| Boy's Love stories are a fictional fantasy textual story that describes a romantic relationship between males. The majority of writers and frequent readers of BL stories are heterosexual teenage women. Little previous research has focused on why these straight young women are fond of BL stories. One of the more prevalent explanations is that they are pursuing the depiction of equality in this homosexual fantasy. That is, as a form of resistance to inequality in heterosexual romantic relationships, women write and read BL stories in which both characters are masculine, and thus share nearly equal power. The current study undertook a content analysis of a sample of popular Chinese BL stories. It finds that, in BL stories, homosexual characters and homosexual relationships are depicted in a heteronormative manner with clear masculine/dominant and feminine/submissive roles. Such an analysis challenges the prevalent explanation of women's motivation to read and write BL stories in previous studies. In addition, an analysis of romantic ideals in BL stories also suggests that depiction of romantic ideals also prevalent in heterosexual romantic stories and films might be the real reason for women's preference for BL stories. |
