#honestly hoping i don't cause an outbreak of outrage with this one

[hadesoftheladies]

so i was reading a paper that someone wrote on a study they did on BL/yaoi fans and fandom (i didn't know a lot about it until like . . . this year), and it had me thinking. some years ago i made an observation on female obsession with gay romances in popular entertainment where I said that I didn't think fans were all interacting with this content from a fetishistic perspective, as much as fetishism and homophobia were common.

as much as there have been straight men that fetishize lesbian relationships, i also thought that perhaps bisexual or straight women's interaction with BL could be a bit more nuanced than entitlement to gay men and their experiences. i thought that there was an element of detachment that gay romances gave women, where men were humanized and female characters did not have the burden of humanizing him. it was an avenue where women and girls could enjoy their attraction to men or what they loved about men without being visible, without any romantic or sexual demands being put on them. it was a way to explore not only their own sexualities, but also their weird (in regard to the predator-prey situation) oftentimes tragic attraction to men. it was a projection of an ideal relationship with a man, one based on true equality in an especially semantic sense.

i think some of these fascinations can be classified as more voyeuristic than fetishistic, especially when they aren't about injecting the female experience with men into the gay experience (like making gay sex more heterosexual in descriptions) and are much more focused on fictional characters/symbols than parasocial relationships with gay influencers/celebrities. rather, some of them seem to be using the (sometimes idealized) gay experience to escape the female experience with men. men loving men (romantically/sexually) seems to be a purer version of male love that women hope to experience but oftentimes do not or cannot, given the homoerotic admiration and respect men hold for other men, but do not extend to women. therefore they opt to be voyeurs. not saying this is necessarily good or bad.

i'm not an avid participant in BL and won't go anywhere near yaoi, especially because of like . . . well everything about yaoi, but I do enjoy gay romance (and lesbian romance) stories, and which i gravitate to more varies according to whatever season of life I'm in on the bi-cycle XD. but i have noticed that i do enjoy these things differently, or rather, what i enjoy about them differs based on my own experiences with patriarchy. it is difficult to imagine het relationships outside the patriarchal hierarchical dynamics, even in fantasies. whereas, removing that relation feels . . . idk, safer, less stressful and more natural to me.

i'm just kind of thinking through things, like, sexuality (not orientation) can be really complex because of how much culture can influence it and the perception of self and I'm just wondering how much BL is escapism for women attracted to men.

anyway, im just thinking out loud here. just putting words out there hoping to find something concrete. but I'm curious, how many radblr users interact with bl/gl or yaoi?

and please share with me your personal opinions/experiences with bl/gl or other variations/genres of it like yaoi