BL female viewers are you attracted to 'real' men?

As a heterosexual woman, I naturally find male bodies attractive, and the actors all have incredibly aesthetic physiques. But they also know and understand the sexual needs of a male partner with somnambulistic certainty, so that in beautiful NC scenes they appear confident in what they give and take. This is not a given in the world of heterosexual partnerships.

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I watch some BL because I like intelligent coming of age and youth series with young people figuring themselves out. Some BL does that well, others not so much.

I also love the Thai way of telling a story, and BL was the easiest way to get into that. But it turns out that a lot of the kindness, acceptance and warmth I was drawn to was more about it being Thai.

When I began watching BL a couple of years ago I was delighted by how quickly it broke down conditioned heteronormative assumptions like who the couple(s) were in series. I also liked how relationship dynamics were sometimes more equal, though sexist het dynamics recast with young men will always irritate me.

These days though, I'm really attuned to the ways BL reinforces heteronormative conditioning to make women secondary to men. Even the best BL with say a supportive female friend, or a possible female love rival who isn't interested for her own reasons, plays into this.

I don't watch much 'high heat' BL, though back when someone was on my case about that all the titles they listed were ones I wasn't particularly interested in because they were more violent. So it wasn't that I was avoiding watching male actors act in intimate ways or anything like that.

I'm bi (and old enough that was the language we used when I figured it out). I like good stories and will appreciate them for what they are, though I'm not so keen on ones which are so soft-focus women's fantasy that LGBTQ+ and gay romance feel like misnomers.

So basically, it's all about the story, I like men and I'm not fussed one way or the other if actors, whatever gender, are pretending to be sexually intimate.

I was gonna ask what you meant with 'real' men, but after reading through the thread, I figured you probably mean living and breathing men as opposed to fictional men, and that answers my question. 

I admittedly wouldn't consider myself a BL fan. I've watched a couple and enjoyed most of them, but my romance interest lies largely in unconventional het romance. I mostly watched the BLs I did for the plot, but also in part to see a situation where men can explore their masculinity without the gender role cringe getting in the way. 

Het media is very focused on traditional gender roles/norms (yes, even girlboss x malewife media), and though queer media definitely also has its fair share too, by default, it is less. In het media, the man will pretty much without fail be the one to pursue, woo, impress, and pamper the woman, but since there is no woman in a gay relationship, that role falls onto a man and thus creates a situation free of gender roles where a man is portrayed as desirable in a way that isn't traditional/the norm (I'm not referring to "the man and the woman" thing that some people try to force onto same sex relationships, but rather "the pursuer and the pursued" which is tied to traditional m/f gender roles but is just a basic romantic dynamic, too)

TL;DR: I dislike and don't relate to het romance, but relate far more to gay romance. If het media stopped forcing gender roles into literally everything, I'd probably only watch BLs like anything else, for the plot. 

 chirisu:

Also, whatever this is.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DO7EbWvE0iu/?igsh=b2ttNzZ1ZXduNDY3

RevLove BTS is insane.

I'm replying here due to the MDL 'quote being too long' issue. Even though you're bi, your opinion is applicable because bi is one half of being het. And I found your answer lines up with what the discussion of being het (and maybe bi) people were talking about online which led me here, I didn't want to speak about what they were literally talk about, but it was almost exactly what you mentioned, having an issue with male genitals.  But the part I'm curious about is if you're watching a BL and it's absolutely implied that dicks are involved (because they absolutely are in every way irl sex between two men, just like a man and woman) then is it that you don't see the dicks in BL? Does not having to see it make it easier to watch? If they showed full frontal nudity in BLs would you stop watching? I'd also have to assume that females who fall into the category I know of i.e (attracted to men) are gay porn watchers (not all obvs, but enough of them) and the rest aren't. (this last sentence is just my specualation)

This answer is for @Arclei 

"I'd probably only watch BLs like anything else, for the plot. " ~~ I gotta admit, this one made me snicker, most BLs have very weak plots, typical BLs generally let the romance dominate everything, even nonsensically, letting the plot fly in the wind. Nowadays, some of them are doing better but over all, plots in a BL barely matter.

But what you said about disliking the way het romances are presented compared to how they're presented in BL, I guess that could be a reason. There is almost always a certain 'way' things are written between men and women which can be boring or uninteresting.

 Aqua:

Trueee, I've seen a lot of slop in my exploration 😂😂😂right now I'll definitely be more choosy of what I watch. 

😂  so true, I drop or skip more BLs than I actually complete watching because many of them are such drivel. I am glad to see BLs nowadays are making more effort though, to raise the quality of their content.