It’s impossible to consume Japanese media without getting exposed to some form of BL or yaoi. I was such a heavy consumer of the genre in my teenage years that when I first started grad school, I considered making it my research subject. Going through the literature, however, I realized that this genre born out of female repression is not always as LGBTQ-friendly as it may seem.
What is yaoi or boys’ love?
Boys love or BL is a genre of Japanese media that portrays homoerotic relationships between boys or men. Within the English-speaking fandom, this is more commonly known as yaoi. The term yaoi was coined in the 80s, an acronym that stands for yama nashi, ochi nashi, imi nashi—no plot, no punch line, no meaning—which gave a name to mostly “action,” no story type of content that a group of authors published at the time.
The contemporary name for the genre is BL (bīeru)or boys’ love, the term you will see as a genre in Japanese book shops and publishing companies. The term also encompasses a wider range of works, because not all titles are sexual in nature.
Now, since the subject matter is boys—more often than not bonking—you might be led to think that this type of content is by and for the LGBTQ community. But it’s not and here is where the inherent problem lies. BL, for the most part, is created by women for women. A good portion of these women identify as cis female or straight, including me.
A woman who is into BL is called fujoshi, which means “rotten woman,” referring to the deviance in taste. Originally it was a derogatory term, but over the years, women have appropriated it and now use it somewhat as a badge of honor.
Which leads us to the next question.
Why do women produce and consume yaoi?
Gender in Japan scholar Mark McLelland says that whenever we dive into this topic, our tendency is to pathologize women, to make it seem that their interest in boys’ love is some type of mental illness, but if you examine it closely, boys’ love and its popularity is a by-product of women’s repression.
Much of yaoi is fantasy. Just as romance novels idealize the chase and insatiable desire between a heterosexual couple, boys’ love is an idealized representation of romance. A love so pure that it defies gender constructs.
But why two men?
Because being a woman comes with social expectations and biological consequences that sometimes even fiction can’t rid women of.
By imagining and allowing herself to identify as the opposite sex, women are able to possess the perceived freedom that men have. They can act on sexual desire without being labeled a slut, and there are no biological consequences like pregnancy. It allows women to move away from the notion of child-bearing as a biological destiny. Yaoi is therefore a safe space, wherein women can, as Mathew Thorn says it, “indulge in the fantasy of loving a man as a man, or, to rephrase it, as an equal, free of predefined gender expectations.”
See, this is why BL is such a liberating experience for women. I know I felt that way when I was a heavy consumer many years ago.
But this also where is where BL becomes problematic.
Yaoi & Internalized Misogyny
At its worst, BL becomes a manifestation of internalized misogyny. Just the idea of having a man so ideal that the only other person who could match up is another man is alarming. It’s reinforcing the hegemonic belief that women are inferior to men.
Not to mention there are BL titles out there, especially ones I consumed when I was younger, that portrayed women in a negative light. Oftentimes, the roles of women are limited to bad mothers or jealous third parties who try to sabotage the relationship of two men.
Really, the sad thing is, the poisonous ideas of patriarchy seep through our subconscious that they even show up in works that are supposedly by women for women. And we don’t even realize it until much introspection.
Anti-Yaoi Voices from the LGBTQ Community
The disservice doesn’t end there. While yaoi depicts homoerotic stories, it does little to truthfully portray the realities that gay people in Japan live. Its main purpose is to provide space for female fantasies, not to shed light on the actual LGBTQ community.
In fact, a common trope in the genre is characters who don’t even identify as gay, they just “happen to fall in love with someone of the same sex” as if it were a nobler experience.
This is why there have been voices against fujoshi claiming that BL is just fetishizing gay lives. In1992, gay activist Sato Masaki criticized the fujoshi community for their voyeuristic tendencies, claiming that these women are just the same as dirty old men watching lesbian pornography. From his point of view, these women are just getting off on gay media and they’re doing very little to advance or invest in gay rights.
And this is not just limited to Japan. We see the same sentiment in other countries like Korea where Japanese BL has been present since the 1990s. In the April 1998 issue of the gat magazine “Buddy,” BL was condemned for distorting the reality of homosexuals. ‘Cause, you know, it only depicts beautiful men. And what about the others who are not necessarily beautiful?
Personally, yes, I do believe these arguments are valid and there is a need for these issues to be addressed within the BL community. It was actually finding out how some people felt about it that made me realize the negative effects of the media I was consuming.
When I first decided to dive into fandom studies and was narrowing what topic I wanted to write about, BL was one of the candidates. But after reading up on the literature, I realized that my own consumption of BL pointed to my dissatisfaction with hegemonic gender roles. It said more about me as a woman, and eventually, it made me want to explore what about being a woman I was struggling with, and that’s precisely what I did.
Does yaoi have a positive contribution?
So yes, these examples provide evidence of how yaoi can be harmful, both to women and the LGBTQ community. But is that all it does? Is there no positive that we can pull from it?
Here’s my stance. Personally, I believe BL has a lot of potential. It can be a positive force especially if we use it as a stepping stone for advancing gender equality.
In my own experience, it was through BL that I was able to navigate how I struggle with patriarchy and with internalized misogyny. Not only that, it provided a framework outside my heavy Catholic upbringing in which I could navigate and ultimately understand gender identities. It helped me empathize with the LGBTQ community. In my case, BL was fundamental in the making of a feminist and an LGBTQ ally.
I do realize that not everybody would have the same journey. BL, after all, is an escapist genre and some people would prefer to stay in the fantasy. Here, I would also like to point out that BL is continuously evolving, It may have started as by women for women genre, but we know now that a portion of its consumers are, in fact, LGBTQ, and yes, even straight men. The term “fudanshi” is on the rise—and the term encompasses both heterosexual and homosexual men who love BL. At its best, Exposure to BL allows us room to explore gender identities, wherever you may fall on the spectrum.
References for Further Reading
Mclelland, M. J. (2000). Male Homosexuality in Modern Japan: Cultural Myths and Social Realities.
Mclelland, M. (2006). Why are Japanese Girls’ Comics Full of Boys Bonking?
Noh, S. (2002). Reading YAOI Comics: An Analysis of Korean Girls’ Fandom.
Thorn, M. (2004). Girls And Women Getting Out Of Hand: The Pleasure And Politics Of Japan’s Amateur Comics Community.
