Customising Intimate Fantasies: Self Narratives and Subjectivity Practice in China’s Mengnv Community

Abstract

This study examines China’s mengnv community, exploring their self-empowering cultural practice of customising intimate fantasies through creative writing and its cultural implications. Combining feminist literary criticism and reader-response theory, the research employed focus group interviews and textual narrative analysis to reveal how these young girls transitioning from late adolescence to emerging adulthood negotiate selfhood through reimagining intimacy. Findings show that the mengnv community engages in self-empowerment by reconstructing the erotic power structure and fostering non-erotic female alliances. Unlike passive consumers of traditional romance novels, they actively produce and spread texts on digital platforms, transforming fantasy into embodied narrative action and contemplating the self and the other in the exploration of eros.. However, contradictions persist: some texts reproduce the pseudo-subjectivity of Mary Sue logic and foster self-alienation through “low perceived deservingness” internalisation, and their “anti-shared ownership” (tongdanjufou/tongjiajufou) practices reflect how privatisation of emotions undermines collective action. The study argues that while the limitations exist, mengnv practices have demonstrated marginalised young girls’ capacity to carve out resistant spaces through micro-narratives.