documenting the BL fan experience
Fanart of Kakashi and Iruka from Naruto kissing in the hokage office on a break. It felt soft and warm. At the time I hadn’t dated anybody and was a known prude who kept my confusion to myself. But seeing them felt reassuring somehow. I…
BL helped me learn about LGBT+ people and topics, along with helping me figure myself out. It’s the discussion about BL and it’s ‘controversial love’ that were super interesting to me. It kind of helped me with getting a grip on my sexuality. — 20,…
I’m very thankful for BL in the sense that it helped me figure out my gender, sexuality, and a lot of personal sexual preferences I have. The fandom has always been incredibly welcoming, and it’s filled with so many people of different backgrounds but similar experiences: to a lot of us, BL was the first step to finding out about queerness and figuring out who we were. (I do like having the little “leverage” of being a mlm BL fan/fudanshi, because I also get to tell people that policing sexuality isn’t protecting me, like they say it is.)
— 24, He/Him, Canada
