in your opinion, was sex between yashiro and doumeki in chapter 25 consensual?
yes, it was consensual
no, it was not consensual
This topic is quite interesting, I can't definitively choose whether the answer is yes or no. But this question reminds me a scene with a significant conversation between Yashiro and Doumeki.
At least it helps me get my own answer to this question....
i'll assume that your answer is "yes", and i have talked about this scene before here. personally, i doubt that you're supposed to be taking doumeki's words at face value. if applied to what happens in ch 25 specifically, retroactively they sound more like a justification, and it's important that doumeki is the one saying this, not yashiro. if we're talking about whether something was consensual or not, i'm not sure how much sense it makes to focus on the words of the potential perpetrator rather than the victim. lastly, how someone's body reacts (arousal was the only indication doumeki had of yashiro supposedly "wanting it", and it's the same excuse used for everything after the time skip) is ultimately irrelevant if we're talking about consent
@chuele please consider that Doumeki is quoting a Japanese law written in 1907 and was changed few years ago, after the chapter was published. And also you are omitting Yashiro’s reaction in the next page when he is visibly angry at what Doumeki said. The law was never quite written with consideration for the victims in the first place. And the question asked in the poll is about consent, and not about the law. Those two things don’t always coincide. The question was and still is: Did Yashiro consent?
If you want, I have written a much longer explanation of that scene in chapter four and the importance of it to frame the story as it follows. It is not written very well, maybe I’ll revisit it but I think it definitely needs to be considered again. Because it says the opposite thing, the uncomfortable thing.
I have been away from this fandom for months because I'm quite busy in another fandom but I took a peek on here because I knew that chapter 59 was coming out soon.
I stumbled upon this poll and this post and thought it was quite interesting so I just wanted to add some of my thoughts to this. [Please bear in mind I am dictating this post as speech to text on my phone so my apologies if there are some typos]
Imho the way this poll is phrased completely misses the extreme nuanced situation and angle of what Saezuru is trying to display. The poll should have been rephrased as follows:
Was the kind sex from Doumeki consensual?
Sex for Yashiro is different compared to sex for the average person. For Yashiro, sex is an addiction and a byproduct of trauma. He has fooled himself into thinking that he likes the way he has become in wanting cruel sex where his hands are tied behind him and he is taken from behind roughly, which is what happened to him when he was abused by his stepfather.
As a result of this trauma, Yashiro has become hypersexual and a sex addict. His entire exterior is a facade. He says he likes painful sex. This is debatable although to be honest highly unlikely that Yashiro would want this if he hadn't had the trauma he had experienced a child.
The entire point of chapters 24 and 25 is that Yashiro experiences tender and caring sex for the first time and cannot cope with it.
It is not that Yashiro does not consent to sex with Doumeki; it is that Yashiro does not consent to Doumeki's kindness.
This is what makes Saezuru Saezuru, and Yashiro's character so heartbreaking.
In chapter 24, even before they have sex, Doumeki's kissing Yashiro's hair tenderly and Yashiro says, "Just don't treat me like that. Do what you want to do and get it over quickly."
This is basically in a nutshell what is going on in these chapters: yashiro does not want to be treated with kindness and wants to be treated in a way that he knows and that is familiar even though it's not good for him, he has fooled himself into thinking it is.
Yashiro has consented to sex. But he has not consented to kindness.
Continuing chapter 24, do mecha is kissing and stroking yashiro's body like it means something and yashiro says "stop touching me like this".
He doesn't say "stop touching me". He says stop touching me like this.
What Doumeki is doing to Yashiro in this chapter can be compared someone chucking out all the unhealthy food of an obese person and letting them only eat healthy food, or to giving a vaccination to a baby.
Further in chapter 24 Yashiro says, "I want you to fill me up" which doesn't get more consensual in terms of basic sex than that. But Doumeki is kissing and licking Yashiro and then rimming him, basically taking his time showering Yashiro's body with affection. Yashiro's body knows this because he comes while Doumeki is rimming him.
Yashiro wants sex with Doumeki because he's a sex addict.
What he doesn't want, or thinks he doesn't want, is the kindness and affection Doumeki displays during the sex. This is what Yashiro doesn't consent to. And this is what Doumeki overrides. Because Doumeki doesn't want to treat Yashiro cruelly.
Yashiro comes lots of time during the sex with Doumeki and later as we know, only becomes hard with exclusively Doumeki.
The Chp 24-25 sex scenes are a game changer for Yashiro and Yashiro's body - it is the first time he experiences caring sex.
I agree. It's not as simple as "was it consensual or not?" It's much more complicated than that; in a way it was both and neither at the same time. Everything that happened between them up to Chapters 24/25 leads the reader to believe that Yashiro wants Doumeki and Yashiro is the one who initially suggests having sex to Doumeki. And yes, he only refuses once Doumeki touches him gently. The whole sex scene is a back and forth of Yashiro wanting to get away and pulling Doumeki back in. Yashiro is torn; he himself doesn't appear to know anymore what he wants and what he doesn't want because there are two opposing desires within him; he wants Doumeki/love/gentleness but, at the same time, he wants to protect himself through his coping mechanism (abusive sex). These things don't go together. We as the readers know about this inner conflict in Yashiro. We know that he desires to be with Doumeki but that his trauma causes him to experience what he actually wants as something hurtful. So, yes, Yashiro's consent is neither here nor there but if you ask me, that's by design, that's the whole point of these chapters. And that's why people can't agree on whether it was consensual or not: It's simply not clearcut. Ultimately I fail to see how an unambiguous answer to this question might matter to the understanding of the story in the first place. Regardless of consent, what happened between Doumeki and Yashiro was a double edged-sword for both of them. Yashiro got to experience genuine affection (something he'd been longing for) and at the same time, it hurt him deeply. He knows it and Doumeki knows it. It caused both of them to pull away from each other. But here we are, four years later, and they still seem to have feelings for eachother despite everything that happened between them. So, what happened doesn't appear to have changed their feelings for one another.
Tumblr not letting me comment so I'm here to say @pouletaulait is correct and bang on the money. Please read their comment above
@pouletaulait u articulated that so well and succinctly! 👏🏻
