Yaoi Manga:

Yaoi or “Boys’ Love” (BL) is exactly what it suggests; it is a homoerotic genre featuring relationships between male characters.

Yaoi manga is usually created by women and targets a female audience but it sometimes does attract a gay male audience. However, Yaoi is not to be misunderstood with “bara” which has homo-ero themes too, but it has a different demographic; bara markets specifically to a gay audience.

What Yaoi Genre covers:

The Yaoi genre can cover a range of various other genres like comedy, science fiction, period dramas, romance etc. What most Yaoi manga have in common are themes like forbidden relationships, the portrayal of some sort of non-consensual along with tragedy and humor.

Yaoi series date decades back and first appeared around late 1970s. Originally it was used to represent fan-fiction that featured male characters of various mainstream manga in explicit sensual relationships or situations with each other. However, it has now come to define female-targeted manga featuring male homoerotic characters.

Yaoi related work currently have a very strong presence around the globe and are available to readers in numerous languages. A popular genre like Yaoi has also been a hot discussion topic for many journalists and scholars.
Yaoi does often include tragic themes and rape fantasies but those are highly complex. In Yaoi, rape mostly represents the extent of passion and the victims are still considered to have their innocence intact. Very rarely are rape fantasies depicted as a criminal act in these works.

Nevertheless, Yaoi also explores other bold thematic elements like gay equality. Since sometimes female characters are often absent or the ones present have very minor, irrelevant roles in Yaoi series, the stories are strongly homosocial and therefore free. Gay men have the freedom to choose their own partners and achieve their goals and futures together.

We have some great yaoi manga like Doushitemo Furetakunai and Konomi ja Naka to

Is it liberating?

It liberates the homosensual beyond the social conformities which, even today, label them as shameful. Sometimes, the manga might still represent today’s culture in the stories but they are usually still positive and promote their acceptance.
Yaoi has gained popularity even in the United States because how much women enjoy reading these types of works. Mostly young women or female teenagers are loyal readers of Yaoi manga but a homosensual and a bi-sensual readership are also present.