LB* read her first gay smut book somewhat by accident. It was about seven years ago, and her aunt recommended J.R. Ward’s Black Dagger Brotherhood series. The stories seemed like a typical vampire romance. That is, until the 11th book, Lover At Last , when the series introduced its first main romance between two male characters.
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“It just opened up a whole new world to me,” LB, who asked to remain anonymous, says of the male x male romance genre, more popularly known as M/M. “And I just really haven’t gone back to anything else as my primary reading.”
LB—who recommends M/M books to her thousands of TikTok followers under the account @ wreckitralph808reviews —is just one of many women who prefer gay romance books to their straight counterparts. A 2022 study done by the fan fiction site Archive of Our Own (AO3) and the University of Central Florida (UCF) found that M/M slash fic—fan fiction between two men—was the most popular ship type at almost 26%. Of the survey’s 5,000 respondents, over 53% identified as cisgender women. The second-highest population was made up of people who identified as nonbinary, at 13%.
Where did M/M books come from?
The data didn’t come as a surprise to Mel Stanfill (they/them), one of the coauthors of the study and a professor at UCF, who considers M/M fan fiction—which has existed since at least the 1960s—the origin of the M/M book genre. “The classic example is Kirk and Spock in Star Trek in the ’60s,” they say.
According to Stanfill, the birth of M/M fan fiction in the ’60s was mainly due to two things: the lack of female characters in pop culture and the upswing of second-wave feminism, which focused on critiquing patriarchal cultural practices throughout society. “These were people who were compelled by these characters, and they wanted to think about their relationships, and their intense relationships were with other men,” Stanfill says. “Women would be able to think through a relationship that didn’t have an automatic gender bias and inequality. You could be an equal.”
The lack of gender stereotypes is also what makes the M/M book genre so appealing to women today, especially compared to the male archetypes that are often seen in straight romance books. “The media presents males as masculine and strong,” says LB. “It’s assuming that what we’ve seen of one person is going to appear as the collective. I don’t automatically assume every male I come across is going to be masculine, strong and have no emotions. Seeing different types of men in M/M romances is where I feel like it’s more intimate.”
Who reads M/M books?
But while women make up the majority of the M/M community, Stanfill has found that, contrary to popular belief, very few of them identify as straight. Most of them identify with queer sexualities, like bisexuality or pansexuality , where at least one of the genders they’re attracted to is men. Per Stanfill, this attraction to men is also represented in why gay smut, specifically, is so popular among the M/M community. “There’s kind of the impetus of lesbian porn, like one lady hot, two ladies hotter. One dude hot, two dudes hotter,” Stanfill says. “They’re sort of using these characters as dolls to have fun in a way that doesn’t feel personal and feels safer because it’s more distant and there’s no one that is a representation of them appearing in the story.”
LB, who identifies as pansexual, however, wants to make clear that there’s a fine line between attraction and fetishization, a misconception she and many members of the M/M community are trying to fight against. It’s not just two guys getting it on. That’s where the fetishism comes from,” she says. “These are real people. Not a character based off of a real person, but the genre itself is based off of a group of people that have struggled forever to be seen and heard.”
Stephanie Johnson, another M/M content creator who recommends books under her account @ stephsometimesreads , also explained that the appeal of M/M books isn’t necessarily the sex, but the story of identity and self-discovery that’s told. “Whenever I’m asked, ‘Why M/M romance?,’ I say that I love to read about different types of love that I will never be able to experience in my real life,” she says. “It doesn’t matter that I’m reading about fictional characters. I still get to experience perspectives and connections that I wouldn’t normally be able to. I’m always drawn to reading about the courage it takes a character to come out to the world or internally confront their own sexuality.”
For LB, who grew up feeling like she should’ve been born a male, M/M books also provided an outlet to see life through someone else’s eyes. “While transitioning wasn’t my journey, reading the types of books where both main characters are male and present as male gave me that safe space to explore [my identity],” she says. “It gives me that little safe bubble to where I can explore that by myself and back off if I need to. I could be in that doorway between, and that was safe for me.”
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Why is there backlash against M/M books?
Still, the M/M book genre isn’t without controversy. According to Dr. Bridget Kies, a professor at Oakland University specializing in queer media, there’s been significant backlash toward female authors who write M/M books, which is why the genre is often labeled as “M/M” and not “gay romance”—indicating the authors are often not gay men. “The readership wasn’t necessarily intended to be gay men or even LGBTQ people,” she says.
To combat the controversy, several female M/M authors have used male pseudonyms, a choice that has backfired on some. “Josh Lanyon was a highly prolific self-pub M/M romance author who got outed as actually being a woman with a male pen name,” Kies says. “And suddenly it seemed unacceptable to write an identity you didn’t live.”
And then there’s the criticism toward the M/M audience and the publishing industry’s preference toward books with muscular and masculine-presenting characters, something Christopher Rice, the male gay romance author behind the Sapphire Cove series, credits in part to the gay community. “The books that seemed to succeed sales-wise are ones in which the heroes both present as very stereotypically masculine,” Rice says. “I’d love to blame female romance authors for that. But the truth is, the fetishizing of masculine-presenting queer men above all others is something the gay community has been wrestling with for years.”
In his opinion, this stereotypical casting leaves something to be desired. “There’s something in me that switches off as a reader when both of the heroes are impossibly gorgeous or equally musclebound,” he adds. “Straight romance novels don’t feature heroines who are all Victoria’s Secret models and trust fund babies who land the man of their dreams.”
How popular are M/M books, really?
Despite the M/M genre’s increased visibility on TikTok, Stanfill notes there’s actually been a decline in popularity in recent years. “The amount of people that like male/male stories is actually decreasing over time,” they say. “It’s less dominant in younger groups than it used to be. In younger groups, there’s a large population of asexual people who don’t like sexual content or lesbians who want to see women content.”
There is some good news, however. While M/M books are on the decline, Kies also predicts an upward trend of other queer romance genres in line with readers’ change of interests. “Current trends indicate that sapphic (F/F or lesbian) romance is still much less popular than gay romance, but it is growing in popularity,” she says. “Nonbinary and trans romance books are published at rates even lower than sapphic, but they, too, are starting to become more popular, especially in YA categories.”
Still, whatever happens to the M/M book industry, its community is louder than ever. Search “M/M books” on TikTok , and you’ll find thousands of content creators recommending their favorite reads and effusing over the storyline, characters, and smut.
“It’s a whole community of not only the people who read it, but the people who write it,” LB says. “The common misconception is it’s just something we do. It’s an experience. Reading itself is an experience.”
The best M/M romance books, recommended by authors and TikTok
Curious to explore the genre? We asked M/M authors and TikTok content creators to recommend the best M/M books for first-timers.
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