Forum - View topicNEWS: Prefecture's Youth Council Discusses 'Harmful' Books & Homosexuality
|
Goto page Previous 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 Next Note: this is the discussion thread for this article |
| Author | Message | ||
|---|---|---|---|
tuxedocat
 Posts: 2183 |
|
||
|
So let me get this straight. Female desire = future homosexuality in children.
LOL. *facepalm* Politicians. They are the same everywhere. They make mouth-flaps, and ridiculous made-up crap comes out. |
|||
|
|||
ptj_tsubasa
 Posts: 129 |
|
||
|
Remember, the Japanese society is based on deeply Confucian values - the idea that there are never "equal" people. Everyone has their own role either above or below someone else, be it at workplace, in school or within a family. To Japanese conservatists the idea that women and men even COULD act the same way and have the same roles feels just as much against "the natural order of things" as homosexuality feels to Christian conservatives.
Japanese gender roles are very much shaped by the the man's relationship to his woman and the woman's relationship to her man. This is why people feel that masculinity is defined by taking the lead and protecting women, and femininity is defined by staying passive and supporting men. Individuality doesn't play a big part in it. This is why they link this to homosexuality without considering it as a leap of logic. To them gender roles and man-woman-relationships are deeply intertwined matters. (This is also why BL always has the uke and the seme, by the way. The Japanese simply don't think relationships as deals between two equal people, but as being composed from the male role and the female role.) Last edited by ptj_tsubasa on Tue Jan 10, 2012 12:56 pm; edited 2 times in total |
|||
|
|||
TitanXL
 Posts: 4036 |
|
||
Oh, there you are logic. I was afraid I lost you in all this stupidity. Don't ever wander off like that again, young man, I think I need to keep you on one of those baby leashes. |
|||
|
|||
|
Nemo_N
Posts: 272 |
|
||
|
A great deal of the stories where a female character takes the lead regarding sex are written by women (Aki Sora and B-Gata H-Kei come to mind) , so maybe they are also trying to tamper "unruly" female authors down too.
|
|||
|
|||
|
configspace
Posts: 3717 |
|
||
|
@ptj_tsubasa
Ironically if you do want to be a true "conservative" as far as Japan goes, then you'd actually be promoting this. Since very open and strong eroticism, male and female homosexuality, mixing of roles, partially matriarchal society were all prevalent prior to the Meiji period (prior to 1868) |
|||
|
|||
Surrender Artist
 Posts: 3264 Location: Pennsylvania, USA |
|
||
|
Well, this is mortifyingly bass-ackwards. A lot of human cultures are fixated on a rather crude and nasty image of masculinity. It reminds me of the more visceral example of how men in some African countries consider opposition to dry sex, a repulsive practice of treating women's vaginas with desiccants to increase the pleasure for the man to the considerable detriment of the woman, as a Western conspiracy to 'feminize' African men. The ideas about homosexuality are rather distastefully primitive too.
While health is the professed rationale for this, I think that it's really about enforcing and perpetuating a traditional power structure. I imagine that attitudes differ materially among age cohorts and in urban prefectures. This might, I hope, be just a loud, angry dying gasp or death rattle of an old way of things. I think that the falling birth rates and growing longevity in a lot of developed countries somewhat retards social change and makes it more acrimonious. There's a slight, and admittedly contrived, irony in this happening in Miyazaki prefecture. Last edited by Surrender Artist on Tue Jan 10, 2012 1:24 pm; edited 3 times in total |
|||
|
|||
|
samuelp
Industry Insider
Posts: 2231 Location: San Antonio, USA |
|
||
|
http://g.co/maps/8jswr
This should explain to everyone how relevant this is to actual policy or even the opinions of most of urban Japan. Newsflash: People in extremely low populated rural areas that are devoid of young people tend to have divergently backwards views on social issues. |
|||
|
|||
GWOtaku
 Posts: 678 |
|
||
|
Before the (justifiable) moral outrage goes full throttle, I want to point out how little this story really means. It is about what two people said in a meeting at one point...not how Bill 156 is enforced right now, or how it will be enforced later, or about any new measure that has been proposed, or about how different regulation actually is from what it was before, or even what titles these people were even discussing.
I'm not saying don't be mad about the comments, mind you, I'm saying to try to keep this in appropriate perspective. I've found the relative silence on this subject to be deafening since soon after the Tokyo Youth Ordinance passed. That this is news (and the first at all in quite some time, I think) just communicates to me just how little has really changed, contrary to fears. Last edited by GWOtaku on Tue Jan 10, 2012 1:51 pm; edited 7 times in total |
|||
|
|||
TheAncientOne
 Posts: 1870 Location: USA (mid-south) |
|
||
|
From the article:
I literally came close to bursting out in laughter at the absurdity of this. |
|||
|
|||
|
Egan Loo
Posts: 1319 |
|
||
At least two of those companies, Kadokawa Shoten and Aniplex, are not participating in Tokyo International Anime Fair (TAF) this year. Kadokawa Shoten President Shinichiro Inoue explained that TAF simply had not updated its page since before the companies' boycott. Note that the page linked above is dated March 2011, before last year's TAF. |
|||
|
|||
mrsatan
 Posts: 909 Location: Olympia, WA, USA |
|
||
|
I used to live in that prefecture.
This doesn't surprise me. VERY conservative area. |
|||
|
|||
|
configspace
Posts: 3717 |
|
||
|
@GWOtaku
While I agree that this news itself is not much a big deal since they haven't done anything yet, the fact is that there are always a handful of titles that are regularly added to the "harmful publications" list in various areas. They all differ, depending on the council members judgement. With Bill 156, I disagree that it's business as usual since several titles were already affected. |
|||
|
|||
|
Crisha
Moderator
 Posts: 4290 |
|
||
|
Ah, this article provided a good chuckle for today.
ptj_tsubasa pretty much answered this one already. So while it makes sense looking at it from that POV, nevertheless, I find that particular logic asinine. Oh well. |
|||
|
|||
|
GWOtaku
Posts: 678 |
|
||
Ah, quite right. I'd managed to totally miss that 10/24 article, thanks for pointing that out. |
|||
|
|||
Apollo-kun
 Posts: 1213 Location: City 7, Macross 7 |
|
||
|
This has to be one of the stupidest things I've seen in a very long while; how certain women being cruel would make me want to be gay, I don't know. The logic is old-fashioned and makes no sense whatsoever.
However, it does to bring the table an issue I've taken with a lot of yaoi, and gay stories in general. They tend to vilify women a lot, and make it so that a lot of the characters rush into a gay relationship because a member of the opposite gender is harassing them. Now, I've read a good bit of yaoi (as a straight guy, it isn't my primary interest, but still), and it's a recurring pattern that bothers me. I'd like to see more yaoi focused on natural, sweet gay relationships than ones brought about by the cruelty of the opposite sex. Seeing women portrayed in such a fashion genuinely bothers me, especially because a lot of my friends are women. What's even more intriguing is that most yaoi is written by women (it seems to be, at least), so it almost makes me wonder if they have some type of gender crisis brought about their traditional upbringing. Anyway, I'm ranting. I just would love to see more realistic gay relationships, and not the "girls hate me so I'm gay" plots that seem so predominant in the stuff I've read. That way, it could show the rigid a*sholes discussing these "harmful" materials that being gay isn't something you chose, it's something you're born with. It's not harmful to see gay dudes in books, comics or anime, and the notion that you can be turned gay is effing stupid. Also, one of their points seems to be based on the idea that a lot of guys read yaoi. Which is, well, quite a stretch. |
|||
|
|||
 |
All times are GMT - 5 Hours |
|
|
|
Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group