Gender and Sexuality Construction in Korean Idol Fan Fiction

Abstract: My research analysis constitutes the construction of gender and sexuality specifically in the category of Top/Bottom in Korean idol fan fictions. Most of the previous researches focus on the feminization of Bottom that women follow the heterosexual norms through the feminized Bottom although they read and write homoerotic fan fictions. The masculinization of Top is barely problematized. In other words, the femaleness of the male body is considered as limitation but the maleness of the male body is taken for granted. However, my point lies on the category of Top/Bottom itself and how the divided category of Top/Bottom is constructed and sustained. On the basis of the argument that the category of Top/Bottom is a parody of the category of two sexes (Butler, 1990, 1993), I explore how the male bodies are Topped/Bottomed in a parody. Laclau and Mouffe's poststructuralist methodology of discourse analysis is deployed to explore my research question. The extracts collected from an online Korean idol fan fiction community are analyzed in the light of signification of the signs in interrelations in the category of Top/Bottom. Judith Butler's concepts of gendered sex, sexed body, materialization, and gender parody provided the theoretical framework to address the research question. Especially my research focused on the subversive aspects of women's reading and writing fan fictions in the theoretical framework of gender parody. In addition, my research rejects the idea of fan fiction being a fantasy demarcated from the reality but deploys theoretical framework of deconstructing the distinction between fantasy and reality in a focus on the function of social regulations drawing demarcation between fantasy and reality.