Warning: this post talks about yaoi, female arousal, and methods of measuring such.
But here's an interesting factoid that I just pulled out of a book that I've been reading, Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex. On page 253 of the paperback version, author (and journalist) Mary Roach says:
"A series of studies by Meredith Chivers and colleagues at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto showed that...women, both gay and straight, will show immediate genital arousal (as measured by a photoplethysmograph) in response to films of sexual activity, regardless of who is engaging in it-- male, female, gay, straight, good hair or bad. Men, contrary to stereotype, tend to respond in a limited manner; they are aroused only by footage that fits their sexual orientation and interests."
In other words, the fact that straight and gay women respond physically to BL does NOT mean that they have some kind of innate taste for the stuff. It seems to me, however, that given this information, it's not so surprising that some significant number of women, once exposed to boy-on-boy material in a positive setting (aimed at their market, probably shown to them by a friend, etc), would move from only physical reaction to psychological as well.
Of course, this is no definitive answer to the age-old "why girls like yaoi" question, but it's certainly an additional piece to the puzzle.
The physical/mental disconnect is interesting--I don't know how much of that is biological in origin and how much is due to societal programming (the whole "lie back and think of England" attitude, and the Madonna-whore complex), but it's almost the reverse problem men have. No one tells us that physical and mental arousal are different, so men have the annoying tendency to conflate the two, or (worse) forget about the mental aspect and go for the physical.
I don't think there'll ever really be any straight-up reason that explains once and for all why girls like yaoi, for the same reason that we'll never have clear explanations for the popularity of the Heathcliff and Rochester windsome male tsundere bastaards.
@sunflower said:
Actually, a quick search for "why do men like lesbian porn" turns up plenty of results-- I believe there are still more men in psychological research than women, but as more women move into it we do start to see more research being done on why men think and, ahem, act the way they do.
I don't know about all men but I think it may have to do with the fact that if I look at lesbian porn then I'm not making my homophobic feelings (that I like to bury away for the sake of being politically correct) afraid that I'm betraying my sexual orientation...if all the participants are female then I'm still straight, right? or at least that's how my male logic works...maybe I'm being too open and honest here but I'm already labeled as a freak so... :P
Meanwhile I need to read The Taming of the Shrew so I can get some Shakespearean tsundere action going on--and speaking of, when are we going to get the anime version with Rie Kugimiya playing Kate?
@sunflower: I don't find it strange at all--I'm a firm believer in equal-opportunity offense, and if, as you say, I enjoy girl-on-girl action then it follows that I have zero right to criticize girls enjoying guy-on-guy action. There's nothing weird about it whether you're male or female.
Incidentally, the lack of in-depth discussion on male sexual physiology is the one complaint I had with Bonk. I want to know how crazy I am too. :(
That said, I'd still watch it.
@Emandudeguyperson: Men are more inclined to admit to it, but there's probably some truth to that assessment...though I also am of the opinion that there are a lot of other reasons why women get into BL, with all its very specific tropes (rape/coersion, very defined top/bottom roles, very effeminate guys, etc), as opposed to, say, live-action gay porn, which (relatively) few women enjoy. Even yaoi and BL fans don't seek out much live-action gay porn.
> into her vagina
I have reason to believe the results of the study may be slightly skewed...
It's not strange that girls like yaoi. What I find strange is that yaoi has become dominant and privileged over heterosexuality in fandom. It's just ironic that something that is often viewed as secondary or less than in mainstream (though that's changing) has become basically the norm in the realm of fandom. And it's interesting that yaoi is targeted mainly at straight women. I don't think anyone's criticizing women's sexuality here. It's just an interesting question that can lead to all sorts of discussions on sexuality and its construction and performance, etc.
But shoujo still sells way more than yaoi volumes almost ever do, though there is the occasional BL volume that breaks into the top ten. If you check Japanese sales for shoujo volumes, the popular ones hit in the hundreds of thousands the first week of sales, whereas it's considered amazing for a BL volume to hit in the tens of thousands (and by comparison, some shounen sells in the millions). Most het romance supporters, in manga as in novels, tend to be quiet consumers of massive numbers of books.
It's not really strange that yaoi is targeted at women. That's what yaoi is by its definition. If it's not targeted at women, it's not yaoi, it's gay. (BTW, on my BL-focused community only 59% of the readers consider themselves to be straight (I've had about 600 people respond). The rest are gay, lesbian, bi, pansexual, etc.; just an interesting thing to note. ^_^)
Anyway, when sexuality for women became more of an open thing in the 60s, women wanted this expressed in all kinds of sexualized romance, and they wrote their own stories to fill those needs. Slash, BL (though it was shounen ai then), and romance novels with sexually adventurous heroines, all for women readers, all took off in the 70s. The publishers responded to a group that bought and gave them more (Did you know romance novels make up almost 50% of all mass market fiction sales? That's a powerful lot of money.) Women who love romance and erotica of all kinds support their love. So BL and romance novels and slash genres arose around the same times, are created by women, and supported by a huge groups of mostly female consumers. Most sales are in het romance, but het or BL, women want it, create it, and put their money where their mouths are and buy it.
So I don't see this debate as het vs mxm, but rather about a blossoming of different flavors of eroticized romance for women, and that seems to make people uncomfortable. Which is what makes me think it all comes back to women's sexuality.
I've seen examples of this in my art work. I often draw these Code Geass parody comics of my devArt page. In one in particular The sight gag at the end has Schneizel, completely nude, being spanked by his attendant, Kanon. For what ever reason, girls adore this image.
This happened again when I did a parody where lelouch didn't realize who he was in such emotional distress that he didn't realize who he was tlaking to and accidentally said something he regretted to Suzaku. This again got great female reactions.
I find my female audience is much more open to both any male or female nudity I draw, but my male audience gets uncomfortable with male nudity. I always tell them that I'll take their complaints seriously the day I get a guy complaining about the size of breasts on the women I draw.
bi-shonen, GAR yaoi is for you know........, while shota has it's own niche
often bi-shonen and shota collapse, and it will sometime result in TRAP
It is worth noting, however-- a Media Blasters rep tells me that yaoi sells better than their straight hentai. :)
I like both yaoi and yuri. Besides in anime boys and girls do not look that different. When I first came into contact with Japanese games/anime etc. I had a problem telling if a character was male or female sometimes.
I mean for someone new to anime it can be quite hard to tell that this is not a girl http://www.animevice.com/kenshin-himura/18-20500/all-images/84-55057/kenshinhimura4/83-74140/
There's counterexamples of both, obviously, but it felt at a glance to be a sharply divided line.