Why women can’t get enough of MM romance (spoiler: it’s not new)

The gap between what women want and what (straight) men think women want is increasingly a canyon. While the manosphere hyperfocuses on looksmaxxing and mogging, women are turning up in their thousands to get lost in the stories of a different kind of man: a man who loves and lusts for men.

Male-male (MM) romance has been having its moment in the BookTok spotlight: Heated Rivalry is the first name on everyone’s lips, but it’s in plenty of good company. From the heartbreaking Boys of Tommen series to the viral five-chili For The Fans, books that explore the lives, relationships and sex of queer men are in demand. Rachel Reid’s Game Changer series alone boosted publisher Harper Collins’ sales by $41 million in the three months after the Heated Rivalry TV series aired.

So, what is it about MM romance that has us hooked, and is it something new?

The early days of MM romance

A quick trip down history lane: it’s the 1970s. The sexual revolution that started in the 60s has uprooted old, patriarchal attitudes about sex and sexuality, leading to greater sexual liberation for straight women and queer people. There’s still significant opposition from conservatives, but attitudes are shifting.

In 1971, US author Gordon Merrick published a novel called The Lord Won’t Mind, promoted in the New York Times as ‘the first homosexual novel with a happy ending’. This was unprecedented, as was the 16 weeks that it spent in the NYT Bestseller list. Eight years later, two more gay romance novels caught similar success, but with a difference: their authors were women. The Front Runner by Patricia Nell Warren and The Catch Trap by Marion Zimmer Bradley set the stage not only for female-authored MM romance, but MM sports and college romances.

Meanwhile, women in Japan were leading their own liberation movement–ūman ribu–that demanded freedom from strict gender roles, including expression of sexual desire. Manga was increasingly popular, but primarily written and illustrated by men, until the 1970s. More female manga artists emerged, creating stories for women and girls that included MM romances known as shōnen-ai, later inspiring yaoi, which was far spicier. But both typically featured more androgynous men, with both masculine and feminine characteristics. Dedicated magazines for shōnen-ai and yaoi began to spring up to meet the demand from female readers.

The 1970s was also the decade that saw the birth of slash fiction, or slashfic, as Star Trek fans couldn’t get enough of their favourite characters–the ‘slash’ referred to the punctuation in ‘Kirk/Spock’. This fan fiction was romantic, often sexual, and soon crossed over to other TV shows. Slashfic was originally printed and sold at conventions, but the arrival of the internet took it global. Slashfic websites hosted thousands of stories, mostly written by female fans, for series like The X-Files, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Stargate. In the noughties, websites like Tumblr, Wattpad and AO3 became thriving hubs of slashfic.

And AO3 brings us back to the present day, as the platform where Rachel Reid published the story that would go on to become Game Changer, the book that precedes Heated Rivalry.

The cult of Heated Rivalry

Shane, Ilya and those cottage scenes awakened something in the collective female consciousness. Whole podcasts have been set up to satiate an appetite for detailed analysis. Themed club nights sold out across the UK. Connor Storrie and Hudson Williams’ audio erotica for Quinn hit 3.2 million listens in a matter of weeks.

The TV show’s popularity doesn’t seem to be limited to the plentiful spicy scenes, either. The trials and tenderness of Shane and Ilya’s relationship are compelling. Scott and Kip’s story arc is sweet and soul-crushing. And the yearning. The yearning…

Ultimately, the show is about love and intimacy, and the same could be said about MM romance as a genre. But it still leaves us with the question: why MM? What makes women want to write and read about sex and love that removes them entirely from the narrative?

Why women love reading men who love men

This is well-trodden topic, if not scientifically then critically. There’s even a whole book about it: Girls Who Like Boys Who Like Boys by Lucy Neville explores the allure of MM smut, but also slashfic and gay porn–Pornhub reports that over half of users watching male-male pornography are female.

There are multiple and wide-ranging theories about the MM romance phenomenon, but three in particular come up again and again, and were common responses in Lucy Neville’s research of women who loved MM erotica.

First, the simplest approach: two (or more) men multiply the desire for women who are attracted to men. Even if there are no other women involved, you’re reading about two people whose physicality turns you on. Add breath-taking, back-arching spicy scenes with serious character chemistry and you’ve got a formula for full mind-body arousal. 

Then there’s the less obvious, but perhaps more potent theory for some: in MM romance, there’s no role for misogyny; no gender power imbalance during the story or sexual encounters. For female readers, it can be pure escapism. All of the smut with none of the issues that heterosexual women face during their relationships and sex lives (which can also affect queer women too). 

Connected to that is the notion that “porn and love are not polar opposites… and the fusion of these two things gives [women] the most pleasure: sexually and emotionally” which Lucy Neville describes in her book. In MM romance, women can fantasise about men at their least performative and their most vulnerable, without patriarchal pressures to protect, provide for and overpower women.

With Season 2 of Heated Rivalry heading into production soon, Rina Kent’s latest entries in the Vipers and Villains series and endless BookTok discourse, whatever your reason for loving it, if you’re an MM smut girlie, you’re eating well.