rpanons | We mustn't offend the all powerful NPCs!

We mustn't offend the all powerful NPCs!

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i'm new to the thread and that was my first comment actually, but one example you could look at as a place to start is the magazine barazoku which ran from 1971-2008 (very good article here if you're interested http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue12/aoki.html)

the thing to understand about the magazine is that while it was written for gay men to help fight against their sense of isolation by producing a "sense of solidarity," this was not a western gay liberation-style notion of political solidarity. there was no "we're here, we're queer, get used to it" and no sense that gaining representation in mainstream media was what anyone wanted or needed or should be fighting for. instead the goal was to produce a magazine for a niche minority audience who was not trying to change its minority status

when the magazine shut down in 2008, one of the reasons was that by then (and now) the "gay community" was being sold to, and seeing itself through, very segmented and separate types--it wasn't a matter of gay people together, but instead very separate notions of types of bodies, aesthetics, styles. this really isn't reducible to western categories of twinks, bears, otters, etc, where people might consume one type of porn or date men of a specific look but still have the notion that gay politics are gay politics which unite everyone

and in part that's because in japan politics are much less liberationist and much more assimilationist than they are now in the west. while we in the west now hear people constantly talking about things like how there should be gay characters in kids shows like steven universe or whatever, and holding this attitude that positive representation in mainstream media will reduce discrimination and make gay people grow up better able to love themselves, within japan people aren't looking to the mainstream media to do that.

l, g, b, and t people each (and generally not as a consolidated group) want some media that's for them. if it's quiet and they can access it privately then all the better, because people much more often tend to see their sexuality as a private matter, so being discrete is of paramount importance.

you're not entirely wrong, but you are looking at things through a very narrow, outmoded perspective. since the 90s (at least, that's when the topic of discussion was getting press) the idea of having a normalized representation of homosexuality in mainstream media has absolutely been a topic of concern.

let's talk about manga, specifically, for a moment. even setting aside the debates about yaoi that went on at that time, there was also generally the issue that manga featuring gay characters and their stories (outside of geicomi, i mean, so the less sexual stuff) would only be run in gay magazines and any gay characters being published in mainstream publications were either looked at as fetishization (see the yaoi arguments, linked above) or as insulting jokes designed to further characterize queer men and women and trans folk as freakish perverts and weirdos.

a younger generation of LGBT activists in japan (younger than the one that started all of the original geicomi magazines like barazoku or g-men or adonis) was having a much louder call to be seen as normal, not as private or shameful. you're basically talking about a difference in generational queer sociopolitics in japan, and thinking only the older mindset is still valid or present. things have changed, and have been changing since the 90s.

not that I think anyone in this thread cares at this point, but I'd say you're wrong on a few key points here

for one thing, the "older" mindset is absolutely still present. gay people who were born in the 60s or 70s (or earlier) are still very much alive and part of the culture. being over 40 doesn't suddenly mean that your ideas about the world vanish or stop being influential

some members of a younger generation of activists may disagree with those approaches, but that doesn't mean that their perspective is uniformly influential. what's narrow is trying to claim that the "old" has been simply replaced by the "new." it hasn't. they exist as two currents alongside each other, and you can't just selectively ignore the history of everything that came before your moment to overstate the singular power of some (but certainly not all) younger people

you're also really overstating when attitudes started to change. it was by no means since the 90s! the late 00's maybe at a stretch, but it would be far more accurate to say only within the current decade is change starting. there are still a tremendous number of gay people in japan who continue to see their sexuality as a private "quiet" sort of matter. they don't want it to be seen as shameful, certainly, but they aren't trying to live the sort of in-your-face oppositional gayness that has characterized decades of lgbt activism in the west from stonewall on

even events like tokyo's rainbow pride take pains to present a non-threatening, non-aggressive, easily assimilable version of gay people. it's a friendly, demure, quiet march that doesn't even disrupt traffic, and that continues to symbolize the overwhelming attitude of gay activism in japan: we would like to be accepted and treated well as part of the culture, but we are not trying to make waves or rock the boat or be too loud or confrontational about it

when you are talking about differences between the approach to gay politics in the west and the approach in japan, you have to acknowledge the difference that this continued wish to keep things relatively quiet and not troublesome makes. so no, I'm not just talking about a difference in generational queer politics. I'm talking about a difference in two different national queer sociopolitics between america and japan which continues to shape things now

the conceit of your argument seems to be "wanting inoffensive representation of queerness in mainstream media", which you've totally finally admitted is a thing that exists in japan thank you (even if we disagree on when that thought gained momentum), equates to being disruptive. it's not.

no no, you misunderstand, and I think perhaps this is the crux of the issue

"wanting" is a very capacious term

it can include "it would be nice to have inoffensive representations of queerness in mainstream media, but it is enough for now to have good representations in niche media, and when things filter to the mainstream change that's good too"

and it can also include "you writers had damn well better give us positive representations of queer characters RIGHT NOW, and those characters had better have fully realized on-screen love and be directly named as some sexual minority and if you don't do what we want we are going to scream about queer baiting and send hate to content producers all over social media sites and use every tactic we can find to MAKE you give us the representations we want now!"

one of those is a tactic that deliberately aims at being disruptive and combative, trying to disrupt the production of content that does not fit the queer bill

the other of those does not aim at being disruptive, but at a much softer voice request that says "please" and then waiting, potentially for a very long time

I shouldn't need to tell you which approach is localized where, but they are two different approaches, and the difference in tactics (and the history of how those tactics have been used) matters. westerners cannot just go around being tone deaf about things like this, and it doesn't matter if you're a westerner living in the west or one who is living abroad in japan

... so you're projecting then.

because no one in this thread was taking up that second tactic. no one said lgbt groups in japan did. you're projecting a sentiment, a bias, onto discussions about representation that don't exist in the context of this conversation.

this is a fascinating attempt at revisionism. someone makes a point you finally can't come up with any dispute for, and your last ditch attempt to win is to claim that there was never any argument at all and they are just "projecting"

I mean it's not true, but it's still a fascinating tactic

sorry if it's not terribly comfortable to have it pointed out to you that your own western biases have shown through to others even when you can't (or won't) see them yourself. when people smell you stinking it doesn't make it projection just because you don't smell yourself

i can't come up with an argument for it because the thing you claim happened in this thread didn't happen.

"i lost the argument so i'll pretend it never happened"

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We mustn't offend the all powerful NPCs!

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