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Girls
 Love Boys’ Love




WORDS By Abha Deshmukh 
Photos courtesy madan kale



Defying cultural stigma around queer media, Boys’ Love has found an unexpected audience: South Asian women.




Imagine two boys kissing. Now imagine two of the most gorgeous men you’ve ever seen engaged in an intense romance with a spicy and complicated storyline that leads to climactic emotional character development and a happy ending. That’s the average Boys’ Love (BL) storyline. And now imagine all of that turned into fanfiction, novels, graphic novels, anime, live-action and audio dramas, and merchandise. Characterized by romantic relationships between two male protagonists, BL, created in East Asia, has captured the hearts of women worldwide, but especially in South Asia.

Women frequently turn to Reddit to discuss their reasons for being drawn to BL. These include the physical appreciation of two attractive male characters, the absence of gender discrimination, the rejection of the traditional savior-hero complex, and the perception of more realistic relationships. Furthermore, it offers a sanctuary from the objectification of women, a pervasive issue in hetero-erotic media. In the typical BL universe, both male characters are portrayed equally, with well-defined qualities, and women are not objectified. Although these general reasons are shared by BL enthusiasts globally, the rationale behind the genre’s appeal to a South Asian female audience often goes unnoticed. It emerges as a means for South Asian women to emancipate themselves from gender-related constraints and every construct that comes with it.


BL originated as fanfiction in 1970s Japan. Amateur female manga fans actively started writing and publishing homoerotic parodies featuring well-known male manga characters and other popular media personalities. This trend started growing in the West around the same time, when female fans of Star Trek started writing Kirk and Spock slash fictions. Nowadays, BL is a huge market in South Korea, China and Thailand, but the creation and acceptance of any queer media is still looked down on in South Asia. 

Instagram users like @yaoiblcrush02, @extre_meer, and @bl_imagines, despite maintaining their anonymity, openly identify as South Asian women. They run fan accounts dedicated to popular BL comics and shows, and frequently engage with their followers. Their substantial followings of 30,700, 43,100, and 50,600, respectively, highlight the genre’s significant popularity in South Asia. If you search for tags like “BL/yaoi lover India,” you’ll find countless social media profiles with large followings.

“In a culture where expressing any type of emotion to its full extent is considered taboo, male characters who are emotionally available automatically become attractive. This is especially true if the characters also exude confidence and masculinity, which we are taught to find attractive growing up,” says Mugdha, a twenty-five-year-old resident of western India who loves to watch BL dramas and read BL fanfiction.

An extremely popular Korean manhwa (“comic”), Banana Scandal by the artist Dolsha, portrays internalized homophobia that turns the handsome and popular main character into a bully who soon comes to regret his behavior, accept his sexuality, work hard to make things right and gains his lover’s trust back. The bullying-development–forgiveness arc is handled carefully and different forms of love between the two men are shown in detailed and emotional ways.

   

Huda, a twenty-seven-year-old Muslim American who grew up in the West, struggled with internalized homophobia that made her hesitant to explore BL. At first, she couldn’t grasp its appeal, but as she continued reading, she was deeply moved by the stories. In brown culture, there’s often a disconnect in openly expressing love among individuals. Given that gay love is not accepted, this gap is bridged in BL, where genuine love is portrayed. As a queer person, Huda was never allowed to fully embody her own queerness. Much like many South Asian women, she was raised with the belief that marriage to a man is a necessary path. “It was like ‘screw love, marriage exists to protect you as a woman, to lift your social status,’” she said. She had questions: If there are so many restrictions within marriage, then what does true love look like? At what point does marriage become something more than a social contract? She likes that “in BL, marriage isn’t a prerequisite.”

Chinese author Mo Xiang Tong Xu’s most famous novel, Mo Dao Zu Shi (“Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation”), got adapted into a graphic novel, an animated series, an audio drama, and a live-action drama due to its massive popularity. In ancient, supernatural China, a beautiful, mischievous, long-haired flute player becomes the grandmaster of demonic cultivation, dies, and gets reincarnated, only to go on adventures with his childhood archenemy who is extremely proper, also a long-haired brunette, and a guqin (Chinese string instrument) maestro. In their elegant, flowy black and white hanfus (traditional Chinese clothing), they fight villains, solve mysteries and bring justice to the world together and fall deeply in love. Their love, not their gender, is central to the story, and drives one of the most complicated plots I have ever read that is filled with magic, monsters, betrayals, revenge, redemption, music, poetry, and art.

At the age of thirty-two, Krishna relocated to the Indian city of Pune with her husband after getting married. Both of them were cut off by her husband’s family due to their disapproval of inter-caste marriage. She says that natural elements of love, affection, and lust are not properly addressed in our highly patriarchal society, and that has been reflected in our literature, films, and other arts. In South Asian households, pregnancy and raising children is falsely looked at as a means to make relationships and marriages stronger, and is often used against women. Society makes women think that love is not necessary for marriage, that their job is to reproduce, and that once you have children, they will become your priority and everything will be right in the world. It’s almost as if women are forced to make up for the lack of love by bearing children. And married couples, whether they marry for love or not, are looked down upon if they do not have or want children. Krishna particularly likes how in BL, there is no pressure to conceive children. “They kill monsters together. They travel together. They teach and learn together. With [an accumulation of] small things, love develops between them. I think it’s a very natural progression free of any gender bias, gender roles, class, caste, race, age anything...love is just love,” said Krishna, “When Lan Wangji raises Lan Sizhui (characters from Mo Dao Zu Shi), it feels cute and not forced.”

Every woman I spoke to expressed their struggle to see brown people in a sexualized capacity in any media. This discomfort with the portrayal of sexualized content involving people of their own ethnicity is a common sentiment among brown communities. Even in the West, where Asian women are hypersexualized, they are mostly referring to East Asian women, not South Asian. Huda, who has firsthand experience with both cultures, emphasized that there is a tendency to stigmatize one’s own people and relationships which allows outsiders to devalue them. This is why it is often more comfortable for women to consume content featuring gay Asian characters who share a similar cultural background but neither represent their gender nor look like them. “I feel less guilty,” said Huda.

Media plays a highly influential part in the shaping of modern society. According to a 2019 analysis of gender inequality in Indian media, representation of women is still significantly low.

Media narratives are molded by the traditionally patriarchal, many times misogynistic male experience and essentially deny others a chance to influence public opinion. Hence BL, that is primarily crafted by women for women, inadvertently serves as a unifying force across communities and cultures. Additionally, it promotes queer awareness and ensures a secure space for its consumers. But it is also important to note that while women aspire to envision and relish a marriage-free, child-free setting through BL, gay marriages remain prohibited in India, and same-sex couples are restricted from adopting children. This social situation, where one community is protesting what the other is fighting for, contributes to the female experience of consuming and enjoying foreign BL content, which might also create a sense of solidarity between both. Boys’ Love essentially fosters a vision of romantic utopia for not only South Asian women but also queer people facing challenges in societies resistant to transformation.



Boys’ Love We Love

1. Yuri On Ice (Japanese anime): a sports anime where two ice skaters at different points in their career fall in love while striving to reach the best versions of themselves through their sport. Heartwarming music, beautiful visuals, relatable characters, and the perfect balance between tears and laughter.

2. Heaven Official's Blessing (Chinese novel, comic, and TV show): a love story between a martial god and a ghost king? Heck yeah. The main lead, in all his flaws, becomes a comfort character for readers and viewers. While it takes him more than 800 years to finally open his heart to someone else, his love interest patiently waits for him in the most loyal and respectful ways. 

3. Unintentional Love Story (Korean comic and TV show): sometimes all you need is a simple slow burn between working adults. I like it because it follows a typical romantic trope but without the excessive drama or a complicated storyline. A realistic storyline, with amazing art.