I found this article just now, about Why Do Guys In Yaoi Claim To Be Straight? and it remind a discussion we had here about the awareness (and sometimes the worrying lack of it) of the girls about their preferences, the most common development with yuri and yaoi, the struggle.

So I started reading it, and found so many things in common with yaoi that made me realize how wrong I was back then when I said that Yaoi fans had it easier than yuri fans, well here is the article, take a coffee and read it, is very informative and good. Is not about yaoi (but that's the main subject) but the whole LGBT community in anime and in Japan. I'm sure you can relate too.

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/answerman/2016-02-03/.98211

Seriously I could change few words here and there and this could be a yuri article

^^
I don't think yaoi fans have it easier. They just have more content of yaoi to read. The reason why is that yaoi has more of a wider audience. The main audience being straight females. Alot of my friends that are straight love watching yaoi but dislike yuri. While yuri is more aimed at guys, which means that there is more fan service instead of straight up romance. Women in general perfer romance thats why yoai has more content in regarding romance stories then straight up fan service. This is a general statement, I know gay guys that read yaoi and read yuri as well.

Of course lesbians read yuri as well but the medium looks at the largest demographic and determines what is the most profitable. You just have to look at the anime Free! I know straight guys that do watch the anime but the largest demographic are women. I’m trying to make the point that if you go to any manga site and click on yaoi you would see there is 50 pages or so of manga. Then click on yuri and there is only around 11 pages of manga. There is a noticeable difference between the amounts of content. That's why you might have thought that yaoi fans have it easier, which they do in regards to content. But the struggle is still the same regardless of being gay or lesbian. The whole LGBT community have it hard in alot of Asian countries.

Ah yeah, the amount of yaoi out there is arguably larger than yuri but what I meant by easier is the fact of we finding things like "Yeah we kissed... I think about that person a lot but... What does it means?/What's this feeling?" "B-But...We're both ..." stuff like that all the time, I thought yaoi didnd't had that (and the point of someone sending a letter to ANN) and was more straight forward or didn't bother in that subject as much as yuri does but it doesn't seen to be the case.

last edited at Feb 4, 2016 9:35AM

There are a lot of lesbians into yaoi as well. In fact, one of them coined one of my favourite phrases on the topic, "Yaoi is not gay fiction. It's porn for girls."

Fact is, most yaoi is not aimed at gay men, nor does it often reflect their lives. Generally speaking, that's more a bara thing. Yaoi is largely a female phenomenon.

This is a bit of a difficult one. Not being a homosexual male nor a fujoshi, I'm not qualified to comment on the preferences of either group. The entire Japanese department at my university is gay, and one of my teachers does a lot of research on various aspects of yaoi, and from what he has told me, it seems like it similar to any genre with a basis of sexuality. Some people read it for titillation, some for romance plots, some for story, and some read it because they can relate to the characters.

As for LGBT in Japan in general, while it is not "proper" to flaunt one's preferences, there is an overlaying idea of homogeneity in the Japanese community. Everyone is Yamato and heteronormative, and anyonewhosaysanythingelseiswrongsoshutup. This is, like any culture, just an over-lying view, and how liberal a person is depends greatly on the individual, or the area that you are in. Still, many gay Japanese men and women prefer to hide their preferences, because in companies or schools, individualism isn't appreciated, and could reflect badly on their social standing in either domain.

The reason that many people who are just realising their attraction to the same sex get confused about it is because homosexuality is not a widely discussed topic. My teacher once asked me if I thought that gay marriage was illegal or legal in Japan once, and knowing Japan, I said "illegal". Turns out that it was a trick question, and that gay marriage is not legislated at all! I believe that the confusion expressed by yaoi characters is reflective of the confusion caused to gays in Japan, who don't know that being gay is a "thing" (although, I think that them not more vehemently denying it is where the unrealism comes in).

Sorry that I rambled a bit, but this is the sort of thing that requires a thesis by a sociology major, and is not a very easy topic to cover in a paragraph or two!

I have read interesting articles that suggest the popularity of yaoi among teen girls, especially in the west, stems at least in part from the opportunity to see male characters in a less threatening context, with more romance than they are given in straight romance stuff. For queer girls, you've also got a layer of enjoying homosexuality in fiction, regardless if it's men or women. Which I must say, I can appreciate although I've not found much yaoi that really grabs me. Nevertheless, I have done loads of yaoi speculation and such, and done RP sessions of the nature, and can totally see the attraction of homosexual stories.

There are quite a few younger gay, bi and questioning guys who enjoy yaoi.

Well, I'm a guy, I'm 70% gay and I don't like yaoi, I don't even find it interesting, I'm glad i'm not the only one lol.

Yaoi is different than yuri in general from what I've noticed. There might more yaoi mangas out there, but the quality is pretty bad imo, so even if there are more it doesn't count to me.
More than half of these stories are basically porn with a hint of story line. Not to mention that the sex scenes feel like rape in a lot of them too.