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EP. REVIEW: O Maidens in Your Savage Season


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MiloTheFirst



Joined: 10 Dec 2014
Posts: 429
PostPosted: Mon Sep 09, 2019 2:09 pm Reply with quote
DuskyPredator wrote:
@ MiloTheFirst
What do you think slut shaming is? Do you think that it is explicitly mentioning one's sex life? He didn't go something like "hope the rest of you know that you have to use a condom". He said that the faculity discussed it, and they decided to tell everyone that their classmate is not coming back because she is prego, so that she can be set as a bad example. Pretty clear the intention will have all her classmates talking about her appearance as a gyaru, and how she seemed open about some of her sexuality.

Clearly they just found out about her being pregnant, and was taken straight to the administration to have her removed from school immediately, not because of health but because it would be too shameful to have her continue to attend. She is in her last year, and they likely have months they could figure out how to have her graduate, and prepare for motherhood. If the school has any further reaction, my guess is that it is going to be to limit the interactions of boys and girls, not take some time aside to make sure they all know how to put a condom on and maybe hand some out. The same thing Rika acted up to now where she would mentally slut shame her more active classmates


you are making a whole lot of assumptions in there, but first to answer your question. Slut shaming is the act of publicly condemning someone for being promiscuous and to instigate others to bully the subject of the shaming. the school absolutely didn't do this, the teacher didn't say how many partners she had or how frequently she had sex, he just said the fact, she got pregnant and thus decided to drop out just as most people are forced to/decide to do (for economic reasons). the aim here is unrelated to the pregnant girl in question, the aim is to suggest student to reconsider their choices as the teacher literally stated. in japan they don't see highschoolers as dumb kids, they recognize their agency so the school's message here is "if you get pregnant while young your prospective career choices will be reduced, as you can see. but at the end that's your call" because that's the professional thing to do, they are not even shaming her for becoming a mother or for cutting her possibilities for social advancement, they are recognizing her agency and since they are an education organization suggesting their students to make choices that would facilitate them to get further education. of course they faculty is not oblivious, of course they know some students will take the opportunity to start some malicious gossip and slut shaming of their own, but if they choose to privately be not-so-nice-people that's outside of the school's jurisdiction, they served their duty

coming back to your assumptions. you are assuming that the school cares at all about her being a gyaru and that it actively desires people to shame her for that, first that's unfounded, then, do you think they aren't busy enough with the regular work so they could rejoice in orchestrating a teenage gossip scheme. then, you are assuming that the school is the one that discover her being pregnant and also assuming that they had any intention or legal power to spell her because of that, for what I have seen in most cases it is the student (or their family) who proactively decides to drop out and obviously have to go to the faculty office to formalize it. you are assuming she would be ashamed to continue the rest of her year (not saying that she couldn't be, but we will have to wait for further episodes to see), and you are also a summing "they likely have months they could figure out how to have her graduate", if you think it is only after she gives birth that they have to start worrying about bills and applying for jobs then you might not be aware of how tight budgets can be for a couple with low wage unqualified jobs, leave alone if they also have to support a baby. why do you suggest that they should be handing out condoms and teaching them how to use them? in other words why do you insist that the unless they are following an ideal American sex ed walk through then they are being malicious about it? japan (and other countries) have other visions of how to best educate their teenagers

Quote:
The implication is that it is the sex itself is the problem, the thing that the good students should not do, that is the slut shaming.


no, the implication is that if people have sex they might get pregnant, and if very young people have to care for a child their career possibilities are cut short, everything else is your bias
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zrnzle500



Joined: 04 Oct 2014
Posts: 3767
PostPosted: Mon Sep 09, 2019 4:02 pm Reply with quote
MiloTheFirst wrote:
you are making a whole lot of assumptions in there, but first to answer your question. Slut shaming is the act of publicly condemning someone for being promiscuous and to instigate others to bully the subject of the shaming. the school absolutely didn't do this, the teacher didn't say how many partners she had or how frequently she had sex, he just said the fact, she got pregnant and thus decided to drop out just as most people are forced to/decide to do (for economic reasons). the aim here is unrelated to the pregnant girl in question, the aim is to suggest student to reconsider their choices as the teacher literally stated. in japan they don't see highschoolers as dumb kids, they recognize their agency so the school's message here is "if you get pregnant while young your prospective career choices will be reduced, as you can see. but at the end that's your call" because that's the professional thing to do, they are not even shaming her for becoming a mother or for cutting her possibilities for social advancement, they are recognizing her agency and since they are an education organization suggesting their students to make choices that would facilitate them to get further education. of course they faculty is not oblivious, of course they know some students will take the opportunity to start some malicious gossip and slut shaming of their own, but if they choose to privately be not-so-nice-people that's outside of the school's jurisdiction, they served their duty

coming back to your assumptions. you are assuming that the school cares at all about her being a gyaru and that it actively desires people to shame her for that, first that's unfounded, then, do you think they aren't busy enough with the regular work so they could rejoice in orchestrating a teenage gossip scheme. then, you are assuming that the school is the one that discover her being pregnant and also assuming that they had any intention or legal power to spell her because of that, for what I have seen in most cases it is the student (or their family) who proactively decides to drop out and obviously have to go to the faculty office to formalize it. you are assuming she would be ashamed to continue the rest of her year (not saying that she couldn't be, but we will have to wait for further episodes to see), and you are also a summing "they likely have months they could figure out how to have her graduate", if you think it is only after she gives birth that they have to start worrying about bills and applying for jobs then you might not be aware of how tight budgets can be for a couple with low wage unqualified jobs, leave alone if they also have to support a baby. why do you suggest that they should be handing out condoms and teaching them how to use them? in other words why do you insist that the unless they are following an ideal American sex ed walk through then they are being malicious about it? japan (and other countries) have other visions of how to best educate their teenagers

Quote:
The implication is that it is the sex itself is the problem, the thing that the good students should not do, that is the slut shaming.


no, the implication is that if people have sex they might get pregnant, and if very young people have to care for a child their career possibilities are cut short, everything else is your bias


As the next episode title indicates (Inappropriate Conduct Between the Sexes is Now Forbidden, as I included in my post above), no, they aren't respecting her or any of the students' agency. As even you admit, the implication with his statement was that if you have sex, you may get pregnant, and without informing the students of their options to prevent pregnancy, be that contraception or abstinence, telling them not to get pregnant is effectively telling them not to have sex. Giving them their options to prevent ruining their lives by getting pregnant at that age is respecting their agency and treating them as more than just dumb kids who can't be trusted to make their own decisions, and telling them "Have sex, get pregnant and ruin your life, or don't. Your choice" is not. It's funny you call telling them about contraceptives as an "American" sex ed walk through, given a number of US states have mandated abstinence-only sex ed, as lossthief mentioned (and have generally had higher teen pregnancy rates than states where they give their students their options).
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MiloTheFirst



Joined: 10 Dec 2014
Posts: 429
PostPosted: Mon Sep 09, 2019 5:23 pm Reply with quote
zrnzle500 wrote:

As the next episode title indicates (Inappropriate Conduct Between the Sexes is Now Forbidden, as I included in my post above), no, they aren't respecting her or any of the students' agency. As even you admit, the implication with his statement was that if you have sex, you may get pregnant, and without informing the students of their options to prevent pregnancy, be that contraception or abstinence, telling them not to get pregnant is effectively telling them not to have sex. Giving them their options to prevent ruining their lives by getting pregnant at that age is respecting their agency and treating them as more than just dumb kids who can't be trusted to make their own decisions, and telling them "Have sex, get pregnant and ruin your life, or don't. Your choice" is not. It's funny you call telling them about contraceptives as an "American" sex ed walk through, given a number of US states have mandated abstinence-only sex ed, as lossthief mentioned (and have generally had higher teen pregnancy rates than states where they give their students their options).


it seems the problem at hand is that you are not aware, in Japan they already fully cover Sex ed by the end of middle school. it is not that they are not "informing them of their options" or whatnot, but that they already did, highschool is mostly academically oriented, otherwise it wouldn't be non-compulsory. also, please don't misquote me, what I called "an ideal american sex ed walk through" is what dusky was proposing, not the act of teaching them about contraceptives at all, and mind you that I did call it a (stereotypical notion of) an ideal way to do it, not that it was the most prevalent or popular,
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hissatsu01



Joined: 08 May 2006
Posts: 963
Location: NYC
PostPosted: Mon Sep 09, 2019 5:48 pm Reply with quote
MiloTheFirst wrote:

it seems the problem at hand is that you are not aware, in Japan they already fully cover Sex ed by the end of middle school.


You paint a rosy picture that isn't very accurate.

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2018/04/07/national/media-national/japan-no-one-wants-talk-sex-education/
http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201809170031.html
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MiloTheFirst



Joined: 10 Dec 2014
Posts: 429
PostPosted: Mon Sep 09, 2019 5:57 pm Reply with quote
I think you are missing my point, I am not saying they are doing it perfectly or that there aren't systemic flaws, you could say that about any educational system of any country. my point is that as far as the highschool faculty is concerned, the students already got their sex ed covered in the middle-school curriculum, thus why they wouldn't jump into teaching them about contraception on this occasion
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zrnzle500



Joined: 04 Oct 2014
Posts: 3767
PostPosted: Mon Sep 09, 2019 6:08 pm Reply with quote
@MiloTheFirst I think you are missing our point, which is that the teacher's decision to divulge that one of their students was dropping out due to pregnancy was not out of respect for her or any of the students' agency, but out of hostility to the idea of teenagers having sex and to make an example of one such teenager, as the next episode will almost certainly bear out. Considering how the events of the next episode will likely settle this debate, I propose we put the discussion of that particular topic off until next week, if that is alright with you.
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MiloTheFirst



Joined: 10 Dec 2014
Posts: 429
PostPosted: Mon Sep 09, 2019 6:15 pm Reply with quote
You see, it is that assumption of spite what i find issue with. But i do agree with you, let's just wait and see how next episode plays out
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DuskyPredator



Joined: 10 Mar 2009
Posts: 15433
Location: Brisbane, Australia
PostPosted: Mon Sep 09, 2019 7:48 pm Reply with quote
MiloTheFirst wrote:
in japan they don't see highschoolers as dumb kids, they recognize their agency so the school's message here is "if you get pregnant while young your prospective career choices will be reduced, as you can see. but at the end that's your call" because that's the professional thing to do, they are not even shaming her for becoming a mother or for cutting her possibilities for social advancement, they are recognizing her agency and since they are an education organization suggesting their students to make choices that would facilitate them to get further education. of course they faculty is not oblivious, of course they know some students will take the opportunity to start some malicious gossip and slut shaming of their own, but if they choose to privately be not-so-nice-people that's outside of the school's jurisdiction, they served their duty


The problem with assuming that frame of mind, is that the teacher said that he hoped this would encourage them "to make better lifestyle choices". How is that not shaming? It is not explicit, but it is implicitly judging her. And if it was just a financial issue, then should would have been able to say goodbye to her friends, and maybe the teachers would not have to just come from a meeting and immediately decide what to tell the other students. Instead she had to leave likely homemade cookies that she made in someone's desk to give a thanks.

It is just a guess, but I am currently assuming her parents found out and so took her to the school, and the school said that it would be best that she stopped attending, maybe not expelling her but pressuring her parents to pull her out. Perhaps with the intention to prevent shame as something so important in Japanese culture, but the school's decision to tell the students does not exactly fulfill that promise. The fact that she was looking for a children's book the episode beforehand, which Rika helped with, I think implies that she may have already known that she was pregnant, and was looking for a story she had kind of forgotten, but still left an imprint on her.

I am leaning back that we can leave certain points to what actually happens in the next episode, but I do not think that means the subject has to have a full stop end of discussion. If it is the assumption of spite you are having a problem with, I kind of feel like you are misunderstanding some opinions. Someone does not need to be spiteful to be offensive or wrong, after all the road to hell is paved with good intentions, it just Japan being funny with sex, too afraid to talk about it despite apparently worried about fallen birth rates, and creating all the weird fetishes. Maybe a bit off topic, but the origin of tentacle porn came from rules against normal pornography that showed penises. The teachers don't need to be going "we are going to shame that slut" to be doing wrong in shaming her, just thinking that they are doing the right thing by using her as an example of what not to do, is a problem. Even if the culturally normal thing to do.

I am just going to wait for if they do start putting restrictions of what interactions between the sexes can be done in the school, there be an irony that it was not even with a student from that school, it would have done nothing to prevent what happened. Except maybe make a bunch of teenagers sexually repressed and afraid of their own sexuality, and that is working so fine with Izumi right now.

Also, I have to post this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5xkxTfVLSA
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Gina Szanboti



Joined: 03 Aug 2008
Posts: 11306
PostPosted: Mon Sep 09, 2019 10:58 pm Reply with quote
Gina Szanboti wrote:
I guess I'm alone in not seeing cram school kid as being creepy.

Dammit, it never fails. As soon as I give a character the benefit of the doubt (seeing only a dumb jerk rather than a creeper) instead of seeing them as a stock trope, they immediately turn on me and let their creep flag fly full mast. Very Happy Maoh-sama Retry did that to me too, not being overtly sleazy in the first episode, until I defended it, then jumping into the sleaze pit with both boots the very next episode. Oy. I guess I need to start thinking the very worst of all characters (or writers) in anime until they prove me wrong by series end. :/

That said, some of the girls have been displaying some pretty creeptastic behavior themselves, but have been getting a pass for the most part, for reasons. Right now, for me pretty much everyone except Izumi, Kasuza, and my pure-hearted boy Amagiri have some issues with their behavior (which means Amagiri is going to turn out to be the most predatory rapemaster of them all, I guess). Oh, and the teacher Milo is crushing on. She seems nice. So she's probably an ax murdering cannibal in her free time. That would explain her mild plumpness. Can't wait to see how this all turns out!!! Very Happy

I'm not sure why everyone is leaping to the assumption that Jujo was careless or ignorant (except for, you know, see the worst in characters). Condoms sometimes fail. They can break, leak, slip off. Only 3% of Japanese women use oral contraceptives and health insurance doesn't cover them. Plan B type contraception can be imported, but none are government approved, so not so easy to get. Abortion is the go to back-up, despite being technically illegal under most circumstances (apparently many doctors under-report procedures for tax purposes as well, so it's not terribly hard to find a provider, even for teens, with parental approval), and doesn't carry the stigma it does in the US (something like 85% of people approve of abortion on demand).

Or maybe she just wanted to be pregnant. She seemed to like her boyfriend a lot. We may never know. In which case, she definitely poked holes in the condom to trap her boyfriend into marriage, yep, that must be it.

Yes, this episode annoyed me, why do you ask?
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DuskyPredator



Joined: 10 Mar 2009
Posts: 15433
Location: Brisbane, Australia
PostPosted: Mon Sep 09, 2019 11:49 pm Reply with quote
Gina Szanboti wrote:
I'm not sure why everyone is leaping to the assumption that Jujo was careless or ignorant (except for, you know, see the worst in characters).


I ain't going to assume the worst in her character, without further info, it may have been from a mistake outside of her control, and or poor sex education that did not talk about protection outside of simply not wanting to talk about it expect a bunch of teenagers to just not listen to their hormones.

Arguably it is the poor sex education, with a bunch of teenagers just trying to understand things, that has caused the majority of problems for them in their "savage season". The girls having to turn to literature with questionable reliability to understand their new seasons, rely on internet searches to understand new concepts that the other teenagers are talking about, and unable to talk about it. The teachers got angry at them for reading stories that are sort of risqué in nature, creating weird taboos over sexuality.

Kazusa thought Izumi was dirty and wrong when she caught him masturbating, freaking out about her own sexual awakening, and unable to ask her parents about things. Hitoha made an enemy of some students in trying to play the moral part of a prude, being practically hostile on subjects she did not understand. Hitoha has gone into some dangerous territory, where she is trying to grow up into the field she wants, and had to rely on not too good information. Momo has had no help on something like same sex attraction, where she could not recognize it even as she is talking about not understanding why she should like boys and finds the female form more appealing, up until her crush says friends don't have sex. And Niina is a whole mess of things, where she has from a young age had her worth equated with how desirable she is, especially from a paedophile that connected it to her youthful looks.

It is like the very purpose of this show, to express how these teens do not get the right education on the maturity of their bodies and general changes into adults, not from something like school where they are supposed to, so they have to look to other sources for some guidance. As much as entertainment, I wonder what this show could do for adolescence in understanding themselves, and the right ways to go about their own maturity. Not that it even stops at adolescence, because I am thinking that Milo sensei has his own weird hang ups, with what he was doing online in the first place, and maybe thinking that he is worth the affection of the teacher he has a crush on.
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vonPeterhof



Joined: 10 Nov 2014
Posts: 729
PostPosted: Mon Sep 09, 2019 11:58 pm Reply with quote
DuskyPredator wrote:
too afraid to talk about it despite apparently worried about fallen birth rates

I'm reminded of a viral Japanese tweet I saw once that went roughly:

middle school: don't have sex
me: 'kay
high school: don't you dare have sex
me: sure
college: you better not be having sex
me: right
[...]
adult society: why aren't young people having sex?
me: wtf
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lossthief
ANN Reviewer


Joined: 14 Dec 2012
Posts: 1380
PostPosted: Tue Sep 10, 2019 1:55 am Reply with quote
Gina Szanboti wrote:

Dammit, it never fails. As soon as I give a character the benefit of the doubt (seeing only a dumb jerk rather than a creeper) instead of seeing them as a stock trope, they immediately turn on me and let their creep flag fly full mast. Very Happy


Honestly the guy's particular brand of passive-aggressive flirting raised some red flags just from his first appearance. The whole "Oh, but I'm not trying to hit on you. I just want to be friends!" while awkwardly flamingo-ing his way into a date that he won't call a date but still insists on paying for her meal because hey they're friends right and that's what a guy is supposed to do. Speaking from experience, that's something guys do when they're convinced they're smooth enough to "seduce" a girl into being into them by sheer momentum. That he eventually reacts to rejection by insisting she was leading him on (despite, y'know, him never expressly asking her to date him and just assuming she was interested) is also something a lot of teenage dudes pull.

In general that's what I really like about this show - while some characters get more fleshed out and fully rounded than others, they all feel more or less grounded in mindsets and personalities that popped up a lot when I was a teenager.
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Agent355



Joined: 12 Dec 2008
Posts: 5113
Location: Crackberry in hand, thumbs at the ready...
PostPosted: Wed Sep 11, 2019 3:29 am Reply with quote
vonPeterhof wrote:
DuskyPredator wrote:
too afraid to talk about it despite apparently worried about fallen birth rates

I'm reminded of a viral Japanese tweet I saw once that went roughly:

middle school: don't have sex
me: 'kay
high school: don't you dare have sex
me: sure
college: you better not be having sex
me: right
[...]
adult society: why aren't young people having sex?
me: wtf

I grew up going to all girls’ parochial schools and now identify as Ace-leaning, so I got a good laugh out of this. Permission to use it elsewhere?

Anyway, I think DuskyPredator hit the nail on the head: this whole show is about how lack of sex education, coupled with taboos, expectations (in Hongo’s case in her writing) and in Niina’s case, abuse creates unhealthy attitudes towards sex in young people, including Milo-sensei, who doesn’t feel deserving of the nice teacher.

Interesting note on teen pregnancy in Japan, abortion is legal and not as religiously stigmatized as in the U.S., but I was surprised to learn that a teen girl who wants the procedure has to get signatures from the father of the fetus, and IIRC, her parents and his parents.
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vonPeterhof



Joined: 10 Nov 2014
Posts: 729
PostPosted: Wed Sep 11, 2019 6:56 am Reply with quote
Agent355 wrote:
I grew up going to all girls’ parochial schools and now identify as Ace-leaning, so I got a good laugh out of this. Permission to use it elsewhere?
Yeah, sure thing. Wish I could find the original tweet...
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kinghumanity



Joined: 03 Nov 2014
Posts: 365
PostPosted: Wed Sep 11, 2019 9:25 pm Reply with quote
So I watched episode 10 twice and still can't understand:

Why does Hongo want to sleep with Milo sensei so badly?
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