Compare and contrast.

[randomness]

Thought for the late night, partly inspired by a face-to-face comment by rmd about gay regency romances mostly being written by and read by women, and partly from a post by digitalemur called Fun with YAOI, or things I come across at work:

Is there any similarity in this kind of man-to-man fiction mostly created and read by women to the girl-on-girl photosets mostly being photographed by and viewed by men?

Note: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yaoi has a useful overview of the yaoi phenomenon.

Comments

Just assume massive disclaimers, please

[stolen-tea.livejournal.com]

I've had that theory for a long time. I think that the common factor between the yaoi and the "girl-on-girl" stuff is that they involve members of one sex acting in a way that appeals to heterosexual members of the other sex. Put in simplified average-case non-spectrum-sensitive terms, yaoi is two men that straight women like, and girl-on-girl is two women that straight men like. So the men in yaoi are handsome, brooding, and emotionally involved, while the women in girl-on-girl are reasonably attractive and like to have sex all the time. In neither case does this correspond to what the average gay or lesbian would seek out, or how they behave.

In my non-expert opinion, anyway...