Originally posted by Gregory
Shounen ai is yaoi minus the explicit sex, at least in common American Internet usage.
Like I had posted,...the term shounen-ai is not used as often in Japan; the wasei-eigo construction Boys Love (boizu rabu) but usually rendered as English, occasionally spelled Boy's Love or Boys' Love, or abbreviated BL) has largely displaced it, due to associations of the original term with pederasty or pedophilia (which were not borrowed into English usage). (This is doubly ironic, since the similar English term boylove has the exact meaning Boys Love was coined to avoid.)
What you said is like saying that you're an otaku but claiming that you mean it in a good way. Even though when otaku is used to mean other than your home, it's derogatory.
Shounen ai isn't as hard core... You're right about that. But how many manga are going to show 12-year-old boy couples having sex with each-other? And how many YAOI doujinshi do have uneraged sex scenes in them? Hmm? Common American Internet usage? What you mean to say is that as far as you know, yaoi isn't inappropriate... If you want to talk about American Internet usage and boys love, you should be calling it "slash" instead... Which is the English word for the fandom.
Now, just look at this site and try to say that YAOI doesn't also encompass sexually explicit boy and boy and sometimes in bad cases underage boy on man action. http://www.boysonboysonfilm.com/news/ Don't try to argue with me just because I don't like YAOI. I have friends who are into slash and even though I don't like it, I don't tell them not to read or watch it. I don't like porn either, but I'm not going to try to say that people shouldn't watch it.