Japanese Censors: Sexually Aggressive Women Turn Kids Gay

[CapitalistPig]

The writer took the words out of my mouth. I was laughing the whole time while reading the minutes. Never mind the name of the committee..... complex much? But I won't go there. Yet another strange thing to come from a strange country. I find it interesting that the country that invented comics where women get raped by octopuses is looking at its loli market as the most dangerous/strange. OR more to the point how does one of the most conservative societies on earth deal with itself when it has manga porn everywhere that is publicly viewed? I don't know I think the whole thing is silly.

I don't mind my girl taking the "lead" (whatever that represents?), because frankly sometimes its exhausting. But that must mean I'm gay. lol Japan.

 

[CapitalistPig]

I can't say I'll shed any tears for those losing their Loli.

But otherwise, I'd say this is humanity continuing to see how low it can dig.

Truth, its a pretty strange culture quirk. And gross.

 

[ThunderCavalier]

So... it's official.

All government politicians are absolutely, irrevocably, and irredeemably stupid. This is no exception to this rule. Ever.

 

[Hat Man]

Looks to me that they're looking for a scapegoat for the fact that a large percentage of the male population has no interest in getting married, having kids or sex and relationships in general, resulting in a demographic crisis.

 

[Tiger Sora]

Ohh Japan. Your one of the few forbackasswards countries. I should copy write that word..... to much work. *Throws it at the public domain*.
Ok Japan is like a bunch of wires in a basket. You put them away neatly but come back in 6 months and they're all tangled. I just don't know anymore.

 

[tehweave]

Okay... When I read the title of the article, I thought "A sociological study finds out that..." turns out its "A Japanese censor board thinks that..." was more accurate.

Frankly, I'm relieved, because if it had been proven through psychology/sociology/research means it would have completely thrown me for a loop. But since it's about censorship and not anything meaningful, I feel a little better.

That does make me wonder... Does environmental or sociological influences change what people find attractive/arousing? Could aggressive or passive women or men change a person's sexual orientation?

TO THE INTERNET! IT'S RESEARCH TIME!

 

[DiMono]

I do hope this will serve as an example for what might happen with the broadly worded SOPA and PIPA bills. Just because it's not the stated intention of a bill does not mean it won't be applied that way.

 

[ph0b0s123]

Back in 2010 Japan signed into law a bill that allows the government to censor, via a committee vote, media that "promotes illegal or immoral sexual activity." The law is almost exclusively invoked against manga; particularly "Loli" manga, which often depicts child-like characters in erotic situations.

In case some people didn't read the previous article [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/106174-Child-Safety-Bill-Could-Cripple-Anime-Industry]; this isn't actually a "censorship law" that entirely prevents producing/selling "immoral" material, but a law that allows the government to put a R-18 stamp on everything they deem not fit for "children". F.ex. if a manga series was found "immoral" (even non erotic one, like Kodomo no Jikan) it would be sold from "hard porn" shelves and put in plastic bags to prevent minors browsing them.

But still it's a horrible law supervised by horribly old men.

I can't say I'll shed any tears for those losing their Loli.

See quote above. They didn't.....

 

[David Farnell]

Are all Japanese people sexist? No. Are there some perfectly decent people in Japan who are as disgusted with this guy's opinion as we are? Yes.

Is the country, as a whole, more sexist than most other developed countries in the West? Yes.

And Japan is a whole lot LESS sexist than many other nations, too. In fact, less sexist than MOST other nations, including many that could be included in "The West," depending on how you define that nebulous term.

Japan is a country with its own culture, no better or worse than any other, taken as a whole. (OK, maybe better than totally dysfunctional ones like North Korea or Somalia...let's just put those kind of countries to the side, eh?) On some points, Japan scores worse than the US. (I'm not going to say "the West" because even defining what "the West" is is very difficult, and it's extremely vague and varied at best. Let's just stick with one country, shall we?) On some points (murder rates, say), Japan scores better. All in all, it pretty much balances out.

Japan needs to work on its treatment of women. A lot of Japanese people, men and women both, know that and are working on it. American needs to work on its murder rate. Lots of Americans are working on that.

(And you know, America needs to work on its treatment of women, too. Whereas Japan had 47 "shooting incidents" last year. Not murders. Not even woundings. Just reported shootings. Like, somebody shot a gun off illegally. My home state, Texas, had nearly 600 HANDGUN MURDERS in 2010. Not just shootings, not just woundings, but successful MURDERS. And that's only with handguns. And Texas has 1/5 the population of Japan. I think Japan's got us on that one.)

Both Japan and America need to work on their homophobia. Americans are probably a bit further along on approving marriage equality (recent polls show more than 50% of Americans approve it), but all in all, Americans and Japanese really don't have hugely varying views on homosexuality--and America cannot even come close to claiming to be the most progressive nation on that count. Japan's views are maybe at, I dunno, 1980s levels, and being held back because of worries of a falling population. (Which is ridiculous, as allowing gays to marry isn't going to significantly impact the birth rate.) But Japan will get there.

Japan is probably the most progressive and socially advanced country in Asia. Not bad, considering that less than 200 years ago they were a tiny preindustrial nothing of a country ruled by warlords.

And please, folks, keep in mind that this guy with these stupid views (views that are held by millions of Americans, by the way, including at least two presidential candidates) is pretty much the equivalent of a school-board member of Bumfuck County, Alabama. He is not in any way representative of "Japan."

 

[David Farnell]

Ohh Japan. Your one of the few forbackasswards countries. I should copy write that word..... to much work. *Throws it at the public domain*.
Ok Japan is like a bunch of wires in a basket. You put them away neatly but come back in 6 months and they're all tangled. I just don't know anymore.

I don't think you knew before. Every country is a mix of old and new. Look at the marriage-age laws in every US state. Look at the Amish. Look at Rick Santorum. These are all representative of medieval attitudes. Hey, some people in Japan are ignorant about homosexuality! Wow! What a surprise! Let's blame JAPAN!

Er, aren't there some Americans who are kind of ignorant and prejudiced about homosexuality? Like, oh, NEARLY HALF THE US POPULATION?

I'm not religious, but I've always loved this from Matthew: "And why behold you the mote that is in your brother's eye, but consider not the beam that is in your own eye?"

 

[Stavros Dimou]

It seems most commentators in this thread ignore or haven't noticed that the article says that these kind of 'sexual comics' are sold to kids.

So you think that the fact that some dude want to censor comics that show women be 'above' men during sex is weird,and not the fact that these (and other kind of) comics are legally sold to little children?

I don't think that censoring comics that feature women being above men sexually is bad,I wonder why the fcuk they don't censor other sexual stuff too from comics that are sold children actually!!

Guess what smart people,there is even a special porn genre exclusive to Japan where men rape minor children,and your average Tokyo vending machines sell schoolgirl's used underwear..
Don't try to find a way out,or you will be crazed.

 

[LilithSlave]

Wow, that was painfully sexist and stupid to read.

I like much about Japanese culture. But that is just absolutely sickening and backwards. There's an irony here that the moe otaku industry often blamed of being a "sexist pocket" in Japanese culture, largely because of creepy virginity fetishists with a lolita complex, denouncing any female that is not deemed "virgin" or "innocent"(though that's not the same as being a "moe otaku", it just so happens that many moe otaku are sad and creepy virginity fetishists). That comics often play with gender more than some so called "normal" people would actually agree with.

Again, I like Japanese culture, but they need a HUGE feminist revolution. There's still a heavy discrimination against female workers and mindset against female assertiveness and dominance present through even just tradition of language. I believe that Japan is making progress, but just like the West it has a long, long ways to go.

This reminds me of why so many people felt refreshed by Gainax's "Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt". It's a perfect "F You" to ideas of female submissiveness. Really, anime industry, despite a lot of sexism or your own, keep on keepin' on, and don't let anybody restrict you for stupid sexist ideas. Gosh, all the gender bending is one of my most favourite thing about Japanese media.

By the way, to say that East Asia or Japan is particularly sexist and moreso than the West is wrong. Not to mention ethnocentric. It's a sad assumption of Westerners that they're always the "forward" ones and don't have things to complain about. Both the East and West have a long way to come in terms of gender equality. We are not a civilization that is ahead of the Eastern world. If anything, it overlaps with sexism in the West to think we're so high and mighty and feminist, the racist idea in the West that Asian women are "submissive".

Hardly a better example to show how myopic the idea is that we're so much more forward than the East, that the West stereotypes Asian women as submissive, leading often to a fetishization of the idea of a submissive Asian woman. Showing an ideal of many men in the West to a "submissive woman", often leading many Asian men getting angry at Western men for their sexism and fetishization of submissiveness. I've seen a great many publications even, made by Asian men irritated by sexist Western men.

Of course, that doesn't take away from that fact that a group of Japanese people, in this case, happen to be the ones engaging in horrid sexism. It also happens to mirror to the kind of horrid sexism I decried about evolutionary psychology. Evolutionary Psychology makes similar claims that leads people all around the world to making such conclusions. The claim that it's in evolutionary psychology for women to not be interested in sex while men are, merely because of the fact that the time it takes for a woman to deliver a child is longer than it takes for a man's sac to refill with sperm. I've seen many people in the West actually claim that a woman's default sexuality is hyposexuality and that any difference is an anomaly created by problems of hormone imbalances in modern society. And that a woman isn't so much sexually attracted to a man as she is romantically attracted to the alpha male and is willing to submit. I have literally heard this from many men in the West and using "evolutionary psychology" as a back for their sexist claims. I've even heard men claim that for these reasons women should stop using birth control because it leads to women being "unnaturally" dominant and androgynous.

What these backward Japanese people are thinking, is again, no different than mainstream Evolutionary Psychological thought in the West. The idea that women are not sexual, and when they are, is a kind of surrendering their hyposexuality to an alpha male as a gift. There are people around the world who believe this way and people around the world who are rightly disgusted by it.

 

[Scars Unseen]

Ugh, another example of why I hate Japanese society. This is yet another facet of the sexist mindset that sex is an activity to be enjoyed by the man only, and that a woman "gives" her body to the man as some selfless sacrifice. No wonder that their society is so sexually repressed, if it refuses to admit that sex is a mutual partnership rather than a one-sided act. It's times like this that make me think that the US isn't really that bad after all.

My wife is Japanese, and she hasn't "given" her body to me in quite some time. I call foul.

Its hardly all of japan that is like that, really most societies have a view of women that is they are beneath a man, hell, even after the sexual revolution women are still struggling to get equal rights and they still regularly earn less then men, feminist is practically a 4 letter word since conservatives have done such a good job of demonizing it. Plus its not reasonable people that get assigned to things like this, its the more conservative and weird elements that get put on things like this.

I can't speak for everyone, but from my perspective, feminism has gotten its current bad name from the outspoken, hardcore, man-hating, feminazi bitches that we keep hearing about. Never run into one myself, so I have a feeling they aren't as common as the internet makes them seem. Classic feminism notion of equality? All for it, as long as it's really equality that they want.

Actually the manhating feminazi bitches tend to mostly be an invention of said rightwing groups as a way to turn the word feminist into a 4 letter one, really your just falling for it, if there is one thing the right is really good at re-defining words.

I'll believe you when stupid "feminist" rant blogs(quotes because I believe they misrepresent the cause they claim to champion) that keep getting linked(and which generally have a reputation of banning anyone who doesn't agree with them). I'm sorry, but they do exist, even if they aren't common. like I said before, I've never personally met one, but there are idiots that take things to extremes in all areas of belief. Then again, it could as likely be a different version of the Internet Warrior. The need to compensate for real life impotence is an equal opportunity flaw.

The funny thing is that those who blog about that sort of thing are in the same boat with you, meaning they dont understand what a feminist really is, they have been fooled by the right wing also.
Besides if you are going to judge groups by the lowest common demoniator then you should hate pretty much anyone who is religions since they obviously support any of the suicide idiots and probably hate gamers since that one guy who shot someone once played a game.

Read the post you originally quoted again. I never said anything about hating. I just said that the movement's current bad press likely comes mostly from the vocal minority. [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/VocalMinority] It's not a malicious right wing conspiracy. It's just stupid people being loud, and like you indicated, this is hardly unique to feminism.

 

[Throwitawaynow]

Oh boy, an article about Japan. I'm sure that the comments section won't contain any raging hypocrites.


OT: I'm going to go with Fawxy's answer.

Spoiler: EDIT: Actually, just read this.

To quote one of dozens of similar comments:

"Why is Japan doing this??"

JAPAN is not doing this. A GUY is doing this. Granted this guy is a product of Japanese culture. But so are 127 million other Japanese people, each of whom is a person with his or her own personality, none of which are precisely identical despite the stereotype.

"JAPAN" is not some monolithic hive-mind. There's one guy in Miyazaki Prefecture (a tiny, mostly rural "state" tucked away in the far south of Japan...the size and population of a couple of American counties) who thinks this way. There are probably a few million others who have similar ridiculous opinions, but most Japanese people would find his views as appalling as most of us do.

And how many millions of Americans think that homosexuality is caused by dominant women? How many Canadians? Dave Sim, the writer of Cerberus, one of the greatest comic books ever, thinks so. Most North Americans who've read his wacky views rightfully think he's a nutcase. Do they say, "Why is Canada doing this??" No. They think, "Why did such a great comic creator turn into such a homophobic, misogynistic creep?"

Why is a Canadian or an American opinion an individual's opinion, but a minor Japanese functionary's opinion is suddenly JAPAN's opinion?

And for the several people who wrote variations on "This is why I hate Japan": Stop being idiots. I could understand such a sentiment if you were, say, Japanese and complaining about your own culture, or if you were Chinese or Korean and your country had been invaded and terribly harmed by Japan, or if you were an 80-year-old Pacific War vet. But even those people should get the hell over it. Americans should remember that Japan is one of America's closest and most loyal allies. It is far from a perfect country, and it has crimes to answer for in its history...but name me a country that is perfect. Name me a country that is free from an ugly past.

It's nice to receive a small reprieve from the US hate here on the escapist, unfortunate that it just shifts do a different country for a bit.

 

[LilithSlave]

LOL horny women making kids gay?

You'd be surprised at how many people in the West think this was. Especially among avid followers of "evolutionary psychology" and the machismo "alpha male" mentality.

The idea in place here is that sexuality and gender roles are intimately tied. And since they believe that a woman tends only to have interest in sex for pleasing and obeying her man, and that virility is sexual aggressiveness, a woman being as interested in or more interested in sex than a man, has an emasculating effect and therefor is "sexually confusing" to boys. Making them possibly attracted to a "male's default sexuality".

Of course, this is stupid and sexist and forms the idea of heterosexual relationships in a predator and prey fashion. Which is why they say "carnivorous" and "herbivorous" when talking about this in Japan sometimes, too. Incredibly offensive, disturbing, and silly. In a similar fashion to how people talk about race as a "natural order" with some races being "above" and others "below" like Nazi Germany did. But that's exactly what's happening, just like with the idea of a master race, the idea of a master sex and a scientifically based natural order of things, men dominating and women obeying. Men potent and women impotent. It's an idea that has been in the world for a long time, and is still disturbingly prominent in both the East and West. It seems to have particularly widespread during the Victorian period. But it still hasn't gone away and died. In fact, some people are more sure than ever that female submissiveness is scientifically proven, and anything else is political correctness and ignorance of science.

And yes, many gender conservatives do say that sexually dominant women are a threat to heteronormativity. It's very, very sad. Honestly, neither sexism or racism are anywhere close to fully extinguished anywhere. There are deeply entrenched cultural ideas of male supremacy throughout the entire world. There have been cultures that deviated from such ideas in the past, but most of them were extinguished with imperialism. Hopefully someday they'll die in all cultures for good.

How...how did they come to that conclusion?
Then again, it's Japan. Guess I shouldn't be surprised.

This is NOT a particularly Japanese idea.

If anything, from old records of old Japan, Japanese women used to be assumed to be fairly proactive and interested in sex. Many Westerners visiting the country finding it very peculiar and "unnatural" it was that these Japanese women were so sexually about. Then they encountered the West and overdid it in some ways. Kind of like how marijuana used to be legal and used in Japan. Now it has ridiculously severe punishment.

I'd say that most sexism in Western culture today comes from Roman prescribed Christianity and Abrahamic religion in general. As a mixture of the backwards ideas of gender in Rome, and the fact of Jews even treating women like property. In the East, it's largely Confucian values or Abrahamic religion as well(either Christianity or Islam) that have caused a lot of the sexist ideas like these. Confucianism holds the strong belief in inequality. Though before this Western influence, folklore in East Asia held that women who weren't sexually fulfilled would often even haunt people after death. And religion was a thing of female importance unlike the West, as Korea, Japan, and pretty well all Altaic cultures, the role of Shaman was considered a female job. And many of the most important gods were female.

It's certainly not a "traditional Japanese" thing to view gender this way. I think personally that the interactions with the West brought this mentality into existence.

 

[Rainbowloid]

Guess what smart people,there is even a special porn genre exclusive to Japan where men rape minor children,and your average Tokyo vending machines sell schoolgirl's used underwear..
Don't try to find a way out,or you will be crazed.

I can't really speak for the porn bit, but I personally guarantee that average Tokyo vending machines do not sell underwear of any kind. Assuming that they exist, they are EXTREMELY rare. I've been living in Tokyo for a while now and have yet to see anything stranger than instant noodles from a vending machine. Kind of disappointing, since I was looking forward to seeing all the crazy vending machines I'd heard about. Unless you have seen these mythical panty-dispensers with your own eyes, please stop perpetuating this ridiculous lie that everyone seems to accept as fact.

Now that I have that all typed out, it seems like a silly thing to get argue about, but oh well.

 

[Guffe]

Japans leader(s) must have some veru valuable time if they can read manga all day and decide they want to censor it so they can get to read it first...

 

[Tanis]

First thing that popped into my head was 'are...are you retarded?'.

 

[Asuka Soryu]

"Women in manga need to be submissive or else they'll turn are men into the gay."


-.-' Japan, get your head out of your ass.

 

[David Farnell]

I can't really speak for the porn bit, but I personally guarantee that average Tokyo vending machines do not sell underwear of any kind.

THANK YOU! Beat me to it. Yeah, I've lived in Japan for 16 years, and I've never seen a vending machine that sold underwear, girls' or otherwise. I have heard that there was at least one such vending machine outside a porno shop in Tokyo about 20 years ago. I'm pretty sure a Western reporter (who probably didn't know Japanese) heard about it at a party and wrote an article that was all "JAPANESE VENDING MACHINES SELL LITTLE GIRLS' PANTIES!"

This is something that happens over and over and over to Japan: people who think "Japan is wacky" come here and write articles and blog posts that confirm their view, and thereby reinforce the "Japan is wacky" meme.

(I did come across a vending machine that sold hot fried food this past weekend, though! That was awesome!)

And LilithSlave, THANK YOU! You are right--I'm actually really surprised that it even needs to be pointed out that the idea that strong women cause homosexuality is an idea that's been in Euro-American culture for centuries. Until VERY recently, many psychiatrists seriously believed that domineering, powerful mothers feminized their male children, turning them gay. Many people in many countries across the world still think so. This is only slightly different from what this ignoramous in Miyazaki believes.

Japan is, indeed, wacky. But more wacky than other countries? I guess it depends on how you measure it.