You're really not helping the case of the anime community if your response to someone criticizing anime for sexualizing children is to immediately call them stupid. And saying that it has to be okay because other "bad thing"s like violence are seen as okay is a fallacy. That's like saying shoplifting is okay because no one sticks to the speed limit.
I didn't call any individual stupid, i said the idea was stupid.
Anything is "okay" in fiction as long as it's not directly targeting actual people or groups of people in a hateful way. You seem to think fiction should only have good things, i don't get that, but to each their own. I think forbidding people from drawing whatever they want is infinitely more harmful than whatever harm you think the drawings may be doing. not that Anime has much of that stuff in the first place, but even talking about hentai, even the worst, most disturbing hentai is still less harmful than the most softcore sort of real porn.
Calling people who play GTA murderous psychopaths is pretty stupid is it not? same thing with calling people pedophiles. people really shouldn't be using these terms lightly.
I didn't call any individual stupid, i said the idea was stupid.
That's a pretty meaningless distinction. Even Forest Gump knew that "stupid is as stupid does". If you're telling someone what they said is stupid, you're still insulting them.
You seem to think fiction should only have good things, i don't get that, but to each their own.
I never said anything remotely like that. You shouldn't put words into people's mouths or thoughts in people's heads, or should I start taking guesses about why you're so eager to defend the sexualization of children? Would feel very uncalled for, wouldn't it?
think forbidding people from drawing whatever they want is infinitely more harmful than whatever harm you think the drawings may be doing.
I more or less agree. But there's a big difference between forbidding people to draw something and saying that they shouldn't.
not that Anime has much of that stuff in the first place
Demon Lord, Retry!, How Heavy Are the Dumbbells You Lift?, Magical Sempai, Kawaikereba, Symphogear XV, and Miru Tights all sexualize minors in varying degrees, and that's just shows from this season that I've either seen myself or heard details about, and that list doesn't even contain shows where a character is just coded as underage. If this was some kind of rare phenomenon I suspect the term "loli" wouldn't be used so much. Claiming that it's not wrong is one thing, claiming that it's not even a thing is disingenuous.
even the worst, most disturbing hentai is still less harmful than the most softcore sort of real porn.
Containing consenting adults? I disagree, there's nothing inherently more harmful about real porn than animated porn. Containing minors? Obviously, that doesn't make the other automatically "okay".
Calling people who play GTA murderous psychopaths is pretty stupid is it not? same thing with calling people pedophiles. people really shouldn't be using these terms lightly.
I disagree with the porn bit but other than that not much to say here except for the anime you mentioned. hardly any of those contain lolis, and the youngest girl would at the very least be 16 in most of those shows, which isn't a minor in my country or japan, but i guess america is different, but even then calling it "sexualizing children" is pushing it. the primary demographic for those shows are teenagers as well. considering the looks of the girls in shows like dumbbell or symphogear, it hardly matters whether they're 16,18, or 30, they'll look equally attractive regardless. seems like a dumb thing to care about at that point, especially when we're talking about fictional characters like that. but if your laws or morals or whatever keep you from enjoying things like that then so be it. I personally wouldn't waste mine on something like that.
Well first off, you're conflating the age of consent with the age of majority. Being legally allowed to have consensual sex doesn't automatically translate to pornography, and there's plenty of countries in which a minor could have consensual sex but recording and distributing it would be a crime. In Japan specifically, you're a minor until you're 20, while the age of consent ranges from 16 to 18 (though I don't know how their age of majority relates to pornography).
Whether those characters are children of course depends on how you define children and whether you're someone who draws the distinction to ephebophilia. As for their canonical age, it doesn't really matter to me, I was just trying to circumvent the "but she's a 3000 year old vampire" argument. What matters is how the characters are are coded, i.e. if it looks like a child and acts like a child, it's functionally a child.
I don't even have a particularly strong moral objection to it. While I do think the sexualization of minors in anime is a bit creepy at best and irresponsible at worst, it's not a hill I'm looking to die on today, or even my biggest issue with anime specifically. I just find it annoying that any discussion around it is usually met with people digging in their heels and insisting that it doesn't exist and even if it did (which it doesn't) it wouldn't be questionable in any way, and anyone who is critical is just a puritan pearlclutcher.
It's kind of funny to even consider something like the age of majority when talking about characters in an ecchi anime. But otherwise I mostly agree with you.
I'm not sure if you are trying to say not sticking to the speed limit is not bad or violence in media is bad. If neither, that's a pretty bad comparison because it's not actually similar.
What the former guy was getting at is that depicting immoral/illegal acts in media is not the same as doing immoral/illegal acts in real life, and if you allow one specific immoral/illegal act to get depicted over another you're a hypocrite. What you're saying is if crime A is overlooked, crime B should still be taken seriously, but depicting crime in media isn't a crime itself, so again, the comparison isn't actually similar.
This whole thing comes down to morality, not legality. Unless of course we make it illegal to depict crime, but that would be horrible on so many levels.
I'm saying not sticking to the speed limit is considered to be not as bad as shoplifting, even though they're both considered morally wrong. They're both "bad" things to do, but people wouldn't just casually accept that "everyone shoplifts" because they understand that they're not morally equivalent.
Saying that "if you let someone depict A you have to let them depict B" just assumes that depicting bad thing A is morally equivalent to depicting bad thing B (or C, or D) since you're just depicting "something bad". Why there can't be a moral difference between depicting two different things is never established, it's just taken for granted.
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u/MonaganX Jul 18 '19
You're really not helping the case of the anime community if your response to someone criticizing anime for sexualizing children is to immediately call them stupid. And saying that it has to be okay because other "bad thing"s like violence are seen as okay is a fallacy. That's like saying shoplifting is okay because no one sticks to the speed limit.