Men loving other men-Oscar Wilde referred to it as "The love that dare not speak its name." The phrase was originally taken from a poem by his young male lover, Lord Alfred Douglas and used against Wilde in court where he was being prosecuted for "gross indecency" because of his sexual orientation and beliefs. Wilde refuted the charges eloquently and was allowed to go free-at first. Later he was sentenced to two years of hard labor for daring to practice and advocate homosexuality.

     A lot has changed since the controversial playwright and author was sent to prison for practicing man love in the late 1800s. Indeed, these days we not only speak about it, we watch it, read it, write it, and (for those of us who like the genre) drool about it to our friends. So what is it about watching, or for the purposes of this article, reading about two hot men get it on that makes us all so hot and bothered? How did it all get started? Why do readers read it? And why are writers who used to write only heterosexual romance suddenly leaving out the heroine in favor of two hot, hunky heroes?
      The origins of modern Western M/M writing may go as far back as the late 1960s. It was then that a small group of enterprising (no pun intended) Star Trek fans started talking about the possibility of Kirk and Spock being more than friends. Talking became writing and the first homosexual fiction about the two Trek characters was printed and circulated among the growing group of female fans. Before the advent of the Internet, the stories were printed in small publications called "zines" and labeled with a slash as in Kirk/Spock. Soon the fiction became known as slash fiction and it was written primarily by women and for women.

     Slash fiction wasn't limited to the Star Trek universe by any means. Once the idea started spreading, more and more genres popped up, often based on popular television shows of the time. One of the more notable ones was the Starsky and Hutch fandom in which the two hard-nosed 1970s police detectives were put into every possible scenario and sexual situation. Starsky and Hutch slash became a widespread phenomenon and the very first convention of M/M slash writers, called Zebracon, was held in California. There fans of slash could meet, greet, and get new ideas from the many zines filled with hot M/M action. Again the writing was mainly by women for women. Why? Well, we'll get to that in a moment. The important thing is that slash fiction was here to stay.

     Once the Internet came on the scene, the proliferation of M/M writing grew exponentially. Readers and writers began to get specific about what they wanted. Many sites had their stories grouped into categories like "hurt/comfort," "first time," and "established relationship" so that readers could read about their favorite characters in very specific sexual situations.

     As the interest in Male/Male erotic writing grew, there was another influence on the budding genre. Shounen-ai which translates as "Boy's Love," more commonly called Yaoi, started making its way to Western readers from Japan. Drawn in comic-book form, Yaoi is all about sexual and emotional relationships between men. Though more males have joined its ranks in recent years, Yaoi has been traditionally written by women for women. It was a big part of Japanese culture long before M/M fiction became really prevalent in Europe, the US and Canada.

     Yaoi began to gain popularity among Western readers, many of them women, who liked the idea of two hot men together in sexual and sensual situations. It has its own jargon to express what goes on in the story. Most notably a "lemon" story contains graphic sex while a "lime" is more of a PG-13 type of rating.

     The growing popularity of slash fiction and Yaoi and the spread of the Internet paved the way for a new genre to be born. Original M/M erotica with a traditional romance-novel emphasis on plot, characterization and a HEA (happily ever after) ending began to spread as writers decided to cross the line and write original characters instead of borrowing from popular television shows and books.

     Women became more vocal about their interest in reading about two men in an emotional and sexual relationship and some widely known "facts" held by the publishing industry were debunked. For instance, everyone "knew" that women wouldn't be interested in a story with no female protagonist. And there was no way women would want to read about graphic man-on-man sex. Right? Wrong. As it turns out the majority of Male/Male erotica readers are women-the same kind of women who were interested in slash and Yaoi before M/M became popular. E-publishers who were groundbreakers in traditional Male/Female erotica took notice and soon M/M erotica was available to anyone with a computer.

     Most recently, some New York published authors are following the e-pub trends. Bestselling author J.R. Ward has a distinctly homoerotic plotline between two of her tough alpha heroes in her Black Dagger Brotherhood series. Ms. Ward has said that she wasn't sure how the plot would be received but decided to take a chance anyway. To her surprise, most of her readers not only approved of the plot but begged for more. Will we be seeing more bisexual and gay heroes in mainstream NY published books in the near future? It seems probable given the current trend and the fact that more female readers are discovering the delights of M/M erotica every day.

     It should be noted that though this article focuses on female readers, there is a growing audience of male readers who should not be discounted. Their thoughts and opinions have been taken into consideration in the second part of this article.

     M/M erotica should not be confused with gay pulp books, sometimes called "one-handed reads" because they are almost exclusively sex without much plot. M/M erotica, which more closely follows a romance book plot arc, is often as much about the emotional connection between two male protagonists as hot sex scenes with lots of sweaty man-love. The fact that growing numbers of men are reading it as well as women is a testament to the genre's increasing popularity.

     Numerous papers have been written to try and explain the popularity of Yaoi, slash and M/M erotica-some critics have even said that it is an attempt by female writers to sublimate their own sexuality by writing sexual stories that have no female characters. Of course many female readers and writers of M/M erotica would disagree strenuously with that. Which brings us to the question of why M/M fiction is gaining in popularity and what readers are looking for when they read it.

     To find the answers I asked for help from Wave of Reviews by Jessewave, a well trafficked blog that caters almost exclusively to GLBT book reviews and discussion. Working together we crafted a series of specific questions for both readers and writers of M/M erotica to try to identify the reasons readers of the genre love it.


     We could include in the accompanying article only a small sampling of the many responses we got. If you're interested in the full discussion, you can find it here. reviewsbyjessewave.blogspot.com/2008/10/how-do-you-like-your-mm-erotic-romance.html

     In reading overall the responses I found that many of them were real eye-openers. For instance, before writing this article I had assumed that writing M/M erotica for male and female readers would be fundamentally different. I thought male readers would want more sex and less plot and would want their sex to be much more hardcore and graphic. To my surprise the overwhelming response from male readers is that they want the same thing female readers want-a solid plot and characters they could fall in love with and root for to get their HEA.

     Of course, while writing this article, I had to ask myself why I loved the genre so much. As an author, I like to be able to explore new worlds and describe experiences I couldn't possibly have outside the realm of imagination. Not being a gay man, I find the whole M/M experience to be a forbidden adventure, made that much hotter by the fact that much of our society still considers this area of literature taboo. (At least the family I grew up in certainly does.) So I greatly enjoy writing a relationship between two men, especially one that grows emotionally and sexually along the way.

     In my book, PLEDGE SLAVE, I tackled the idea of a forbidden romance growing between two frat boys. After one character is required to erotically pleasure the other one during an initiation ceremony, their reluctant friendship gives way to a scorching passion that consumes both men. My upcoming M/M new erotica book, BROKEN BOUNDARIES, is set in an all-male school and involves two cadets forced into an erotic partnership though one character is still uncertain of his sexual identity. The book is a coming-of-age story for my protagonist as he learns to admit his own feelings and his fear and hatred of his dark and dangerous partner turn to desire and love.

     Trying on these characters and situations for size is a lot of fun and certainly something I would never be able to do outside my imagination. As I write, I hope that my readers will have as much fun reading my forbidden fantasies as I have writing them. And of course, I also try to keep things accurate and my characters believable even though they are doing things I personally will never be able to do myself.

     The M/M erotica genre is growing. Every day new readers are finding it online and new authors are giving it a try. It offers readers something new and different to read and gives authors a challenging new genre to write.

     So the next time you're surfing the EC website, why not give a M/M book a try? You might find you're falling in love with erotica all over again, thanks to an infusion of hot man love.