Editorial: Boy’s Love by Mel
Hello, I’m Mel, a cultural researcher from the UK. I’ve been following Jack’s writing and audio works for the best part of three years, so thanks for letting me write something for the site!
I love all sorts of artistic things, NSFW stuff as well as Japan. So, tying into all of those interests, I’m going to take this opportunity to talk about one of my personal kinks, the sweet smell of guy on guy action. The way I see it, if one dick is good, then double dick is even better. And three? Well, three’s a crowd, right? What I’m really trying to say, in my admittedly unprofessional opinion, is that dicks, in all their forms, are pretty damn awesome. I like to watch. I do have a bit of a voyeuristic streak, after all. Before I delve into this though, let me just say that I’m a straight, cis woman who is (half-jokingly) convinced she was actually a Japanese gay man in some past life, and that maybe she should have lived through the 80s as a teenager. Well, you know, when they finally crack the code to time travel, I want to at least manage to explore the 80s part…
In any case, I’m thirty-one, married to a wonderful guy and life is pretty great.
Especially when there are dicks to look at.
Whether they’re real or illustrated.
Now, live action gay porn is understandably something that was designed to cater to a male viewership. It was never intended to be used as fodder for women to get off to. But I know I’m not the only woman in the world who gets wet from the sound of two men grunting and moaning and sweating in unison. After all, there have been entire academic studies on this very subject, like Girls Who Like Boys Who Like Boys by Lucy Neville. That said, a lot of the porn found online in general is, in my opinion, merely entertainment. Some people are going to get off to that, and others will inevitably end up laughing at the obscurity of the scenarios writers manage to come up with. Frankly, I’d much rather watch amateur videos on Twitter or porn sites. People tend to be far more inventive and candid when they’re performing for themselves. All those glammed-up shoots? Please don’t get me wrong, I have the utmost respect for gay – or in fact any – porn stars, but the actors can be so seemingly flawless that we’re only ever exposed to the types of bodies that directors want the audience to see. I think the world truly deserves to see real people. Spanish director Erika Lust is someone I’d highly recommend checking out if you want something really satisfying to watch that doesn’t seem clichéd or overly staged. It’s her mission to reframe pornography, championing sexual, gender and racial diversity as well as what the mainstream porn industry might well call ‘pear-shaped’ bodies. She also uses real insights and fantasies to inform the level of sensual detail, consent and empathy that ends up in her productions.
So, while I generally stay away from the vast majority of overly polished gay porn content, I do really enjoy the aesthetic of photography projects, general anatomy, and illustrations that depict adult male nudity. I took a life drawing class a few years back, which far from being anywhere near erotic, encouraged me to be more objective when it comes to observing the male figure. And I don’t mean that I started ‘objectifying’ the male body per se, but in an art class like that you simply learn to accept others’ bodies as they are. You work with the shapes you see and, as a result, come to appreciate all the finer details; the crevices, marks, angles, and all the empty spaces in between. There’s a class in London for shibari (rope binding) life drawing that I would really love to go to one of these days. Drawing people suspended from the ceiling sounds like a truly fascinating concept to me.
You may be familiar with the term ‘YAOI’. This is an acronym originating from the Japanese saying ‘Yama nashi, Ochi nashi, Imi nashi’ which translates as ‘no climax, no point, no meaning.’ This is commonly how all instances of male gay relationships are categorised outside Japan. But there is a difference. YAOI is an entirely fan-made concept. When fans create sexual relationships between two (or, let’s face it, sometimes more) male characters in a series that hasn’t originally painted them as being canonically gay, that’s when it’s considered to be YAOI.
Take the ever-popular figure skating anime Yuri! On Ice, for instance. That’s a series which features a boatload of sexual tension and sees a deep relationship unfolding between the two protagonists that cannot be interpreted as anything other than homosexual. However, their relationship is never explicitly defined as such. There’s no point in the series where either character says anything along the lines of, ‘he’s my partner’ or ‘we’re in love’. Therefore, to get technical about it, Yuri!!! On Ice would be categorised as a sports anime first and foremost; one that happens to seamlessly integrate gay characters into the narrative without being classed as a ‘gay drama’ in its own right. Essentially, when the protagonist’s primary main objective is not to pursue another man romantically or sexually, then it’s not technically BL. For Yuri, in Yuri!!! On Ice, the goal is to improve at figure skating and win competitions, but his journey towards this goal is ultimately supported by the strong relationship he’s forged with his coach, Victor.
Besides the actual subject matter, however, canon BL series tend to have a similar structure and rather formulaic character development across the board. The scenarios are set up in a very similar way to how shojo manga is presented. As you may already know, shojo is primarily aimed at an audience of teenage girls (think along the lines of Sailor Moon, Cardcaptor Sakura or Ouran High School Host Club for some older examples). These stories typically put emphasis on emotion and heart-pounding romance at the centre of the narrative, with cute young guys or bishonen often playing the love interest. So when it comes to BL, all that really changes is that the female protagonist is swapped out for another male character. The vast majority of BL manga artists are female and write the series with straight women’s fantasies in mind, unlike gay porn.
Although this isn’t the case for me personally, many readers of BL enjoy delving into this genre precisely because it allows them to assume the role of a spectator, to become an outsider. Sure, when we read stories, we’re doing so externally to the characters being described. Still, in shojo, female readers may feel most drawn to identify with the female protagonist. But following two male characters developing a deeper relationship, and especially where there’s hardcore sex involved, makes it easier to distance oneself from that. They subconsciously consider the fact that it’s easier to get swept up in a sexual fantasy without necessarily feeling like it’s ‘about them’.
What I personally love about BL is the sense of fluidity that comes with the territory. Yes, there are some basic tropes that are common to many different series, but then again, rules are made to be broken. There is such a variety of characters; from cross-dressers to shapeshifters, Omegaverse (all those Alphas, Betas and Omegas which I have yet to get my head around) to older bottoms, criminals, college students to name a few. I even saw a promotion for a BL comic recently featuring a character who transforms from a ‘beautiful clam’ into a guy with tentacles (try and figure that one out). The point is, there’s pretty much something for every fujoshi (or ‘rotten girls’ as we affectionately call ourselves), and there really is a plethora of sub-genres out there.
While I never like to judge a book by its cover, when it comes to BL, I pretty much always do. For me, it’s as much about the art style and character design as the flow of the story itself. I like my BL to be as smutty and uncensored as possible, with a small side serving of fluff, and yet without compromising on a strong narrative or character development. I was first introduced to the genre through watching the anime adaptation of Shungiku Nakamura’s Junjou Romantica. I will say that, overall, the genre changed for the better over time to show loving relationships, instead of the rather unsettling depictions of gay rape in series like Boku no Sexual Harassment or what is considered the ‘first’ BL manga Kaze to Ki no Uta, which feature questionable scenarios. Some of my favourites, though, include the ever-popular Twittering Birds Never Fly and Ten Count, both of which are due to be adapted into animated series over the next year or so. The increase in the number of works being adapted into anime or live-action movies pays testament to the genre’s growing popularity.
Of course, there’s always a danger that premises depicted in BL will get conflated with real life gay culture. For starters, the usually segregated roles of seme (pitcher) and uke (catcher) in BL can lead to misconceptions that this is always the way male-male sexual partners do things. But while gay, bi and pan men (or anybody with a dick) may have their own personal preferences that dictates how they fuck, it’s unlikely that stereotypical BL roles would play out exactly the same way in reality. If anything, labelling people as either ‘tops’ or ‘bottoms’ is ultimately limiting and brings the discussion back to heteronormative gender roles of the binary ‘male’ and ‘female’; this is neatly outlined through interviews with several gay men in this GQ article by Nick Levine. That doesn’t change the way I feel about BL as an entire subset of works though, because it exists in its own right, distinct from LGBT+ cultures and the discourse that surrounds them. Masaki C. Matsumoto is a queer bilingual Japanese LGBT+ / feminism / sex work activist and speaker who has released several vlogs on LGBT discourse in Japan. He uploaded one particular video that defends BL as a genre from a gay viewpoint. I took part in an interview a couple of years back, for a project run by Professor Anna Madill of Leeds University, who has been involved in ongoing research into Boys Love from the angle of female readership and recurring themes. Afterwards, she asked if I wanted my views to remain anonymous when she published the research.
Hell no. Put that shit out there.
So, that’s my take on why I love BL. I’m certain, though, that the masses of other fujoshi out there have their own reasons for being attracted to the genre. And those are perfectly valid too.