Girls Love tags used in novels with male romance

[HonestMistake]

I'm not sure if this is the right place (I don't post, like, at all!), so forgive me.

GL is girls love, which means the protagonist is female, and ALL of HER love interest are FEMALE. Not some, not maybe, ALL. To me, GL is synonymous (same as) a lesbian tag. As soon as a male love interest is introduced, it is no longer a girls love story. It is now a BISEXUAL story. Just because there are girls in the MC's harem as well as boys, DOES NOT make it a girls love story. If the MC is MALE, and some of the females in his harem are together, that DOES NOT make it a girls love story.

Please, stop using the girls love tag when your story is anything but. Those tags are the first thing we see, and for the most part, is what many readers use to judge if a story is worth reading or not. I personally find the male body to be gross, and anything more than a light hug is unpleasant and gross to me. It's why my library is so full of GL novels. So when I go to read a GL novel that looks really good, and find the MC sleeping with a man, or there's graphic scenes with males, it really upsets me.

I am NOT hating on bisexual protagonists or people who like dudes. If that is what you like, then good for you. It's just not for me, and when I read a story that has that stuff in it while it claims to be a GL novel, it makes for a really unpleasant experience. I hope I'm not the only one.

Just to be clear, I am not asking authors to change their stories and the romance in them. All I ask is that you understand the purpose of the Girls Love tag, and stop using it in novels that feature male romance.

 

[yansusustories]

I wonder if there's a specific novel that set everyone off

Is anyone else bothered by the large amount of gl novels containing het?

So I've always been of the opinion that girls' love novels should never contain m/f content, especially among the main cast. I mean it's not really about girls' love if there are love interests that are male. It's extremely common on this website for a story to have the "bisexual protagonist"...

forum.scribblehub.com

Separated BG (Boy/Girl aka M/F) romance genre or tag

Given that Boys Love and Girls Love are their own separate genres, it would make sense to have BG (Boy/Girl) Love as a separate genre, or at least tag, so that readers can include or filter out as necessary. [It would also be neat to have a "no romance" tag too] edit: alternate names include...

forum.scribblehub.com

So, to reiterate: We need different tags!

 

[MrTiemos]

What about the GL/BL subplot tags?

 

[OvidLemma]

GL is girls love, which means the protagonist is female, and ALL of HER love interest are FEMALE. Not some, not maybe, ALL. To me, GL is synonymous (same as) a lesbian tag.

I have to disagree - this may be a personal preference of yours, but this isn't the absolute and inviolable definition of what a GL story is. In my mind, a GL story is one where a girl-girl romantic pairing is a major focus (or the major focus) of the story, but it doesn't preclude other things. I'm pretty careful about tagging my stories, many of which are GL stories with some het content. Namely, my protagonists are often pansexual (and I add the pansexual or bisexual protagonist tag, which should be a red flag to anybody wanting exclusively lesbian romantic content), sometimes poly, and they often have varied partners of either sex over the course of a story but have a main female partner. But, when the girl-girl romantic pairing is a major and continued focus, I think it's entirely reasonable to add the GL tag. I cannot anticipate the tastes and idiosyncrasies of individual readers and think it's unreasonable for readers to expect this. However, if somebody ever has a question about the content of my stories, I am always delighted to clarify the story content and be forthright with them about any content they might find objectionable.

 

[bafflinghaze]

To me, a Girls Love genre means that the end game main pairing is GL!

But I agree that more tags are needed, and it would be nice if authors flagged such things

 

[Milk.Milkan]

Here to agree.
Girls love in genre means its a genre.
Its like putting a fantasy genre/litRPG while ur story is a modern world slice of life and dere is a few chapters where MC and friends playing some DnD or something.
"Whatever subplot" would be good enough.

 

[AliceShiki]

ALL of HER love interest are FEMALE.

You are wrong. GL means that the protagonist is female and that she has a romantic relationship with a woman.

It does not mean that all of her love interests are women by any means.

If you wanna exclude novels with male love interests, do exclude the bisexual protagonist tag. As that should be a pretty obvious warning that men will be some of the love interests in the story.

If the MC is MALE, and some of the females in his harem are together, that DOES NOT make it a girls love story.

You are correct in saying that a male MC cannot be part of a GL story. For those stories, the author should use the GL subplot tag instead.

 

[RepresentingCaution]

If you wanna exclude novels with male love interests, do exclude the bisexual protagonist tag. As that should be a pretty obvious warning that men will be some of the love interests in the story.

Yes, exactly what I was going to say.

I personally don't use the GL tag because I only have one chapter with girl-on-girl kissing, but I could see using it if it was in 1/4 or more of the chapters.

 

[Queenfisher]

If you wanna exclude novels with male love interests, do exclude the bisexual protagonist tag. As that should be a pretty obvious warning that men will be some of the love interests in the story.

Having sex with a man does not necessarily mean she is bi, though? Thus would not be tagged as such and would be a nasty surprise for the readers. She might be coerced or discovering herself or not knowing that she can choose something else without being Bi and tagged it.

GL having male love partners is not GL, though, because like you said somewhere else, GL = LGBTQ+ love stories about F+F (analogy from your definition of BL). Thus, GL = lesbian, no? A lesbian who has (and pursues) male love interests is bisexual, not a lesbian.

Your solution is confusing to say the least, and many authors would just ignore this frankenstein's tag combination mess and not tag it correctly at all.

Excluding this tag for search is meaningless if it's not used correctly anyway.

 

[BenJepheneT]

Having sex with a man does not necessarily mean she is bi, though?

the reality of the situation is that people wanna enjoy a story where all the GL MC does is sex with other women. as much as these sexuality classifications go, the matter of the fact stays that the general consensus is that if a lesbian mingles with another man, it's a high chance that she's just bisexual. it doesn't matter if there's context to it or not; people just want to be informed whether that the GL novel they're reading does not include any semblance of male romance, whether it be emotional investment or simple skinship. If you put a GL tag over a romance story that includes any major elements of male romance that affects the plot and/or takes centre stage, people will point it out and question it, regardless of their opinions on sexualities.

people are much more fickle to fiction than reality. they may share the same sentiment with you irl but in terms of the elements they enjoy in a story, having these tags would really help them curate their reading lists. trust me; the courtesy goes both ways.

 

[Queenfisher]

the reality of the situation is that people wanna enjoy a story where all the GL MC does is sex with other women. as much as these sexuality classifications go, the matter of the fact stays that the general consensus is that if a lesbian mingles with another man, it's a high chance that she's just bisexual. it doesn't matter if there's context to it or not; people just want to be informed whether that the GL novel they're reading does not include any semblance of male romance, whether it be emotional investment or simple skinship. If you put a GL tag over a romance story that includes any major elements of male romance that affects the plot and/or takes centre stage, people will point it out and question it, regardless of their opinions on sexualities.

people are much more fickle to fiction than reality. they may share the same sentiment with you irl but in terms of the elements they enjoy in a story, having these tags would really help them curate their reading lists. trust me; the courtesy goes both ways.

Oh yes, I do get this.

It's just that people tagging things correctly needs to be enforced or at least standardized (with definitions of some sort). Some of the terms SH uses are not used outside SH in the same definition and would require a lot of digging to understand them. Like @AliceShiki said somewhere, "SH's definition of BL is based on NU's definition history of Yaoi/Shounen Ai and does not correspond with the definitions of BL used outside of SH". Which is weird but okay. It kind of implies one needs to be aware of the NU's definition first, but that's like getting a degree in history of SH and NU before using the site.

And most SH users aren't even logged in to use its main features. It's asking a bit too much for them to intuit what definitions of tags SH uses, especially if some of them are non-standard...

Unless that's done first, most people would not care to use the tags correctly*. Sometimes I wonder what tags I should use and I (really) just fling it because I have no idea... . (Cold Protag, Apathetic Protag, Antisocial Protag, or Kuudere? What's the difference? Who knows).

*Also, not all tags are created equal in the eyes of what's popular. I think the OP is talking about one specific novel on SH that is tagged GL but does not actually have GL in it. Why did it tag itself that?

Because it gets views and the author can always excuse themselves by saying "well... it's gonna be GL soon. You haven't read the whole story yet". And --? Well. That's kind of a valid excuse because the author defines the tags, not the readers...

 

[Moonpearl]

Yes, exactly what I was going to say.

I personally don't use the GL tag because I only have one chapter with girl-on-girl kissing, but I could see using it if it was in 1/4 or more of the chapters.

Even at that, that would be given the "Girls Love subplot" tag, not the Girls Love genre mark.

(Also, I've said this many times, but you can have a bisexual protagonist without them having multiple relationships or love interests. Many published f/f fictions do.)

 

[Sabruness]

Even at that, that would be given the "Girls Love subplot" tag, not the Girls Love genre mark.

(Also, I've said this many times, but you can have a bisexual protagonist without them having multiple relationships or love interests. Many published f/f fictions do.)

i've seen bisexual tags used elsewhere for F/F stories mostly when they've had previous relationships with men before the time of the story but dont actually have het relationships in the actual story. IMO that's the only "acceptable" use of bisexual protags in a pure GL story (ie one that doesnt have an actual bisexual protag who has relationships with both during the story).

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i agree with OP and @BenJepheneT though. Authors need to tag properly their stories to the content that comes out, not "oh the GL's in the future but for now it's all het" or tagging GL for levels of content that the genre doesnt apply to.

 

[RepresentingWrath]

I'm curious, what tag you should use when your protagonist explores her sexuality and sexual preferences and\or deviations? I mean, if she changes her preferences from say, man, in the beginning, to girls in the ending? Or if she switches partners despite their genders, yet the character itself isn't identifying herself as a bisexual or whatever sexual there is? And once again, she ends up with a girl. She thinks she is hetero, but in the end, she changes to a lesbian.
If a novel isn't straight up GL wish fulfillment? But there is real character development, like something that happened in Ao no Flag(Blue Flag) manga. What tags you should use? Don't take what I've written as an insult, or sarcasm, as I am genuinely interested in the tags usage and their definition.

 

[Moonpearl]

i've seen bisexual tags used elsewhere for F/F stories mostly when they've had previous relationships with men before the time of the story but dont actually have het relationships in the actual story. IMO that's the only "acceptable" use of bisexual protags in a pure GL story (ie one that doesnt have an actual bisexual protag who has relationships with both during the story).

========
i agree with OP and @BenJepheneT though. Authors need to tag properly their stories to the content that comes out, not "oh the GL's in the future but for now it's all het" or tagging GL for levels of content that the genre doesnt apply to.

As long as they do like men as well, they would be actual bisexual protagonists, though. You don't stop being bisexual just because you aren't dating multiple genders at once. By that logic, you'd become asexual as soon as you're single.

There are also plenty of ways to incorporate a character's bisexuality that wouldn't cheapen or invalidate the GL.
It's just that people rarely use them because love triangles are easy drama...

I'm curious, what tag you should use when your protagonist explores her sexuality and sexual preferences and\or deviations? I mean, if she changes her preferences from say, man, in the beginning, to girls in the ending? Or if she switches partners despite their genders, yet the character itself isn't identifying herself as a bisexual or whatever sexual there is? And once again, she ends up with a girl. She thinks she is hetero, but in the end, she changes to a lesbian.
If a novel isn't straight up GL wish fulfillment? But there is real character development, like something that happened in Ao no Flag(Blue Flag) manga. What tags you should use? Don't take what I've written as an insult, or sarcasm, as I am genuinely interested in the tags usage and their definition.

"Girls Love subplot", most likely. It would depend on how you focus your novel.

Although character development doesn't have to be via exploring your sexuality. Not all GL is wish fulfillment.

 

[RepresentingWrath]

As long as they do like men as well, they would be actual bisexual protagonists, though. You don't stop being bisexual just because you aren't dating multiple genders at once. By that logic, you'd become asexual as soon as you're single.

There are also plenty of ways to incorporate a character's bisexuality that wouldn't cheapen or invalidate the GL.
It's just that people rarely use them because love triangles are easy drama...


"Girls Love subplot", most likely. It would depend on how you focus your novel.

Although character development doesn't have to be via exploring your sexuality. Not all GL is wish fulfillment.

I've probably phrased it weirdly, I didn't mean every GL novel is a wish fulfillment. And what I mean about exploring your sexuality, well, it is a part of character development. I didn't mean that your sexual preferences are the only thing that develops you as a person, but it can have a major impact on personality and be a focus of the story.
See other thread where a Chinese author got allegedly arrested for writing bl. There are still countries where anything other than hetero romance is unacceptable.

 

[AliceShiki]

Having sex with a man does not necessarily mean she is bi, though? Thus would not be tagged as such and would be a nasty surprise for the readers. She might be coerced or discovering herself or not knowing that she can choose something else without being Bi and tagged it.

Well yes, she can be raped. If you have a problem with that, avoid the Rape tag.

 

[Moonpearl]

I've probably phrased it weirdly, I didn't mean every GL novel is a wish fulfillment. And what I mean about exploring your sexuality, well, it is a part of character development. I didn't mean that your sexual preferences are the only thing that develops you as a person, but it can have a major impact on personality and be a focus of the story.
See other thread where a Chinese author got allegedly arrested for writing bl. There are still countries where anything other than hetero romance is unacceptable.

It's hard to be LGBT+ anywhere. Most LGBT+ fiction hyperfocuses on the struggle, though, so having GL as a place where romance is the focus instead is nice.

There are GL that have explorations of sexuality, but they work by clearly pitching the f/f relationship as THE romance.
The story probably only begins when those two meet, it follows their feelings, etc.
If men are used, they're just side characters or are clearly the wrong choice, and there's usually a lot if angst and drama about it.

Using men is an unpopular choice, though. A lot of GL fans get sick and tired of "suddenly dating a man!" being used for cheap drama. It's kind of been done to death.

 

[RepresentingWrath]

It's hard to be LGBT+ anywhere. Most LGBT+ fiction hyperfocuses on the struggle, though, so having GL as a place where romance is the focus instead is nice.

There are GL that have explorations of sexuality, but they work by clearly pitching the f/f relationship as THE romance.
The story probably only begins when those two meet, it follows their feelings, etc.
If men are used, they're just side characters or are clearly the wrong choice, and there's usually a lot if angst and drama about it.

Using men is an unpopular choice, though. A lot of GL fans get sick and tired of "suddenly dating a man!" being used for cheap drama. It's kind of been done to death.

I wasn't talking about that either. I was asking what kind of tags should be used. What if the novel is pure GL, but the MC was hetero before and has flashbacks of her being with a man? And the man isn't a scumbag, it's just that she came to understand that she doesn't like men?

I will try to bring a very basic synopsis to illustrate what I mean better.

The MC dates a great guy, who is loving, caring, etc. It's her first relationship, and she THINKS she likes him. But most of her 'like', comes from the peer pressure, or she doesn't want to hurt her friends and parents, the 'hetero propaganda' or because it's 'how it should be'. One point or maybe all of them altogether. Later on, she finds out that she likes girls. And she gets hurt by a girl she fell in love with. She tries to date another guy, but end up confirming that guys aren't for her. And the rest of the novel about pure GL. What kind of tag should be used here? GL subplot, or GL?

 

[Moonpearl]

I wasn't talking about that either. I was asking what kind of tags should be used. What if the novel is pure GL, but the MC was hetero before and has flashbacks of her being with a man? And the man isn't a scumbag, it's just that she came to understand that she doesn't like men?

I will try to bring a very basic synopsis to illustrate what I mean better.

The MC dates a great guy, who is loving, caring, etc. It's her first relationship, and she THINKS she likes him. But most of her 'like', comes from the peer pressure, or she doesn't want to hurt her friends and parents, the 'hetero propaganda' or because it's 'how it should be'. One point or maybe all of them altogether. Later on, she finds out that she likes girls. And she gets hurt by a girl she fell in love with. She tries to date another guy, but end up confirming that guys aren't for her. And the rest of the novel about pure GL. What kind of tag should be used here? GL subplot, or GL?

If the novel covers the entirety of that, that would be "Girls Love subplot" under the current system.