There's a genre of manga, Japanese comics, that is designed just for the female audience called Boys Love. Even though its designed for female audience, its main theme is love story but of two men. This genre is so famous that every bookstore in Japan has special section.
But why is it that women enjoy watching romance between two men?
According to Doane, while watching Hollywood films, women are forced to masquerade separation between the cause of desire and self. She either have to 1) forget that they are women and look through male gaze, or 2) identify with women and enjoy a masochistic pleasure of being powerless and punished.
While watching heterosexual romance, women are never free of the gaze of their own. Women are expected to take the gaze of the female character who carries the same burden and expectation as in the real life, to be passive, loving, and beautiful to be the appropriate object of men's love.
However, through BL, women are free from this expectation and free to take any gaze that she desires. Because there are no female protagonist in the BL manga, she is free to take any gaze, without losing her identity as a women or feeling guilty of enjoying masochistic pleasure. The reader can be dominating, aggressive, sexually assertive, masochistic, etc, without losing her identity as women.
There's much more to say about the complexity of BL but I recommend you to take a look first and let me know what you think. :)
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