Yaoi fandom

The yaoi fandom consists of the readers of yaoi (also called Boys' Love or abbreviated to BL), a genre of male homosexual narratives. Individuals in the yaoi fandom may attend conventions, maintain/post to fansites, create fanfiction/fanart, etc. In the mid-1990s, estimates of the size of the Japanese yaoi fandom were at 100,000–500,000 people. Despite increased knowledge of the genre among the general public, readership remained limited in 2008. English-language fan translations of From Eroica with Love circulated through the slash fiction community in the 1980s, forging a link between slash fiction fandom and yaoi fandom.

In Japan, female fans are called fujoshi (腐女子, lit. "rotten girl"), denoting how a woman who enjoys fictional gay content is "rotten", too ruined to be married. A male fan of yaoi is called a fudanshi (腐男子, "rotten boy"). The words' origin can be found in the online text board 2channel.

Yaoi fans have been characters in manga such as the seinen manga Fujoshi Rumi.^[1] At least one butler café has opened with a schoolboy theme in order to appeal to the Boy's Love aesthetic.^[2] In one study on visual kei, 37% of Japanese fan respondents reported having "yaoi or sexual fantasies" about the visual kei stars.^[3]

^ Nagaike, Kazumi (April 2009). "Elegant Caucasians, Amorous Arabs, and Invisible Others: Signs and Images of Foreigners in Japanese BL Manga". Intersections: Gender and Sexuality in Asia and the Pacific (20).
^ "Tokyo cafe taps into women's Prince Charming fantasies". 19 February 2008. Archived from the original on 2010-01-29. Retrieved 10 July 2009.
^ Hashimoto, Miyuki (January 2007). "Visual Kei Otaku Identity—An Intercultural Analysis" (PDF). Intercultural Communication Studies. XVI: 87–99. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2011-06-07.

[Nagaike-1] Nagaike, Kazumi (April 2009). "Elegant Caucasians, Amorous Arabs, and Invisible Others: Signs and Images of Foreigners in Japanese BL Manga". Intersections: Gender and Sexuality in Asia and the Pacific (20).

[2] "Tokyo cafe taps into women's Prince Charming fantasies". 19 February 2008. Archived from the original on 2010-01-29. Retrieved 10 July 2009.

[3] Hashimoto, Miyuki (January 2007). "Visual Kei Otaku Identity—An Intercultural Analysis" (PDF). Intercultural Communication Studies. XVI: 87–99. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2011-06-07.

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