Now that I read the last bit, I have to read the entire thing (￣へ￣）
I'm so sorry!!!
No it’s no problem (: I never realized the blatant sexism appearing in anime. Rape and abusive tropes have been such a reoccurring theme that I’ve almost been desensitized to it now. It never crossed my mind how people (including myself) have been disregarding the issue in other genres except BL. Thank you for helping me realize this!
you. i like you.
i know that i may not be a woman, but doesn't it bother anyone how young female girls are so sexualized in animes but people just find it quirky and funny? like i think konosuba can be pretty funny at times but how was it funny when kazuma considered touching megumin in her sleep? was it funny because the ending was that she wanted it all along? it only makes me uncomfortable to see this.
honestly with japan, they have the lowest sexual harassment and rape reports around the world... but that's just because no woman ever has the courage to report the incident. i feel like people are too quickly normalizing the sexualization and lowkey rapey media targeted toward female minors and females in general. and i can't understand how a female or male alike could think it's okay to make jokes about it in such a toxic and romanticized manner.
i hope that we finally have more animes that don't feel the need to make a breast joke about a high schooler or have rapey male love interests. and that more BLs and GLs would follow the trend of being a good romance story that doesn't depend on questionable comedy for it's source of entertainment.
Yea I feel like I should apologise again just for that. People tell me it's hard to unsee if I get through to them. Also I usually end up ruining the Usui/Misaki ship for many people :<
Especially after that hickey scene, I just cannot stand that little smug sonuvab...
I mean hentai usually depicts underage school girls (and then they get assaulted and/or humiliated in the most innovatively cruel ways ... I have never been able to do hentai ever!)
People love to throw out the age of consent in Japan is 13. What they forget is there are statutory laws to prohibit their sexual activity ESPECIALLY with anyone 18 or older. I've rarely seen any shojos that did not have an underage relationship in them :<
i absolutely HATE hentai. there's nothing enthrilling about it or enticing. the pure rape and sexualization of the female makes me so nauseous, it always sends chills down my entire body and makes my stomach hurt thinking about how the females are treated as mere cum dumpsters.
even though BL and GL has a lot of questionable scenes, i still prefer it over hetorosexual nsfw. BL and GL has relatively more consent and nice stories than its hetorosexual counterpart. also yeah just because the age of consent is 13, it should never justify child pornography or insensitive depictions of minors. just because it's a law doesn't mean it's right, it's a man-made rule like c'mon segregation was legal at one point too.
also yeah when i watched maid-sama with my friend, i didn't really like the couple. usui just wasn't the type of guy i'd like. i enjoyed misaki's defiance but she becomes so flustered around a "hot guy" but it doesn't mean he's not lowkey creepy.
Usui was gross and very annoying regardless... I really could not watch the show after that beach episode. The whole "let me use sexual assault to protect you from sexual assault but it's all good coz u clearly want me u tsundere" is just awful >.<
It's also true BL/GL have "problematic" scenes but their straight romance counterparts have more of them; I did the math. Abuse, harassment, underage and coercive relationships are more present in magical girl/shojo than in PG to 12+ BL/GL; they are more present in moe, eichi and josei than 13+ to R15 BL/GL with sex scenes; and they are MUCH MORE present in R18 anime&manga to hentais than explicit Yaoi and Yuri.
Also my point is not even to say if these "problematic" things should or should not be there (I prefer not, or at-least not romanticised but condemned) but why people only complain about them in BL alone and the industry only gives trigger warnings or edits in BL alone ... to only complain about "problematic" things happening to men and ignore when the same or worse happens to women is sexist and especially troubling when you consider real-life statistics :<
I need to point out a trend I've noticed within the anime community in regards to BL which really creeps me out... I see it everywhere in conventions, articles, reviews and even the official dubbing and manga distribution. Things get changed or warnings are given to make it more consensual and less sexualised. The reduced sexualisation is due to avoiding fetishistic potrayal? But the same scrutiny does not exist in lesbian and heterosexual sex scenes in anime for some reason. However I want to talk about the other thing; CONSENT!
Now I'm not a big BL (or GL) fan; I've seen some here and there but stories focusing mainly on romance are not my thing unless they deliver in the comedy, tragedy, or crazy story department. But I've been around enough to pick up on the fact that in BL (or non-BL with gay male relationships like YOI), people go out of there way to denounce problematic tropes like sexual assault, harassment and pedophilia... I'm really happy about that but I'm also really pissed off by it too BUT not for the reasons you may think. Regardless of where you stand on blurred lines and flawed characters in fiction, why is it people never kick up a fuss when this shit happens almost as frequently if not more in shoujo, magical girl, josei, eichi, moe and R-18 anime than it's BL counterparts (I've done the math and the romanticism of the exact same tropes are more present) and less so but still there in seinen and shounen?
The industry itself goes out of its way to fix BL anime by changing dialogue, ageing up characters, adding warnings, or refusing to dub (all things that they have done) which actually costs them an active market segment reflecting how much public concern can make a difference. But these concerns only arrive when men are the victims of harassment and abuse but not when women have repeatedly been the victims and/or perpetrators, and this speaks volumes of the amount of sexism involved by absolutely everyone. I mean no one bats an eye when animes like Citrus & Diabolik Lovers (aka Rape Culture: the Anime) are released and swiftly dubbed without changing a thing to be less problematic or adding any trigger warnings at all!!!
I wish this was hypocrisy or a case of conservative straight male execs who just don't get the appeal of the BL genre even though they enjoy sexualised girl on girl anime. I really wish this was people not wanting to appear homophobic thus needing an ethical excuse to dismiss the genre but I was wrong. I have a male friend who goes out of his way to deride all the "toxic things in BL" like the sleeping kiss in Sarazanmai (I think) or the butt groping scene in YOI yet he doesn't care when Mamoru does the same to Usagi (Sailor Moon) or when Miroku does the same to Sango (InuYasah) and they all actually end up together. I gave him a rude awakening when I told him about a new "BL" which was me presenting a thinly veiled Kaichou wa Maid Sama keeping the romance verbatim to gauge his reaction (he ships Usui & Misaki). As expected, he went off on his usual tirade: "why does the genre always go the stalker/harassment route, and having an attempted rape rescue is unnecessary, this is why BL sucks". Then I told him I regurgitated his ship back to him and he was genuinely disturbed that he literally doesn't pick up on these things in other anime.
The more I analyse this, the more I find this is not a double standard, people are actually bothered by these abusive tropes. They just willfully ignore when it happens to women and/or is done by women. So in conclusion, this is blatant if not conditioned sexism, which speaking as a woman, is TERRIFYING! I want to reiterate: I'm not making a case for whether these tropes should be condemned in works of fictions or not, I'm just saying that doing so for only one gender, especially when the other is statistically more likely to suffer these tropes in reality, just really really really really sucks ....
BL may have a rape problem but I honestly think that's because anime has a rape problem which I would like to see changed. At the very least, I want the majority of the uniformed, non-introspective, anime community to stop selectively taking the moral high ground by being vocal on a genre that depicts abusive relationships relatively less than most if you actually add things up!!!
I guess its fine because all women are tsunderes right? lololololol
Sorry for the rant. If you read all the way to the end you are a much better person than I am <3