There was a thread a while back (a couple years, lol) that was very eye opening - the subject was basically "Why are all these teenage girls writing I've been kidnapped and raped by a member of a very popular boyband", and someone broke it down in a way that I felt applied to BL in general -
A lot of the times, the people writing these stories that have to do with the MC getting raped and being obsessed over by some crazy love interest are girls or women that have been raised to be ashamed of their sexuality - they grew up not feeling like they could be sexual because that was impure and wrong, and so they are more easily able to read stories where the girls are forced against their wills to enjoy sex than the ones that are more comfortable with their sexuality.
A lot of teenage girls get into BL because again, they are able to enjoy it more because the couple are guys, and they can relate in a way to the uke without feeling themselves like they are impure because it's two guys. I personally write MM dark romance for a living because while I consume FM and MM romance, it's just easier for me to write MM for those exact reasons - even though I am fully comfortable in my sexuality as an adult, it's still harder for me to write FM romance because there is still some internal biases from being raised in a strict catholic household that made me giggly and awkward when writing as filthy and smutty as I want. When I write MM, I can get really, really graphic....but FM? Fluff is as good as it gets. ;.;
In Japan and Asia, a lot of authors also were raised to have that same belief that girls should be pure and whatnot, and so you see the same sort of energy put into BL, which is why rape-but-actually-it's-romantic is so common.
In most BL, the rape scenes are often depicted in ways that show the uke liking it despite also hating it, which again is a way for the author to be able to say the chracter is still 'pure' and 'not a slut' because they didn't actually want to enjoy it.
Thankfully though, we have many more BL's now than we did twenty years ago that show the uke as enjoying sex and the seme as not being a toxic waste dump of a person - the uke even initiates sex and can be forward sexually and still be 'the good guy'.
So it's a very, very complex topic and BL was built on the backs of women who read rapey stories because they can feel subconsciously more supportive of an MC that doesn't want to be ravished than the ones that throw themselves at the seme.
Looking at the old harliquin novels, you will honestly see the same thing - lots of 'no, no, no' from the lead female that turn into her enjoy it.
Society....has lucky grown in a better direction from those days, but there is a reason why stories like that still flourish. As long as people aren't made to be allowed to feel they can be comfortable in their sexuality, there are going to be 'I've been forced against my will to have sex with this super hot person, OMG, and now we're getting married' stories.
thank you for the explanation, very useful for the overview of asian culture. here in Europe we are not that far from this behavior, if you enjoy it you are a slut. but step by step hope we are evolving to better ways of thinking.
This was suchhh a good explanation omg
Wow thank you for the explanation, honestly i read some few things similar to this before but it's regardless of danmei culture and its female audiences. Thank you for the insight (≧∀≦)
genuinely a very disgusting and depressing reason. i always get stuck between supporting these women and wishing yaoi and bl were never even created bc it is just so nasty and inherently
homophobic. i can’t believe it’s lasted so long and imo only gotten worse.
that really explains it. thankyou man
why is it that the majority of the BL authors seem to have a rape fetish. DISGUSTANG.