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Chicks On Anime - Pornography for Women


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sailorsean





PostPosted: Tue Dec 16, 2008 4:41 am Reply with quote
interesting article... i agree on some parts
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Labbes



Joined: 09 Feb 2008
Posts: 890
PostPosted: Tue Dec 16, 2008 4:43 am Reply with quote
In summer, I was discussing with a friend how women view porn, and it was very interesting - she even came to similar conclusions.
And Bamboo bashes Twilight even more Sad
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enurtsol



Joined: 01 May 2007
Posts: 14893
PostPosted: Tue Dec 16, 2008 5:20 am Reply with quote
Oh, I'm used to girls watching pr0n. Every year in the college theater's weekly film schedule, there's a pr0n movie (e.g. Debbie Does Dallas) just before the Fall semester finals. It's always the hottest tickets of the year - and easily half of the packed theater are girls. Laughing
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maaya



Joined: 14 Oct 2007
Posts: 976
PostPosted: Tue Dec 16, 2008 5:21 am Reply with quote
I'm surprised you didn't mention more of the "smut" mangas aimed at females (usually they are even considered "shojo"). When I read the titel of this discussion I immediately thought of Mayu Shinjo (Haou Airen - her works are also published in this "Cheese!" magazine), Kayono (Royal Seventeen) and Minami Kanan ... and there are many more.
In all of their series I know, the girl gets abused (often up to being actually raped) by the guy and she will still continue to support him and in the end realize that this is "true love" etc. All those series are pretty successfull, in and outside of Japan, so to me this also relates to those "rape fantasies" that were mentioned.

There are also other smut mangas including stronger female leads or with a lot of humor as well, like the works of Yuki Yoshihara, which I'm kinda missing in this discussion ^^;

A quote from wikipedia concerning the Shojo Comic magazine, which published f.ex. Mayu Shinjo's "Sensual Phrase" series

Quote:
The manga it features are marketed to appeal to girls from late middle school through high school. Originally the manga in Shōjo Comic were very tame, and rarely featured anything that could be considered sexual in content, not even kissing scenes. Over time, with successful stories such as Mayu Shinjo's series Kaikan Phrase (Sensual Phrase), which was heavy in sexual content, Shōjo Comic is now seen as having more sexual content than its competitors Margaret and Hana to Yume.


Quote:
Shinjo is best known for her manga that puts teenage girls into titillating situations with more handsome, older looking men. Her stories borderline hentai, but are more of a soft ecchi.
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Fear Ghoul



Joined: 26 Nov 2007
Posts: 65
PostPosted: Tue Dec 16, 2008 5:42 am Reply with quote
I think that some women miss the whole point of feminism, which was to give women the right to choose, even if that choice is to be a housewife, pornstar, or glamour model. Some branches of feminism nowadays are really hypocritical in their approach to women's rights and gender equality by trying to force on other women their own choices. Thus, I don't really care if women decide to do porn or whatever so long as that was what they decided themselves. I've never made an exception for porn as "Objectification" because everyone objectifies everything all the time, so it's a rather moot point.

Rape hentai do disgust me however, and I really question the guy who gets off on forcing himself on other women.
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Dahling



Joined: 19 Aug 2008
Posts: 49
PostPosted: Tue Dec 16, 2008 5:58 am Reply with quote
I reeeally shouldn't be on here (I've been sleepless for far too long) and this probably won't make much sense, or at least will have not much of a point. I just couldn't help but think while reading this that part of the whole 'passive' side of women is because women are largely more passive aggressive. They prefer to influence just shy of directly, like a puppet master.

Did that make any sense? I'm really sleepy. Or I should be, I think I'm just fuzzy in the head instead.
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nargun



Joined: 29 Mar 2006
Posts: 930
PostPosted: Tue Dec 16, 2008 6:16 am Reply with quote
Fear Ghoul wrote:
I think that some women miss the whole point of feminism, which was to give women the right to choose, even if that choice is to be a housewife, pornstar, or glamour model.


See, it's really not that simple, because making certain choices yourself, no matter how freely, prevents others from making their free choices.

It becomes complex. It's not my field of study, and your wording suggests that it's not yours either; I sort of doubt you have sufficient knowledge to tell other people that they're doing feminism wrong.
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enurtsol



Joined: 01 May 2007
Posts: 14893
PostPosted: Tue Dec 16, 2008 6:22 am Reply with quote
maaya wrote:
I'm surprised you didn't mention more of the "smut" mangas aimed at females (usually they are even considered "shojo"). When I read the titel of this discussion I immediately thought of Mayu Shinjo (Haou Airen - her works are also published in this "Cheese!" magazine), Kayono (Royal Seventeen) and Minami Kanan ... and there are many more.
In all of their series I know, the girl gets abused (often up to being actually raped) by the guy and she will still continue to support him and in the end realize that this is "true love" etc. All those series are pretty successfull, in and outside of Japan, so to me this also relates to those "rape fantasies" that were mentioned.


Of course, as Scarlett O'Hara had shown all those decades ago and even Rapeman not too long ago, rape only hurts at first. Idea
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Kyogissun



Joined: 17 Aug 2007
Posts: 676
PostPosted: Tue Dec 16, 2008 6:24 am Reply with quote
Well, first time I have replied to one or this articles feedback thread in a while...

Ultimately, it was said best at the end IMHO and I believe this is the common view for those who look into the more niche stuff.

Be it male or female as long as the viewer is able to grasp the difference of what acceptable in the real world and what should merely be viewed and used as a form of... Well, most commonly physical relief and not some warped teaching method for future relations with a partner, spouse, etc, that's what matters, right?

Either way, maybe a disclaimer of the article covering a mature topic might be in order... If only because I imagine there are SOME people who might be uncomfortable about reading it.

...You know, naive prudes or something similar. Razz
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Kyaa the Catlord



Joined: 18 Sep 2006
Posts: 300
PostPosted: Tue Dec 16, 2008 7:33 am Reply with quote
Um. Other than that one mention of the manga in Cheese!, what did this article really have to do with "porn for women?" It mentioned Erica Sakurazawa, but didn't discuss her work at all.

I'm sorry, this should have been titled something more like "tangental discussions about male-centric porn and the use of sex in advertising towards men."
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liannesentar



Joined: 21 Mar 2006
Posts: 30
PostPosted: Tue Dec 16, 2008 8:22 am Reply with quote
Kyaa the Catlord wrote:
Um. Other than that one mention of the manga in Cheese!, what did this article really have to do with "porn for women?" It mentioned Erica Sakurazawa, but didn't discuss her work at all.

I'm sorry, this should have been titled something more like "tangental discussions about male-centric porn and the use of sex in advertising towards men."


You make a good point--this roundtable was more about the concept of porn (both for men and for women) and its affect on women. I would've liked to see a bit more about actual titles, but it seemed like Casey was the only one familiar with shoujo smut and josei porn.

As maaya mentioned, any talk of shoujo porn should reference at least Mayu Shinjo (especially since she's published in English via Sensual Phrase), and Yuki Yoshihara is a good example of a creator who writes about aggresive, oftentimes psychotic women in a funny light, which is contrary to a lot of other depressing, jaded, oftentimes sadistic josei porn titles. In short:

-Shoujo smut can be found in Shoujo Comic (where Yuu Watase ran for years--does all the sex in Fushigi Yuugi and Ceres make sense now?) and Cheese, at least, and titles are oftentimes monogamous schoolgirl rape fantasies that show no genetalia and include a confession from the boy at some point, driving home that the rape was more a reflection of the boy "loving her so much he lost control" than an actual desire to reduce her to a victim. (Take that as you will.)

-Josei porn can be found in a number of magazines as well (can't think of any off the top of my head...Petite, maybe?), and is often more graphic, may include genetalia (although it has less focus on the "parts and what they're doing" than in porn aimed for men), and tends to be rather pessimistic...since it usually takes a "jaded" female view on sex and its connection to one's social/work life, how love and sex are more screwed-up than romantic, etc.

Yaoi has been analyzed to death in the West, but shoujo/josei smut is its own monster and warrants its own discussion, ESPECIALLY considering how it can fall into the hands of young women. (Casey herself mentioned that a 13-year-old could easily be reading Cheese, where Aihara's reprehensibly anti-feminist Teacher's Pet ran.) But alas, this topic has yet to be treated with any real depth. I tried to tackle a facet of the issue years ago (http://www.sleepisfortheweak.org/articles/shoujodangers.html), but it seems that even shoujo smut is read less frequently by Westerners than I thought.

Still, this roundtable brought up some good points. Not to offend the women of the Chicks on Anime staff, but it seems like most of them are often bringing "outsider" opinions on various shoujo topics...Casey seems to be the only one actually well-read in girl-aimed Japanese media. Was that the intent?
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maaya



Joined: 14 Oct 2007
Posts: 976
PostPosted: Tue Dec 16, 2008 8:47 am Reply with quote
liannesentar wrote:
but it seems that even shoujo smut is read less frequently by Westerners than I thought.


I wonder, it seems to be read quite a lot, but just not "talked about" a lot, maybe because Yaoi is something special, while erotic stuff about a guy and a girl isn't.

Especially Mayu Shinjo is extremely popular abroad and, at least where I live, smut shojo titles outsell most other genres, apart from yaoi (which of course can be considered pornography for women as well) and the really big shonen (naruto, one piece) and shojo titles (Arina Tanemura, Vampire Knight - which could be considered sexual as well).

Another author that I just thought of is Kasane Katsumoto (one of her titles is "deep sex" Anime hyper ). I only skipped through some of her works at the book store and they seemed pretty explicit, probably more so than Mayu Shinjo Shocked

I've always wondered about the appeal of series like Haou Airen though - some even call it "cute" or "romantic" x_X ... when reading it I only get aggressiv, because the female characters are so stupid and the males are complete as******. I just want to slap all of them >.<

Btw, I always disliked Mayu Shinjo for her works, but it seems that she herself was fed up with always drawing the same stuff and it was in fact her publisher that didn't allow her any freedom to try something else etc. Which is why she is now independant.


Last edited by maaya on Tue Dec 16, 2008 9:00 am; edited 1 time in total
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Kyaa the Catlord



Joined: 18 Sep 2006
Posts: 300
PostPosted: Tue Dec 16, 2008 8:59 am Reply with quote
Yeah, my biggest complaint is that this particular entry in the Chicks series was more about the Huffpo entry they found than anime or porn.

I think the main problem with this topic is that boy-smut is easy to point to, it has tentacles and rape and ginormous boobies, while girl smut is much less visual and less about the sex than the easily identifiable titles that have a male focus.

Honestly, its kinda hard to compare Sensual Phrase with say... A Wish of My Sister, although there are similar themes to AWOMS in Boku wa imouto no koi o Suru which also ran in Shojo Comic. Razz

I agree with your last paragraph though, I mentioned to my friend I linked to this article that this felt more like "The View" than an anime-based article.
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Fear Ghoul



Joined: 26 Nov 2007
Posts: 65
PostPosted: Tue Dec 16, 2008 9:00 am Reply with quote
Quote:
It becomes complex. It's not my field of study, and your wording suggests that it's not yours either; I sort of doubt you have sufficient knowledge to tell other people that they're doing feminism wrong.


Feminism is not my field of professional study, but that doens't mean I know nothing about it. I'm very much into gender equality and women's rights. You might call me a sentientist I suppose. And to be honest, feminism being about the right to choose was a vast oversimplification, but I was merely trying to get across the fact that I felt that some aspects of modern 3rd wave feminism have actually failed to progress women's rights and gender equality by telling women what they should and should not do rather than just letting them do as they please, which is the foundation of a free liberal humanitarian society.

Quote:
See, it's really not that simple, because making certain choices yourself, no matter how freely, prevents others from making their free choices.


I disagree. I don't think some people should be forced to make certain choices just so that others can then have their own freedom to choose. That's selective freedom, and that doesn't seem right.
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Princess_Irene
ANN Associate Editor


Joined: 16 Dec 2008
Posts: 2657
Location: The castle beyond the Goblin City
PostPosted: Tue Dec 16, 2008 9:11 am Reply with quote
Wow, I can't believe I actually registered and stopped lurking. Smile

I am surprised that more people haven't mentioned shoujo smut authors - they're really popular in the scanslation community with some groups almost exclusively translating them. Then there's Aurora's "LuvLuv" imprint, which is solely josei smut. A few of the stories have a definite rape theme to them, particularly in Voices of Love, the first book they put out.

I taught a course on romance novels last year, and a lot of the literary critiques of the genre focus on the fact that the books are fantasy. In Dangerous Men and Adventurous Women, edited by Jayne Ann Krentz, most of the essays mentioned that the great appeal of the stories was that the hero was also the villain, and therefore the books had a sort of "Beauty and the Beast" feel to them, with the heroine "taming" the hero and teaching him to incorporate love into his sexuality. I could see this being the case in a lot of the manga romances - in Hot Gimmick, for example, the heroine does not have sex with the hero until she is his fiancee rather than his "girlfriend-in-training." This could suggest that she has "tamed" him - made him understand that there must be love as well as physicality - before she commits herself. (Ok, I know that's not the best example, but bear with me. Smile)

However, I think that the argument could be made that in a lot of these rape fantasy stories we're dealing with more of a "Little Red Riding Hood" symbolism than "Beauty and the Beast." Jack Zipes (a folklorist) suggests that the story is really about how a woman is at fault and facilitates her own rape - Red strays from the path, she tempts the wolf, and then she "allows" him to eat her. Adding in the rape fantasy (in Teacher's Pet the heroine wears short skirts and blouses that show how buxom she is), the idea that Red will come to appreciate what the wolf is doing seems like the fulfillment of Zipes' theory. Interestingly enough, the most recent English volumes of Skip Beat have rape themes and lots of "Little Red Riding Hood" imagery.

The main point here is that scholars (at least those of literature) suggest that this support for rape fantasy and violent romance has ancient roots, and maybe feminists are best served by retelling the old tales in safer, more empowering ways.

Oh, and if you're interested in the different variations of "Little Red Riding Hood" (the earliest version, "The Grandmother's Tale", is pretty interesting), check this site: http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/type0333.html
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