BL, Yaoi, and the Fantasy of "Gay Men"

A large portion of this page is covering topics relating to pornography, but in a vague and boring non-sexual way.
Proceed with caution.

To preface, BL manga in particular has been my special interest for the past... what, 13 years now? so I'm not trying to push the whole "BL/yaoi sucks and shouldn't exist" idea that a lot of people have.
I'm actually here to go over some of the issues I frequently see people completely ignore, when they DO just say "yaoi bad".

Also, when I say "gay" going forward, I specifically mean gay men. It just gets repetitive writing that over and over.

So anyway, to address the elephant in the room, BL, and yaoi in particular, are not supposed to be accurate representation.
That was honestly the whole reason it felt totally normal-ish to read it as someone who thought I was straight and/or aroace for the entirety of my teenage years. BL, at its core, is not actually about gay men, which is on purpose.
It just gets frustrating when people act like it's supposed to be good.

The issue really only became real for me when I found out I was gay at age... 21? 22? and I realized almost nothing of the thousands of manga I'd read were actually all that gay.
It became a pain when I now wanted things to relate to, and the pattern made itself clear:

Nearly every single piece of fictional media depicting a relationship between two male characters, isn't actually depicting a gay relationship, as insane as that sounds.

BL and Yaoi Manga

BL and yaoi came from Japanese doujin circles, and have now become a booming international industry, for better, and for way, way, worse. Yaoi in particular is extremely popular, being one of the most popular genres on any sort of webtoon or manga site. Both are clearly made for women, and always have been.
From what I know, BL serves as an umbrella term for anything depicting a romantic/sexual relationship between male characters, but I'm using it here to refer to specifically manga that focuses on story and/or romance.

BL, or Boy's Love

BL is the lesser of two evils, and is the one that tends to lean towards shoujo-type romance plots, or in western terms, is stories aimed at young women and girls. It doesn't have to be, all my favorites lean towards shounen (aimed at young men/boys), but those are considerably more rare.

The typical highschool romance is probably the most popular plotline, and it's light-hearted fun. I'm a huge fan (being a highschool dropout gave me a horrible addiction to coming-of-age stories), although by now they all blend together into one big blob of the same stories in different fonts. It's a curse and a blessing.
BL is inherently just shoujo romance with the female character being covered with a male exterior. The tropes, characters, drama, etc, are all the same. You could swap one of the characters with a tomboyish girl and the story would remain completely unchanged.

BL is like this by design.

You're supposed to be a young woman, able to relate to the character slightly more effeminate, and if they're both vaguely the same, they're androgynous, not masculine. It's a safe escapism for women and, by extension, people not overtly aligned with masculinity. This is something that has all the right to exist, even if I have to accept it's not made for me.
Yes, I'm saying that to throw shit at people who think BL written by and for women shouldn't be allowed.

So BL is PG, and Yaoi is Adult?

BL may seem PG compared to yaoi, but all it means is a focus on story and romance, and BL may very well have several sex scenes or cover darker topics.
One of my favorite BL series is Stigmata by Takahashi Hidebu, which is really a murder mystery story, with BL on the side; only becoming overtly BL in volume 2. I wouldn't classify any of Takahashi's works as "yaoi", even if they're adult in nature.

My general guideline for actually good BL, is looking for authors that used to write shounen or seinen, not shoujo or josei.

Yaoi

To say I hate yaoi is an understatement, but it's not for reasons you may assume.
Yaoi, an acronym that translates to "no climax, no punch line, no meaning", is supposed to be porn without plot, essentially. Bringing criticism to it for being what it literally says on the tin, is shallow, and shows an inherent misunderstanding of what it's supposed to be as a genre.

The real problem I have with it shows itself when you take into consideration how yaoi, these days, is only made for profit. Now that it's become mainstream, it's just another part of the porn industry.
It carries the same awful stereotypes, justifications of abuse, and horrible artwork that it's had for the past 20+ years, with no sign of improving any time soon. People simply do not care about improving the genre just because that's how porn has always been.
I feel like it's more obvious in korean yaoi, where you get 30 new horrible manhwas a day with the exact same copy-pasted characters, plotlines, and horrible anatomy (don't even get me started on the horrible art oh my god), over and over again.
And the pornrotted freaks love it.

This had led to BL authors being forced to cram sex scenes into their otherwise fully PG works, because it simply does not sell without it. It shouldn't have to be this way.

Yaoi obviously also has the same "issue" as BL, where it's not actually written for a non-female audience. It may show (genuinely pretty repulsive) detailed panels of male genitalia, but if you have an ounce of media literacy and have spoken to one (1) actual gay man, you'll know it's just a weird version of straight porn with two male characters. It's kinda impressive how it can look like it does and still be so incredibly straight.

Basically, fujoshi/fudanshi (female and male BL/yaoi fans, respectively) enjoy yaoi in the same way straight men might enjoy lesbian porn. It's eye-candy.
I'm not mad at them for that, but I will never be able to understand their perspective. That's okay.

Bara and Subgenres Actually Written by and for Men

There are, however, "subgenres" of both BL and yaoi written by and for a gay audience. Although calling them subgenres is a bit misleading, since they're stand-alone genres that evolved independently for the most part. I'm not a huge fan of these, purely because the stuff you can easily find simply isn't my cup of tea artstyle-wise. Bara in particular features muscular and hairy men, which makes it extremely popular for simply being everything BL/yaoi lacks. It's hypermasculine, where BL and yaoi is very much... not that.

Point is, they're out there, but considerably harder to find, because they tend to be shunned by those female fans who don't actually want an accurate depiction of gay people. I've commonly heard them call it cringy, disgusting, or simply unappealing. In a way, this makes sense, because it's not made for them.

Fanfiction

Fanfiction only really entered my radar in more recent years, as I got over my struggles reading things that aren't just... picture books for grown ups.
However, I quickly realized it just wasn't gonna be for me. It's a lot harder to ignore the glaring issues in depicting gay relationships when it's not just pretty pictures to look at. It also comes with the biggest issue of all, authors genuinely thinking they're doing good representation.

By the point I started trying to read fics for real, not just reading random horrible ones for fun, I'd already started understanding who I was, and many of my favorite pairings had characters I related to in one way or another. Seeing these characters be completely scrubbed of personality to write the same "clearly intended for women" slop, was almost painful.
It seemed so easy to understand my favorite pairings from my own perspective, but trying to actually find fics depicting them even remotely similar to that was shockingly difficult. It made me realize that fanfiction, just like BL, was by and for a non-man audience. If I wanted to see it done in a way I liked, I'd have to do it myself.

Stories Written "by and for Queer People"

This is where I honestly just get kinda frustrated and sad.
As I've gotten used to reading actual words on paper, I've gotten back into books. The world of literature has changed drastically since last time, and nothing's been more motivation to read than putting my special interest into everything I read book-wise, too. So naturally I've been reading a shit-ton of gay books and thriving. Or, at least I wish I was.

The Issue of Non-Gay Authors

I read Song of Achilles, and while I loved it as a book (it's beautiful, please read it), it was just... not quite it.
I later moved on to Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, which thankfully was, in fact, it. And I reread it, and reread it, and reread it. Although I think most of my love for that book comes from me being able to relate very strongly to Ari, the point still stands.
At the time of writing this I was reading Red, White, and Royal Blue, and again, something just didn't feel right. It also just wasn't all that good in my opinion, but that's just me.
If you know the authors of these books, you can tell there's a pattern.

And while I'll never read Heartstopper, I remember the controversy of its author a few years ago. All I really have to say is that while BL as a genre can be horrible portrayals of gay romance, even if you try to make it non-fetishistic, as a non-gay author, you will never get it right regardless.
This doesn't have to be a bad thing, just please, for the love of god, don't act like it's great representation when it's still clearly written by a non-man.

Otherwise Queer Authors

Unfortunately, this all also extends to LGBTQ+ authors who lack the essential experience.

I've read works written by gay trans men, and as much as I'd like to say they don't have the same issues, they often do. At its core, being able to portray a cis gay relationship that hits right, comes down to being able to actually understand what it's like to be these people you're trying to write.
You can be an incredible author, you can by all means be a gay man, but if you didn't have to go through similar experiences that these characters did, there's always gonna be something a little bit off when you try to depict them without doing some intense research on how people raised as male actually behave and think.
I'm saying this as someone who's also struggling to get my own characters right. It's never gonna be easy.

This doesn't mean I think nobody except cis gay men should write about cis gay characters, but I'm sick of people pretending it's gonna be easy to portray accurately. I still love Song of Achilles, I still read BL written by women, but I can't see myself in it.
People shouldn't tell others that they're doing something wrong for saying that.
Everybody would be rightfully upset if 90% of popular lesbian fiction were written by men, so why aren't people recognizing the problem here, too? Not every genre needs to be hyper-diverse, sometimes you need the right perspective to get certain things to feel right.

???