y!Gallery

Archive
Name:	y!Gallery, Yaoi Gallery
Date(s):	February 13th, 2005 - July 11th, 2016
Archivist:	Various, see the staff page for more info.
Founder:
Type:	Yaoi fanfic and fanart
Fandom:	Multifandom
URL:	http://yaoi.y-gallery.net/
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y!Gallery was a multifandom site for fanfic, fanart, and original works centered around yaoi pairings. It was one of two popular sites founded as an alternative to SheezyArt after it banned all adult artwork from their site in January 2005 (the other being Fur Affinity). y!Gallery aimed at creating a place to appreciate the human male form and male sexuality, and as such, female characters were forbidden from being a featured portion or central part of any media submission.

Content rules

• Male characters must be the focus of all works submitted to the gallery.
• Transgender or androgynous characters are allowed if they appear physically indistinguishable from male characters and identify as male.
• All male characters must not appear to have overtly feminine characteristics, i.e. the appearance of female breasts or genitalia. Characters with feminine faces (long eyelashes, large lips, makeup) or hourglass figures must display at least one male characteristic.
• Humanoid (including furry) characters must be the focus of all works submitted to the gallery.
• Works containing no characters (e.g. landscapes, inanimate objects) are not allowed in the main gallery.
• Characters not listed in rules 1a through 1d may still appear in a work as long as they are not the focus of the work, do not appear with any visible breasts or genitals, and are not engaging in any sexual activity.
• Visible penises may be retractable/sheathed, but must otherwise appear human.
• Works containing only non-gender-specific body parts (e.g. works containing only hands, eyes, feet, etc.) are not allowed in the main gallery unless they are part of a male anatomy tutorial or appear as a minor part of a multi-page comic.
• Unless they are "tentacles from the formless void", animals may not appear to be having sexual contact with any character or each other.

History

The site went down in mid-2016 due to hacking, and (as of February 2019) is still not back. The URL y-gallery.net for a while redirected to their developer's tumblr blog, "ygaldeveloper". Initially staff stated they would restore from a November 2015 backup, but then decided instead to work towards building "Y!gallery 2.0". Unfortunately, none of the previous Y!Gallery content will be transferred over.

Age Verification

Users were required to be age 18 or older to have an account. y!Gallery staff would perform random age verification of users, "especially if there is something suspicious about the date of birth listed on site or if we’ve received a tip that a member is under the age of eighteen", by asking them to submit an image of a government issued ID:

Addresses, bar codes, and any unique identification numbers such as license or passport number can be blacked out or blurred, but your name, photo, and date of birth must remain intact or the ID will be rejected. This is a measure to prevent minors from supplying fake or doctored IDs in order to illegally access our site. All IDs received are immediately deleted after age verification.

If this is not done in a timely manner, or if you are seen being active on the site without verifying your age, your account will be suspended for 18 years until a valid ID is received.

If you are underage, your account will be suspended until your 18th birthday. Once you have turned eighteen you will be welcome back to the site.

User Stats

The multi-fandom slash/yaoi site Y!Gallery came to similar results when I asked them to take a community poll.

The linked poll is about the creators, i.e. writers and artists. For those not logged in: there were 1848 participants and the responses (rounded) are as follows:

• male homosexual: 36 %
• female heterosexual: 20 %
• female polysexual: 19 %
• male polysexual: 13 %
• female asexual: 7 %
• other: 4 %
• female homosexual: 3 %
• male heterosexual: 3 %
• male asexual: 2 %

(“Polysexual” meant attracted to anything more than one gender, i.e. bi, pan, etc. There wasn’t enough space in the poll form to ask for trans* identities, so most of those chose “other”.)

Taken together, that’s 77 % QUILTBAG-identified people.

They also did a general community poll first (i.e. including those who only visit the site to look and read, not to create content themselves.) This got a little confused, due to pansexuals and trans* people being lumped together under “other” and because people could click several answers at once. But still, the trend is clear. There were 3284 answers and the results (rounded) were:

• male homosexual: 27 %
• female heterosexual: 21 %
• female bisexual: 16 %
• male bisexual: 11 %
• female asexual: 7 %
• female other: 6 %
• female homosexual: 4 %
• male other: 4 %
• male asexual: 2 %
• male heterosexual: 2 %

That’s again 77 % answers other than “heterosexual”.

Of course, there’s some self-selection bias with these kind of polls. If you’re straight, you don’t have to care much about representation so you’re less likely to bother with the poll. But still, the QUILTBAG percentage here is so overwhelming, that I’m sure that in reality it’s at least half of the slash/yaoi community.