good evening everyone. how are you? again, im currently not doing well. after a long time of being in an incredibly depressive slump, i've come around to recover, only for something truly awful to happen to me. and i can't let it go, and it's consuming me.
what happened was: recently my accounts on twitter banned in a triple whammy, 3 accounts gone in a row. so i resorted to my very last account, my twitter account for being an idol reply guy, and followed all my friends there. because i though it would be banned again (as of writing this, it's still up), i asked my mutuals to recommend me discord servers to be in touch with visual novel fans, so i would still be in touch with the fandom and some of my friends too. one of my friends recommended me the towa's atelier server, a slow damage server. i joined, it was fine. it had a dead dove channel restricted to users only with that role, which im completely fine with. i decided to not join that channel because even though i enjoy some aspects of dead dove, i'm a sensitive person overall, with trauma due to being groomed as a teen by a lolicon, and wanted to have fun on the server like everyone else.
one day, someone mentioned kobayashi-san chi no maid dragon. i replied saying how much i enjoyed it as a teen because of the domestic yuri, but i was sad how pedophilic it was, showing children in these sexual scenarios, in a sexual way and as a joke. i mentioned how i really disliked how they played sexual assault of a child character as a joke. the person who originally mentioned the anime replied, "im a shotacon so i can't relate / valid tho / it always happens to lolis so it was #equality to me" and i was just. shocked. by how easily someone can say that they enjoy consuming such things so i only replied "i hate that too it was awful to me sorry". they replied "nah nah its a super valid squick tho". well, at least they have some empathy. i would've left it at that. but, a random person, whom i have never interacted before, sent the following: "more power to shotacons" in a way to mock me.
i said that it was not a squick, but an anxtriety trigger for me. i asked, very politely: please keep such topics on the dead dove channel. im very sensitive to such topics and i wanna have fun on the server. the person who mocked me, replied that they were not sure if that was a rule since other visual novels had such topics. fine. i didn't want to be someone playing the role of a mod, so i just said if that's so i'd have to leave the server for my safety. i also asked very politely, to not mock me for such things. i have my own issues and i know i should be the one to curate my own online experience. i try my best to do so, but this server is theirs as much as it is my space, so i asked politely for a bit of empathy and not mock me when i have clearly shown that i dislike treating such heavy, taboo topics.
someone in the server said to move on, because this person was not mocking me. when they clearly were. then someone else chimed in and said they loved shotacon, even though this entire discussion was going on, in a clear way to mock me as well.
even though i am sharing screenshots, i wouldn't make this a call out post. just making it sure people believe me, and don't think that i am making things up or exaggerating.
i've been very passive about proship/profiction/comship people due to just wanting to be able to talk about my favorite visual novels with others, but it has been doing more harm than damage to me. i've always enjoyed heavy and taboo topics in fiction, and in no way i am in favor of censorship. i love transgressive fiction as much as the next guy. my main issues with these people is: a lack of empathy from them. and also a lack of competence.
they are absolutely adamant about how fiction doesn't affect reality, when, as an artist, you have to acknowledge that all the art you make is supposed to get a reaction out of people. either it's awe, sadness, fear, whatever. art is part of reality. fiction isn't a separate dimension where everything is fine and you can do whatever you want.
saying "it's just fiction" is factually wrong. the movie "birth of a nation" was directly related to the revival of the ku klux klan (CHNW, 2010), jaws is one of the most famous example of movies having an impact, with shark culling programs being implemented in australia (Neff, 2015), among other famous examples (Platt College). this being said, how could someone assume that just because loli/shota is being consumed by adults, instead of thinking "they know how to differentiate between reality and fiction", my question is: how does consuming this type of content constantly does not affect their perception of real life?
when it comes to loli/shota, it has also affected japanese society immensely: LiLy, a popular writer of books for young women - Sex in the City, Tokyo-style, she says - told me about her school days when men would approach her and her friends and offer money for their socks or panties. (...) The fascination with adolescent sexuality is "all about the power that men want to achieve, men who are tired of strong independent women," she argues. (BBC, 2015)
there are many, many articles that go in more depth that i ever could about this topic, but here's a quote from the article "Just Looking: Tantalization, Lolicon, and Virtual Girls" by Shari L Savage: "According to Japanese lawmakers, rorikon anime, a multi-billion dollar industry, will not face legal sanctions until research shows that consuming such content leads to increases in child sex trades or other indicators point to increases in the exploitation of children. Research does exist, however, which ties child porn consumption to increases in the business of the child sex trade, and over 40% of thosearrested for downloading child porn have enacted upon their desires with actual children. Because we live in a culture saturated with a sexualized media, much of advertising is dependent on normalizing the eroticizing of girls, the promotion of innocence as a marker for desire, and the continually moving line of indecency stretches further. Magazines and videos of anime girls in rape or bondage scenarios, (...) What about Japanese girls, who have grown up in a culture in which one in ten adult men admit to having viewed child pornography?. Or, that men look at erotic images of young girls on their phones, or lip through rorikon anime on the subway or in restaurants in full view of children and teens? How does this affect girls as they try to understand their own sexuality and agency? The APA (2007) report on the sexualization of girls found signiicant detrimental effects for girls trying to navigate a world that places adult sexuality on them, around them, and produces imagery normalizing the sexualization of young girls. Popular visual culture tells girls they are objects to be consumed, that their youth and innocence is sexually desirable, and in some cultures, obsession with young girls is not only acceptable but also encouraged. Discourse around sexualization itself is fraught with literature arguing that children are sexual beings and explore their own sexuality on a timetable not tied to a specific age" (Savage, 2015)
it was not the first time i've been mocked by these people. in the past a girl i was interested in, who is a proshipper, told me that the person who groomed me "wouldve been a pedophile anyway, regardless if they consumed loli content or not", when i, the victim, had known that person for a while, and he used loli art and scenarios to groom me. the loli art was still used to groom me when i was young. clearly, this type of art and culture has affected people and society in a number of ways. it is simply idiotic and factually wrong to say that art cannot affect reality, that's not how the world works or will ever work. and i am exausted to see these people act like i am a prude for saying i hate such topics being constantly glamourized by these communities.
i'd like here to reiterate that i am not in favour of censorship. i love transgressive fiction, i love when stories get dark and full of taboo. i know that most censorship advocates are usually on the far right, and by censoring something could lead to a slippery slope of damages specially to queer spaces. and i don't know how to deal with such things, as much i would like for them to stop existing, i know that won't happen. there is a war going on right now, with children dying everyday, and the news aren't reaching the outside world because of a bias towards the state of israel. i would like for the state of israel to stop completely existing and lead palestinians to their freedom, but i can't do that by just wishing. i really don't know how to deal with such things and i don't have an answer.
but i do have a small solution: have more empathy towards someone else.
it's very easy to lose empathy towards someone else online, you can't see them face to face and forget that they're human, too. a lot of the proship people aren't in touch with transgressive fiction communities, but i'd imagine that from my small knowledge of it, i can imagine that these types of people also exist in these spaces. but, something that i've seen from transgressive fiction reviewers is a lot of nuance. these people understand that the fiction that they're reading is taboo for a good reason.
a lot of proship people tend to blame people not enjoying these heavy topics to purity culture or it's influence of christian values in society. in reality, it depends. i'm sure that incest is taboo because of christian values, but i'm also sure that rape, pedophilia and zoophilia are taboo because of the lack of consent from one of the parties and the imbalance of power.
so, when someone says that they're uncomfortable by such topics, be aware that these topics are taboo for a good reason. either they have trauma or personal reasons towards it, it doesn't matter to you. if someone says that they don't like lolishota because of trauma, your first response shouldn't be "but there's people who like such things because they also have gone through such trauma! it's not an excuse to hate it!", and you're right, it's not an excuse. it's a reason. a very good one.
a lot of the sentiment i get from these people, by saying that they love such dark and taboo topics is a sentiment of edginess, specially when others talk about disliking it for personal reasons. there's a lot of "i am better and more fucked up than you are" from them, like being able to read such things without being disgusted is good, and if you have triggers or anxiety you are immediately seen as weak or a prude.
i think a lot of this sentiment comes from the "it's not that deep" side of things, where people are adamant that stories don't have any deeper meaning and what is written or shown is 1:1, or was simply shown because of... fetish reasons? like you can't also analyse these types of sexual scenes. they want visual novels and fanfiction to be treated as valuable mediums, but it's readers do nothing but undermine it; the sex happened because of fetish reasons, trauma from the character wasn't a deliberate decision from writers, etc. quoting this very eloquent youtube comment: "Something does NOT need to be intentional to be meaningful." ("Turn Ur Brain Off" - The Purpose and Value of Media Analysis" by Explanation Point) this can be it's own topic, that i don't think i will able to tackle it right now.
overall, i wrote this to convince those who are on the fence about it, but also try to exorcise this topic from my brain. which i don't think it will ever happen, i am still passionate about it. i don't think i've written enough or disputed their claims enough. i will definitely bring this topic again.
i know my blog doesn't reach a lot of people, im not the most eloquent person in the world either, and neither am i morally above pro-ship people and the likes. i'd like for people to have more empathy towards so called "antis". i have never labled myself that, others have labled me this. i know it's impossible to have a discussion on social media that is level headed, but please, be nice to others. sexual taboos in this day and age, specially in leftist circles, are still here for a good reason. and treating them like they aren't is only bringing harm, and normalizing them only to you and your small community, and not doing any favours to society overall. stop focusing on fandom only issues and advocate more for issues in real life. because, otherwise people will let fiction teach them about society. and fiction does affect reality, you moron.
links for essays and videos related to this topic:
I'm Worried About Cancel Culture - Noralities (Youtube)
The darker side of cuteness - The Economist
The Costs of Lolicon: Japan’s Pedophilia Trade - Megan Sluzhevsky
Just Looking: Tantalization, Lolicon, and Virtual Girls - Shari Savage
The Lolita Complex in the Digital Age - Harrison Smith
- candy
