passionfruit

As a feminist, a guilty pleasure I have is yaoi.  For those of you who don’t know what that is, yaoi is a genre which originated from Japan, the word yaoi is a acronym for yama nashi,  ochi nashi,  imi nashi .  Which means, no climax, no point, no mean. To understand yaoi fully, it’s important to understand aspects of Japanese culture.  Yaoi also deals with male/male relationships, what’s interesting about yaoi is while it is basically two men having sex, their sexual orientation may or may not be an issue.  Another interesting thing about yaoi is that it’s written by heterosexual women and for the most part, the target audience is also heterosexual women.

 As yaoi made its way to the North America, it has developed into a subculture.  There’s even conventions that are dedicated to yaoi, as well as several publishers to translating and publishing yaoi.  Not surprsingly, people have begun to take notice of the yaoi subculture.  In my opnion, part of the reason why is due to the fact that it’s mostly made up straight women and teenage girls.  

Now why would a straight women be interested in two guys having sex?  This question comes up whenever there’s discussion of yaoi, I was even asked this question several times. The thing is, the idea of a woman liking yaoi is very confusing to many. But why is it confusing?  Is it because women aren’t supposed to enjoy guy on guy ...