Even though cartoons are not real bodies, it can encourage men to commit violence against women and girls; it makes sexual violence a form of entertainment.
So this article is really interesting to me because it summarizes a lot of what’s wrong with hentai criticism:
lack of data
presenting hentai as something exotic
no mention of BL or how Japanese women helped pioneer hentai
The image for the article is just a stock photo they put a dark filter over to make it look more sinister. Here’s the original:
I don’t really have the motivation to tear into the whole thing line by line. But here’s some quick takes:
WORRY ABOUT ACTUAL CHILDREN INSTEAD OF FICTITIOUS ONES!
Monitor what your kids do online.
Teach kids (and adults) media literacy.
If anyone doesn’t seem interested in dating/getting married, then that’s their own fucking choice.
And if you want to pick on Japan specifically, then criticize its leniency on real child porn, under reported rapes, and censored history books. It’s a country with bigger problems than doodles of dicks.
Don’t whine about how someone drew some titties and then posted them on the internet. There are so many better causes out there.
(and yes I do realize the irony of me posting these complaints on tumblr)
A further problem arises from the communication insufficiencies of the male gender. As a result of Japan’s sustained economic recession, the number of freeters (furītā) and NEETs (nīto, an abbreviation for “Not in Employment, Education, or Training”) has increased. As Eve Sedgwick points out in her 1985 book Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire, the homosocial bond between men has been severed, and the male gender becomes divided in two—a dualism is created between the male as authority figure and the marginalized male. Within the marginalized male group in Japan, a shared notion of victimization has arisen, which, through the Internet, has become bonded to a violent logic that posits itself as “anti-feminazi” (“anchi feminachi”). Members of the (predominantly young) marginalized male group come to experience a sense of loss stemming from their lack of identity as full-fledged members of society (shakaijin) in possession of male authority, an identity that in the past had been given to men by their companies.13 This sense of loss prevents these marginalized males from being able to properly communicate with others, and the male gender is left with nothing but a void created by this accumulated sense of lack. A structure then arises in which men draw on national identity in order to fill the identity void they feel within themselves.
Mechademia vol. 5 Reorganizations of Gender and Nationalism: Gender Bashing and Loliconized Japanese Society
An idealized form has been set aside for her, one that was valorized in the Victorian period, one that evokes a particular "scene" of innocence, purity, sweetness, and a femininity whose power is derived not from her ability to reproduce, but from her power as an image of a potentially ‘pure and innocent’ sexuality. As McClintock comments, ‘power through being the spectacle of another’s gaze is an ambiguous power. It allows one to internalize the gaze of the voyeur and participate in the vicarious enjoyment of their power.’ This is the key to the revolutionary and paradoxical power of the shojo.
As the pivotal defense against the threatening sexuality of a mature woman, the shojo persona effects a ‘sealing up’ of the body surfaces against the confrontation with the materiality of the Real, to secure the subject with an armor constructed from the safe costumes and totems of childhood. But not just any childhood. In a pastiche of historical and cultural constraints, the mangaka (artist) has cloaked the shojo body in various sartorial implementations of Victorian culture. The key to the shojo effect lies in the way in which clothes, wallpapers and the image of the shojo body are articulated: shojo is constructed of layers of fetish.
Mechademia Vol. 6 Under the Ruffles: Shojo and the Morphology of Power
For the shojo, the response to the abjection of maturity and the consequent desire for agency and power are both configured through a masquerade of innocence and purity: the infantilized signs of kawaii or cute in shojo heroines. Yet, even as heroines imply power and agency, little girls are notoriously considered the weakest human subjects. This seeming contradiction is answered in Anne McClintocks explanation of sadomaschochism as 'a historical subculture that draws its symbolic logic from the changing social contradictions.' McClintock also quotes G. W. Levi Kamel: 'The desire for submission represents a peculiar transposition of the desire for recognition.'
Mechademia Vol. 6 Under the Ruffles: Shōjo and the Morphology of Power
Yandere love is love unfiltered, love in its rawest, purest form. It’s unconditional love. It might not be rational, but then again, love isn’t rational.
Interesting, if not disturbing post about the appeal of yandere characters. In the authors eyes it boils down to an unconditional and pure love where the character will actively defend that love by any means and this is somehow admirable.
But the more likely underlying reasons are empathy for irrational behavior in reaction to unreciprocated affection and a want for a functional yet mentally broken girl who adheres to all gender roles.
Yandere characters demonstrate the same kind of entitled, aggressive behavior toward their partners as men socialized in a patriarchal society.
They should answer their phone and always tell you where their going. They should only hang out with people you approve of. If they don’t listen to your warnings you have every right to get violent.
These are the thought processes of an abusive partner. Many men see nothing wrong with this approach to how they treat the women they’re dating. The author seems to empathize with this approach and understands the motives of the yandere characters as empathetic rather than unhealthy.
Finally a girl that gets it. One who’s on an even playing field. One who’ll not only hit you to keep you in line but doesn’t mind getting hit herself. In fact, she wants to hit because that’s her role as your wife, a belonging with which you can do what you please.
The author has high praise for the domestic skills of yandere characters, after all women are suppose to slave away at cooking and cleaning according to traditional gender roles, with no regard for their own ambitions or dreams. They exist solely to please the man they are assigned to and that extends to their sexuality where their own pleasure is of no regard, they are merely serving their purpose to please their male patriarch.
Even if this costs them their mental sanity, they never veer away from their duty as a good wife. This is what makes them abnormal from any sane girl. Her unhealthy mental state is cute, endearing, provokes moe and provokes a sense of dependence.
She’ll fall apart without you. You are needed and that’s all that matters, your sense of validation trumps her well-being and that’s okay, that’s how she wants it.
But there’s none of the downsides of actually having a partner with mental illness: no doctors, no meds, no insurance payments, physical symptoms, no worries. This is the fun type of mental illness that was designed to please your every fantasy of how a woman should be as dictated by patriarchal social expectations. Of course you can pick and choose what social expectations for men apply to you. You don’t need to be strong, or a bread winner, or good in bed. She loves you anyway, solely because you are male and she was assigned to you.
This explains the severe lack of yandere male characters in anime. It comes down to women not seeing the appeal in having an abusive partner, or a domestic slave, or mentally broken child, as these are reflect real issues women most deal with in real life. While your average male otaku with minimal dating experience, or interaction with real women, doesn’t understand the greater connotations of the yandere characters they enjoy.
I’m pretty sure Kira Kira Precure is the most fetish friendly season. I’m not sure the franchise can top Cure Chocolat, a cross dresser who transforms by covering herself in chocolate.
Then turns into a dog.
And the series catch phrase is “Ready to Serve!”
Not to mention they defeat enemies by shooting “cream” onto them.
This is an introductory preface to a planned series of (probably highly intermittent) posts on “otokonoko” (a pun that translates roughly as “male maiden”) note, AKA “josou shounen” (crossdressing …
