What Is M/M Romance?

If you’re just diving into queer fiction or even fanfic, you’re probably running across new terminology. “The olds” might make fun of teens and college students for having a lot of slang they don’t understand. Truth is that you’ll find a lot of almost incomprehensible jargon in almost any niche.

So, at this point, you might be wondering what, exactly, “m/m” romance is. On the surface, the answer is quite simple. If you dig a little deeper, the answer is a lot more complex than you might have anticipated.

M/M Romance: Meaning and Definition

Quite simply, “m/m romance” is a romance between men. The “m/m” stands for “man/man” or “male/male.” That’s all.

Of course, even my simple definition there can be complex. The men in the romance don’t have to be gay. They could be bi or pan, for example. One of the most popular categories used to be the “gay for you” trope. In this kind of story, at least one of the male leads identifies as straight—except for when it comes to this one particular guy, who happens to be his love interest.

As you can see, we’re already throwing wrenches into what should be a relatively simple definition. And it only gets worse from here.

What Is M/M Romance?

If we want to define m/m romance as a romance between two men, we’re suddenly tossed into an epistemological debate about who is actually a man.

Obviously, the quick and easy answer to that is “a cisgender man.” It’s someone who has an XY chromosomal phenotype.

As I’ve discussed before, though, even that is complicated. Not every man has an XY phenotype. Certain intersex conditions, for example, mean that some men are actually biologically “female,” with an XX phenotype (and vice-versa).

That also leaves aside transgender individuals. Some people would absolutely love to argue that trans men are not male and thus can’t be included in romance between two males.

Others take issue with that view. Some people thus see “m/m romance” as meaning “man/man” or “man-on-man.” This sometimes leads to confusion and upset when readers and authors use different definitions of the term.

Some people advocate using the more inclusive term “mlm romance” (man-loves-man) to avoid any potential confusion on this point. It removes the focus from biological definitions and places them more squarely on social identities. Thus “mlm” can include trans men without bogging us down in arguments about who is “male.”

Is M/M Gay Romance?

A lot of people assume “m/m romance” is really just shorthand for “gay romance.” Once again, we run into a bit of a problem with such a facile definition.

In this case, it’s that a lot of m/m fiction avoids explicitly labeling the characters as gay, bi, pan, or otherwise.

So, in a sense, m/m romance books are fiction about men in queer relationships with other men. Despite that, I’ve read very few that explicitly label their characters as gay men. Instead, it’s just sort of assumed that the characters are attracted to men, and that’s that. There is relatively little discussion of queer identity.

Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing might depend on your perspective. If you’re a gay man looking for representation—where the characters are confirmably, undeniably gay—it can be difficult to find that. Add in that a lot of m/m romance is actually written by cisgender women, and you may find that m/m romance isn’t actually “gay romance.” A lot of times the characters do not accurately represent gay men and their lived experiences.

The opposite way of thinking about this is that it’s a good thing. Queerness is so accepted in these worlds that nobody bothers to need a label for it. There’s no need to label “gay men” because being gay is simply so accepted in the fabric of society.

Allowing Characters to ID Themselves

This is, thankfully, changing. This year alone, I’ve read several newer novels where the characters to explicitly identify themselves as gay, bi, or pan.

I do think it is more common in contemporary romances, a genre I don’t tend to read a lot of. Historical authors often skirt the issue. There’s a big argument in history nerd circles about how people might have identified themselves in the past.

We know there are a lot of historical figures who demonstrated queerness, either in their relationships or their desires. That said, it’s unlikely those people would have understood themselves using the language we use now. For example, King James I of England was known to be pretty much in love with the Duke of Buckingham, George Villiers, but it’s not like we can ask either of them if they identified as gay or queer. If they used the same language, they might have chosen a gay identity. They equally might have called themselves bi or pan. But it’s also likely that their understanding of themselves was quite separate from what we’d think of as “gay.”

That said, the argument about not labeling historical figures with modern queer identities is often rooted in denialism. We can’t label King James I as a queer man because we can’t ask him how he identified, so we just shouldn’t talk about the fact the man wrote some pretty queer letters to Villiers and that their rooms in the palace were attached. Or so the logic goes, anyway.

And Emily Dickinson was “just friends” with her sister-in-law.

When a Lack of Labels Is a Good Sign

In other genres, like paranormal and omegaverse, queerness is just kind of a given. This is one of the situations where the lack of identity within fiction could actually be taken as a good thing. Basically, everyone is queer and queerness is so accepted, you don’t need to label it.

Even in these genres, though, I’m seeing more characters specifically addressing their identities. One historical romance I just read referred to one of the main characters as an “invert,” which is a historical term. (The character was self-labeling, which gives us some insight into how the character might feel about his sexual orientation. At the same time, it’s in line with terminology used during the period.) In a contemporary romance I read, both of the leads identified themselves: one was gay, and one was (likely) bi, although he was having an “awakening.”

The Gay-for-You Trope

One of the issues that the lack of character identification leads to is the use of the gay-for-you trope. I mentioned this was an incredibly popular trope for quite some time, and it’s easy to see why. It allows writers to circumvent the issue of having their characters actually identify as queer. At the same time, the characters can indulge in queer relationships—and get an HEA.

More recently, there’s been a lot of backlash against this trope—for good reason. It basically suggests someone is straight “until the right guy” comes along. In turn, it suggests that people can be gay for one person and one person alone.

There is, perhaps, a grain of truth in this. Sexuality is a spectrum. The result is that there are a lot of people who are some degree of queer, while also maybe being some degree of straight. That said, we’d be better to adopt the bi/pan label for these characters, however. The gay-for-you trope suggests they are “straight” guys who happen to be “gay” for one guy and one guy alone.

Perpetuating Harmful Myths

The trope also plays into fearmongering around men being “turned” gay by other gay men. Queerness is not an infectious disease; gay men are not vampires. Nobody can catch “the gay,” and you don’t make out with a gay man and magically turn gay. That is simply not how it works.

This trope, then, is a fairly reductive “gay awakening” or “bisexual awakening,” which is flattened. This prevents the character from realizing their sexuality in full.

The good news is that this trope seems to be falling out of favor, although there are always going to be “gay-for-you” books published. In the wake of its waning popularity, however, we’re seeing more and more books where characters are experiencing their “awakening” more fully and coming to identify as gay, bi, or pan—in those words, on the page.

The Issue of Representation in Gay and M/M Romance

One of the other reasons representation is so important in m/m romance—and why the “gay-for-you” trope makes so many people sour—is that m/m romance isn’t necessarily gay romance.

I touched on this idea, but it’s worth more exploration. A very noted phenomenon from fandom spaces has been what was once called the “yaoi fangirl.” The fact of the matter is that m/m romance has been co-opted or colonized by cisgender women writers. That means, by and large, m/m fiction is written by and for women readers.

That means a lot of m/m romance isn’t gay romance. Women writers tend to write these supposedly queer relationships in particular ways—often modeling them directly on heterosexual stereotypes. In anime fandoms at the start of the millennium, this meant very strict top and bottom roles, where the top was brooding and masculine. The bottom was usually an airheaded sunshine femme—often to the point of cross dressing, using feminine speech, wearing makeup, and so on.

If you venture into the realm of actual gay—and more broadly queer—fiction, you’ll find most of these stereotypes drop by the wayside. The reason is that queer people tend to think about things in distinctly queer ways. That means dispensing with the social scripts that tell us how people act in relationships, how women act, and how men act.

Rethinking Queer Relationships

Something I’m happy to report is that this queer thinking is more widespread now. Perhaps it’s because I’m moving in more queer spaces myself, but I’m seeing more variety in how writers handle their queer relationships—even if they are cisgender women writing for a largely female-coded audience.

That doesn’t change the fact that a large swath of m/m is written by women and caters to women readers. Gay men and other queer people often feel left out in the cold, seeing their identities co-opted and served up as stereotyped fiction.

So, m/m romance is often not gay romance—although, in many ways, it should be.

M/M by Any Other Name

Outside of publishing, m/m may have a few different names. In fandom spaces, it might be known as slash or slash fic, which comes from the convention of using the solidus (or slash) between the names of the characters. Famously, this was done by a Star Trek fan, who paired Kirk and Spock together, creating Kirk/Spock.

In anime circles specifically, m/m may be known by a few different monikers: yaoi and shonen-ai were both common in past decades. Today, the English version of shonen-ai, boys’ love, is often used instead of the Japanese term. This may be shortened to BL.

I also mentioned that the term “mlm” is sometimes used for romance that features men in love, although not all of them are “male.” And, of course, we have “gay romance.” There may be some subtle nuance to using “m/m romance” and “gay romance,” though, which may mean it’s unwise to use the two terms as interchangeably.

Nonetheless, the meaning of m/m romance is clear enough: it’s two (or more) dudes in love.