No Evolutionary Benefit: So Why Do Girls Like BL/Yaoi/Gay Romance?

Straight women are going absolutely feral over Heated Rivalry — the steamy gay hockey romance series that nobody saw coming. From TikTok edits to viral thirst posts, this Canadian show (now on HBO) has become a global obsession, even trending in places where it’s banned.

In this episode, Simone & Malcolm Collins dive deep into why women can’t get enough of male-on-male romance — from Yuri on Ice to Boys’ Love manga, slash fiction since the 1970s, and the surprising evolutionary & psychological reasons behind it.

We cover:

* The “women can’t love” red-pill theory (Simone’s most based take ever)

* Why go woke go broke has one massive exception

* The difference between real gay relationships and the fantasy versions women crave

* Power dynamics, objectification, escape from gender politics, and much more

Is this just harmless escapism… or proof of something deeper about female desire?

Simone outlined this episode, so the informal notes are below, and the transcript follows. :)

Episode Notes: Why do straight women lust after gay men?

The Gist

* Gay Men on Ice are Trending!

* Before 6am this morning alone, I heard about the show Heated Rivalry, which features steamy sex scenes between two hockey rivals, four times: Two from friends who listen to the podcast, two from YouTubers I listen to in the mornings

* One of our Patrons encouraged us to do an episode on the trending topic, writing:

* “Why do straight women love to lust after gay men?

* There seems to be a current cultural infatuation with these gay hockey players and the video I shared by Brett Cooper delves into the current craze. This has always baffled me because of the obvious incompatibility, but this has long been a cultural stereotype, it doesn’t seem to be a new cultural phenomenon but I don’t know how timeless it is either but it’s definitely intercultural.

* I’m also personally invested into this topic given that a lot of girls growing up told me things along the lines of “ I wish you were gay” or “ you have to be gay. ” I even had a group of about 4 female friends I had, make a plan to try to convince their parents I was gay so we could all go together to a vacation house. ( though nothing happened)

* I’m just wondering and would love Malcolm’s input on the subject.”

So let’s dive in.

Heated Rivalry

* It’s a Canadian sports romance series that exploded into a massive cultural phenomenon since its premiere on November 28, 2025.

* It’s an adaptation of Rachel Reid’s “Game Changers” book series (specifically drawing from the novel Heated Rivalry), created, written, and directed by Jacob Tierney for a Canadian streaming service called Crave

* HBO Max acquired rights for a day-and-date release in the US and other territories, turning it into a global breakout.

The show follows two elite, closeted professional hockey players—Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov—who are fierce on-ice rivals but develop an intense, secret romantic and sexual relationship. It features explicit, steamy scenes.

It’s been called one of the biggest surprises in TV, a “word-of-mouth sensation” (even HBO execs were shocked), and a rare hit centered on gay characters that didn’t get canceled after one season.

Why is it trending?

* The first season wrapped up in December and a second season was approved

* Its popularity is snowballing after the series started with little promotion but exploded via word-of-mouth, especially on social media (TikTok fan edits, thirst posts, etc.), becoming a “social phenomenon.”

* Viewership on HBO Max surged dramatically—starting low but growing over 10x by the finale (from ~30 million to 324 million streaming minutes weekly, per Luminate data).

* It’s Crave’s most-watched original ever and HBO Max’s top debut for an acquired non-animated title since 2019.

Key factors driving the hype:

* The show has high ratings: 98% on Rotten Tomatoes, praise for directing, writing, chemistry between leads, and handling of queer themes in a macho sport like hockey.

* The show has a massive online community (”HudCon” ship for the stars), viral clips, and fan events (even internation al ones like in the Philippines)

* The show resonated widely, including in places like Russia (even though it’s banned there), and sparked discussions on queer representation in sports.

But it should not be surprising that women see man-on-man romance and eat it right up.

* Think of the Sherlock shipping

* Think of how women can’t even watch The Lorax without creating Oncest (once-ler shipping)

Yaoi & Boys Love

I was first introduced to fangirling over male-male relationships in high school when my friends loaned me yaoi manga. Turns out Yaoi has a long history which could arguably go back to:

* (Arguably) History’s first novel, the Tale of Genji

* Which was written by the Japanese noblewoman Murasaki Shikibu in the early 11th century

* And has an episode involving Genji and a beautiful boy named Kogimi, the younger brother of the lady Utsusemi.

* Involving Genji and a beautiful boy named Kogimi, the younger brother of the lady Utsusemi.

* After Genji fails to win over Utsusemi, the text notes almost in passing that he “consoles himself” in bed with Kogimi, and later remarks that Genji finds the boy in some ways more attractive than his distant sister, which many scholars read as an allusion to male–male eroticism.

But yaoi as a genre didn’t emerge until girls’ manga got big in the 1970s and as Japanese fanfiction culture (dōjinshi) rose with it

* Boy-boy romance wasn’t pioneered by fan fiction:

* Mari Mori’s 1961 book A Lovers’ Forest is often cited as the first modern Japanese novel focused on male homosexual passion written by a woman for women. It influenced later BL/yaoi tropes (age gaps, aesthetic beauty, tragedy).

* In the early 1970s, the Year 24 Group (女性漫画家グループ, a collective of influential female manga artists born around 1949, the 24th year of the Shōwa era) pioneered shōnen-ai (”boy love”)

* Key figures created romantic, often tragic stories featuring beautiful, androgynous young men (bishōnen) in male-male relationships. These were original works published in mainstream shōjo magazines, influenced by European literature and art

* The launch of the magazine June (originally Comic Jun) in 1978 was pivotal—it specialized in shōnen-ai/tanbi content, helping formalize and spread the genre commercially (though it focused more on aesthetic romance than explicit sex).

* HOWEVER yaoi is about fan fiction

* The rise of Comiket (Comic Market, first held in 1975) and dōjinshi culture gave female fans a space to create and share parody works outside mainstream publishing constraints.

* The term “yaoi” itself is a portmanteau coming from from “yama nashi, ochi nashi, imi nashi” (山[場]なし、落ちなし、意味なし), which translates to “no climax, no point, no meaning” (or sometimes “no peak, no punchline, no meaning”).

* It was originally used in a self-deprecating, ironic way to describe male-male smutty shipping (often of boys’ manga or anime characters)

* By the 1980s, yaoi dōjinshi exploded in popularity at fan events. In the 1990s, the genre went more mainstream/commercial under the term “boys’ love” (BL / bōizu rabu), as publishers recruited dōjinshi creators and launched dedicated magazines.

Not Limited to Japan

* The 1960s-70s brought first major wave of organized slash fiction

* It emerged among mostly female fans writing fan fiction

* Examples of early shipping were Kirk-Spock fanfiction arcs. Private circulation of stories imagining romantic/sexual relationships between male characters. This marks the start of modern, community-driven female interest.

The Gay Ice Skater Bridge?

One of the more popular male-on-male anime romances in the 2010s was Yuri on Ice

* The series premiered on October 6, 2016, and ended on December 22, 2016

* It revolves around the relationships between Japanese figure skater Yuri Katsuki; his idol, Russian figure-skating champion Victor Nikiforov; and up-and-coming Russian skater Yuri Plisetsky; as the two Yuris compete in the Figure Skating Grand Prix

* It did really well

* It won three awards at the Tokyo Anime Award Festival, a Japan Character Award, seven awards in the Crunchyroll’s inaugural Anime Awards, and in 2019 was named by the website’s editorial team as one of the top 25 anime of the 2010s.

So… Why Are Women Into Boy’s Love?

* Safe exploration of desire and/or escapism: Takes the female audience member (and her insecurities) out of the picture

* Both women and men feel pressure to perform in sex and when their entire sex is absent, that pressure lifts

* Ability to avoid gender politics or gender wars

* It’s porn without the porn discourse because women aren’t involved

* Emotional depth: Some argue that male friendships in media often carry intense bonds that women readers/ writers “romanticize” or eroticize.

* Reminds me of red pillars asserting women are incapable of real love

* So maybe do women also think that men feel love more powerfully?

* Aesthetic appeal: Women like looking at male bodies, duh

* Similar to men wanting lesbian porn

* Power dynamics: In heterosexual stories, gender roles can feel restrictive; male-male pairings provide more flexibility.

And Why are Women Into Gay Men?

* Safety from sexual pressure and competition

* Experiments show straight women rate mating-related advice from gay men as more trustworthy than advice from straight men or other women, because they do not suspect hidden sexual motives or rivalry.

* Studies also suggest women feel that gay male friends value them beyond their bodies, which can boost self-esteem and body image compared to interactions with straight men.

* Researchers have argued that attractive women in particular may seek out gay male friends because they expect both: (a) safety from sexual exploitation, and (b) high-quality, “unbiased” advice on dating and self-presentation to men

* Mutual support in a heterosexist, patriarchal context

* Qualitative work on women and gay men suggests women may feel that gay men understand harassment, stigma, and gender policing better than straight men do, creating a sense of “we’re on the same side.”

* Some theorists argue that the bond is partly about shared resistance to traditional masculinity: both groups may reject or parody “macho” norms and instead celebrate emotional expressiveness, camp, and nontraditional gender roles.

* Attraction to campy, aesthetically intense performances of gender

* Symbolic identification with marginalized, resilient figures—plus a parallel critique that all this can slip into stereotype and commodification

Episode Transcript

Simone Collins: [00:00:00] Maybe the red pillars are right. Maybe women love, well, maybe women are incapable of love. And also women know it too, and that’s why they like to watch men love each other, because they love to observe these strange creatures who are capable of love.

Malcolm Collins: Oh my God. That is the most based Simone. Simone that’s going at the front of the video. I That is. That is, I had never considered this before. Right. Right. And I think you might be right.

Simone Collins: go woke, go broke has one massive exception and it’s when , the wokeness is for a leering, non woke audience that just wants to thirst over when you are objectifying

Malcolm Collins: the person.

Simone Collins: Yeah. When you we, yes. When, when you are objectifying.

Would you like to know more?

Simone Collins: Hello Malcolm.

I’m excited to be speaking with you today because gay men on ice are trending and before

Malcolm Collins: Gary, Gary, Gary on ice, that anime, we, we watched like two episodes of it or something about gay men on ice.

Simone Collins: It’s, yeah, but they’re figure skaters. And today we’re talking about hockey [00:01:00] skaters because literally what, before 6:00 AM this morning alone, I heard about the show heated rivalry, which features steamy sex scenes between two hockey rivals.

Four times two were from like YouTubers and then. Two or from friends.

Malcolm Collins: Why was everybody talking about this seems like a normal thing in media these days. Why is, why are people talking about this?

Simone Collins: No, no. This is different. This is different. And okay. Also, one of our, one of our patrons encouraged me to do an episode on this because it’s trending that much.

And they’re like, what is going on? So they wrote, why do straight women love to Lust after Gay Men? Because that’s the thing people are talking about. They’re not talking about the show per se. They’re talking about the women posting TikTok reactions to it and edits of it. And like, this is women fangirling over it.

So this person wrote, there seems to be current cultural fascination with these gay hockey players. And the video I shared by Brett Cooper delves into the current craze ‘cause she did this whole thing on it. This has always baffled me because the obvious. [00:02:00] Incompatibility, but this is long-winded cultural stereotype.

It doesn’t seem to be a new cultural phenomenon, but I don’t know how timeless it is either because it’s definitely intercultural. I’m also personally interested in this topic, given that a lot of girls growing up told me things like, I wish you were gay, or You have to be gay. I even had a group of four female friends, I had make a plan to try to convince their parents I was gay so we could all go together to a vacation house.

Though nothing happened. My condolences by the way, I’m just wondering and would love Malcolm’s input on the subject. So we need your analysis, Malcolm. Okay, so let’s, let’s dive in. I’m, I’m gonna tell you about heated rivalry ‘cause that’s kind of, hold, hold on. I need to for,

Malcolm Collins: for context for people. So if you’re a guy.

Okay. There is a major problem in sites like PornHub with DEI just flooding everything. I swear about a third of the women on there are lesbians are bi and that just cannot be true of the general population. And I’m, of course, I’m joking [00:03:00] here. The joke is that, of course men have a, a preference for many men do for watching erotic content with lesbians in it or with multiple women in it, with one guy.

That’s to why so many guys have this preference. It should be fairly obvious from an evolutionary perspective. There is no context in which you are watching another man. Sleep was a woman. Unless something really bad is happening and you are not being cupped, right? Like this is not something that you should genetically like to see.

All right? This should be one of the most mortifying sites to you, a man, unless we’re able to just totally dissociate or somewhat gay. Actually, I remember when I was in high school my roommate. We’re talking about porn at one point, and he was like you know, describing what he liked.

And I was like, oh, I, I never watch anything. Was any men in it ever? And he was very surprised by this. And he’s like, [00:04:00] really? And I was like, yeah, it’s a, it’s a massive turnoff to me to see a man, to literally see myself being cut somewhere in this world. Mm-hmm. Because that’s, you’re watching a video of you not having sex with someone.

That is, that is what that is. And he just couldn’t understand it. Anyway, turned out he was super gay. He just, did he know it

Simone Collins: at the time? He just didn’t know it.

Malcolm Collins: He didn’t fully know it at the time. No. But yeah, he was, he was gay. So, what I’m pointing out is that I, I, that, that is why men have that preference, right?

But with men it’s di with, with women, it’s different. Okay.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: With women, we’re dealing with a scenario where where

Simone Collins: women aren’t really as oriented to male or female, primary and secondary sexual characteristics so much as they’re oriented around. Power dynamics.

Malcolm Collins: Like, like, like genetically, historically, it’s not that bad for them, right?

Like a lot of women were you know, there were certain periods of human history where 17 women bred for only one man that bred, that meant on average people had 17 what on [00:05:00] average, 17 wives, right? Mm-hmm. So women being okay with you know, the husband sleeping with one girl and then sleeping with them they were gonna have more kids than the ones who were like grossed out or itched out by that or whatever.

So it is weirder that women seem to have a pretty strong, now, we pointed out in the Pragmatic Guide to Sexuality, when we did a big study on this, it was the, the first really big study ever done on this in this way. And what we showed is that if you count erotic novels as the same as porn that women consume.

Exactly as much pornography as men do. Mm-hmm. And there’s this assumption that women consume a lot less pornography than men do because these studies were all created by men originally and they did not consider something like 50 Shades of Gray or Twilight pornography market.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Or, or you know, I think that I’d also put in there things like a Handmaid’s Tale.

But you please, please don’t force breed me in front of a bunch of high status [00:06:00] women. But anyway I mean, from a genetic perspective, that’s exactly what a woman would want. Right. Like, a, a scenario like that where basically they are cing this high status woman.

Simone Collins: Yeah. They are actually technically speaking with them

Malcolm Collins: and then raising them as high status kids.

Yeah. Right. Like that is. Mortifying that than, sorry. That is, that is exactly what genetically they’re, you’re coded to want to happen to you. It’s like an a, a, perfect. And we’ve done an episode on a go see if you wanna say, but the point I’m making here is. If you know girls, like if you hang out with like, gerd, girl nerd culture which is something that, you know, I have done a lot.

Growing up I was a very nerdy guy. And one thing you will learn about girl nerd, nerd culture is that things like yi are really, really common. These are, and we’re gonna talk

Simone Collins: about that.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So, but what I’m saying is like, this isn’t new, right? Like, this has been around since [00:07:00] forever.

We’re gonna talk

Simone Collins: about the history and, but it, it goes beyond that because there is this trope of the ma the, the gay best friend for women. There’s not the lesbian guest best friend for men, you know, not enough

Malcolm Collins: lesbians.

Simone Collins: I don’t think there would be best friend if I could have a lesbian best

Malcolm Collins: friend. I probably would.

No, you wouldn’t. Women are pretty

Simone Collins: terrible. You wouldn’t, you wouldn’t. No, no. Don’t lie. But yeah, like, so it’s, anyway, a lot of people are talking about it now though, because of heated rivalry. And you, you hadn’t even heard of it before. So I need to bring you up to speed on this, this whirlwind hit of a show, because it is the thing these days.

So, oh, gimme a moment. Are we good?

Gimme a moment. Ms. Fussy is your un fuss. Okay. So Heated Rivalry is a Canadian sports [00:08:00] romance series that completely exploded out unexpectedly into a massive cultural phenomenon since its premier, premier in November of last year. So it’s just three months old. Basically, in terms of American audiences, it is an adaptation of Rachel Reed’s Game Changers book series, which was drawing from the novel Heated Romance, that’s why it’s called Heated Romance.

So this like with 50 Shades of Gray, this is a book to. You know, show jump. And it was originally created for a Canadian streaming service called Crave, which makes sense. ‘cause I mean, Canadians in hockey, like, okay, checks out fine, but it’s like made for some small streaming service in Canada about gay hockey players.

You, you wouldn’t think it was going to become big and the HBO execs who licensed it for basically streaming in in the US and elsewhere, totally didn’t expect this to become a thing. They didn’t really promote it, they just [00:09:00] put it up and we’re like, yeah, fine. This, you know, we, we gotta diversify our portfolio or whatever.

And it just somehow. Went out of control into, I mean, it, it shouldn’t be surprising, we’re gonna go into that, but it became a global breakout. The show follows two elite closeted professional hockey players, Shane Hollander and Ilya ov, who are fierce on the ice rivals, but develop an intense secret, romantic and sexual relationship.

It features explicit steamy scenes. I have not watched any of them. I, I don’t really want to. But it, it has been called one of the biggest surprises on tv. It, even HBO execs who really vouch for it to be brought on are surprised it did so well. And people think that it. Would’ve gotten canceled in its first season, like they were sure it wasn’t gonna get renewed or anything.

But as of December, it has gotten a second season. That’s one of the reasons why it’s trending right now, is people are excited. It’s getting a second [00:10:00] season filming is gonna begin in the summer of this year. But specifically the reason this went crazy is because of just intense word of mouth fangirling, primarily from women who are making all of these TikTok cuts of it who are talking about on social media, how it’s changed their lives and how they just can’t get over it.

And there are all these thirst posts about it, and it’s really become a social phenomenon, even in Russia where it’s banned because as we’ve discussed in other episodes, you can’t have same sex. Content. And now you can’t have antinatalists content or dink content in Russia. So the fact that this is trending even in Russia that people can’t get enough of, it, shows how hard it is, especially for women to resist male on male romance.

And in general, apparently the show is actually really good. It has a 98% un rotten tomatoes. And apparently it’s really well cast and written and [00:11:00] the, the chemistry is really strong between the, the male leads who have this romance. And then there’s just this massive online community with people making viral clips.

And there are even fan events, like there was even a fan event in the Philippines. So this isn’t just Russia. Okay, this isn’t just the United States or Canada. This is literally a global phenomenon. Well, no,

Malcolm Collins: but what’s interesting about this is. People found out the secret, right? Yeah. When you, they kept putting gay people in everything and nobody wanted to watch it uhhuh because they put gay people in stuff.

Mm-hmm. But the audience for it was gay people. Yeah. If you wanna put hot lesbians and stuff, guys aren’t gonna complain about that. We can. No, no. That’s the thing is, is

Simone Collins: go woke, go broke has one massive exception and it’s when , the wokeness is for a leering, non woke audience that just wants to thirst over when you are objectifying

Malcolm Collins: the person.

Simone Collins: Yeah. When you we, yes. When, when you are objectifying. Yeah. Like you have to me too. The woke people. [00:12:00] And then, and then it’s great when they’re being exploited, when they’re being layered at, when people are fing over, you know them, then, then it’s, then it’s gonna totally make money. The thing

Malcolm Collins: that, it’s not even about fing.

Like, I don’t think that many women are like, fing over this. And there’s a lot of stuff that guys alike where you have sexy women and people aren’t actually fing over it. Right? Sure. They aren’t. Malcolm, they, the, the, the, you didn’t need to be able to fap to like the original Laura Croft to prefer looking at an attractive woman as your avatar over a man, as your avatar.

And this is the thing today, everyone is all like, oh, all the main characters are women, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Mm-hmm. I, I think that we, you know, broadly on the right. We need to recategorize how we’re saying this. No one had a problem with stellar blade’s. Main character being a woman. In fact, we loved it until they decided to start censoring it.

You know? The, the, the, the problem is, is that they are ugly women that are meant to be non-threatening to the studio people who are putting these in. We need to not, [00:13:00] it’s not that we are against, women being, being in our video games or in our, they just need

Simone Collins: to be hot.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: We just want them. We’re not against same, same sex relationships.

We, they just need to be hot. Actually, you know what a really good point though about it’s not a lot of the same sex couples, no hold on. The same sex couples that are in the goo Go broke like Disney movies and stuff is that they one, aren’t hot. And two, it’s all about like interpersonal conflict and my feelings and our struggles.

And no one wants to watch that. They like

Malcolm Collins: kids. No, but there’s, the point I’m making is they don’t need to be. Hot. They need to be objectified. That is even more important than being hot, right? Like the oh, my struggles and stuff. That’s not objectifying them, right? Mm-hmm. They’re humanizing. Oh, so you need to dehumanize them.

That’s not accurate though, because No, I didn’t say you need to dehumanize them. You need to objectify them. So if you look at something like, let’s take Tomb Raider, Laura Croft, by the way. Right?

Simone Collins: Okay. [00:14:00] Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: If you watch the way Laura Croft runs or jumps at a ledge, or,

Malcolm Collins: oh, so basically

Simone Collins: you need fan service.

Malcolm Collins: It’s no, but she does it in a way that is objectified. Right? If you look at the new Laura Croft games, which did pretty well, and I quite liked the Laura Croft reboots what is the number one thing that we are doing to Laura Croft in those games? We are putting her in horrible situations where she is getting horrifyingly injured or beaten.

That is, that is what is constantly happening to her, and she is never whining about it. Okay?

Malcolm Collins: The, the jazz animation dying are over the top, and I have never seen death animations like that. They’re, they’re literally like above Mortal Kombat level [00:15:00] death animation. Are you serious? Because the Mortal Kombat ones just look over the top and gruesome, and these look very realistic.

Oh, no. God, like, you know, like getting caught in a river. And then a stake go through her, her chin and up through the side of her head. Oh, gosh. Wow. A fast river while hitting a bunch of B Rock. Okay. So stuff, it’s over the top, but what I’m saying is that, is objectifying the individual, right?

Like, well, I can’t, I haven’t watched,

Simone Collins: I haven’t watched the show. Okay, hold on. Let’s go back. The,

Malcolm Collins: the character who everyone always says is like, oh, men, like strong female leads, blah, blah, blah. Strong female leads are, okay. Is Ridley from aliens, right? Ripley, Ripley, rip Ripley, Ripley Ripley from, so Ripley is actually a fairly objectified character throughout the Alien series.

So, okay. What, what is it that has happened to her? What, what happened to her? She was forcibly impregnated with an alien [00:16:00] that was put inside her without her consent. No,

Simone Collins: she wasn’t. One of her crew mates was,

Malcolm Collins: she was in number two, the one that did really well. She was, yeah, that’s her whole thing. And then she be, takes on like a mother role in like number three or four or something to one of the areas.

No, I remember that. That was created from her DNA, so not only is is she in, in most of them, she’s either taking on a, a motherly role. Like there’s the one that had like the ghostly version. It was the last like decent one made.

Simone Collins: I remember one with a little girl hiding in the ventilation and I won’t remember the first one.

Yeah, that was the

Malcolm Collins: first one and she wasn’t forcibly. But even in that one, if you look at the role that she takes on, it is very much an objectified girl, boss wrote role. Very much like if you’re gonna say like, what’s an example of a guy taking on an objectified masculine role? I’d say blade is a very good example of a guy taking on an objectified masculine role.

It’s not a realistic masculine role. [00:17:00] It’s a role that is over the top to the point of being fetishized.

Simone Collins: Okay. I think I may follow you, but I’m not, I don’t actually think that this show does that. I mean, it’s really known for having. Just amazing direction and character development you’re forgetting, you’re looking at this totally through the male gaze, and you’re not thinking about the female gaze on the male gaze, AKA, the men who love each other.

You are thinking about this as a man looking at women. You are not thinking about this as the way that women look at men and totally the thing that women like isn’t, I mean, yeah, the bodies look good, but they’re there for the romantic tension. That’s what yi’s all about. That’s what heated rivalry is all about.

And so I I, I, I appreciate your explanation of how men look at this when they’re looking at female [00:18:00] characters. But the thing that drives female interest in male romance is, is different. It’s a different dynamic that you do not understand.

Malcolm Collins: No. Hold on. Actually, I’m gonna, I’m gonna push back. You’re gonna mansplain on this.

I you’re gonna explain to me how women

Simone Collins: consume gay content.

Malcolm Collins: I watch enough anime that there have been seasons when I run out of anime that is not Yi. And so I say, okay, I’ll try whatever the, the, it has an interesting premise. Okay. You

Simone Collins: only watched two episodes of Yuri on Ice.

Malcolm Collins: I’ve watched other ones to the end.

Okay. That were like sci-fi and I was more interested in I’m, I’m not like reflexively against it because first of all, you gotta keep in mind if, if you’re like watching this and you’re like, what, what does he mean? Like, does this stuff have sex in it usually? Actually never have I seen it have sex in it.

Yeah. This is, this is just like for girls with a lot of ywe stuff. It’s just like suggestive stuff. And then you’ve got some sci-fi story happening in the background anyway. The point I’m making is they do [00:19:00] not form relationships that are like real relationships the relationships that they form.

Think about you, you say you’ve read Yahweh before. Does, does the type of relationship that the two men form, does it look like the type of romance you see between a man and a woman in a mango?

Simone Collins: No. Not at all. No,

Malcolm Collins: it doesn’t. It’s completely objectified. It is. What? And, and actually there’s a, even like a thing online, like a trend of this where gay men watch or, or read ywe and then react to laughingly at the, at the way that women portray gay male relationship.

Oh, just how,

Simone Collins: like, this is not how it works at all. Yeah, yeah. Like this

Malcolm Collins: is not how it works at all.

Simone Collins: And it’s not, it’s really not. Because I when, when I have sleepless nights and I. Get curious and I just don’t, I’m too stressed and I wanna like forget who I am. I go to all the NSFW subreddits, so I know, I know all the fetishes, I know all the weird stuff that people consume, and therefore I [00:20:00] also have seen a lot of gay porn.

And I, I’ve, and I like, you know, we, we’ve all like, we we also have gay friends too. No, like, it, because like y Yahweh is very, it’s typically about like crushes turning into romantic tension, turning into like these encounters, whereas like out out gay relationships as we know them, are a lot more based and effective and pragmatic.

I think the biggest differentiation that I see between the typical male romance as depicted in Ywe and I think probably also in heated rivalry is that there are a lot more closeted and there’s a lot more tension and crushes and dancing around things, whereas in, in real life. You’re just getting basically men being much more optimal partners for each other than women could ever be for men.

I don’t know how else to put it. So like, I mean, I, I’d point

Malcolm Collins: out to people that that [00:21:00] this is very similar to if, if you like, showed a lesbian, lesbian like porn, mint for men, lesbian porn, mint for men. They say this is nothing like what actual lesbian sex is like. Well, yeah, I mean

Simone Collins: also like, just look at how morphologically different erotic material online lesbians look from.

Lesbians at Trader Joe’s, you know what I mean? They’re very, it’s a different look. It’s a very different look,

Malcolm Collins: but it’s, it’s both

Simone Collins: lovely. But

Malcolm Collins: I, I think you’re getting a better example of what men would want to do to women, or what women want men to do to them when they’re in the opposite role. When you’re watching same gender stuff.

This is why in, for example, in real lesbian relationships, using strap-on is incredibly rare. That’s just not used much in real lesbian sex

Simone Collins: Yes.

Malcolm Collins: Point. But in lesbian porn, it’s incredibly common because you want one of them to take on the, the male role. It’s the same with the Yi, which you’re actually seeing is one of the men taking on a woman’s role.

But we’ll get into why as you go further.

Simone Collins: Yeah. So [00:22:00] let’s, yeah. But anyway, I think it’s really funny. It’s humorous to me that everyone’s shocked that heated rivalry is doing so well, and that women are going crazy for it. When like, literally we couldn’t even have shows like Sherlock without people.

Completely. And, and, and, and psychopath Shipping people You mean women? Yeah. Sorry. Without women obsessively pairing Watson and Sherlock in, in fan fiction that we, we can’t even have kids movies like the Lorax without people literally shipping the winsler against himself. For, for what, what, what do they call it?

Ancest one est. They, they, they, like, this is, this is how psychopathic women are in their need for, for boys love. There’s only one character they’re kind of into, it’s okay, we’ll just double him and have him have him. I don’t know. Come on to himself. It’s, it’s, it’s intense, this, this female instinct.

And so, [00:23:00] yeah, I, I, I want to, I want to go into Yi and Boys love and the history and the dynamics behind it because I think it’s, it’s interesting and, and

Malcolm Collins: I also wanna know one thing about it and, and you can tell me if you think this is wrong. Yeah. It is, it seems to be an instinct that is stronger in younger women than older women.

I

Simone Collins: could see that maybe, yeah.

Malcolm Collins: I’ll, I’ll go into why I think that is at the end, but continue, Simone.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Okay. Perfect. So Ywe, I, I dunno. When you first learned about Ywe, I learned about it when I was. In high school, and my friends who let me, all their manga gave me Ywe manga, and we all nerded out about it.

But it, it actually turns out I didn’t know this. Ywe has a really long history and it can argue, arguably go back to the first novel. I don’t know if you’ve heard of the, the Tale of Gen Genji. It, it’s, it’s argued that that was history’s first novel ‘cause it was a, a story written in narrative form.

Are you familiar with it at all?

Malcolm Collins: No. Tell me more. Well, we talked about it. I remember I read a bit of it and it just wasn’t that [00:24:00] impressive to me. But it’s not, but

Simone Collins: I mean, what, what are you gonna do? You know? But like, it’s also so funny though that like the world’s first bromance is also one of the earliest stories now that I come to think of it.

That, you know, the tale of Gilgamesh we had Anky do and was, it was his name Giles? It was Giles. It was a total bromance. Boys. Boys love. But anyway, the first novel for sure had at least a little bit. It was, it was, it was by the Japanese noble women, mur Kashi Shiku in the early 11th century. And while it’s not okay, a dedicated boys love novel.

There is one episode in which Genji and a beautiful boy named Kmi, the younger brother of Lady U oh, Tsui kind of get together. Okay. Like he, he first tries to come on to Lady Zumi, but then she isn’t that into him. So he, comforts himself in, [00:25:00] in bed or consoles himself in bed with, with Kmi. So that implies that he’s, he’s bi, but I mean the, the, the, the rest of the tales focus on his romances with women.

But there’s still a moment I, I feel like the author here, maybe a fan girl a little bit with some boys love, but Yi is a genre didn’t emerge until Girls Monga got big in the 1970s and this Japanese fan fiction culture emerged. And I think Fanfic Can Fiction culture correlates really highly with the prevalence of boys love romance.

And I think this has to do with the fact that women are really into it. But mainstream society doesn’t want to condone it, so you’re only gonna see it when women are unleashed and allowed to write things. And as soon as they’re allowed to, or as soon as, as, as their secret writings become more public through weird market dynamics like the rise of Doji Q, which is just basically.

Fan fiction, but Naked Manga and in Japan then, then you get it. [00:26:00] But boy, boy Romance was not necessarily pioneered by fan fiction. There’s this 1961 book by Mari Maury called A Lovers Forest, which is often cited as the first modern Japanese novel focused on male homosexual passion. And it was written by a woman for women.

So this really falls well into the category, and it did influence later boys love in Ywe tropes like age gaps and aesthetic Beauty and tragedy. And then later, about a decade later, in the early 1970s, the year 24 group, which was a collective of influential manga artists that were born in the 24th year of the Shoah era, pioneered sh and I, which is.

Translated to boys love the key figures, created romantic and often very tragic stories featuring very beautiful and very androgynous young men. Which you’ve probably heard of as bi in male male relationships, which were often influenced by [00:27:00] European art and sort of made to be very foreign maybe kind of to, to get you out of Japanese culture and morays.

But then the launch of a magazine called June in 1978 was really something that skyrocketed the genre because it’s specialized in this kind of content and formalize the genre. But really the, the fan fiction explosion in Japan is what made Yi big. There was this comic market called Comic Cat, which was first held in 1975.

Where Dochy fans were able to come together and kind of just all realize that they had these secret fantasies and stories that they wrote that were boys love focused. And this is where you start to see the, the word yi bandied about. Because, you know, before it’s, and even after, like it’s really been called boys love mostly, but I didn’t know.

Yi is a port mento coming from three, three words really. So the YAI and [00:28:00] ii and this translates to no climax, no point, no meaning, or sometimes no peak, no punchline and no meaning, which gets to your point that there often really isn’t like much going on in these plots. You know, it’s just sort of all like tension and vibes.

So I think you really zero in on something meaningful there. And it was. I think people who created Ywe as fan fiction have always been very self-deprecating and joking and ironic. Like they understand that what they create is, is s muddy fluff. And they, they, they don’t take themselves very seriously and they have fun with it.

But you also totally see this in the heated rivalry posts that people are making now online. They understand that they’re, they’re being kind of tery and funny and that this is utterly unserious, but they also just love it and can’t help themselves. And I think that’s really interesting. And I mean basically after the 1980s, YWE was here to stay, but [00:29:00] it kind of evolved more just broadly into boys love.

And it went from being something that was primarily fan fiction or in really niche publications to stuff that was just mainstream. So by the time you get to like the 2010s, you get to show like the one we mentioned, Yuri on Ice, which. Involves, we didn’t really explain what it was. It, it’s basically about this relationship between the Japanese figure skater, Yuri Kazuki and his idol, who’s this Russian figure skater champion named Victor Nikki for of, or I can’t remember his last name.

I think it’s Nikki for of, or something like that. And then this other, other skater also called Yuri like Yuri, Yuri Ky. And basically the two Yuri’s compete in this grand figure skating Grand Prix. And Victor is the coach to the Japanese Yuri, who is a crush on him and is like the, just the idol.

And it’s just really sweet and it’s really cute. And it was, it was award-winning. It did really well. It [00:30:00] only had, I think, 12 episodes or something. And it ran maybe from like 20, 20 16 or something. We didn’t see it until the. Like 2018 or something, I think. But

yeah.

Yeah, it was made a long time ago, but it was by that point mainstream, which is why I thought it was a major, it was a major enemy, and of course it made it to like American streaming platforms.

So, yeah. But then, I mean that’s, it’s just so funny though that some, there’s something about male love on ice that we just can’t get enough of. In fact, I tried to see if the, the writer of the original heated rivalry book was inspired by Yuri on Ice because the timeline kind of worked for me.

And the author and all the people also associated with the original creation of the show cite tons of real world hockey rivalries and all sorts of other inspirations. So it’s not like they don’t talk about their inspiration, but apparently this is just truly convergently evolved fetishization of men on ice [00:31:00] skates being into each other because they do not cite Uri on ice at all.

And it appears that they really have no, they have no hat nods to each other. Like, heated rivalry has, doesn’t do anything to kind of hint at the fact that it was inspired by Yuri on Ice.

Malcolm Collins: I mean, Yuri on Ice is not about rivalry, it’s about like, mentorship and, and close. It appears to be a different dynamic that they’re playing.

Yeah,

Simone Collins: yeah. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: They like the, the characters are made to look very vulnerable in Yuri on Ice.

Simone Collins: Well, the characters are, are, are somewhat vulnerable and, and heated rivalry too. But yeah, I mean, it’s, it would be as if well I guess we didn’t watch all of Yuri on Ice. I don’t know if the two Yuri also kind of get into each other, but I think, I mean, at least as far as we saw Intuit, it was only about, the, yeah, this was like trainer student dynamic or I idol and fan dynamic instead. I’m, I’m just not sure though, so who knows? But we should point out that there was also this really, the big first major wave of slash fiction did [00:32:00] also emerge around the 16 and seventies at the same time in the United States.

So it’s not like this is just a Japanese thing. And as our, our paid subscriber pointed out this, this is kind of a, a cross-cultural thing. This is not limited to any particular subgroup. Do you know what the first really big popular pairing in a fictional and universe in. Zines in nerdy zines in the 1960s and 74.

Yeah, of course

Malcolm Collins: it was Spock and Kirk, that’s, Colin knows their, the history of porn knows this one back and forth, Simone,

Simone Collins: the OTP, you gotta, you gotta, they must kiss, they must be together forever. Yes, you were absolutely right. So, yes, I, this is, this is something again, and I, I really don’t, I don’t think it’s that this is a new instinct.

I just think that this was the era in which fans were finally able to converge and share their dirty little secrets. And that’s how it all came to be. So anyway, I think that that’s, that’s interesting. But let’s answer the question, [00:33:00] why are women into boys love? And there’s first, I think, the really obvious answer that everyone gives, which is that for women especially, this is a, a way to very safely explore their desires and kind of es escape.

The things that hold them back sexually while still really indulging. So when they’re watching these romances and even when they get pretty steamy and explicit, they can do so in a way that really feels escapist and fun because they, all of their insecurities are out of the picture. They’re not thinking about, well, how do my boobs compare?

Or like, my thighs, or like, they, they also, I think women feel a lot of pressure to perform Oh, and men do too sexually. And I think for both men and women, same sex erotic material, it can be comforting or at least less disjointed because they don’t feel the need or as much prompting to think personally about their own performance.

[00:34:00] They’re just. Completely enjoying the I guess eroticism or sexuality. I’m gonna,

Malcolm Collins: I’m gonna argue that this is what women often say.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And

Malcolm Collins: they actually mean something else. When they say this,

Simone Collins: tell me what you think they mean.

Malcolm Collins: So. If you watch or read like, ywe books, right. Uhhuh you will see that if it was a real relationship, as we have said already, you would find the situation quite comical often.

Yeah. So like, this is ridiculous. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. The reality is, is that women, if they saw a woman being objectified in the way that one of the male partners typically is, because one of the things that’s very common in Yahweh tropes is one of the males needs to be saved. He needs to be rescued. He’s incredibly vulnerable.

He’s incredibly unsure of himself, and a lot of modern women, if they saw a woman acting like that, the one who is [00:35:00] in the, the female role, often they’d be like, this is objectifying. This makes me uncomfortable. Mm-hmm. Like, why is she, why does she need to be saved? Why is she acting so vulnerable? That was the next thing on

Simone Collins: my list actually.

I was like, you know, it really helps. That when it’s male, male romance, you get to avoid gender politics. Politics and gender wars. And in an era, especially now when there’s this increasing animosity and political divide between men and women, when it’s just two men that is just totally removed from the picture.

Men, you don’t have to think about all, but men are the enemy, men are the aggressor. Men are the, like, where was there consent? Like that just has been removed from the lexicon of this scenario and people could just have fun again. And I really do think that’s majorly underrated. That’s a really good point.

Yeah.