F/f relationships in SF/F went passee years ago--they weren't controversial anymore, and they weren't really "naughty" as in pushing the social acceptability edge anymore, and the novelty was gone. Male/male, however, was still taboo, and still is taboo to a large percentage of the population, perhaps even the majority. The m/m audiences include women--but then the Kirk/Spock genre is more than 40 years old--more than a generation and a half it's been around. However, originally it was essentially a small tightly knit underground with common tastes in entertainment and common lack of full accedence to the available approved roles for women in the culture. There was that hook into Jungian archetypes with Mr Spock as cipher for the anima/hidden woman... and K/S was a phenomenon almost completely ignored/overlooked/not deigned to even be noticed for the purposes of sneer at it, by males. Romance got sneered at, K/S was beneath acknowledgement of its existence.
The m/m audience includes homosexual males, who have been able the past few years in some states, to have legally recognized partnerships, and even marriage. Yes, women can have legally recognized f/f relationships, but "Boston marriages" where two women shared lives with or without carnal relationsship, was socially acceptable going back a long way....
Anyway, bottom line--m/m has social and market cachet today that f/f doesn't had and hasn't had for years.
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F/f relationships in SF/F went passee years ago--they weren't controversial anymore, and they weren't really "naughty" as in pushing the social acceptability edge anymore, and the novelty was gone. Male/male, however, was still taboo, and still is taboo to a large percentage of the population, perhaps even the majority. The m/m audiences include women--but then the Kirk/Spock genre is more than 40 years old--more than a generation and a half it's been around. However, originally it was essentially a small tightly knit underground with common tastes in entertainment and common lack of full accedence to the available approved roles for women in the culture. There was that hook into Jungian archetypes with Mr Spock as cipher for the anima/hidden woman... and K/S was a phenomenon almost completely ignored/overlooked/not deigned to even be noticed for the purposes of sneer at it, by males. Romance got sneered at, K/S was beneath acknowledgement of its existence.
The m/m audience includes homosexual males, who have been able the past few years in some states, to have legally recognized partnerships, and even marriage. Yes, women can have legally recognized f/f relationships, but "Boston marriages" where two women shared lives with or without carnal relationsship, was socially acceptable going back a long way....
Anyway, bottom line--m/m has social and market cachet today that f/f doesn't had and hasn't had for years.