Yaoi fans have been characters in manga such as the seinen manga Fujoshi Rumi. The words' origin can be found in the online image board 2channel.
A male fan of yaoi is called a fudanshi ( 腐男子, 'rotten boy'). 'rotten girl'), denoting how a woman who enjoys fictional gay content is 'rotten', too ruined to be married. In Japan, female fans are called fujoshi ( 腐女子, lit. Most yaoi fans are teenage girls or young women.
English-language fan translations of From Eroica with Love circulated through the slash fiction community in the 1980s, forging a link between slash fiction fandom and yaoi fandom. Despite increased knowledge of the genre among the general public, readership remains limited in 2008. In the mid-1990s, estimates of the size of the Japanese yaoi fandom were at 100,000–500,000 people. The yaoi fandom consists of the readers of yaoi (also called Boys' Love or abbreviated to BL), a genre of male x male romance narratives aimed at those who participate in communal activities organized around yaoi, such as attending conventions, maintaining or posting to fansites, creating fan fiction or fan art, etc.
