If you’ve been on certain parts of the Internet, you’ve likely seen the words “yaoi” and “yuri” thrown around. These terms have both been used as synonyms for romance; yaoi refers to love between two men, while yuri involves two women. This term, originally used in close Japanese nerd culture circles to market art with their favorite queer pairings, has evolved to describe queer relationships as a whole, even for surface-level fans of manga and anime. Calling the love of fictional characters yaoi or yuri is fair game, but when it’s used for real queer relationships, it feels fetishistic and utterly disrespectful in nature, especially since there are better substitutes to those terms.
“Yaoi” and “yuri” have less of a history than general queer history, both in Japan and internationally, but the origin of these terms should still be discussed to understand why they could be seen as offensive to real-life queer people.
Before there was yuri, there was yaoi. Originally, yaoi was defined as fiction from the doujinshi self-published community in Japan about centered around the pairing of two men, primarily made by women for a predominately straight female audience. It was originally created as a subgenre of the girl-oriented “shoujo” media (primarily manga, or Japanese comics). Funnily enough, the term “yaoi” comes from a tongue-and-cheek phrase that translates to “no climax, no point, no meaning,” which refers to the plot of many of these fictions. Compare this to “gei komi,” which is gay comics and manga made by gay men for a gay male audience. Gei komi is less exploitative in nature,considering the creators and target audience.
The genres of yaoi and its female counterpart, yuri, are often romantic or sexual in nature but don’t necessarily have to be. The pairings technically only need an emotional or spiritual connection, but the connotations of “yaoi” and “yuri” have grown to imply romance and sexuality.
This is already questionable at best, since many of the creators aren’t attracted to the same gender. Instead of telling stories authentic to their own identities, they exploit and even fetishize queer relationships and queerness as a whole. Gei komi, on the other hand, is typically art that rejects the exploitation of queerness in favor of telling authentic stories without the voyeurism.
Yaoi and yuri that don’t accurately depict queer people in all their complexity as human beings (and not just romantic and sexual objects) set a bad precedent for the queer community. They aren’t representation; they are exploitative fetish art.
As art is a reflection of humanity, there are people out there who fetishize queer relationships instead of genuinely accepting them as normal. Although fetishizing identities is far from new, calling real queer relationships yaoi or yuriis an out-of-touch and overt way of showing how you view queerness as voyeuristic entertainment to exploit, rather than genuine and typical love.
So, what terms should we use in place of “yaoi” and “yuri” when talking about queer media and queer relationships? “Yaoi” could typically be called “shounen-ai,” or “boys’ love” in English instead. “Yuri” could typically be called “shoujo-ai,” or “girls’ love” instead. These terms have less of the sexualization and ironic, patronizing humor that the terms “yaoi” and “yuri” have developed and opt to focus on their love instead. There are also trans-inclusive terms,such as “achillean” for masc-identifying people attracted to other masculine people and “sapphic” for femme-identifying people attracted to other feminine people. These terms could be used to label the relationships of both people and media.
If you’re not queer and you enjoy shounen-ai or shoujo-ai media, this article isn’t meant to shame you, but to help people become more conscious of art that exploits queer identities versus authentic queer art. In a world where these identities have continuously been delegitimized and rejected, art featuring these relationships can bring a huge sense of comfort to us as we continue to persevere. As such, art about queer people should ideally be made by people who understand and respect queer culture instead of those who aim to exploit and profit off of the queer community. This is why, as a very basic start, yaoi, yuri and other terms with voyeuristic nuances should never be used to unironically define queer relationships, especially real ones.