In contrast, in the Western world, gay fiction has just been called gay fiction (or slash in the context of fanfiction), which is plainly visible on Amazon and other booksellers. The subject matter tends to be more targeted towards LGBT audiences. “Boys Love” isn’t a term that is used, and is largely taken to be something else entirely.
But a lot of Western gay fiction is written in the same tone as BL, just with slightly less dedication to seme/uke.
Like I said, you get a lot of really good gay fiction without stereotypes or cringy power dynamics. You also get a whole lot that's definitely written for the author's fetish for queer men. Sometimes even queer men produce stuff of the same quality.
Labelling it "gay fiction" only gives the illusion that the genre is more balanced.
This is the second time this comes to my attention -- where BL and GL's goals are put against each other.
I.e. if we ever create a distinction between LGBT+ stories in BL, then GL would be affected negatively and therefore, BL shouldn't. Does it really have to work like that? It's so frustrating... Last time we came to this conclusion in the discussion, I decided that -- okay, since this site (SH) is unique in this way that GL here is much more popular than BL then nobody would really care what happens to BL.
BL already negatively impacts GL and we "just have to deal with it".
Keep in mind that this is one of the few sites where GL has this kind of popularity. Everywhere else, and in the wider world, BL is a monster of a genre that GL lives in the shadow of.
(And also, the idea that GL outweighs BL by a whole ton seems to be a myth. Look at the statistics again here:
https://forum.scribblehub.com/threads/novel-statistics-by-moonpearl.2646/
We actually have a fairly equal number of novels, it's just that BL fans are experiencing not being the ones with all the power for once.)
Because of the popularity of BL everywhere else, GL is assumed to be just like BL, but the opposite. That means GL gets accused of being by men and for men, of fetishishing lesbians, of being full of rape and other horrors, and a whole baloney of stuff that isn't really true.
BL fans also spread this misinformation whenever asked about GL, many times even after people try to correct them.
There's a strong attitude in BL-dominated spaces that GL fans who try to increase the popularity of GL should, although cute, accept their place in the heirarchy, because "naturally BL will always be more popular".
And yet, whenever GL gets something small that BL fans actually want, there's always complaints being thrown around.
Why does Little Sister always have to share her meal even when she's hungry? When is Big Brother going to pull his own weight?
So really -- is there no way to separate BL on SH from GL somehow? So that they do not influence each other too much? I understand your worries about creating an artificial divide in Yuri stories which are generally not as cleanly split between "m/m fetishism" and "m/m reality". But BL really needs such a split. It halves our audience and also halves all chances of the LGBT+ authors to get noticed because BL would usually dominate them. If such a split can be done without influencing GL too much, that would be great...
But I do not know how to come up with a term for a tag or a separate genre without mentioning LGBT+ somehow. I understand that adding a tag with any combination of LGBT+ in it would invariably make some Yuri writers want to use it as well, which would cause the issue you are talking about...
However, if there is a term for LGBT+-focused m/m that clearly does not influence Yuri in some way -- that would be nice! Does anybody know of one???
Please???
I mean, it sounds like, when you say "LGBT+ people", you actually mean queer men? Because I think that a lot of BL being written here is by and for queer people.
If all you want is to differentiate between your target audience, if you really feel you must, then just use the "Josei" and "Seinen" genres. Technically those should have a specific tone to them but, for want of anything else, that will do.
Because "Josei" means targeted at women, and "Seinen" means targeted at men.
This one is one of my biggest BL-related anxieties, actually.
That I -- and by the nature of this discussion you two (and some others) -- are really not representative of the genre or wha it wants or where it moves on to.
Because while I want BL to get rid of stereotypes and all and I am genuinely excited when you say the genre has changed -- but I actually do not believe it did, or that it will in the foreseeable future.
Stereotypes of BL that are viewed by most as negative (m/m fetishism) is one of the things that drive this market so heavily. Without them, I'm afraid there won't be much of a genre... >_<.
People who want to read non-fetishized, normalized BL usually graduate from the fetishized ones. By this nature, there are always going to be much more people who read fetishized BL than the non-fetishized one.
I often see this trajectory in readers when I read reviews on NU. New BL-fans usually go through a period of reading very heavily stereotyped BL with heteronormativity, rape, misogyny, etc. And I mean -- I get it. Nothing wrong in indulging in something for fun even if it is disliked by the actual LGBT+ m/m communities. It isn't written for them, after all. The mainstream het romance genre is also plagued with the same problems, so it's not even so much a BL issue as it is the "female demographic preferences in reading about men" issue, I think. (??) Only after the initial exposure, do these NU readers of BL mention that they move on to something new and refreshing after some time, away from the old stereotypes... but some still return to the stereotyped ones just because it's more fun (even though they do sometimes claim they hate it).
In other words -- stereotyped BL keeps getting produced and will always be because that's where the majority of BL audience live and what they enjoy most. (And not just BL but the overarching Romance with a ML catering to female demographic).
So I am afraid that the fact that we are talking about this here is already a bit of a "selective bias" at work.
We are using a lot of terminology and philosophizing concepts to discuss BL with, and some of us are very well-versed in LGBT+ terms as well. Are we actually representative of the majority of the genre's readers? Do most people who read BL spend hours discussing its future or its terms and ideologies?
So if we are talking about BL changing for the better... I mean -- on the fringes and the niches? Yes, it probably is. (But so it was in the 00s , too, judging from some of the older topics I found on the Internet
). But does it change overall? I am a little bit afraid that it is not
.
If you can give me hope about it -- please do!!!
But just seeing which trends usually get ahead and are MUCH more popular than others in nowadays-written BL on most sites I frequent, I am a bit depressed and pessimistic about it.
(And note: I am
not against fetishized stories in BL (or anywhere else per se). I read them myself, lol. But I also want diversity and a lot of choice of what I can read at any moment. I want a
supermarket of ideas where there are perfectly categorized and managed aisles and everyone can find exactly what they want in an easily accessible manner. So far, it takes TOO much digging in the mainstream BL to find everything that can cater to me at all times. And some products are literally unavailable
. Or at least un-findable. So it's not a supermarket of BL ideas yet. I hope, one day, it will be ^^).
"Different" is almost always popular. The film "Promare" became extensively popular for being an (almost) gay love story set in a magic revolution, without many cliches. The most popular novels on NUF are the ones who broke the mould and offered healthy relationships, no rape, characters with less of a seme/uke dynamic, etc.
You won't be able to sell bromance as gay fiction, and shouldn't (don't say that men who have close, healthy relationships with other men have crossed the line into gay romance - they already struggle from that problem enough as it is).
But you have plenty of space to spread your wings. Whether you succeed or not is something you'll have to see.
I always find it really enlightening when the anti-fujoshi rhetoric starts, and everyone starts talking about the "evil straight women who fetishize the gays", when self-reported surveys reveal that cishets are a minority among fujin. We had long heard from academics working in Japan that BL spaces are queer, we know that English-speaking fujin are overwhelmingly queer, and yet, this perception of BL as something for 'straight women' continues... hmm.....
Either the straights are just the most vocal or, even if the majority of BL readers are queer (if they are), BL fandoms are a space of internalised self-hatred. They're not friendly to queer women. They're not friendly to most anyone who's queer, really, when you look past the surface.
I grew up in the BL fandom (literally grew up - I dived into the BL fandom at a really young age because I needed queer media) and it was a terrible place for a young queer girl to be.
It's very much an environment where men with penises are put on a pedastel and worshipped. People talk about "one man being hot, two men being hotter" as the go-to explanation for BL.
But further than that, trash talking people without penises is also the norm. Saying things like, "if there's no penis, it's not interesting or intimate", "dicks are the best and the most satisfying", "sex between (they imply cis) women is boring and less passionate" - that stuff plays on repeat wherever you go.
Likewise, there's such a drive to hate GL.
When I grew up, fellow BL fans would show me only the most horrific GIFs from yuri hentai and say, "This is what yuri is. It's animated lesbian porn for straight men. It's not like us - we're better. We respect queer men." (lol)
And, when BL fans don't actively hate yuri and queer women media, they're usually apathetic about it. It comes down to lip service, and nothing more.
The only reason I started watching and reading GL was because a post was circulated from a queer woman who finally had enough. She called the BL (and wider slash/gay fiction fandom, btw) out on all its bullshit, and the fans circulated it as a sort of "appeasing our guilt" stunt.
"Sakura Trick" was released shortly after that and, probably riding on the waves of that post, it was spread around the fandom with a half-hearted, "Good for queer women!"
But it's not like any of those folk were going to watch it or remember it.
I deliberately watched it because I was questioning my place in the fandom as a queer woman, and... Jesus Christ, I can't believe anyone kept me from this stuff before. It's so good!
I went on a binge, I found so many great anime and novels, I met other fans (and they weren't dribbling perverts like the BL fandom taught me to believe) - it was great.
And then I was excommunicated from the BL fandom because I liked GL too much and had become "the Other" to them. Good times.
