Why are women so into Yaoi and BL? A history and analysis of the Yaoi phenomenon

Have you ever wondered to yourself, "why are girls so into Yaoi and BL?" Well look no further, as I have done far too much research to answer that question.

0:00 - Introduction
0:52 - Background of Japanese literature and defining terms
5:20 - Shoujo Manga, Shounen-Ai and Early Yaoi (1970s-1980s)
12:17 - Emergence of Early Yaoi (1980s)
17:24 - The “Gay Boom” and the Globalization of Yaoi (1990s - Present)
20:58 - Why are Yaoi and BL so popular?
32:54 - Conclusion

BGM sources:

Primary manga and anime referenced/pictured:
Wotaku ni Koi wa Muzukashii
Lucky Star
Onimai
Versailles no Bara (The Rose of Versailles)
Toma no Shinzou (Heart of Thomas)
Kaze to Ki no Uta ( The Song of the Wind and the Trees)
Zettai BL ni Naru Sekai vs. Zettai BL ni Naritakunai Otoko
Also a bunch of manhwa I pulled from Google images that I have no idea the source of.

Photos of the yuri section of the New York City Kinokuniya curtesy of @chirality_

Sources and further reading:
Angles, Jeffrey. Writing the Love of Boys Origins of bishōnen Culture in Modernist Japanese Literature. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011.
Chou, Dienfang. “Exploring the Meaning of Yaoi in Taiwan for Female Readers: From the Perspective of Gender.” (2010).
Jiang Chang & Hao Tian (2020): Girl power in boy love: Yaoi, online female counterculture, and digital feminism in China, Feminist Media Studies, DOI: 10.1080/14680777.2020.1803942
Madill, Anna. "The yaoi/Boys' Love/danmei audience." Encyclopaedia of gender, media and communication. Wiley, Blackwells (2020).
Matthew Thorn, “Girls and Women Getting Out of Hand: The Pleasure and Politics of Japan’s Amateur Comics Community,” in Fanning the Flames: Fans and Consumer Culture in Contemporary Japan, ed. William Kelly (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004)
McLelland, Mark. “Why are Japanese girls' comics full of boys bonking?” (2006).
McLelland, Mark J., Kazumi Nagaike, Katsuhiko Suganuma, and James Welker. Boys Love Manga and beyond: History, Culture, and Community in Japan. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2015.
Shamoon, Deborah Michelle. Passionate Friendship: The Aesthetics of Girls' Culture in Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2012.
Simon David Turner (2018): Interdisciplinary approaches to yaoi manga: a review, Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, DOI: 10.1080/21504857.2018.1494020
Turner, Simon (2016) Yaoi online : the queer and affective practices of a yaoi manga fan community. PhD thesis, Birkbeck, University of London.

[incognito_tab]

My 12 year old self’s reasoning was “what’s better than one hot guy? Two hot guys. What’s better than two hot guys? Two hot guys who LOVE each other.” 😭

[cucublueberry]

What has pulled me towards Yaoi is that men get to be vulnerable. Also I hate the stereotypical power dynamics in hentai.

[spiritofchaos]

As a certified Girl ™, I have my own theory as to why Yaoi is so popular.

Pretend you’re a straight woman, and you want to watch a fanservice-y anime/manga. You’ve got 1000 ecchi with a straight couple in front of you and you pick one at random. What are the chances the male character is going to be the primary target of sexualization? Most likely he’s going to be some nondescript dude, if he even has a face drawn. It’s straight, but the woman is the focus 99.99% of the time. Good luck finding something where the man is even decent, let alone the focus.

Now imagine you have 1000 yaoi in front of you. What are the chances of the dude being the target of sexualization? 100%.

Simply put, ecchi in general isn’t usually made for women. You have thousands of vapid shows about one lame man and a harem. It’s in every genre, in every fetish you could think of. Vampire girls, monster girls, literally 1000 girlfriends ect ect. It floods the market without any clear category to denote it as for the boys, because the default IS for the boys. Yaoi acts as a clear way for women to know that the target of sexualization won’t be a female character.

[linkedsky]

As a straight dude I just don't like the amount of hentai in regular romance anime so Shit like Banana fish and No.6 made me go HOLY SHIT THIS IS FIRE

[JosieDrake]

Chinese women out here breaking the law to get off. Love those women, they’re my heroes. But for real, the fact that Chinese women are embodying resistance solely by writing about romantic male relationships is kinda boss of them. And just so you know, The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation actually has an incredibly intricate and engaging story that a number of straight men who unknowingly got into the story were too invested to quit reading once they found out it was BL

[雨时-uk]

My friend just explained: would u rather see one hot guy one the screen or two at once 💀

[kishida_]

why is this man cooking so hard?!?!?!?!

[Pollymichaelis]

It's because I can enjoy a love story without having to relate/self-insert as the female character and being subjected to hetero-normality social roles

[nickeni]

My reason is that... straight stories show the gender before they show the people, it feels like it's a method of differentiating gender that yes the male is falling for a female, i swear it's a female, see she's doing female stuff. Gay stories don't need to do this because there's no point in differentiating when they're literally same gender, so by skipping this part they just go straight to showing the people and their personalities

[kully_bony]

I just wish there wasn't so much internalised misogyny in the BL community💀

[oriwhitedeer]

As a woman and long time BL fan — my reason for enjoying the genre is (abusive stories aside because I do not enjoy, condone or support those works) the romantic pair are allowed to be self-actualized characters rather than “roles” In a way straight pairings are rarely afforded. These stories play with identity, gender, society, growth in interesting ways that are appealing to me. I don’t like to insert myself into stories so it’s crucial I find characters to love, hate, root for or against. I can’t tell you how infuriating it is for a “straight” pairing to start off interesting/compelling but inevitably fall into thier designated “roles.” BL and GL stories allow for more freedom in story telling, at least in my experience, and that is what keeps me coming back.

[Maxi.Dounut]

For me it’s because I want to watch/read men being sexualized + being emotionally in focus. Usually it’s always women being sexualized, and as a straight woman that is not very interesting.
But all the points made in this video is quite spot on also.

[disaster]

My theory on that as a girlie who used to read het, yuri and yaoi equally lol, is that they may like the dynamic often shown there, but would be uncomfortable with it with the gender roles (like a woman being in the "passive" role in itself can have bad assosiations), or just don't want to be reminded of their gender (and themselves) when projecting onto a character 😭 but tbh I think eveyone has their own reason!

[lochnessu]

As a lesbian who has read all sorts of manga (BL/GL/Het) personally I find that it’s incredibly easy to find high quality BL in regards to writing, characters & art. Since there’s such a huge demand for it you’re guaranteed to find some really good ones amongst the yaoi garbage. M/F manga often suffers from being super predictable, cliche, or objectifying and there’s just not enough GL being made or translated… (justice for yuri 😭)

[chelonianmobile]

Comments have already brought up "two pieces of eye candy at once" but I'd also add that girls are heavily shamed for considering sexuality at all, so it's often easier if there's some emotional distance from the fictional couple they're reading about - the self-insert is a boy, so it's ""okay"" for him to have sexual feelings.

[VelvetRed-rzur]

My reason to love Yaoi/BL is; it’s triggering and upsetting to watch females characters being mistreated and on those lame fragile stereotypical roles as hopeless victims.. meanwhile the male characters being stoic and cold (not to mention if you dare watching hentai the males characters are ugly old bastards if they even get a face)
Meanwhile Yaoi it’s full of heavenly beautiful males with angel faces and charismatic personalities who show emotions and you get to see male characters being vulnerable, sensual and erotic while falling in love, expressing their feelings and being wholesome.
This type of fiction it’s the one thing holding me back from hating men and masculinity entirely. I just wish men could treat women with tha same amount of respect and unconditional love as they treat their bros.

[supasaiya-jinvegeta]

Explaining why men are into Yuri: 1 chocolate bar < 2 chocolate bars.
Explaining why women are into Yaoi: To answer that we need to talk about parallel universes.

[justlikethis]

It's crazy that the characters in the thumbnail aren't even from a yaoi LMAOOO

[sonjac.]

I enjoyed hetero romance before I suffered an assault. After that, BL/Yaoi has been the only way for me to actually indulge that little part of me that wanted to be able to just look at something romantic or even sexual without shutting down emotionally.

Therapy has helped a lot but Yaoi/BL are still a lot easier for me to enjoy than any kind of hetero romance. It affords me the degree of seperation I might need and, embarrassingly, also helps to keep the feelings of inadequacy ("I'm a failure because I'm still not able to trust a man like that"/"You are not trying hard enough, if you did, you could have a love like this as well") at bay.
Enganging with Yaoi has been helpful in feeling safe enough to engage with sexual themes on my own terms, little by little. At this point, I can watch most hetero romantic comedies again without any issue (feeligns of inadequacy aside...) but it definitely was a process to get to this point. And it would have been much harder without the little help through "safe" exposure I got through BL/Yaoi :)

That might not be the prevalent reason out there, but I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one.

[goforapunch]

lesbian who generally prefers m/m in romance… imo a lot of shipping specifically is from the way male-centric media is written. there’s plenty of media that have great female characters of course, but for the type of stories i’m into (grittier, action-heavy works) chances are that there won’t be much emphasis on m/f relationship development, instead just shoved in there (with m/f romance seen as a given) while the focus is on making the male friendships believable (like sasuke/naruto). overall i think a big part of yaoi’s popularity is bc a lot of male mangaka/showrunners/etc can’t write women for shit lol