Regimes of desire: Young gay men and media in Japan

Arising out of my doctoral fieldwork, this project examines how consuming media informs young Japanese gay men about their identities and sexual desires through a predominantly ethnographic approach. I am especially interested in charting how the Japanese gay media landscape produces “hierarchies of desire” that privilege heteronormative expressions of masculinity. In particular, through a number of critical case studies of how young gay men consume and utilise media in their everyday lives, I seek to interrogate how the system of “Typing” which structures the Japanese gay media landscape commoditizes desire and identity, subsequently limiting the agency of gay men in Japan to express themselves.