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This seems like basic denial. I've read more than my fair share of smutty josei and BL. The plot lines and character personalities are easily interchangeable. People who notice this aren't unable to suspend ideas of what female sexuality. The trite approach to it in smutty josei is why I burnt out on it so quickly. The media has stereotypical ideas of what femininity is and how that's represented sexually. Reading the same thing but with two men didn't hold my interest much longer either.

Tl;dr
Typical josei/yaoi doesn't fulfill my fantasy needs so not a fan.

octopodpie wrote:

This seems like basic denial. I've read more than my fair share of smutty josei and BL. The plot lines and character personalities are easily interchangeable. People who notice this aren't unable to suspend ideas of what female sexuality. The trite approach to it in smutty josei is why I burnt out on it so quickly. The media has stereotypical ideas of what femininity is and how that's represented sexually. Reading the same thing but with two men didn't hold my interest much longer either.

I don't know how often you've talked to BL fans about this, but trust me, it is quite common for female fans to identify as seme or be more attracted to the uke. There have been a couple of academic surveys, as well as a bunch of informal fan-run polls, that support this. Or you could, you know, ask some fans.

You are correct in that the uke is often presented as having a traditionally feminine sexuality. But the point of that is that he is a man with a stereotypically feminine sexuality. Which is presented as something you the reader could find enticing, and which also opens the possibility of you the reader occupying the traditionally masculine sexual role.

{Edit: Next time leave out the rude snarky comment at the end. Thanks. ~ Psycho 101}

@ lebrel : You mention a lot of good, relevant points.
Also, if you can recommend any essays/articles on BL that you have liked or learned from, I am very interested in them.

I appreciate that acknowledging women can identify as the uke or seme is being brought up. I feel like that's should be obvious, but is often over-looked. (I often do it myself, but haven't actually thought about that.) Given the women in Japan are identifying and/or being identified as carnivores so often too, that would certainly fit that they would enjoy relating to the seme just as much, if not more than the uke.

Also, I'm just glad someone pointed out that many of the gay men doing BL prefer the term geikomi. I wish I could find the quote, but that is the preferred term over bara (which is still acceptable).

I went through a strong phase of BL a decade or so ago, mostly because of my friends but in part my picks too, and for a few years after, I was kind of burnt out on it? I've been reading het stuff lately, but I also found some good BL and have been easing my way back in. Certainly gets me to thinking about how my reading choice has changed, noting similarities and differences in the writing now vs then, and my own sexuality, lol.

Good article.
Maybe in the future, manga and anime will portray LGBT relationships more accurately.

lebrel wrote:

Justin and various other people wrote:

by women for women

I hate how this generalization is always phrased. BL is written for women, but no part of its definition requires that it be written by women, any more than shoujo/josei has to be written by women. Yes, the majority of authors are female, but there are male authors, including occasionally gay authors who usually write for gay men's magazines. It's the audience, not the author.

It is the audience and the author. I consider it important to the identity of BL that it was created by women and continues to be mostly written by women. Yes, there are men who write BL; but not so many that 'by women' is at all an invalid statement. There are also women who write gei-komi, which doesn't change the fact that it is primarly written by gay men for gay men.
There are virtually no men who write shoujo / josei BTW.

lebrel wrote:

scarletrhodelia wrote:

after going over my terms (BL, shounen-ai, and yaoi)

Another bugbear of mine; I hope you explain that the shounen-ai/yaoi distinction is something that English-speaking fans came up with, and is incomprehensible to Japanese readers, for whom the terms have completely different meanings.

Of course, that is why I talk about them. Wink

I think that you and I are pretty much on the same page and these are minor differences of opinion. I'd love to have you attend one of my talks sometime and talk about BL in person.

OH BOY I like this topic so much I literally created a forum account just to add my two cents.

On BL and gender in general: I'm a lesbian who reads a fair bit of BL, and I feel like a few people have touched on there being an important difference between a genre's intended audience and who actually consumes it. BL is absolutely aimed at girls and women - I guess, presumably, straight girls and women, although I've heard from Japanese lesbians who like BL - but I have known people of all genders and sexualities who read and enjoy it. I'm always more attracted to stories about same-sex romance/sex than those about heterosexual romance/sex, so that's the emotional appeal. Hentai tends to be pretty misogynistic, and most sexually explicit yuri out there is aimed at straight dudes (although I super-love and recommend Morishima Akiko's work, she was the character designer for Yurikuma Arashi and her girls tend to actually have sex). BL can be a way for women to enjoy sexual material while bypassing the minefield of the male gaze, which I think is great.

On the specific subject of why BL guys always say they're straight: firstly, I hate this trope, unless it's part of a narrative arc where the character eventually realizes they really are queer. Just anecdotally, though, I feel like actually hit its high water mark somewhere along the line? I remember when I started reading stuff from the mid-90s to early 2000s as a teenager, I saw a ton of it, but I feel as though it's not as common as it once was. I feel like the number of characters who openly identify as gay or bi has also gone up. Like, Yoneda Kou is my favourite BL author, and in most of her works, at least one guy in the couple is gay. Usually the uke, which is stereotyping, but it's a lot better than "I'm super super straight and just want to bone this one dude."

I'd be curious if anyone else in this threat has noticed any BL trends related to this over time!

@ lebrel : I created this account after lurking for years just to say Thank You. Every post you made I agree with - have seen & do feel exactly the same when I read BL.

Some great BL authors are changing as they get older & get better at tossing away the tired tropes & the publishers finally start to let them, so it's not all protestation & floaty flowers aimed a younger girls. I'm enjoying the genre more now than I did 8 years ago. Embarassed

Last edited by Puniyo on Thu Feb 04, 2016 2:56 pm; edited 3 times in total

To be honest, the main appeal of BL manga for me as a female, is that the couple is equal.
They can switch being dominant and there's no 'weak female that needs to be protected'. It's a hard thing to explain, but it's something ingrained in me by society and yaoi's a nice escape from it. The guy usually actually has concern for his partner and is careful not to hurt him too during such scenes, which isn't something that happens often in straight stuff.

Other than that I find the deniability thing isn't that unbelievable, and I'm a sucker for the whole 'if it's you it's okay' thing 'cause I'm a hopeless romantic who likes to think love > sexuality labels

From my experience this mostly seems to happen in "traditional" (for lack of a better word) BL and usually goes hand in hand with strictly set seme/uke roles and (not neccessarily, but often) the "rape = uncontrollable desire/love" trope. I've never been a fan of this type of dynamic and fortunately there are plenty of BL series for all kinds of tastes now.

I don't expect realism in BL/yaoi because I view them as erotic fantasies. They're no more "realistic" than the "bodice rippers' I used to read. So I'm not exactly expecting them to reflect real life and it's why "non-con" doesn't necessarily bother me. Of course, I prefer the smuttier stuff but I also like a good story. It's hard to find both so I haven't actually read all that much. I don't expect realism, but I do prefer that whatever happens make sense in terms of the overall story. And while there are a lot of BL that rely on clichéd tropes, I do find some series that try to be more realistic and modern when it comes to male homosexuality.

I've read and watched BL for years now and I can pretty much say it is probably not the most progressive genre there is. Slash that, it definitely isn't. I get that for the most part they're supposed to be escapist fantasies but generally, it can get rape-y, homophobic, transphobic and the female representation is lacklustre to say the least. Realism and nuance can actually boost my enjoyment of a story. In general anime and manga kinda fall short when it comes to depicting LGBT groups and issues. This article elaborates on the issue of queer identity in anime/manga quite well in my opinion: https://gargarstegosaurus.wordpress.com/2010/12/27/queer-identity-in-manga/. The article does acknowledge the difference between denial or confusion of your sexuality (which is a real thing) and the narrative wanting you to believe that nope, he isn't gay he just fell for this one guy.

With that said, in a conversation I had with a friend who was also a fujoshi like myself we both noticed that some recent BL are getting better at least in terms of the consent issue. It still might be too soon to say but I do wish that this would become the norm rather than the exception. It's not really uncommon anymore for me to read a BL where one of the guys identify as gay, but now I'm kinda waiting for that BL that features both guys to be queer lol. Then there are those BL where nothing is ever explicitly stated but the guys never assert their straightness or pull a "If It's You It's Okay" thing so I tend to just assume they are queer. There was even one where the guy admitted to being bi (and isn't demonised for it) which astounded me. But seriously it is stupid when men who have been having sex with each other keep being aghast at the idea of a man being attracted to another man (Junjou and Sekaiichi being obvious perpetrators).

I would also love a BL written by Gen Urobuchi but probably not gonna happen anytime soon.

Ooo, lots of comments!

manapear wrote:

Also, I'm just glad someone pointed out that many of the gay men doing BL prefer the term geikomi. I wish I could find the quote, but that is the preferred term over bara (which is still acceptable).

There are a couple of interviews with Gengoroh Tagame where he talks about this, and some panels with the guy who runs Massive (the company) where it has come up. I'm too lazy to Google them right now but they should be easy to find. Basically, "bara" is used as a homophobic slur in Japan, so it should be avoided.

Also, and I'm not sure this is intentional or just a typo, but your wording implies that gei comi is a type of BL; just so everyone is on the same page, it's a separate class of material, like josei vs seinen.

scarletrhodelia wrote:

It is the audience and the author. I consider it important to the identity of BL that it was created by women and continues to be mostly written by women. Yes, there are men who write BL; but not so many that 'by women' is at all an invalid statement. There are also women who write gei-komi, which doesn't change the fact that it is primarly written by gay men for gay men.
There are virtually no men who write shoujo / josei BTW.

As a genre, I agree that the fact that it was developed by women and that women are controlling its direction is important, but at the level of individual works, the gender of the author is irrelevant, just as it is for the other demographic categories (the number of men who write shoujo / josei is low, but it is not zero). For example: one or two of the stories in the Gengoroh Tagame anthology were created for BL magazines, but I've seen English-speaking readers who rejected, or were even offended by, the idea that these stories are BL; they were written by a gay man, therefore they must be gay manga. Conversely, I've also seen people who reject the idea that women can write gay men's manga (which is apparently not that unusual; a couple of the stories in Est Em's Red Blinds the Foolish were published in a gay men's magazine). This is not how material is classified by its authors or its publishers; if a work is created for a BL audience and goes through an editorial process designed to produce material that will appeal to that audience, it's BL. If ditto ditto gay male audience, it's gei comi.

RachelBee wrote:

BL is absolutely aimed at girls and women - I guess, presumably, straight girls and women, although I've heard from Japanese lesbians who like BL - but I have known people of all genders and sexualities who read and enjoy it.

True, and everybody knows this; for material produced in all the demographic categories, it is understood that there will be readers from outside the target audience (although mostly in the direction of female readers consuming works primarily targeted to male audiences). In the case of BL specifically, writers and publishers have occasionally talked about the variety of people who read (and create) BL.

RachelBee wrote:

On the specific subject of why BL guys always say they're straight: firstly, I hate this trope, unless it's part of a narrative arc where the character eventually realizes they really are queer. Just anecdotally, though, I feel like actually hit its high water mark somewhere along the line? I remember when I started reading stuff from the mid-90s to early 2000s as a teenager, I saw a ton of it, but I feel as though it's not as common as it once was. I feel like the number of characters who openly identify as gay or bi has also gone up. Like, Yoneda Kou is my favourite BL author, and in most of her works, at least one guy in the couple is gay. Usually the uke, which is stereotyping, but it's a lot better than "I'm super super straight and just want to bone this one dude."

buffywrestling wrote:

Some great BL authors are changing as they get older & get better at tossing away the tired tropes & the publishers finally start to let them, so it's not all protestation & floaty flowers aimed a younger girls. I'm enjoying the genre more now than I did 8 years ago.

I don't know if it's really a change in Japan; rather more of a change in US BL publishers, who have definitely become more willing to license more adult-oriented works (in all senses) over the last ten years or so. There has been a recent recognition of a group of authors producing what has been dubbed "new wave" BL, which is perceived as being more mature and realistic; but these stories have always existed, it is just that they are now being classified as an identifiable type of material and associated with specific magazines, making them easier to find.

It must be said that I personally love the sparkles and "floaty flowers" and heightened emotionality of "stereotypical" BL. I love the way shoujo and josei are just willing to go all out and be as girly as they damn well want to be, and specifically the way they apply that feminine-positivity to men (in het romances too). American culture needs more cute girly guys.

Dragonsandphoenix wrote:

now I'm kinda waiting for that BL that features both guys to be queer

This exists. A reasonable number of works along these lines have been published in English; one of my personal favorites is A Liar in Love, by Kiyo Ueda.

Dragonsandphoenix wrote:

But seriously it is stupid when men who have been having sex with each other keep being aghast at the idea of a man being attracted to another man (Junjou and Sekaiichi being obvious perpetrators).

Well, one of the points of appeal of both Junjou and Sekaiichi is watching the respective protagonists freak out about their relationship. It's supposed to be entertaining to watch them throw up this giant wall of denial about their feelings for the other person; similar to a lot of old-school shounen romances in which the male half would endlessly insist that they are not interested in that girl, even though it was a forgone conclusion that they'd end up together.

Interesting discussion.

Backtracking slightly, I would say the Answerman to the question "why do these guys keep insisting they're straight" misses the mark slightly. (Or omits one of several marks)

Basically, if a straight guy falls in love with a man through sheer force of the other's winning personality (or other reasons relating to actual interaction between two love interests), suddenly we're now reading a story where "who this person IS" is so attractive that it can override even hard-wired sexual attraction. Not only that, but if you then add sexual attraction to the mix, suddenly we're reading a story where a personality is so attractive, it can even cause sexual attraction where it would never be otherwise.

You can't possibly see why that might be attractive to women, the idea of being loved most for something beyond how physically attractive you are? (It doesn't quite work with an ugly woman in the place of one of the love interests. We all know men don't go for "uggos"; society is too clear on that to pretend otherwise.)

But then flipping that around, of course gay men are going to be equally turned off by the trope. The allure of the trope can be summed up as "masculinity as a negative that is overcome by love" whereas a gay experience is going to resonate with "masculinity is the reason for the attraction in the first place". I don't think it's at all strange to find the trope offensive, but I don't think that will override the reasons why it it attractive to women on a certain level. Different axises and all that.

lebrel wrote:

It must be said that I personally love the sparkles and "floaty flowers" and heightened emotionality of "stereotypical" BL. I love the way shoujo and josei are just willing to go all out and be as girly as they damn well want to be, and specifically the way they apply that feminine-positivity to men (in het romances too). American culture needs more cute girly guys.

Don't get me wrong, I love it too! I think there's plenty of room for both "new wave" and flowers and sparkles. I also feel like a lot of the criticism of "girly uke" is rooted in misogyny, as though it's unrealistic and/or wrong for men to have stereotypically feminine traits. There are BL tropes I dislike (guys asserting they're straight to the point of homophobia, rape glossed over), but that's because I worry about the message they send, wheras the message "girlyness is for everyone" is one I strongly agree with.

I'm also so glad you brought up genre crossover, it's really interesting to me and I have very little knowledge about it! I'm really curious about how much of this is happening what what people think about it, so I appreciate the insight!

lebrel wrote:

Ooo, lots of comments!

manapear wrote:

Also, I'm just glad someone pointed out that many of the gay men doing BL prefer the term geikomi. I wish I could find the quote, but that is the preferred term over bara (which is still acceptable).

There are a couple of interviews with Gengoroh Tagame where he talks about this, and some panels with the guy who runs Massive (the company) where it has come up. I'm too lazy to Google them right now but they should be easy to find. Basically, "bara" is used as a homophobic slur in Japan, so it should be avoided.

Also, and I'm not sure this is intentional or just a typo, but your wording implies that gei comi is a type of BL; just so everyone is on the same page, it's a separate class of material, like josei vs seinen.

Thanks! I'll look those up. (Was Tagame the one that was quoted talking about the use of geikomi as a term?)

And yeah, that was my bad with wording, but that's good to make the distinction. ^u^

@ RachelBee : Agreed on all of your commentary! And I think that's a good point in particular about the misogyny of male characters with girly features.

@ musouka : That's a solid point about the straight guy falling in love due to someone's character. Those kind of storylines are a huge draw for me. It's a nice. . . power fantasy/empowerment scenario (when handled right, applying to anything!). But yeah, very good points all around about all of that, especially why that can be equally unappealing (or more) for gay men.

This is off-topic, and may sound weird, but I'm really glad to see this comment thread going this way. I'm certainly learning a lot, and there's a lot of commenters here that know what they're talking about, and/or have some experience with BL that I can relate to or reminds me of my friends.

It's going much better than that recent yuri thread was, and that just feels good to see. (Especially with how this community can get, lol.)

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