Sandra Buckley points out that at one point during the 1970s, comics for girls were the testing ground for defying censorship laws, and the sex scenes were homosexual in nature, not heterosexual. Since the beginning of this genre in the 1970s, they have contained "bed scenes" ( beddo shiinu ) or "bed scenes", where homosexual sex was implicit and the authors began to be bolder in its representation, not only in the homoerotic attraction but also in the consummate sexual act. "BL" ( "Boys 'Love", "Boys' Love" ) refers to stories that contain younger characters or less dramatic and lighter romances (as an alternative to those stories that have more sexual content). June refers to storylines that contain homosexual drama and romance between adult (male) characters. Today in Japan the term "yaoi" is used occasionally for scenes of sex in manga or doujinshi with male homosexual content, while in the West, the word is associated with a story that includes a sentimental relationship of these characteristics and is automatically linked with Japan Be it commercial manga, anime, games, fanfiction based on slash games, fanfiction in other languages, fanart, etc.
The generically used term is " yaoi ", an acronym for the phrase "Yama nashi, ochi nashi, imi nashi", which means "without climax, without resolution, without meaning".