Discussion What demographic is Bl ?

I have been wondering for a while , under what demographics does Bl falls under. Until a few years ago I've always thought that its shojo/ josei , the Bl section would be near the girls section in a bookstore so yeah
Most of my BL reader friends where majorly female , and most authors / readers are also female so it didnt appear special-

But since then my thoughts have changed and now im confused what to tag I also meet with more fudanshis and other things that changed

 

Its lightsaber fight and swords in places that shouldnt be use.

 

I'd say josei but not like women only, just that's it is in that category, romance and all that's associated with josei. Just like shounen are shounen even tho girls read them too.

 

Just checked whats the other choices via google.

I'd rather have it just BL or yaoi rather than having it inbetween mangas or books for my niece. Dont want her to grow up looking at male friends and thinking "are the fcking or something".

 

I'd say it is it's own genre. Just like you don't put Romance novels in the Fantasy/sci-fi section, even if it may involve fantasy/scifi elements.

 

Oh god , Imagine looking at your male friends and thinking " are they fcking ... I've never done that because i saw Bl next to shojo mangas when i was kid ..

I think you're right , It can also be embarrassing for male Bl readers to look around in the shojo section just for bl

 

Seen a lot of those in college tbh. Me and my buds always have issues with females thinking we doing something at a night out.
Well they did walk out when we went to a night club with topless tiddies.

Its sad to have handsome friends and me being the under one... Like wtf.

 

Technically it can be any age/gender demographic depending on the story, even if the shoujo/josei ones might be in the majority.

 

Most BL stories are aimed at the same target audience as Shoujo, which is why you can see a lot of Shoujo in the BL stories.

If you're talking about tags/genres though? BL is its own genre, it doesn't fall under Shoujo just because they're extremely similar.

 

lol, I think Bl falls under the romance genre, just like BG and GL and all other types of sexual orientation because of its definition. But usually, it's just tagged BG, BL, GL, or non-CP.

Shoujo, shounen, josei, sci-fi, fantasy, etc., are all different genres labeled based on novels contents and target audiences. I believe that BL usually goes along with shoujo and josei because of its target audiences, not because BL is their sub-genre.

 

Even tho most of the audience for BL is female I wouldn’t say it should be the same category as shoujo. Because that’d just confuse things about. Shoujo is like young teen girlish romance between girls and boys and then throwing BL in there would make the category too broad so as to say?

 

It isn't confusing at all if you see them as separate genres.

Shoujo is one of the demographic types. That means the target audiences of shoujo novels are primarily young females from 13 to young adults (~22-23), so shoujo isn't only going along with fluffy BG. Examples of non-romance or almost no romance of the shoujo genre are the Precure, Hell Girl, Kaleido Star.

Also, the age rating of many fluffy BL and GL novels is teen in Western; that's why you can see they tag shoujo with those genres.

What makes me confused is why BL, GL can't be seen as a separate genre and must be put in the sub-genre of xxx (except romance in broad meaning, though).

 

While technically BL probably shouldn't count as a genre, it functions as one and I think it'd be correct to think of it as a discrete genre. A genre is what a work is about, and how it's designed to entertain or engage the audience. As such, genres aren't tied to any one demographic so there's no need to try to pigeon hole it. Think of genres like Mystery - you can write this kind of story for any intended audience and it'd still be a Mystery novel. In the case of BL, most of the writers seem to be women and they tend to be designed to cater to female audiences. However, there's going to be a strong subset of these stories written by gay men as well, so the demographics for these books should be considered more broad than that.

I think that the problem here is that you're thinking of shoujo as a genre and it simply isn't one. It just designates particular stories as being targetted at younger female readers. Some of these stories are BL so it only makes sense to acknowledge this. Also note that because shoujo isn't a genre, it's not possible to be overly broad at defining it.

 

True. I think I’m just thinking of it in terms of when I go to the bookstore or browse a online manga site, I usually pick Shoujo and have some general expectations to what I’m looking for. Like yes I know shoujo is not a genre but when I buy a shoujo magazine, choose shoujo on a manga site, or look thru the shoujo section in a bookstore I know what to expect. So yeah that’s why I say putting BL into the shoujo demographic would be a bit weird

 

But that could be said about any niche subgenre, excluding them from a wide demographic or broader main genre just because they don't fit the general expectations someone might have of those seem a bit weirder to me.
It isn't really all that much different from saying BL isn't romance just because it isn't BG.

 

It can and is seen as a genre of its own , but BL is not a demographic.
Demographic are more like this , BL is not a target audience ..
Children ( young ) --> Shojo age around 7 to 18 ( more or less ) --> Josei ( more mature stuff )
Children ( young ) --> Shonen age around 7 to 18 --> Seinen ( more mature stuff )
Im not so sure about western but should be something like this
Kids --> teen --> young adult --> adult ?

BL is a genre but not a demographic but a genre , sooo the safest thing to say it that the demographic or target audience of BL is calculated based on the story i think ? Even if it is considered shojo / josei most of the time , it can also be shonen / seinen . OR just dont dont tag demographics and yeah ...

Its still difficult to put BL titles into demographics ... Just take the most popular BL novels and chose one as example //
MDZS --> Its not really for toddlers so not kids
shonen/ seinen ? since action and adventure, male MC ( doesnt really mean anything but idk why i put it here, also MC is shou so ... ) , fighting --> Male audience
or is it shojo /josei because of the romance ,drama (possessive bf times) and smut parts --> female audience
Ask the same with the more well known ones and you will be confused .. I say more popular ones since they tend to make more sense the some other ...

 

Eh. I don’t think it’s weird. No body said BL isn’t romance but BL manga is usually published in their own magazines. Not one site puts BL manga under the shoujo category either. It has its own category. Bookstores all typically don’t shelf BL with shoujo. The whole point of categorizing things like this because of reader expectations and marketing. No one is saying BL should be hidden or put into some back category…but if you want to say is BL shoujo as in is the demographic mostly girls then yes it’s shoujo. It’s just not marketed as a shoujo manga but a BL manga. Idk. I’m not hating on BL it’s just I have never seen it categorized as shoujo in all the years I’ve been reading manga and novels

 

Not sure what exact sites you visit, but I've seen plenty over the years that do categorize them as both BL and Shoujo(or another demographic), at least if it is a site that tags genres and demographics separately, not saying that there isn't ones that do as you mentioned though.
Also even if a lot BL mangas is published in magazines meant just for BL, those magazines can often still be focused on a specific demographic as well, demographic marketing isn't just about what category you put them as in stores.

That said things do get somewhat complicated by the fact that a more mainstream selection of shoujo gets pushed almost like a genre of it's own, problem with that however that is reader expectations can shift, a story that gets published as shoujo today could quite easily be in another demographic if it was published a couple decades later, not to mention there is still plenty of stories that are in a grey-zone that gets published as one demographic but could quite easily have been in another if the author or publisher had wanted it to.
I'm not saying it is weird for you to mostly see shoujo as that pseudo-genre that a lot of it is marketed as, just that it weirds me out personally the way demographics are marketed in the first place to create that kind of expectations, and not just regarding shoujo.

By the way, I'm not saying most BL are shoujo, if you put together all the BL that are josei, seinen or even shounen then those could quite possibly match or outnumber the ones that are shoujo for all I know.

 

I think the disconnect comes from thinking of shoujo as a genre when it's nothing like that. It builds up a preconception of what kinds of stories are supposed to be shoujo when the question should be "Who are reading these stories?"

 

I think any novel is going to fall into multiple genres. Think of Harry Potter - it's juvenile fiction, fantasy, coming of age, school drama, adventure, etc. If you have a physical library or bookstore, you have to pick a section and decide where to put the book, so you'll put it where you think readers of the books on the same shelf will be most likely to also want to read this book. In an online database like NU, you can tag it with all of the genres it falls under, so people who love any part of it can find it with a search.

BL is probably a subgenre of romance, but even so, just like with straight romances, there are plenty of novels with a BL plot for which the romance is not the primary point of the novel. In a bookstore, these novels don't belong in the romance section, or even in a BL section, but with other books related to the primary themes of the novel.

Today, many BL novels are written by straight women for straight women, and the content of the stories reflects that. As more cultures become more accepting of homosexuality, and more gay people come out, I think we will see an increasing market of gay romance to gay audiences. Gay authors will also be given more opportunities to tell stories, which will affect the types of stories we see. We will also begin to see gay romance plots in stories marketed to a broad audience. Much like Harry Potter had straight romance subplots, the future best sellers will include gay partnerships in the epilogues.

(By the way, I chose Harry Potter as an example only because it is widely known; I am not a big Harry Potter fan, and am well aware of how problematic it is.)