I agree that there are so many good stories in the BL genre. In fact, I touched on that with #4 in my list of 5 reasons when I said that there's more dramatic conflict in a gay love story. And I cracked up when you said that we like seeing attractive men! lol. I love BL because it's not just one hot guy in the lead, but 2 hot guys. We get a double dose of male hotness!
As for practicing Asian languages, you and I have discussed this before and I am so impressed by your proficiency with foreign languages. Especially because you said you were American and we Americans are notorious for not learning other languages. We expect the whole world to speak English because, well, it kind of does. lol. A century ago French was still the language of diplomacy. English began to replace it at the end of WWI when Western Europe faded as America rose. But I've heard that Chinese is on its way to becoming the next international language. All the pricy prep schools now teach Chinese.
I think most of my personal reasons are covered, but I'll add in my thoughts in anyways.
1. I'm a straight female and I'm attracted to guys. I'll give an example. Let's say that you like chocolate bars, but in order to eat a chocolate bar, you also have to eat a vegetable (that you neither like nor dislike ). However, one day, you're given two chocolate bars instead of 1 choco bar and 1 vegetable. You get double the amount of stuff that you like, so you would obviously pick the 2 Choco bars. They same concept applies to BL for me.
2. I enjoy watching the positive and negative variations of male characters that we don't often see in straight dramas.
3. I also like watching BL's for the plot. Steamy scenes do not make any contribution to my decision of what BL's I watch. Some of my favorite BL's have no steamy scenes (ATOTS, Cherry Magic, Woh, etc). Sometimes, even if the show is loaded with steamy scenes and whatnot, if I don't like the plot, then I won't watch it.
4. I just like seeing different perspectives. I've watched straight movies and shows for all my life, so watching something different is refreshing.
5. Different relationship dynamics - This goes along with point 4, but it's kinda fun to see different dynamics for men. Like you said, a lot of women are given passive roles, so when I see a male character having a passive role, it feels a bit satisfying for me.
Thank you for commenting on the importance of plot. Every time some self-righteous person accuses fujoshis of "fetishizing gay men" I reply, "Um, no. Because if I had a sexual fetish for gay men, I'd watch gay male porn. But I like the stories, so I watch BL's instead."
I also love how you cited the Hot Guy x's2 factor when you said the following: "You get double the amount of stuff that you like, so you would obviously pick the 2 Choco bars. They same concept applies to BL for me."
I had said the same thing in #5 on my list when I joked that hetero men want to see Hot Girls x's2 in porn, and hetero women want to see Hot Guys x's2 in BL. I also qualified that I'd come up with this as my own personal reason, rather than one of the reasons I'd gleaned from Queer Studies BL Dissertations. Funny, but I've read over 50 Queer Studies BL Dissertations, and not one said a word about Hot Guys x's2. Yet I have seen Hot Guy x's2 appear three times just today as a reason that we actual, practicing fujoshis love BL!
Incidentally, a lot of those academic papers suffer from the fact that the writers are not actual, practicing BL viewers. That's why they would not even know about the Hot Guys x's2 reason. They are interested in Queer Theory in an abstract, intellectual capacity, and simply hit on BL's as the hot new topic because everyone has written on everything else before . As someone who had to write an English PhD Dissertation, I can tell you that finding an original topic is extremely hard.
So you have all these Queer Theory academics only writing about BL's because it's the hot, new topic. But I can tell that they are not fans, and have no joy or passion for the genre. Often, they will get a show's plot points or character analysis utterly wrong. However, I'm happy to say that others evidence a true passion for the genre. Guess where I see the most genuine passion? Yep, it's Asian women who attend American Universities! They are the only ones who interview true fans instead of just dumping a lot of other professors' theories into their papers. Frankly, it's shocking how few of these academic papers engaged with actual fans of the genre.
Speaking from my personal experiences, as a bi woman, I love both BL and GL because both contents are mostly youth scenes that take me back to when I was young, like gigling when you like someone from the same class, you know, first love experiences. Also, I can’t stand straight drama because they are cheesy, some tends to have bad ending, and does not give me butterfly as much as BL and GL. There were like a tons of them with the same plots so that’s kinda repetitive and predictable. I mean BL and GL haven’t really developed until the last couple years so they are mostly amateur works but I enjoy most of them regardless. But I still watch normal straight drama with comedic sense or if I find both male lead and female lead are attractive. The straight dramas also suffer from female lead syndrome, meaning, most of the time I found the female lead acting is annoying, overacted, and painful to watch. I think it is mostly because of the script writer that they making the character that way (could be gender bias that most female supposed to be act that way). Instead of making them matured, considered, they just have to make them act childish. To add on another reason why I love BL and GL is because sometimes in the drama, they make that being gay is so natural, no question asked from friends when the main characters introducing their partner or confess that they like another guy/gal. And I think that is the world that we need to strive for. I really hate it when I introduce my partner and people be like, are you gay? Aren’t you straight? I hate people throwing questions at me. So I kinda want to say that BL and GL is relatable. So it doesn’t have to be hetero women but queer women can also enjoy this type of genre
dtran3377
Thank you so much for your reply. I love what you called "female lead syndrome" because I know precisely what you meant when you said the following:
"I found the female lead acting is annoying, overacted, and painful to watch. I think it is mostly because of the script writer that they making the character that way (could be gender bias that most female supposed to be act that way). Instead of making them matured, considered, they just have to make them act childish."
You are spot on correct that the problem is often gender bias because the majority of television and movie screenwriters are men. Male writers also dominate in America, and I presume the same across the world, including Asia . Some men can get inside the minds of women characters but, of course, most cannot. So we have men creating weak women characters. Meanwhile, with BLs it's the exact opposite and it's women who write about men. Unfortunately, the women writers portray us just as badly as the male writers do.
To be clear, some do a wonderful job portraying positive women, such as the lead's ex girlfriend in "Like Love," and the manga writer's female best friend in "Shiny Smile" (she said, "Every fujoshi has a penis growing in her heart!" lol). However, there are a surprising number of BL's with the evil ex-girlfriend, the witchy mom, or the gossipy, gaggle of girls in class (Thai BL's are especially guilty on all three counts of this). I see this in BL's and wonder, "How can you portray your own gender this way?"
I personally like it for the forbidden element. It goes against societal standards yet, for the sake of love, the two men come together anyways. Like Romeo and Juliet kind of. Most BLs have to hide their love. They love in secret. It is a star-crossed love almost all of the time. So the fact that they come together anyways makes that love feel all the more powerful. Whereas, hetero relationships are the norm. They are accepted everywhere you go, so they don't face that initial scandal or challenge.
Also, I wonder what percentage of the male population on planet earth is actually gay? Because that might account for why BL's have a larger female demographic. It might just be a numbers thing. Like, there're more female heterosexuals on earth than male homosexuals so naturally those numbers would reflect in the target audience of BLs. For example, say if 10% of the planet was male homosexuals, that's a relatively small number compared to 40% heterosexual females. Those are just random numbers so don't quote me, but I imagine that discrepancy counts for something.
I had listed forbidden love on my list because it's a very strong reason for me. Forbidden love means conflict, and conflict is the essence of drama. However, the Queer Studies academics who write those dissertations have no interest in (nor knowledge of), fictional writing techniques. I say this as an English Professor who's had to wade through the terrible, turgid prose of dissertations even in my own department. Academic writing is notoriously dry and awful, as opposed to good fiction. So these papers will focus on all sorts of socio-political reasons for women enjoying BL, but utterly overlook the obvious. Which is to say, that forbidden love provides a spanking good story!
In fact, that's why Asian BL's are still so riveting. There's nothing forbidden about gay love in the West anymore. Our LGBT love stories begin with characters marching down 5th Avenue waiving a rainbow flag. But there are still risks to being gay in Asia, and the stakes are still high, which means the dramatic tension is high. I'm not happy about real life gays still struggling, but in terms of fiction I cannot deny that struggle equals dramatic conflict. And that's the essence of a good story.
In short, this is my strongest reason for enjoying BL. When I watch Western gay love stories -- which is to say, LGBT movies -- I enjoy ones set in earlier periods when being gay meant a life fraught with dramatic tension. I highly recommend the GL "Carol" with Cate Blanchett set in the 1950's. I loved Stephen Frye's Oscar Wilde biopic. Merchant & Ivories "Maurice" is one of my all time fave gay love stories. It's set in the Edwardian period, about 20 years after poor Oscar Wilde was destroyed for being gay, when being gay was still illegal. E.M. Forster could not even publish it and just shared it with his friends (it was published posthumously in the 1970's).
The novel and movie "Maurice" provide this wonderful dramatic tension as Maurice struggles with his desires and lives in terror of being caught. Surprisingly, however, it has a happy ending. Imagine, a novel about gay love written in 1910 and a movie made about it in 1987 have a happy ending! The gays did not have to be punished or die at the end!
Yes, it is almost impossible to pin point what makes a good story just like it is impossible to pin point what makes a good actor. They call it the “it” factor. I just call it some element of magic. Maurice was actually one of the very first LGBTQ+ films I watched! I simply don’t enjoy BL stories as much when there isn’t that risk factor. The same with heterosexual love stories. Plenty of modern movies exist that capture that risk factor though, like Boy Erased, Prayers for Bobby, Brokeback Mountain, Free Fall (German Film), Moffie (South African film), and especially a French movie called Hidden Kisses. Gosh I have been watching Gay movies all my life hahah. I think in a last life I was a gay man ??? But I agree with you. Carol is on my list of ones to watch! Thank you for the mention ?
Carol is brilliant. It's on Netflix if you have it. It was still really hard to be gay in the 1950's and even harder for lesbians because women, of course, had less rights to begin with. But this movie, like Maurice, has a happy ending. I gave someone a list of my Top 5 GL's on page one of this forum and Carol is among them. I am sure you'll love it too as I see you on many MDL comment threads so I know we have the same taste.
Sorry, I don't have time to read all the others comments, but I think I can indeed add something new to the discussion.
I agree with most reasons you pointed out, the equality thing, the erotic aspects, not the escapism, though. (I hear it often that people in general watch or read stories to escape their life, and for most that maybe indeed the reason for them enjoying fiction, not for me though). As I writer myself (yes, I make a living with novel writing, but I'm not a native English speaker, so that explains my poor language skills), I never felt like watching or reading about stories is some sort of escapism. It's art, it's passion, it makes you learn about life and people. Yes, it lets you experience another world with interesting characters, but that adds to life, makes you grow as a person and learn about others. That's also the reason why I'm here for a good and deep story, that keeps me on the edge of my seat, and not for some cheesy fanservice or fetish, though such series I enjoy occasionally for my guilty pleasure too, if they don't overdo it. Do you know about mpreg btw? Omegaverse?
First, there is indeed the erotic part, seeing two men kiss. Like someone else mentioned, she is into femininity, so she likes feminine boys kiss. I'm the opposite. I'm more into masculinity in general, and I myself am more of a tomboy. It's sad, but I admire masculinity more, and with femininity I associate weakness. That said, I enjoy rather masculine tomboy-ish girls on screen very, very much. So I like lesbian stories if the girls are not your typical hetero girls.
But back to the new thing I want to add.
At the beginning of BL there was that concept of "I'm only gay for you". They still use this sometimes, but it's not that prominent anymore. They make their stories more realistic nowadays, and are more clear about the sexuality of their character. I never really enjoyed the cheesy aspect of it, but the idea behind it, that you like a person, their character, their personality, you enjoy being with that person so much, that you even feel attracted to that person physically despite this going against your nature, was exciting. Again, this is not about the soulmate thing, (for me) it's more about the idea, how love works, and at what pace and in what direction it develops.
When I was a young girl, and god only knows why, I seriously thought relationships develop like this. You meet a boy, you get along with him, you became friends, your bond gets stronger, you enjoy being together, you fall in love, you want to connect to him on a physical level, you kiss, you have sex.
The reality is, that you're a woman, a girl. There is a guy, who thinks you're nice. He doesn't behave towards you like he would towards a guy friend. He approaches you with the intent to make you his girlfriend. I'm not saying men and women can't be friends, but it's just my personal experience that men show (sexual) interest in you before they even know you well. I felt reduced to a "woman", that the guy is only interested to interact with, because, well, I am a woman, and he wants to be with a woman. So this is not about me and my personality, it's more about my gender. He wouldn't want to be with me if I'm a guy. I hope that makes sense. To sum it up: Personality comes later, hormones, physical attraction comes first. Without the latter no love is happening. So "love" means indeed being attracted to the social concept and sexuality of the opposite sex.
Like you pointed out, the gender roles are still the same today. I have no partner, and I don't plan to look for one. When I was in a relationship, I felt like I had to be the "woman" which means I have to provide emotional support (women are soft and emotional, and they like to care for men and children, well, I don't), I have to cook, clean, spread my legs. Even when it comes to sex - especially (!) when it comes to sex - you're the passive, the weak one. That will never change. Unless you play some ugly mind games with your guy (which some women do), you will always be the weaker one at least physically, and also financially if you have to care for the children, and can't pursue a career like he does. You will depend on him.
So back to BL. There is the possibility (!) of equality, and you can chose your role. They can even change their sex positions and be top and bottom! Funny thing is, that for many hetero women who enjoy BL as a fetish, they are into those top/bottom stereotypes or even into mpreg, which I'm not. This just presses the couple into the man/woman role again, and I can watch hetero stories for that.
Talking about my writing career, I started with Gay Romance, that's how we called the genre back then in Germany. Nowadays, I write hetero stories, and funny enough, they sell well. I lately calculated that I sold around 420k books in my career. No, I'm no millionaire. You don't earn much per book. The way I write my characters, I always provide both, the man and the woman, with strengths and weaknesses. I try to create the characters in a way so their personality fits each other, they complement each other and support each other. Nobody is above the other. I'm really surprised that those stories sell, because throughout my career, people always told me, I can't make it. This is not what sells. It's not cheesy enough, not mainstream enough, the characters are too unusual. They were wrong. So I guess there are indeed some people out there who enjoy reading such stories.
So, that was it from me.
I'm jumping in here from a totally different perspective. I am a gay man from Europe, with a strong love for Asia in general, and my boyfriend who I met on my many travels through Asia is Thai.
I am loving BLs for many years now, I think since "Love by Chance" in Thailand aired first.
For obvious reasons, I love watching attractive (Asian) boys/men on screen, but especially, seeing so many shows where love is celebrated. There are so many (western) gay themed movies out there that are really tragic, with sad storylines. The other way round it's mostly hetero relationships. BLs are some sort of escapism for me to see beautiful shows with lots of cuteness and love (and sometimes with some steam). And I also find it very interesting that those shows come from a part of the world where LGBTQ is not as accepted as in Western hemispheres, although it's getting much better in the past years. And so many BL shows! It's countless which is fantastic. Such a large production area with basically unlimited content. Although same-sex relationships are very much accepted here, there are only very limited series or movies around that topic available. And they
I also saw a lot of Thai BL actors in Bangkok for real. They are basically everywhere doing some promotional stuff. And I was also really surprised to be sometimes the only male in the crowd - all girls screaming to their BL stars. So it's highly interesting to read through this thread to understand where it's coming from. I always thought in the beginning I'm watching gay shows for a gay audience, but man, I was wrong :)
Hello again :)
You asked me to copy paste part of our previous discussion here, so here it is. I edited it a bunch because I had more to say lol.
I'd like to add to your list of reasons for why women enjoy media in which two men fall in love. I don't disagree with any of your reasons, but some of mine might be contradictory. Different reasons apply to different people. Not all women enjoy m/m media for the same reasons.
You've probably heard of AO3 (archives of our own). It's the most popular fanfic website. The overwhelming majority of content on there is m/m. Most of the authors and audience are women (about 75%). Women enjoying gay media isn't only a thing in Asia. I guess the conservative old farts that dictate the western film industry just haven't yet realized the absolute goldmine of content they're completely ignoring. Red White Royal Blue is getting a movie adaptation though, after Heartstopper's success, so maybe some change is finally on the way.
But the interesting thing is that you can apparently do polls on AO3, and those polls show that the majority of authors and readers of m/m media are NOT straight women, only 30% of them are. Bisexual women are the largest group, then straight women, then asexuals, and there is even a significant percentage who are lesbians and trans people of all varieties. And obviously queer men as well. I got these statistics from Sarah Z's video 'Gay Fanfiction' which explores the question of why fanfiction is so dominated by m/m ships and why it's mostly written and read by women.
A lot of these queer people say that they read/write m/m media partially because it helps them explore their own struggles with self acceptance and coming out. They relate to the characters' experiences, but it's still more emotionally distant than if it was about someone who shared their actual identity, so consuming this media is less heavy of an emotional burden.
For asexual women, a lot of them say that they read/write m/m media because it helps them enjoy sexuality from a distance, without having to identify with either of the main leads too much, because having to imagine oneself in a sexual situation would be personally uncomfortable or unbearable. Autochorissexuality/aegosexuality is a thing, and I'd say it heavily correlates with enjoying BL for women or GL for men.
Maybe emotional distance from sexual situations also helps women who've been through sexual abuse? Seems logical to me.
I have a bunch of ace, bi and trans friends, some of whom are very into m/m fanfic, and they have their own musings on why this is.
One friend said that the most well-developed characters in media she consumes are almost always male (because of society's sexism female characters are underdeveloped blabla). Exploring the relationship between two male characters who are canonically just friends is therefore more interesting than including a female character who just wasn't written to be as interesting.
One friend said she enjoys that in m/m fiction she can explore what (the threat of) violence means within a romantic relationship. If a gay guy has a crush on a friend who is maybe straight maybe not, then because of society's homophobia, the relationship may turn violent when the straight friend finds out about this crush. And maybe the 'straight' friend isn't straight at all, but is in heavy denial about his orientation and is using violence as a way to prove his masculinity and supposed heterosexuality. These themes are interesting to her. In BL, especially enemies to lovers series, main leads punching each other is a thing that sometimes happens, and it would not happen if either of them were female. The potential for violence increases angst potentials.
And one acquaintance, who I think was hetero ace, said that for her it was simply about double hot guy = double hot. She also said that she just doesn't like women, and she did come off pretty unabashedly misogynistic. She enjoyed the pornographic side of BL, and not the fluffy side. None of my friends in that conversation shared her reasons for enjoying BL, so y'know, that's how some people work, but def not the majority.
And I've already mentioned the 'it's emotionally distant, therefore sexual violence happening to the main character feels more fictional' reason. I think that is the reason that 'Killing Stalking' was so popular among straight women. James Somerton made a great video about why women enjoy media in which abuse gets romanticized, especially m/m media, but also media like '50 Shades of grey' and '365 Days'. It has to do with societal misogyny/rape culture getting fetishized and ingrained in women.
I mean, Addicted Heroin, TharnType and KinnPorsche were massively popular, so I don't think we can deny that the romanticization of abuse is a thing within BL. I once tried to go read some Chinese BL on a fanfic-esque website to see if I could use it to improve my Mandarin, but the most popular tags were 'abuse' and 'slight abuse', so I was out of there real fast. It is undeniably a popular thing among a subset of BL fans.
I will not judge women for writing these things, as I know that for some of them it is a way of processing the sexual trauma they endured themselves by taking control of the narrative (they're literally all-mighty in what happens in the story since they're the ones writing it).
James Somerton's video is called 'Killing Stalking and the Romancing of Abuse'. I think you'd enjoy his video called 'Shipping, the Good, the Bad and the Thirsty' too.
It appears that tv adaptations of BL, especially more recently, largely shy away from this side of BL. Maybe focusing more on the fluffy side (which is also definitely a big thing in independent fanfic) helps it appeal to a wider audience, or helps people avoid scandals? It's less risky.
I think that's a good thing. Processing your own trauma by writing these things, having a small community of similar people reading it, that's one thing. Making a big budget tv series out of it which romanticizes and possibly perpetuates rape culture to a whole new audience is another thing entirely.
Rowan Ellis made a video essay called 'The Rise (and Rise) of the Omegaverse', discussing how and why queer people engage in 'the omegaverse'. 'The omegaverse' is a mostly western genre of m/m stories (that I'm not personally familiar with), in which there are essentially a second set of genders. There's male/female and on top of that every character has a second gender of alpha/beta/omega. As I understand it, these are kind of like top/verse/bottom, but also kind of different, e.g. male 'omegas' can get pregnant for some reason.
The male pregnancy thing coming with different gendered social norms is actually really interesting in terms of how interwoven physical sex, gender norms and the distribution of labor are under capitalism. In the real world, the realm of reproductive labor (childrearing, cooking, cleaning etc) is traditionally assigned to women, and productive labor (making stuff) assigned to men. In the fictional omegaverse, 'omega' males get assigned reproductive labor despite being male, and that also often comes with gender norms of them being weaker and lower on the social hierarchy.
Rowan Ellis analyzes how queer people use this fictional set of genders to explore gender equality and inequality, how it interacts with romantic relationships, gender expression, oppression, how it can be hidden, how the rules can be broken, etc. But of course a lot of it is also apparently just straight up porn with no deeper meaning. I certainly haven't waded into the genre to go find the hidden gems. No thank you.
Rowan Ellis surveyed a LOT of queer people who enjoy m/m omegaverse stories on what they enjoy about it, so I think this video would be right up your alley. She really offers new insights, as she always does.
Ellis herself is an ace lesbian, so not someone you'd think would enjoy m/m media, but yeah no she absolutely does. I mean, among all of my queer friends of various genders and orientations, everyone loved Heartstopper, which was written by an aroace woman and is mostly about a fluffy relationship between two teenage boys. So I don't think we can say that the majority of people who enjoy BL are straight women, or necessarily even attracted to men at all (like me, I'm really not that into guys). Maybe in Asia more of the female audience is still closeted, but I just don't think they're all actually straight. Some of them will be, but the majority? I don't know.
A giant part of the reason why Heartstopper was so popular is 'queer optimism'= queer people want to see media in which we get to be happy. Queer optimism was/is a new and very popular trend among queer audiences, and BL slots right into it. (The wave of anti-LGBT hate and legislation in the past year has pretty much stopped this brand new trend in its tracks, because it feels like this is a time to fight for our goddamn lives, not to go 'everything is going to be sunshine and rainbows for us yay.')
Queer optimism was a response to earlier trends of always portraying queer lives as ending in tragedy. The reason this happened was because of the Hays Code. Queer people in media legally had to have a tragic ending, because otherwise it would be seen as promoting homosexuality, which was illegal. It would straight up be censored otherwise.
When I was younger and looked for queer media, it would often end in the main character dying a horrible death either by suicide or violence from community or family, so now that type of media is hard to watch for me. When that's the only ending you see for people who are like you, it has an impact on the types of futures you can imagine for yourself and whether you think the world has a place for you at all.
That's why I gravitate towards the much fluffier BL/GL or things like She-ra or The Owl House. If I watch queer media, I always first check whether it has a happy ending. It's fine if things get difficult for the main character, up to a certain point (and sexual violence is beyond my boundaries), as long as everything is okay at the end.
This preference for positive media is a trend among queer people. To illustrate, there's this independent webseries on YouTube called 'Hetero' and its tagline to draw queer audiences in is 'everyone is gay and nobody dies'. The makers feel the need to clarify that nobody dies beforehand, so that audiences feel safe getting emotionally invested in the characters.
I don't know if you've heard of the website 'does the dog die', but it's pretty much what it says on the tin. You can search for a movie you're about to watch and see if the dog dies, so you can prepare for that or decide not to watch it. It has a spinoff called 'does an lgbt person die'.
We're kinda done watching queer people get sexually abused, violated, murdered, shunned to the point of suicide. I'm done with 'misery porn', = media designed to get straight people to sympathize with those poor queers whose lives are so full of misery, the term doesn't actually refer to porn.
Media about queer people that wins prizes often falls into this category. It's why we call it Oscar-bait. This type of media is made by straight people, with a straight audience in mind, which obviously appeals more to the straight majority than media made with a queer audience in mind, so it's more popular because of demographic numbers. E.g. the Danish Girl, Brokeback Mountain. They're not necessarily hits among queer people at all. They're often heavily critiqued by queer people.
BL is pretty unique in that it pretty much always has a happy ending, because if it didn't have that, fans would blast the shit out of it.
As a nonbinary person, a part of the reason I gravitate towards BL is that the romantic relationship doesn't include people with body parts that I don't want to be reminded of, and nobody in the relationship gets treated like a girl, either in a sexist way or in a regular 'you just are a girl' way. It helps me avoid gender dysphoria.
I cringe a bit too hard at heterosexual relationships in media. A part of that is due to me being reminded of how men have treated me in the past and how that makes me want to crawl out of my skin. Another part of that is due to me not wanting to be reminded of female-ness in general, like, I don't want to have to look at a character and think 'ugh, is that what I look like to other people? Barf.'
Not all of this applies to GL, so that's still easier for me to watch than anything straight. GL also sometimes includes butch lesbians who could be nonbinary if you squint, which I obviously enjoy. I hope once I finally get access to medical transition I'll be able to enjoy lesbian media without having to endure dysphoria.
So yeah there are not only 'pull' factors towards BL, but also 'push' factors away from straight media.
I guess I'm looking for two types of media.
The first is fluffy media that implicitly tells its audience that queer life can have a happy ending, that we're allowed to exist in this world and be okay, that life doesn't have to suck for us. Asian BL and GL perfectly fit this desire. I know that this fluffy media is often not deeper than your average hallmark christmas movie, but I'm okay with that. I really wish there was fluffy nonsense about like 6 attractive trans people of various genders falling in love with each other in the same style that BL guys do. I guess I just want to feel okay about myself, like there's a place where I belong and can be okay. I'm trying to negate internalized queerphobia.
The second type of media I'm looking for is media made by queer people that is about fighting systemic injustice, about nonconformity, changing social rules, found family, self-discovery, diversity and acceptance. Media like The Owl House, She-Ra, Our Flag Means Death, Luca, The Eclipse etc. I really want to watch Nimona and Strange World but haven't been able to stream them illegally yet.
Uh yeah so loads of extra reasons there, and obviously not a lot of them apply to straight women, but I thought I'd elucidate some reasons for the BL enjoyers who aren't straight women :)
(Two other creators who discuss the world of queer media and fanfic and who are super worth listening to are Alexander Avila and Princess Weekes.)
I will also disagree that there is no longer a 'forbidden' element to queer love in a western setting. In some stories that might be true, but homophobia is still going strong in the west too, ESPECIALLY this year, like bruh it's a fever pitch.
Statistically the majority of homeless minors are still LGBT+, and we all know why that is, right?
And I'll agree about academics often being very out of touch with the communities they write about. That's why I generally just get my info straight from the communities themselves. Academics attempt to get at and distill knowledge that is already widely available within queer communities. They're like anthropologists, they stand on the outside, always several steps behind the actual community itself.
I mean, as a trans person, reading studies about trans people by so-called experts is just embarrassing. They're so incredibly clueless. If they'd just had one trans person go through the study and correct all the issues with a big red pen, they'd have saved themselves some really basic mistakes, but they didn't, instead they generally portray trans people's own knowledge as biased, silly, unscientific. A lot of academics have this type of haughty superiority complex that I'll never understand. Dunning Kruger effect maybe.
And yeah the language learning aspect is a big part of it for me too. I'm a total language nerd, and while I'm not specifically interested in Thai, Japanese, Korean or Tagalog (definitely in Mandarin though), slowly piecing together and understanding more of a language as I watch more of their media is still really satisfying. It's like a really long puzzle. You first start to recognize phonemes, then common words and phrases, then grammatical rules, and you end up being able to understand meaning and connotations beyond what the subtitles can give you! I love that so much!
Also, tiny issue, I wouldn't personally use the word 'blacks' to describe black people. In my knowledge, they don't generally appreciate that. It's one of those 'you can say it if you're part of the community, otherwise no' words.
I sometimes say 'queers' or 'gays', and I usually do it to make fun of how conservative straight people talk about us. I would not do this if I was not queer myself. I'd say 'queer people' or 'LGBT+ people' or something like that. I don't ever mean to use 'queers' or 'gays' as an actual word. It's meant to be an in-joke. In the same way I sometimes say 'transes' to refer to trans people. It's like saying 'pocketses'. It's not a word, but it's fun to say.
First, there is indeed the erotic part, seeing two men kiss. Like someone else mentioned, she is into femininity, so she likes feminine boys kiss. I'm the opposite. I'm more into masculinity in general, and I myself am more of a tomboy. It's sad, but I admire masculinity more, and with femininity I associate weakness. That said, I enjoy rather masculine tomboy-ish girls on screen very, very much. So I like lesbian stories if the girls are not your typical hetero girls.adramalover:
just a little addition. just because someone is attracted to masculinity doesn't mean they have to be masculine themselves. its rather quite the opposite. same goes for femininity, if someone is attracted to femininity doesn't mean they are feminine themselves.
Butch lesbian here. I love beautiful petite feminine women. :( so i gotta be the masc one lmao
i associate femininity with weakness too! that's why i feel the need to protect. thats why im into them.
You are quite rare. you are a particular trait and you are attracted to the same. which is pretty honest rare to see.
I am masculine, im attracted to feminine. Even my ex boyfriends have never been traditional masculine. always feminine tending.
so its deffo rare to see someone who's into masculine, even though they are masculine themselves.
Pre-warning this is a long post because I'm trying to catch up on what everyone said and write my thoughts as I read through.
Maggi64 to add on to your #2 "BL's allow women to see men's softer, vulnerable side" I think seeing the vulnerability side of masculinity is part of it but so is as AthenaTheStorierX
mentioned that fact that there is no female audience surrogate women feel safer with a mlm relationship and are able to escape into the fiction of the story. With hetro onscreen couples there is always an element of the female audience put themselves in the woman's shoes versus with two men you are able to create that distance.
As a Pan/ Bi woman I have watched hetro dramas where I liked both the ML and FL. And that was a lot of fun. The first example I can think of of Strong Woman Do Bong Soon. With BLs in particular for me what drew me in was the amount of Pan/ Bi representation even if not healthy because there is so little of that representation for me in the west. I would love to see more GLs as well. The other thing I really liked was that a lot of BLs have happy endings for queer people which is really nice to see. I was getting really tired of the bury your gays tropes and the concentration on the tragedy of being queer brought on by the Hayes code and the Oscar bait dramas for a straight audience. We still get some of that in BLs but not as much as other media. While straight women cannot relate to this aspect the same way as queer people can there is still an element of something being shown on screen happy queer relationships that is not common in other media. Couple that with attraction to both MLs and it is a fun experience to watch these shows.
This idea comes back to what Assassin Wench and sjay
said BL plots feel different because they are different. We've all seen the hetro tropes played out to death. Most of the BL tropes still feel fresh because it is an emerging genre and the shows are becoming more varied/ experimental. Cutie Pie is a great example I had never seen a show were two men were engaged since childhood before. It felt like a fresh take on a trope we've all seen before. KinnPorsche is fun because it's warring mafia men who also have romances with each other.
Also, sjay love the chocolate comparison. It is also satisfying to see men in a passive role in relationships. But on the other side of the coin I tend to prefer seeing two active men in a relationship the push and pull of that relationship is fun MaxTul being the kings of this in early BLs.
One thing to comment on for women watching BLs instead of gay porn. It is because more often than not women are more interested in the emotional relationship than just the sexual one. Women are drawn to seeing the emotional side of the relationship. Sometimes the sexual relationship is fun but the emotional is much more satisfying and if you pair them together that's even better.
Another thing to take note of is how many of these BLs have an element of the female gaze and showing men through that gaze. Most of the books these shows are based off of were written by women. And some women are the directors and screenwriters. Still so much of the media made today is made by men and is missing the element of the female gaze. And to me a key point of the female gaze is taking the emotional relationship into account instead of just the physical.
Hello fellow Bi BL GL watcher dtran3377 the often annoying immaturity of FL in some hetro drama is unwatchable. But I also feel that way about some of the immature BL MLs as well. And yes the escapism of some of these BLs and GLs being in a world where being gay is normalized is such a relief and again something we don't see anywhere else.
adramalover I think your commentary about a lot BLs being about liking someone for who they are despite their physical sex definitely plays into the ideas of what I was talking about where women care about the emotions and personality more than the physicality. This also plays into why I've met a lot more female Pansexuals than male. There is an element of women prefer look at who a person is not just their physical appearance. The only difference is Pansexuals don't just like the opposite sex. And when I describe Demisexual to women most agree that they feel that way also. Demisexual is when you are only attracted to people physically after liking their personality. I am also Demi btw.
Ryn_333 Thank you for bringing up Asexuals because a friend of mine is Ace and she loves BLs and cites one of the reasons being the shows are not asking her to relate them sexually she can just be a viewer. Also, so glad we are getting more adaptations like Heartstopper and Red White and Royal Blue. I completely agree that BLs are a safe place for exploration of violence in romantic relationships there is a reason Enemies to Lovers is a favorite trope especially for those who have experienced sexual abuse and as a way to take back control in a misogynistic society.
I also would love to see more Ace characters on screen like in Heartstopper and The Warp Effect.
There is also a big mis-reprentation that all of the women watching BLs are straight. Of all of the women I know personally that are watching BLs only 3 are straight the rest (8 women) are a part of the queer community. I think the A03 surveys may be relatively representative of the BL viewership as well.
Ichika Kaneki It's funny you bring up that people are generally attracted to the opposite of themselves. I am a pretty strong and tall woman so the men I am generally more attracted to are bigger and stronger but the women I am attracted to can go either way. I think this can also be paired with Dom and Sub energies people have. I am very verse so I can be fine with Dom or Sub energy from a woman but sadly the misogyny in society makes me less comfortable with a sub male especially if he is smaller than me. If he's a lot bigger than me than maybe.
I have loved reading everyone's thoughts here and will pop in the future to read what everyone will say.
