Abstract
This chapter explores the role of romance and love in participants’ use of gay male erotica and pornography. A large section of the sample discussed how important the relationship (or perceived relationship) between the characters was when they were reading or watching m/m erotic content. This chapter investigates this, and what it might have to offer to the longstanding, though not uncontested, assertion that men like ‘porn’ and women like ‘erotica’.
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Notes
- 1.
Demisexuality is also referred to as ‘semi sexuality’ or ‘gray sexuality’, and demisexual people might refer to themselves as ‘gray-asexuals’ or ‘gray-aces’ for short.
- 2.
For the 84 per cent who were involved in slash fandom.
- 3.
The authors do not provide a sample size.
- 4.
<eye roll>.
- 5.
They are referring here to situations where an m/f couple in the original text are often literally ‘swapped out’ for an m/m couple—so, for example, stories which follow existing narrative arcs (e.g. Beauty and the Beast, or the teen movie She’s All That) but with both protagonists recast as men.
- 6.
Schmoop describes a fan fiction, or part of a fan fiction, which is sweetly romantic or cute, usually to a degree considered maudlin.
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Neville, L. (2018). ‘…Always Should Be Someone You Really Love’. In: Girls Who Like Boys Who Like Boys. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69134-3_6
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