Most Western yaoi fansites 'appeared some years later than pages and lists devoted to mainstream anime and manga'. In the mid-1990s, estimates of the size of the Japanese yaoi fandom were at 100,000-500,000 people at around that time, the long-running yaoi anthology June had a circulation of between 80,000 and 100,000, twice the circulation of the 'best-selling' gay lifestyle magazine Badi. ДЄuthors of BL present themselves as 'fellow fans' by using dust jacket notes and postscripts to chat to the readers 'as if they were her girlfriends' and talk about the creative process in making the manga, and what she discovered she liked about the story she wrote. Some male manga artists have produced yaoi works, using their successes in yaoi to then go on to publish gei comi. Lunsing notes that some of the narrative annoyances that homosexual men express about yaoi manga, such as rape, misogyny, and an absence of a Western-style gay identity, are also present in gei comi. That is not to say that the majority of homosexual men are fans of the genre, as some are put off by the feminine art style or unrealistic depictions of homosexual life and instead seek ' Gei comi' (Gay comics), manga written by and for homosexual men, as gei comi is perceived to be more realistic. Lunsing suggests that younger Japanese gay men who are offended by gay men's magazines' 'pornographic' content may prefer to read yaoi instead. yaoi fans, about one quarter of respondents were male online surveys of Anglophone readers place this percentage at about 10%. ДЄlthough the genre is marketed at women and girls, gay, bisexual, and even heterosexual males also form part of the readership. The reasoning behind this trend is sometimes attributed to patriarchy- that women who write yaoi fanfiction are in fact acting out heterosexual fantasies through these male figures. Much like the Yaoi readership base, the majority of Yaoi fanfiction writers are also believed to be heterosexual women. It has been suggested that Western fans may be more diverse in their sexual orientation than Japanese fans and that Western fans are 'more likely to link' BL ('Boy's Love') to supporting gay rights. Recent online surveys of English-speaking readers of yaoi indicate that 50-60% of female readers self-identify as heterosexual. It is usually assumed that all female fans are heterosexual, but in Japan there is a presence of lesbian manga authors and lesbian, bisexual, other or questioning female readers. The female readership in Thailand is estimated at 50% as males also read gay manga, and the membership of Yaoi-Con, a yaoi convention in San Francisco, is 50% female. In one study on visual kei, 37% of Japanese fan respondents reported having ' yaoi or sexual fantasies' about the visual kei stars. At least one butler cafГ© has opened with a schoolboy theme in order to appeal to the Boy's Love aesthetic. Yaoi fans have been characters in manga such as the seinen manga Fujoshi Rumi. The words' origin can be found in the online image board 2channel. The male equivalent is called a fudanshi ( и…ђз”·еђ, 'rotten boy'). 'rotten girl'), denoting how a woman who enjoys fictional gay content is 'rotten', too ruined to be married. In Japan, female fans are called fujoshi ( и…ђеҐіеђ, lit. Most yaoi fans are teenage girls or young women. 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. Despite increased knowledge of the genre among the general public, readership remains limited in 2008. In the mid-1990s, estimates of the size of the Japanese yaoi fandom were at 100,000вЂ“500,000 people. The yaoi fandom consists of the readers of yaoi (also called Boys' Love or abbreviated to BL), a genre of male x male romance narratives aimed at those who participate in communal activities organized around yaoi, such as attending conventions, maintaining or posting to fansites, creating fan fiction or fan art, etc.

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