Hello, everyone! We’re back with our regularly (hah!) scheduled spooniness. This time around, I’d like to do something a bit different from my usual: I’m going to perform a textual analysis of a post which tries to explain Shirou’s supposed sexism in the Fate/Stay Night visual novel.
Oh, and don’t worry about the fancy-pants title, this won’t read like a college paper – or heck, even a high school one.
Let me make myself perfectly clear: I am not doing this to “call out” the author, or anything of the sort. I am merely using their post to showcase a common issue in fandoms. Also, one thing we should keep in mind is that communication is difficult; after all, it’s not as if we’re all mind readers capable of immediately ascertaining exactly what someone else is saying, so we have to rely on a variety of things to convey meaning: choice of words, tone of voice, body language. As one can imagine, communication solely by written means is even more difficult, since we can’t rely on two of the methods I mentioned. So, I’ll exercise a reasonable amount of effort when analysing the post (emphasis on reasonable; after all, communication is a two-way street, so the burden doesn’t fall only on the receiver).
Here’s the aforementioned post. After the cut, I’ll proceed to the analysis.
So here’s how the post starts:
I always find it a little funny that there’s an argument over whether Shirou is sexist when they make a big point to show how much like a housewife he is.
Hm. Not very well, to be honest.
Let’s set aside for now the question as to why the author thinks complaints of Shirou being sexist are funny (do they find it funny people apparently haven’t grasped the nuances of Japanese gender politics present in the work? Or do they find the very concept of discussing sexism in works of fiction to be funny?). Instead, I’ll focus on how, right off the bat, the author makes a logical fallacy: that somehow housewives can’t be sexist. Unfortunately, internalised sexism is a very real issue.
Also, I’ll be addressing the “Shirou is a housewife” argument later on, but for now, let’s continue:
So, one of the areas this is pointed out is in Shirou’s reaction to Mitsuzuri being attacked. I’m going to transcribe the Mirror Moon translation, and then point out something.
The author then transcribes the scene in question. You can read it either in the original post, or in Seorin’s LP transcript here. Before we continue, let me point out something important: while that scene is, indeed, often brought up exactly because of what’s said in it, there are plenty of other scenes which can (and have been) used to showcase the sexism implicit (or even explicit) in Shirou’s arguments. One need only read Act’s own Let’s Play / Read of the game / novel in this blog.
So, of course, first, Shirou thinks Ayako got into a fight. Then, he hears she was attacked by a molester, but got away with only a minor injury, and is relieved. Because of the first point, though, he is quick to think the molester an idiot, since Ayako apparently projects as someone that is quick to fight back.
So far, I don’t have anything on which to comment.
Then, almost as an afterthought, he realizes that the situation might have taught her something.
Ah! Here’s what the author missed: the important part in what Shirou says isn’t his tone of voice – that is, it doesn’t matter if it was said “almost as an afterthought” -, but rather, what, exactly, he said. To quote the VN: “I guess that’s good. It’s impossible to teach her femininity unless something like this happens.”
It’s impossible to teach her femininity unless something like this happens. Remember, choice of words is very important for communication: Shirou is specifically saying Ayako being attacked is good because it should teach her to be less of a tomboy (unless there really was a translation issue here, but in the absence of concrete evidence, that’s still only speculation; besides, the author of the post doesn’t even mention the possibility and takes the scene at face value, so we should be doing the same).
Here’s how the post’s author defends what Shirou is saying:
Now, I’ll tell you this: people in Japan, especially housewives, love to gossip. […] Too, women tend to concern themselves more with other women, not in a segregated way, but just from the standpoint of understanding: who ever knows why those crazy boys do this, but honestly, what kind of woman
does that? Anyway, this whole conversation would not be out of place for a Japanese woman to be going on about.
It leads somewhat into a cultural expectation. While it is changing, the average Japanese woman is very much expected to get married and start a family as opposed to pursue a career or whatnot. The fact remainsthat Shirou, honestly, seems worried about Ayako as a member of this culture, that she hasn’t “calmed down” and all, which could be harmful to her future. A Catch-22, since if she doesn’t calm down, she is both A) less likely to be taken seriously for her futurecareer or academic prospects, and B) less likely to be taken seriously for her romantic or familial prospects. There’s a traditional saying in Japan, “the nail that sticks out will be hammered down.” Shirou is, at least, concerned that this may happened to Ayako.
Another huge point which the author somehow missed is that that’s the most basic definition of sexism: that each gender HAS to act in accordance with a specific role society set aside for them.
Now, based on the “as a member of this culture” qualification and the reference to a “traditional saying in Japan”, it’s clear their argument (although it could be expressed in a more explicit manner in the text itself) is that it’s one of Japan’s social mores and shouldn’t be judged as sexist, since it’s only normal for that culture. And, on a sociopolitical level, that’s an understandable attitude; First World countries have a shitty history of disregarding, dismissing and simply disrespecting other cultures, and we should be wary of repeating that pattern.
However, that still doesn’t make it wrong for individuals from a culture to react negatively to social mores from other cultures. It shouldn’t matter if female genital mutilation is a ritual in some countries around the world, for example, it’s perfectly alright for you, as an individual, to call it “mutilation” and to consider it barbarous that women are forced to undergo it without any consideration given to whether they want to do so (and indeed, whether they can even have any choice in the matter, considering cultural teachings).
Finally, another nuance which the author didn’t grasp is that even if we, the Western audience, accepted that women should behave in a feminine manner – that is, that they should fit the role society aside for them and not stray from it in any way (actually, I think many of us do accept that, unfortunately) -, it would still be awful to say it’s good a woman was attacked because then she would start behaving in a more acceptable manner. Considering the treatment of rape survivors by both Western and Japanese cultures (ranging from “Don’t speak up or speak out, just be quiet and bear with it” to “Well, it was your own damn fault”), that’s a really shocking misstep.
I’ll be coming back later to this point about Japanese society and its beliefs, but for now, let’s keep this in mind: the author could have written a post simply saying something along the lines of “Hey, guys, there’s a deeper layer in that scene related to Japanese culture, let me explain it”; instead, they wrote (either by choice or by lack of skill) a post which basically says “Stop complaining about this scene, it’s a Japanese thing”. The distinction is very important: in one, they’re offering additional context which may or may not affect our judgement of the work, in the other, they’re outright saying we shouldn’t complain about sexism at all as long as it’s present in a Japanese work.
Also note, that “femininity” is not necessarily derogatory or a put-down in terms of “Woman, stay in the kitchen and bear me children.” On the former, you have the fact that this is not the sort of submissive place quite like it might be in the West. In the traditional Japanese home, the woman is in charge with home matters. The husband may be the “breadwinner” so to speak, but women traditionally dictate finances even. Men are often given an allowance of the money they earn, I kid you not.
Here, the author is falling prey to another common logical fallacy: that just because women traditionally control the finances of the household, they’re just as socially important as the men. The problems with that line of thinking are:
1) again, it misses the point that being forced into a specific role solely due to the circumstances of your birth is bad;
2) most importantly, it’s just not true that being the household manager is viewed in Japanese culture (which is the implied assumption) as being as socially and economically important as being the “breadwinner”. “Femininity” in Japan might not mean just “Woman, stay in the kitchen and bear me children”, but “Woman, stay at home, take good care of the money I BRING YOU and bear me children” isn’t really better.
Finally, those roles aren’t even exclusive to Japanese culture, modern or otherwise. Consider the stereotypical American suburban household presented in TV shows and assorted fictional works, where we have a similar social set-up – the man earns the money, while the woman buys groceries and cooks meals. Why should a situation that is deemed sexist in America be considered any less sexist just because it exists in a different culture, without any other relevant factors influencing it?
Really, too the thing that should be kind of poked at is the fact that Shirou is being very hypocritical here. Take the last line, replace a few words, and you have Shirou’s own problem. I guess that’s good. It’s impossible to teach him pragmatism unless something like this happens. Might as well be a comment on him surviving all the charge-in-save-the-day actions he gets himself into.
The problem with this argument is that we don’t really have any support from the text to do so. And I don’t mean just in this specific scene (which, if you recall, doesn’t have anyone else making that same logical assumption, even though Saber and Rin – both more than capable of doing so – are present); for all that everyone and their mother calls Shirou out on his stupidity throughout it, the “Fate” route is the one where Shirou’s ideals, far from being challenged, are constantly validated by the narrative. To give just one example: was it stupid of him to take the blow for Saber in the fight against Berserker? Yes, but that directly leads to Ilya withdrawing with her Servant, which thus saves the lives of everybody present.
Besides, the comparison is flawed from the start. Even if I agreed that we’re meant to see Shirou as being hypocritical here, a personal issue (Shirou’s lack of self-worth) should not be put on the same level as a social issue (a female character being indirectly told to be more feminine, reinforcing the sexist mores of that society), never mind that it still wouldn’t excuse saying Ayako being attacked is good, or that even if both were personal issues, they still wouldn’t be on the same level (Shirou chooses to involve himself in dangerous situations; Ayako being attacked, on the other hand, is something outside of her control. The circumstances are completely different).
An interesting thing to think about, too, is the fact that there’s a funny kind of reversal in the situation at Shirou’s house. Taiga is a woman and with a career. Shirou essentially acts like a housewife, cooking, cleaning, and, as is common in a modern home, also working a job to support the income. […] Yes, indeed, Shirou has fully
integrated himself as woman of the house.
And here’s the “Shirou is the housewife” argument once again. The author has, unknowingly, hit the nail on the head: the role reversal at the Emiya household is, indeed, funny – as in, it’s a source of comedy. Putting the man in the traditional role of a woman isn’t progressive at all when it’s done only so people can laugh at the situation. And Shirou saying Ayako should follow society’s expectations of what it means to be feminine shouldn’t be acceptable just because he plays the role of the housewife, since it wouldn’t be acceptable even if he were actually a woman (it seems the author considers sexism to be something that’s only directed from men to women, like women can’t be sexist). At most, we could say it tones down the sexism a bit because a woman (in this case, Ayako) isn’t being judged by a man, but by another “woman” (Shirou); even so, that only diminishes the level of sexism (again, at most), not completely erases it.
Now, let me go back to what seems to be the main argument of the post: that we, Western readers, should not judge Shirou by our standards of sexism, but rather, by Japanese standards of sexism. However (and setting aside the argument that yes, we are completely within our rights as individuals to condemn a sociocultural issue even if it’s from a different culture), in the words of Adrian Monk, here’s the thing: Japanese standards are changing, even if slowly (something which even the author acknowledges: “It leads somewhat into a cultural expectation. While it is changing,[…]“). In fact, they’ve been changing, to the best of my knowledge, at least since the eighties-nineties, if not before. Fate/Stay Night was originally released in 2004; it’s understandable it would reflect more traditional mores of Japanese culture, but not excusable, and it still doesn’t negate the fact we can and should judge the work in accordance with our own cultural mores. Context is important – Shakespeare, for instance, was actually quite progressive for his time, especially regarding political issues -, but that doesn’t mean we should just accept that a woman being forced to undergo sleep and food deprivation so that she can deliver a speech about how a woman’s happiness is being entirely submissive to a good husband is necessary for a play to have a happy ending. Context informs, it does not excuse.
So, why did I write this post of my own? Because I think the author of the original post is sexist? No. Well, yes, I think they are (although in the same unthinking, uncritical way so many are; that is, they ignore any gender issues other than the most blatant ones, and reproduce gender-normative assumptions without first considering their purpose and whether they should be reproduced), but that wasn’t the reason; rather, I wanted to talk about the issue of normalisation of sexism in Anime fandoms.
Anime fandoms, to put it bluntly, tend to be horrifying; in their effort to defend what they love, they end up accepting uncritically things they should find horrifying – sexualisation of underage characters (or characters who look and act as if they were underage), sexualisation of violence against women, uncritical acceptance of a protagonist’s right to pass extreme judgement on others solely due to the fact they’re the protagonist, etc. That would already be bad enough, since it leads to the marginalisation and exclusion of a great many number of people from the hobby itself; but it becomes exponentially worse when they try to force others to also accept those things as normal.
Should we just automatically not consume any work which doesn’t match our morals? That’s for each individual to decide by themselves. We shouldn’t, however, ignore the very real social issues (as opposed to personal ones) that may surround it. To give a personal example: it’s one thing for me to say I love Robert E. Howard’s “Solomon Kane” stories in spite of the racism in them; it would be another for me to deliberately ignore said racism (which wouldn’t speak well of my character); and it would be yet another, much worse, for me to say others shouldn’t judge those stories as racist simply because they were written in a different time period. Remember, context informs, but does not excuse, especially regarding an issue which is still very present in our own cultural context (it’s not as if gender essentialism is exclusive to Japanese culture, after all): it’s one thing to, say, understand that life for the medieval Norsemen was very harsh and that farmers leaving handicapped babies out in the cold to die often was the most pragmatic choice, it’s quite another to find an actual baby freezing to death and just accept it and do nothing.
Like I said before, the author of the original post could have written it in a way that was, if not sympathetic to the complaints against Shirou’s sexism, at least neutral towards them; instead, they wrote it in a way that dismisses those complaints as invalid and, whether they realise (and accept) it or not, ends up defending sexist mores in Japanese culture. At best, the post was a misguided attempt to provide additional context for Fate/Stay Night; but even at best, it still ends up normalising social issues which should at the very least be considered in a critical manner.
Then again, it’s only a single post. Is it fair of me to consider it as if it were representative of a trend in the Fate/Stay Night fandom? I do think so; not only is the author an apparently esteemed member of the Beast’s Lair forums (a board which claims to be an authority on Type-Moon works and often derides the Type-Moon Wiki for being full of “fanon”), that post is part of a series of posts by the same author which were considered useful and authoritative enough to be stickied in the “Fanfics” sub-forum.* However, I think the most damning evidence is that, when I asked about whether that scene really had been mistranslated, another user simply pasted the link to the original post in response. Again, regarding a question specifically about whether a translation issue really existed (“Oh, and since we’re on the subject of ‘translation’, does anyone know what that ‘It’s good that Ayako was attacked, that should teach her to be more feminine’ line (paraphrased) actually meant?”), their response was simply to paste the link to that post, which doesn’t actually address the subject. That’s how normalised those issues are; in response to “Was that line actually translated correctly?”, the answer was immediately “It’s not sexist”. Hence my belief that the original post does represent at least part of the fandom.
(Do you know what I would find funny? If that scene had indeed been the result of a translation mistake, and we found out that the original author had written a post defending the sexism in a scene which might not even mean what we think it means!)
* EDIT: As has been pointed out to me at Beast’s Lair, the author’s original post wasn’t actually stickied, the sticky was a different thread which seems to be only recommendations of fanfic authors. My mistake. I maintain, however, that the overall argument (“This post showcases a common issue in fandoms”) is solid.
Also note, that “femininity” is not necessarily derogatory or a put-down in terms of “Woman, stay in the kitchen and bear me children.”
This is also empirically untrue. That’s literally what femininity is, the social rules put in place to subjugate women. You can’t separate gender roles (ie, masculinity and femininity) from female oppression when the whole point of them is to oppress females.
(There are, of course, women who of their own accord, even in a perfect world, would be ‘feminine.’ This is because people have different traits. The problem with femininity as a concept is that is takes ‘people traits,’ sorts them along sex lines, and then mandates everyone follow those rules. This line seems like it’s the pretty standard coopting and twisting of the idea that women should be able to act however they want into ~but femininity is good we should keep all those rules so
womensome people can follow them~.)From this post and others they’ve written, I’d guess the author doesn’t actually notice that gender roles are inherently harmful.
True. This is also a fandom that gleefully sexualizes a rape victim and children (DO NOT LOOK UP FIGURES OF ILYA, P SURE I’M NOW ON A WATCH LIST), so nothing really surprises me anymore.
Haha, I remember reading this manga that had a disclaimer around chapter 50 that anyone who made it this far is probably now on a watchlist, and I just had to laugh. Because it’s true.
Yeah, I don’t care for the fandom all that much. If it’s not creepy fetishists, then it’s endless power level discussion and attempts to make a complete theory of everything in Nasuverse, and blegh, to hell with them all except the translation people. They may live for now.
Though I’m not sure this particular point is unusually prominent in this fandom. I see a similar attitude in a lot of communities: people gather around things they like and any attempt to point out problems results, at best, in people trying to conceive explanations for why it’s OK. as if you can’t like imperfect things.
Honestly, I get the attitude, but stuff like what we see in the post here makes me think that being in a fandom twists your mind into a spiral, judging by the mental gymnastics some people demonstrate.
Like, I’m currently having a discussion on another forum about house elves in Harry Potter and how it’s OK they’re slaves, they’re happy that way, it’s their nature.
To be honest I think a lot of it is that fictional settings reveal real-life biases. Someone who’s willing to do mental gymnastics to justify pedophilia/misogyny/racism in a fictional setting is honing their ability to run through those same thought processes IRL, and that they now have an internet that connects them with other terrible people just helps normalize their behaviuors. After all, who the fuck wants to deal with calling the hundreds of people who order naked Ilyas sickos and get zergswarmed and then banned from a major comm, you know? Then there’s fanom’s love of non-con, my least favorite way rape is made palatable. The internet does a lot of good in bringing people together, but it also gives bad people a lot of practice justifying themselves to likeminded thinkers.
Hm, true. Someone not bothered by problematic elements to begin with is more likely to excuse them than simply admitting a flaw in the work.
(Also, I’m not sure I know what non-con is and how it’s different from rape. Is it “but the victim liked it” defense? Or is it the violent/coercion rape distinction?)
It’s fandom’s term for rape-as-titillation that they use as a way to get around saying “I love rape.”
Often it’s between two characters they ship, so the justification is that it’s okay because they end up in lurvvve.
Ah, so not even an attempt at justification, just an euphemism to obscure the issue.
Yeah, I’m not surprised, considering there are stories about building harems out of mind-controlled sex slaves.
So non-con is rape. Dub-con is like what then, that “Blurred Lines” song?
Dub-con seems to change by fandom and can mean anything from “both had a sip of beer, plz don’t kill me tumblr” to “violent rape, but it’s okay because I ship them so I refuse to label it non-con because it’s not like it’s rape-rape”.
Hmn. Not quite sure I get it. I mean, the difference between “non-consensual” and “dubiously consensual” already seems small enough to be negligible in some cases, like someone’s trying to excuse rape by saying it was dub-con instead of non-con.
You need to look at this as porn labels. It’s for people trying to find exactly what flavor of thing they want. Steven Universe has different labels for precisely what horrible version of the horrible idea of gems laying eggs the fic is using. Glee or Supernatural or both had this thing called bugcock.
Dubcon generally means “rape, but not violent, possibly the person is unaware it’s rape and blames themself!” Noncon generally means “victim is aware of rape, probably violent!” Then they add if it involves other things of interest, like getting peed on or male pregnancy or whatever.
Then people got yelled at for writing rape and decided that dubcon counted as not rape and it all went to shit.
Ah, porn tags. Now you’re speaking my language.
…”Bugcock”?
A cock which is a bug and not the cock of a bug.
…What? How? Why?
Yes.
Hm, I wonder if it’s more or less creepy than Wraeththu flower cock that spits acid.
I’m not sure I like where this conversation has gone.
The world of fanfic porn scares and terrifies me.
Although I suppose it’s better that they tag the stuff, so people can avoid it.
I still say it’s useful.
“This story contains rape” “this is a story that’s writing out a very detailed totally unrealistic rape for porn purposes” are very different things and it’s for the best we don’t label them the same, and definitely good to avoid people thinking “that thing where one character secretly wanted it so it was okay and also there were these other reasons and they were so hot together!” should get the same word we use in court trials.
(I don’t think if anyone ever checked to see if there’s still the same increase in being okay with rape after reading noncon fanfic as there is with regular romance novels, but in theory, anything you can do to section this off as not real and don’t apply it with real people is good.)
See, my inclination is that it would be the opposite. We already know regular porn destroys empathy and fucks with brains, to the point that double-blind studies are generally considered unethical. Being inured to sexual violence and developing long lists of ways to describe it that excuse it seems like it can only be a bad thing to me. I guess the only question is if written porn has the same negative affects visual does, or if seeing real people is what actually screws people up.
I’m inclined to say that most people who write/consume written porn in fandom are well aware that it’s fantasy and would be horrified to have their A/B/O dub-con hockey RPF fic bleed over into real life; they just want to play with their fandom dollies and indulge their id in a harmless way even if others find it baffling/extremely gross. There ARE people who can’t separate fantasy from reality and leave horrifying deviantart comments about how “rape is just sex” but I think this is a symptom of a deeper dysfunction.
As for why live action porn is harmful I think it has more to do with how mainstream porn confirms a toxic worldview and provides affirmation for that male-supremacy, female-always-submissive, often-racist viewpoint rather than it having brain-whammying powers. Certainly there is amateur and/or LGBT-friendly porn that is a lot more respectful of its performers.
A/B/O dub-con hockey RPF
I know what dub-con is and I am guessing A/B/O stands for Alpha/Beta/Omega …
But do I want to know what RPF means?
Haha, RPF just means Real Person Fiction, but many people find it uncomfortable, especially when the people involved are real and alive. (e.g. no one really objects to fiction about Abe Lincoln or Hannibal Barca)
I find it baffling because 1) why and 2) there’s no way it can possibly be in character :B but as long as no one’s emailing it to the real people it’s just another form of playing-with-dolls. I think it’s a way of writing Any Two Guys fiction with an easy way of saying what the characters look like.
I mean, obviously it doesn’t have special powers, but studies have repeatedly shown that exposure causes brains to process women as objects and not people, and we know that exposure to violence habituates people to it, and it should come as no surprise that porn inures people to violence and is correlated with unhealty relationships.
There’s a theoretical utopia where there can be such thing as ‘ethical porn’, but a) you can’t remove the voyeuristic element that creates objectification and b) we don’t have that utopia, and the only question when it comes to violent porn is if it’s *as* harmful in written form as it is visually, not whether or not it does damage.
The world is so depressing.
I do think there’s a huge problem with “sexy rape” in media, such that people are actually shocked when rape is actually shown as an act of violence, and that mainstream porn is often really awful and jaded and I’m not surprised that teenagers would watch it and internalize what they see uncritically. But what I’ve seen in panfandom spaces is that people enjoy a huge rainbow of kinks and porn, some of it violent or just weird, and it’s very clear that it’s fantasy for these adults.
I think it’s an important source of options that just aren’t present in mainstream porn, where tacit male domination and female submission reigns supreme and rape is just sex you didn’t know you wanted, or hentai with all of its awful problems. Mainstream media of all kinds is all from a very narrow male gaze, and that’s harmful because it’s the only game in town– that’s what creates situations where people stay and withstand abuse instead of escaping, because they’ve been persuaded that it’s normal. Fanfic has violent porn but you don’t have to read it or be persuaded that it’s “right” or “the way things are”, you can click through to the next story. Plenty of people want to see male characters in hurt/comfort or rape or weird xeno monster situations as well.
I find some of the conclusions in the second link a little eyebrow-raising, like why is “Subjects were more accepting of non-marital sexual activity and non-coital sexual practices such as oral and anal sex.” (oh noes) in the same list as “Subjects considered the crime of rape less serious.” (O_O) or “Subjects showed a greater acceptance of female promiscuity.” oh no, not teh promiscuity
The brain scan studies are interesting but they don’t prove causation; same with the conclusion that porn breaks up families. Personally, after my extensive studies of Internet Dudes I think that these people have other issues with themselves and women– maybe mainstream porn magnifies it– but the issues would still be there without it. These are Bad Dudes and they have to learn not to be bad, not to blame it all on the porn they’re obsessed with.
I was a bit suspicious when I saw “Say NO to same-sex marriage” on the right side of that second link, so I decided to check out the “About Us”. Apparently “Membership is open to qualifying healthcare professionals who share the College’s Mission, Vision and Values”, and the “Mission, Vision and Values” that follow make it basically a euphemism for conservatism. Apparently members must be opposed to same-sex marriage and unmarried couples (“Recognizes the fundamental mother-father family unit, within the context of marriage, to be the optimal setting for the development and nurturing of children”), pro-life (“Recognizes the unique value of every human life from the time of conception to natural death”), and believe in abstinence outside of marriage (“Recognizes the physical and emotional benefits of sexual abstinence
until marriage and pledges to promote this behavior as the ideal for
adolescence”). So, seems to be an outright right-wing political advocacy group that happens to be composed of pediatricians. Doesn’t automatically invalidate their conclusions, mind you, but yeah, it’d certainly explain why they think acceptance of female promiscuity and oral sex are terribad and must be stopped.
I mean, there is a shit ton of research out there, which I know because I looked into this myself not too long ago and then NOPED away. Here’s one pretty comprehensive list:
http://luaren.tumblr.com/post/79627230804/yeah-because-you-can-totally-tell-how-smart-i-am
I have seen so, so many studies show porn is a nightmare and literally none that have concluded that it’s all in good fun. If you can dig up science to the contrary I’d love to see, because the picture is pretty horrifying as-is.
Nevermind
Nevermind
No worries, I didn’t read it as defensive at all ^^;
As for where that leaves individuals, I think people as a whole need to really do a lot more asking about where their fantasies come from than is done right now. No one exists in a vacuum, and we’re all a product of our lives and the messages we’ve gotten. Sex media isn’t a special kind of media that doesn’t influence people, and sex fantasies aren’t a special kind of fantasy that exists in a vacuum. I think precisely because it’s so personal — and violent fantasies have a lot of correlation with trauma — people NOPE away from analysis, which is understandable, but sex media as a whole — especially the mainstream stuff — is really fucked up (heh) right now and until individuals start to ask why it’s not going to get better.
Myself included, of course. I’ve done a loooot of looking into this recently precisely because there’s so much feeling and non-info surrounding it, and it’s depressing but that it’s been so hard has only made me feel more strongly about how important it is.
edit: Also, not to get all “Kids these days!” but I think the upcoming generation is insignificantly worse shape here than my own was.
It also upsets me because I’ve seen a lot of people on ‘purity patrols’ on tumblr going around hounding people about their (properly labeled) kinks, and then going ‘oh, it’s okay if you’re a survivor’, so in essence they’re forcing people to out themselves to not be harassed. The really ridiculous thing about this is they don’t even just keep it to ‘do you write this as titillation’. I’ve seen someone hounded for writing a fic about csa that dealt with it as a bad thing and explored the consequences of it, and other people harassed for drawing or reblogging pictures of ships the harasser deemed ‘abusive’.
So, while I agree it’s good to look at the WHY of these things, my own experience with people who do that has been very very negative. It’s kind of a mess! I don’t really like how people are shifting towards ‘censorship is the solution to everything’. I can think something is disgusting and horrible and still defend it existing in fiction, properly labeled and not sprung on anyone. I can think something is disgusting and horrible and think it’s NECESSARY to explore it in fiction! Like, if we cleansed fiction of all references to abuse, that contributes to the stigma of being abused.
So… I think I probably actually agree with you a lot, and just got a bit knee-jerking at how you were wording or simplifying things.
Ugh, fucking tumblr. Despite linking to a source posted there, it’s not a place I spend a lot of time precisely because of that kind of stuff. The whole environment is so toxic, and I’ve found it to also be extremely misogynistic — you can attack women all you want, as long as you claim some tangentially realated form of also-oppression, and yeah, they get big into purity politics.
And yeah, the tumblr!censorship is really bad, and seems to be bleeding into RL as well. The one that always makes me bristley is the whole ableism culture there, because as someone with like 47 mental illness problems, it just silences and silences and silences when the biggest issue surrounding mental illness is that no one fucking talks about it.
I’ve been not-purposely curt in the comments these past few days, so sorry if I came off as dismissive. I have real-life shit going on that bleeds through sometimes and I know I’ve been somewhat impatient.
It’s not a problem! It’s not like I’ve never gotten curt bc I was upset over other stuff, and actually talking to you about this, I can see I was conflating your viewpoint with other, more toxic viewpoints that you weren’t advocating.
I hope things work out for you!
Wait, hold on. How would you even do a double-blind study on porn? Double-blind means neither the subjects nor the experimenters are aware who is in the test group and who is in the control group. You’d have to… show people pornography while not making them aware that it’s pornography? ?_? That doesn’t make any sense.
It would be showing them porn while they’re not aware exactly what the study is for, just that it involves them watching it. That’s how you do a lot of psych studies — make sure the subject thinks the study is about something it’s not. (The famous hot/cold priming-effect interview experiment comes to mind.)
Wrong! Non-con is rape. It’s used as a tag so that people triggered by discussions of rape can avoid it. That’s the literal origin and the most common use of it – it’s not an attempt to sugarcoat it. Dubcon is for things that are ambiguiously rape, or rape-by-means-that-don’t-exist, or situations where neither character can reasonably consent, but there’s not someone consciously making that happen, such as the infamous ‘sex pollen’ trope in Star Trek fandom.
And frankly, I think there’s a hell of a difference between enjoying rape fantasy and actually condoning rape, and that extends to exploring such through fiction just as much as it extends to exploring it through roleplaying scenes with consensual adults.
That being said, the attitude of ‘but it wasn’t rape because luuuuurve’ or ‘it wasn’t rape because it wasn’t violent’ or other such things is definitely horrifying.
non-con, dub-con, and rape would all be rape in a court of law or by the consent model of sexual activity, but they refer to different “flavors” of sexual fantasy for the purpose of sorting or excluding stories for the reader. http://fanlore.org/wiki/Non-con
“rape” as a tag usually means that it’s supposed to be horrifying/dehumanizing/taken seriously as an act of violence; “non-con” is rape but it’s for the titillation/benefit of the reader*; “dub-con” is rape where consent is given but muddied through magic/sex pollen/alien mind control/love potions/etc.
*fandom is mostly women, and lots of women have rape fantasies or like the submissive aspect, and want their non-con from the POV of the victim. I remember reading a lot of old bad USEnet porn stories on web 1.0 while trawling sites like the Portal of Evil, and you can tell they’re written by dudes who are in it for the voyeuristic/ domination side.
*fandom is mostly women, and lots of women have rape fantasies or like the submissive aspect, and want their non-con from the POV of the victim.
Not-so-fun fact: rape fantasies are disproportionately high among women who grow up in religious environments, implying that essentially abstinence education conditions women to only be able to enjoy sex when they believe they aren’t making Jesus cry when they do it. Which is so, so depressing, though fortunately can be worked through in therapy.
Hah, I believe it, such a classic bodice-ripper trope. That’s where (anecdotally) a lot of the popularity of the dubcon/rape-to-love in the Pern books came from, according to discussions I’ve seen in panfandom spaces, that element of “[character]/[I] was forced to do it and also liked it in the end so it was all OK”.
romance novels are weeeeeird
being in a fandom twists your mind into a spiral,
You know whose fault that is? The people who scanlated Uzumaki. Because of them, the Spiral has claimed the internet, and now it’s seeping into people’s brain by vector of fandom.
as if you can’t like imperfect things.
People are completely okay with liking imperfect things… as long as they noticed the flaws on their own. If they didn’t and people have to point it out to them, they conceive it as an attack on their intelligence.
It shows particularly in HP stuff, because most people read it as children, and good luck noticing all the questionnable stuff when you’re 12.
As for F/SN, I think the game being an eroge is part of it too. People feels acknowledging flaws in the story is like admitting they were in it for the porn. F/SN HAS to be a perfect story, that’s why they read it, yes, certainly not for the naked pictures, no sir.
Fandoms are dumb. Especially ultranerd ones like BL. They do all right when doing actual work, otherwise should be avoided.
OTOH, Shirou is not sexist (mainly because he isn’t a real person). FSN itself is a sexist, especially in Fate and HF. Forget Shirou, Saber’s Fate alone is more than enough proof that FSN gets sexist as fuck. Shirou occasionally becoming the outlet for sexist bullshit isn’t particularly condemning for “his” character. You don’t blame Peter for Quesada’s motherfuckery (unless you’re a silly).
Also, it’s a japanese porn game. Foresttrees.
…
“Not-so-fun fact:”
But that’s more hilarious, not less.
…
“F/SN HAS to be a perfect story, that’s why they read it, yes, certainly not for the naked pictures, no sir.”
I read it for new girls to add into the group sex chapter for my giant fanfic crossover starring my OC (do not steal).
Also, it’s a japanese porn game. Foresttrees.
Hm, I’d say yes and no. The actual amount of porn in F/SN compared to other, more traditional eroges, plus the obvious disconnect between those scenes and the rest of the writing, lead me to think it shouldn’t just be dismissed as “oh, it’s just a porn game, no big deal”. I think it’s telling that Nasu considers “Réalta Nua”, which doesn’t actually have the porn, his preferred version of the work.
Besides, I’m more concerned about the audience and their reception of the work than the work itself.
OTOH, Shirou is not sexist (mainly because he isn’t a real person). FSN itself is a sexist, especially in Fate and HF.
I agree that the issue is mostly (not only, but mostly) with the work in itself, than with a specific character, but it is entirely possible to judge a character as sexist – see, for instance, Harry Dresden’s “chivalry”, which stands out even when compared to the narrative’s general sexism.
Butcher’s writing is such a quagmire of stupid that sexism drowns under the tide of idiocy.
Crack at Ayako is supposed to be a humor scene and Shirou doesn’t say anything like that elsewhere but none of the girls in the scene who’d normally not overlook this comment reacting to it negatively shows it’s a writer fault. Shirou doesn’t do sexist outside of writing fails, his dealings with Rin or Taiga or Saber when not in Fate or Caster are all all right (tho I dunno what reason Nasu could possibly have for writing his getting pervy about Ilya a couple times and Sakura is yet another quagmire). He’s got the ordinary residual sexism, he’s a teenaged boy, but isn’t routinely douchebagging around like Issei (or Dresden).
…
“I think it’s telling that Nasu considers “Réalta Nua”, which doesn’t actually have the porn, his preferred version of the work.”
If that doesn’t hold for George Lucas, it doesn’t hold for Nasu. Those two are very similar in a number of ways.
If that doesn’t hold for George Lucas, it doesn’t hold for Nasu.
Hah! Yeah, fair enough. But still, even regular F/SN isn’t really a typical eroge and shouldn’t be judged only as one.
Besides, it’s not like even eroges should just be dismissed as “oh, it’s porn, never mind”, especially when taking into account the audience’s reception.
Honestly, I’ve often wondered if wizards and witches in Harry Potter didn’t magically temper with the house elf species to make them SEEM happier. The books make it pretty clear that socialization and abuse is a part of it, with Kreacher, but the way that even house elves in ‘good’ places (such as Hogwarts) act… it hints at something pretty damn horrifying, whether that socialization was carried out psychologically or magically.
As has been pointed out to me at Beast’s Lair, the author’s original post wasn’t actually stickied, the sticky was a different thread which seems to be only recommendations of fanfic authors. My mistake; I added a note at the end of my own post.
I maintain, however, that the overall argument (“This post showcases a common issue in fandoms”) is solid.
Just so you know, there’s actually no such thing as a social more; the word “mores” is plural-only.
Ah, I didn’t know that. Thanks! I’ll correct the article.
Hello ! A comment just to say that I loved to read your fate related articles, it’s really difficult to find analyse that point the sexism tones of the franchise (among other flaws).
When I started the game I was really excited (I love mythological legends from all over the world since I’m 9 y o, so a game talking about various heroes of time&place, with magic ? Hell yes I thought this game could be very interesting and entertaining.) Sadly I quickly have to realize I was going to follow another wish-fulfilment male protagonist so “special” in his “quest” to confront himself and it has sucked all my enthusiasm (despite having interesting settings and roughts characters, they aren’t pushed to their best potential imo because of the author projecting too much).
Your LP helped me to overcame a bit the disappointment, thank you again !
Wrong thread. The LP is by Act, this post is by Spoony Viking, it’s just related to FSN.
Hey thanks illhousen for pointing me this, I didn’t noticed at all that the site publications has multiple authors ! So thanks to Spoony Viking for this article, and to Act for the LP ! PS : English isn’t native tongue !
No problem, it’s a common mistake.
Changing everyone’s username to Farla(Somenumber) would be a great April Fool’s joke.
Also pretty easy, as it turned out. Don’t think it would work on old comments, though.
<3! Glad you enjoyed it!
My pleasure. :-)
this comment on the other site: I always find it a little funny that there’s an argument over whether Shirou is sexist when they make a big point to show how much like a housewife he is.
Honestly? Yikes. Perfectly fine to be a housewife, but saying that since Shirou cooks and clean and maintain his home isn’t sexist because of that… isn’t that sexist itself?