The original term for fujoshi was “yurizoku” (lily tribe), which came from a gay men’s magazine column (“yurizoku no heya” / “Lily Tribe’s room”) in the 70s/80s and referred to their female readers. “Where’s your proof that any fujoshi are lesbian/bisexual/trans?” (Also there are fujoshi and female BL mangaka that are lesbian or bisexual, or even closeted trans men) Fujoshi means a female fan of BL and mxm ships. “Are you pro-fujoshi? Fujoshi means a cishet woman that fetishes gay men!!”Īgain, incorrect. Keep in mind that these are just a few that are public about their gender, and a lot of other male BL authors are closeted and will not disclose that information. ((And even if they were all cishet women reading pwp smut, porn does not inherently equal fetishization.))Īlso, here’s a small list of male BL artists and geicomi artists who work on BL anthologies / BL Magazines. While BL is mainly marketed toward women due to the expectation that romance is a “girl’s thing”, a fair number of BL readers are male. (It has also been used in western fandom to refer to all mxm interactions, so this is likely where the conflation of BL and yaoi probably comes from.) (x) “Yaoi” referring to R-18 pwp mxm interactions is a western fandom thing.
In Japan, “Yaoi” originally refers to a specific subset of anime parody doujinshi that satirizes the “no homo” male-male bonding of earlier (usually) shounen series by portraying it as romantic or sexual.
“By BL, you mean yaoi, right? Yaoi means pwp smut of two men made for cishet womens’ consumption! That’s fetishization!” BL means Boy’s Love, and refers to comics/shows in Japan where the main focus is on the love (usually heavily romantic) relationship of two male characters.