Based on your experiences in Japan, would you say it's the case that that there are majority populations of persons in both the U.S. and in Japan who would be more than enthusiastic at having every pedo executed on the spot? As in wiped off the face of the Earth, erased from existence? Specifically:

As an American, and a New Yorker, that's certainly the zeitgeist I'm observe whenever any news or concerns in that subject area are raised around here - one of extreme hostility and non-negotiable lethality.

With that in mind, would the "mainstream" Japanese public also be similarly inclined? In other words, contrary to the earlier mentioned "insitutionalized pedophilia", is it instead the case that (based on your experiences and observations) the issue is just as vehemently taboo and despised among the non-anime majority of the Japanese populace?

It would be highly unexpected if this were not the case.

aphasiac Wrote:Proof this is wrong; Go to any videos in the official AKB48 youtube channel and click the "view video statistics" graph underneath. The videos are *always* most viewed by males aged 45-54 and males aged 35-44. Anonymous stats don't lie; their hardcore fanbase is aged 45 and over..

I'd believe that if most Japanese music videos didn't have those statistics.
Look at the statistics for EXILE's videos, for example.
Even for some of the boy bands you can see Males 45-54 taking the third slot.
I understand 高齢化 but I think this is going too far!

The statistics can also lie if you don't see the actual data and how it was gathered.

aphasiac Wrote:The difference is, these middle aged men in Japan buy their records, and go to their concerts and fan-meet-and-greets.

It's ok to find younger girls attractive but this is going far beyond that; It's the obsessive idol-otaku thing that most people find creepy.

hmm, seems like their handshake events are populated by lots of girls.
you can also see the parents bringing their kids.

whenever i went to the store in akihabara there was always a lot of high schoolers or younger.

i'm not denying the existence of the weird middle age people (and they're certainly responsible for a lot of the archaic rules in place) and i would probably guess that they were the main audience in the past, but it's gone beyond that now.

I think it really depends on what you mean by "pedophilia".

I don't think there's any doubt that Japan sexualizes younger people more openly than what you usually find in the US. I've seen people try to explain it otherwise, but I don't find that very convincing. All you have to do is walk into a 7-11 and pick up a few manga weeklies and you'll find bikini photoshoots of girls under 18 (and some over too).

Pedophilia requires pre-pubescents, though, and I don't know how common that is. I guess it's also up to your own judgment whether you think that a post-pubescent girl who is under the age of consent should be appearing in bikini photoshoots and the like, and also whether a man who gets his kicks off of pictures of teenagers is a pedophile (or morally equivalent to a pedophile).

kainzero Wrote:The difference of Rule 34 between us and them is that doujin is accepted. It's not over here and you'd probably get your ass sued to hell and back if you published an ero-doujin with Lisa Simpson.

I've just realised how you interpreted my post. I didn't mean I could find doujin-shi with the メイドクッキー girl herself. When I said 'the kind of character designs,' I meant cutesy loli, and I meant that they were in print by publishing companies, not just doujin-shi, in numbers that can't begin to be compared to Lisa Simpson porn. The innumerable amount of fan art of naked 10-15-year-olds that pops up on Google image search shouldn't be discounted though.

kainzero Wrote:If it were really institutionalized and accepted, I would be able to go on the train and read it openly, without getting strange looks, right?

Why? Porn is porn wherever you go. Wouldn't a better comparison be to say if it's sold in shops, Amazon, online porn sites and generally readily available? If you're repeatedly seeing something without trying, you may develop the impression that it's accepted rather than an obscure oddity for the few who choose to dig it out.

yudantaiteki Wrote:I don't think there's any doubt that Japan sexualizes younger people more openly than what you usually find in the US. I've seen people try to explain it otherwise, but I don't find that very convincing. All you have to do is walk into a 7-11 and pick up a few manga weeklies and you'll find bikini photoshoots of girls under 18 (and some over too).

My g/f has shown me the cover of one of these featuring a girl aged 8. I'd forgotten about junior gravure. It doesn't even need commenting on really. The appearance of the 1位 actress on DMM is also telling, despite the fact that she's over 18.

I don't know how much evidence you need to show that westerners are exempt from any blame in the impressions they have, whether they're accurate for the majority or not (I don't think that's really the point anyway). Bitter 2chers who don't want to be seen as freaks by the rest of the world probably aren't the most reliable source for a counter argument.

Onelove_yo Wrote:Wow, that article blew my mind. Where could I do more reading on the subject?

It's hard for me to recommend a book. I've read a few with some good information, but they tend to veer off on anti-carb crusades that are as bad as the lipid hypothesis they denounce. The answers, what we have at least, are all in biochemistry. How are different kinds of nutrients broken down? How do they affect hormones? How do hormones affect enzymes? If you do a bit of reading along these lines, you'll soon start to get an idea of how it all works, and what a sorry state common knowledge surrounding fat, cholesterol etc is in nowadays.

God there are too many posts to quote so I'll try and simply hit on some points.

AKB and fanbase.
There may be a lot of fans that are young but MAKE NO MISTAKE, the band was built, shaped, trained, and pranced out on stage to draw in an audience of middle aged males. The master mind behind AKB and their spawn is Yasushi Akimoto, this guy created the group Onyanko Club back in the 80's. They had the famous song: Don't Make Me Take Off My Sailor Suit. Situation back then was the same as it is now. Young girls. This is sort of tangent to the issue in question so back on course. Audience target. Akimoto built the group and markets the girls so that they will attract obsessive fans. I mean just note how they do their new single releases so they boost their place on the charts. They put the handshaking tickets in limited number of new release cases which forces people to buy up tons so they can get one. Kids and Teens don't have the money for that kind of shit.

It was already mentioned, but ya the U15 (under 15) gravure videos exist.

Sex.
I think its important to remind people that sex is viewed differnetly in Japan compared to the West, and specifically from the view of the United States. It was never demonized in Japan, it was just something people do and if anything it was a positive thing; where as its a negative thing in the US usually. I mean just note the presence of love hotels, something that would never fly in the states. I think the fact that sex was never stigmatized in Japan is probably a reason why <18 yr olds had such a focus. Because lets not kid ourselves here, men, in particular, often favor young women highly and most girls over 13-14 are physiologically adults. So it shouldn't come as a surprise that in a country where sex has always just been something normal or even very positive; that there will be a lot of porn focused on young teens.

As far as anime and drawn porn goes. I think the steps toward censoring it are pretty uncalled for and stupid. If you are going to make drawn kids (lolicon) illegal then you are stepping into "though crime" territory and that is dangerous.

qwertyytrewq Wrote:

IceCream Wrote:They're not. It really is just another sexual preference...

That's a very, very interesting statement, especially coming from a female such as yourself. Because at the moment, it is officially classified as a mental disorder or mental imbalance or whatever you want to call it. The main distinction that I can see is that the difference is that a sexual preference is "normal" while a mental disorder is "abnormal". I'm not saying I agree or disagree with the statement, just something interesting.

It's also interesting because homosexuality was once classified as a mental disorder, but now it's just another simple sexual preference. And I'm being forced to add a disclaimer: Not that I'm equating the two.

It depends what you mean by abnormal. If you mean "a minority of the population" then yeah, that should be right.

But, in terms of "finding a cure", i think that's about on the level of finding a cure for being gay, yeah.

The reason ANYTHING is classed as a disorder is that causes problems... either for the individual, or society. In most cases, if you meet the criteria for a DSM diagnosis, but it isn't causing any significant problems in your life, you don't have to do anything about it. For example, someone might meet the DSM for one of the "personality disorders", but if it isn't causing them problems, it doesn't matter.

But with pedophilia, it's going to cause problems for a child if someone abuses them. That's why it's classified as a disorder.

qwertyytrewq Wrote:In my opinion, men will be men and most straight men would like AKB48 (or at least the physical appearance of AKB48) unless they're not into Asian girls.

I wouldn't call them perverted, I would actually call them normal.

I'm not saying it's right or wrong for a middle-age man (or any age man) to like AKB48. I'm simply saying it would be more abnormal NOT to like them (the physical appearance).

I think, actually, most people's taste generally does change as they get older. I don't look at Justin Bieber and go woahhhh, hotttttt!!! like teenage girls do. I look at him and think "cute kid". (ok, he's not my taste to begin with, but you get the idea). I even find men in their early 20s less attractive now.
It's not that i suddenly don't like their physical appearance... i can obviously still judge whether they're good looking or not. It's just that i don't find them particularly sexually attractive. I find myself imagining what that 20 year old would look like in a few years time instead.

I'm pretty sure this trend continues as you get older, since my mum sometimes says something about some famous person around her own age, and i just think "ew, old guy".

I understand that men's ranges for this are wider than womens, but it's still not true that it's just stationary and paused eternally on 14 year olds. Or isn't naturally, anyway. Culture does have a part to play in that, i think.

vix86 Wrote:Because lets not kid ourselves here, men, in particular, often favor young women highly and most girls over 13-14 are physiologically adults.

No, they're not. That's exactly why there are campaigns all over the world to try to stop older men marrying girls under 16 / consumating marriages before the girl is around 16.

It's incredibly dangerous for young girls to be sexually active before this age, because their bodies aren't yet ready to have children. They end up losing babies, and getting fistula or other medical problems. Often, they're then shunned by society... and it wasn't their own fault in the first place.

Btw, if you don't know what fistula is, it looks incredibly painful. It's basically when the girl is not mature, and during birth she tears herself so badly that it ends up tearing the wall to her bladder or anus, and she ends up permenantly leaking pee. In some cases it's so bad that it can't be repaired.

Just because a girl's started menstruating, it doesn't mean they're sexually adults yet.

IceCream Wrote:

vix86 Wrote:Because lets not kid ourselves here, men, in particular, often favor young women highly and most girls over 13-14 are physiologically adults.

No, they're not. That's exactly why there are campaigns all over the world to try to stop older men marrying girls under 16 / consumating marriages before the girl is around 16.

It's incredibly dangerous for young girls to be sexually active before this age, because their bodies aren't yet ready to have children. They end up losing babies, and getting fistula or other medical problems. Often, they're then shunned by society... and it wasn't their own fault in the first place.

Btw, if you don't know what fistula is, it looks incredibly painful. It's basically when the girl is not mature, and during birth she tears herself so badly that it ends up tearing the wall to her bladder or anus, and she ends up permenantly leaking pee. In some cases it's so bad that it can't be repaired.

Just because a girl's started menstruating, it doesn't mean they're sexually adults yet.

I guess the point I was going at wasn't so much that they can or can't have babies. But more that their body has started to change from being a flat board, no curves, boy. Into something with curves. So all the physical cues that tell someone that a 21 yr old is an adult are also the cues that girls get around early teens.

So when laws run around and say that "Oh no, you shouldn't be sexually attracted to this 16yr old with tits, in the same way you shouldn't be attracted to that 7yr old that might actually be a boy. I think its preposterous.

... as far as i'm aware, there's no law stating that you can't be attracted to a 15 year old with tits, OR a 7 year old who may actually be a boy. There's only laws preventing you from doing anything about it in either case, for good (albeit different) reasons in both cases.

i was just checking out the fistula thing, and apparently it's much higher prevalence under 19, not under 16... got that wrong, sorry. It has to do with how long a girl's been menstruating though, so it's not a fixed age for everyone.

also, i don't know how much it has to do with a specific physical cue like breasts... it's fairly obvious to most people which girls are young teens, and which are older or early twenties, except in a few outlying cases, regardless of that. I dunno, i think they look really quite different in most cases.

vix86 Wrote:Audience target. Akimoto built the group and markets the girls so that they will attract obsessive fans. I mean just note how they do their new single releases so they boost their place on the charts. They put the handshaking tickets in limited number of new release cases which forces people to buy up tons so they can get one. Kids and Teens don't have the money for that kind of shit.

That's partially true.
There's definitely a lot of obsessive behavior, especially with regards to the election single.
Before this latest single, their prior single had limited editions with handshake tickets and regular editions with no handshake tickets. The limited editions sold out really fast; same with the single before that.
But last year, even I got a handshake ticket from buying a CD at the bookstore in LA since this was before they would fill up stadiums, and you used to be able to buy and sell tickets and even see the same girl 8 times if you wanted to.

I'm finding that one of the main differences between Americans and Japanese is that Americans can bounce from hobby to hobby easily and not spend that much money, where as Japanese people tend to stick with one or two hobbies and focus entirely on that. With that said, even teenagers/college students can afford it, they just pour all their money into this one hobby. I'm actually really surprised how teenagers can spend 1～2万円 on arcade games every week.

vix86 Wrote:Sex.
I think its important to remind people that sex is viewed differnetly in Japan compared to the West, and specifically from the view of the United States. It was never demonized in Japan, it was just something people do and if anything it was a positive thing; where as its a negative thing in the US usually. I mean just note the presence of love hotels, something that would never fly in the states. I think the fact that sex was never stigmatized in Japan is probably a reason why <18 yr olds had such a focus. Because lets not kid ourselves here, men, in particular, often favor young women highly and most girls over 13-14 are physiologically adults. So it shouldn't come as a surprise that in a country where sex has always just been something normal or even very positive; that there will be a lot of porn focused on young teens.

As far as anime and drawn porn goes. I think the steps toward censoring it are pretty uncalled for and stupid. If you are going to make drawn kids (lolicon) illegal then you are stepping into "though crime" territory and that is dangerous.

On the other hand, what is thoroughly demonized in the media at least, is the specter of otaku and anime in general, with a strong association presented between that and instances of pedophilia in the news.

So while the attitude towards sex is lenient, in the context of junior idols and lolicon, it should be strongly hostile, right?

I know it would be strange to suppose this is a topic to ever come up in conversation, but isn't it reasonable to think that a similar manner of hate would be displayed both in the U.S. and Japan, especially given Ishihara, news media, etc.

Can I just dump this link in here,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ephebophilia
It's not paedophilia.. its that ^^ when your discussing pubescents.
It's the reason for the grey area that was the such a point of contention on the reddit site a few months ago.

Also the age of consent / whatever you want to call it, is a fairly recent development, marriage and sex happened much earlier in the past. Some countries (germany? I believe is one) legal age is 14, lots of countries is 16.. America is 18. I'm not saying thats justification for putting kids in bikini's on fronts of magazines, but I'm certainly not going to recoil in horror if a girl legal age in my country is on the front of a magazine rack wearing not a great deal.

A lot of western countries suffer Christian guilt over sex. (I'm a Christian before anyone throws that at me) Japan doesn't have this, judging another country by your own standards is futile and pointless.

don't forget hebephilia... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebephilia
that's the 11-14 age range.

(i don't think many people have a problem with people being attracted to later teens [ephebophilia] (since in most cases, they are either extremely close to, or are already physiological adults), it's ^^this age group and younger that i was more talking about, at least.)

i also don't think it reduces to christian mentalities or cultural relativism. judging other countries by a standard of health and well being of those involved is objective enough, and important.

In the U.S., under 18 = pedo, while this is not technically accurate, it's what near everyone thinks and how the word itself is used. Ephebo and Hebe are almost never used, and certainly never used on broadcast television, at least in the U.S.

I just have this comic image in my head, of someone who thinks Japan is all ok with loli, and then going to Japan walking around with a shopping bag emblazoned with a junior idol or a blantantly sexualized loli char on it and getting glares from everyone and maybe even slapped upside the head from a yakuza or a drunk uyoku dantai member in the back of a izakaya somewhere.

16 is by far the most common age of consent in America, not 18. The age of consent is 16 in 31 states. It's 18 in 11 states.

The idea of 18 being the age of consent mostly comes from movies, actually.

http://whatjapanthinks.com/2009/12/15/a-...rt-2-of-2/

Quote:5,000 adults over the age of twenty were selected at random from all over the country, and an attempt was made to conduct face-to-face interviews with them over the period of the 1st to 18th of October 2009. 3,240 people, or 64,8%, were available and agreed to take part. 53.4% of the sample were female, 9.8% in their twenties, 14.6% in their thirties, 16.2% in their forties, 19.0% in their fifties, 22.2% in their sixties and 18.1% aged seventy or older. 48.5% were employed, 9.9% self-employed, 3.7% in the family business, and 37.9% homemakers, studens, or retired. 74.6% were married, 0.7% were unmarried but living with their partner, 4.3% divorced, 5.7% widowed, and 14.8% unmarried. Finally, 77.6% had children

Q10: Do you think expression of sex or violence on television, newspapers, magazines, internet, computer games, other media is a problem? (Sample size=3,240)
Think so (to SQ) 46.4%
Think so to some degree (to SQ) 33.6%
Don’t think so to some degree 9.4%
Don’t think so 6.5%
Don’t know 4.0%


Q10SQ: What kinds of problems do you think there are with expressions of sex or violence? (Sample size=2,593, multiple answer)
Exposure of such expressions to those who don’t want it, to children 63.0%
Damage to the moral framework, ethical sense of society as a whole 59.4%
Promotion of sex crimes against children 51.1%
Over-sexual objectification of women, infringing on women’s rights 41.7%
Promotion of violence against women 30.9%
Other 0.5%
Don’t know 1.9%

At the very least, these results indicate there is concern on a societal level regarding the relationship of publications when it comes to children.

TheTrueBlue Wrote:In the U.S., under 18 = pedo, while this is not technically accurate, it's what near everyone thinks and how the word itself is used. Ephebo and Hebe are almost never used, and certainly never used on broadcast television, at least in the U.S.

In fact, you'll get called a pedo if you even know what ephebo or hebephiles are, since that means you've looked into the subject. I got weird reactions from my friends when I told them that I was surprised to find that the age of consent in my state was 16 (since I was reading up on the age of consent and oh no now I'm a child molester).

i think there's a clear dichotomy between being called a pedophile for liking high school girls vs. being called a pedophile for doing what jerry sandusky does.

vix86 Wrote:I think its important to remind people that sex is viewed differnetly in Japan compared to the West, and specifically from the view of the United States. It was never demonized in Japan, it was just something people do and if anything it was a positive thing

I disagree: I think sex in Japan is highly stigmatized. For example:
http://www.gng.org/currents/japan/ja_hiv.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/15/world/...all&src=pm
Knowledge of safe sex and family planning is extremely low in Japan, specifically *because* it is not widely discussed in society. China and Korea are the same way, to my understanding - I have read that it is a common feature in conservative Eastern cultures, and it makes it really difficult for public health workers to raise awareness about STDs and family planning.

harusame Wrote:Knowledge of safe sex and family planning is extremely low in Japan, specifically *because* it is not widely discussed in society.

In Japan, people avoid discussing anything awkward or too serious in most situations. So it doesn't necessarily reflect a stigma around sex--it just reflects that it's a bit awkward to talk about.

harusame Wrote:

vix86 Wrote:I think its important to remind people that sex is viewed differnetly in Japan compared to the West, and specifically from the view of the United States. It was never demonized in Japan, it was just something people do and if anything it was a positive thing

I disagree: I think sex in Japan is highly stigmatized.

Maybe "not talked about" more than stigmatized.

I also think that in Japan, they may generally see a wider divide between "bikini girls in magazines" and "sex" than Americans might. Even if someone looks at the bikini spreads in the manga weeklies, that doesn't mean they actually want to have sex with the models. Note how in the actual manga themselves (at least shonen manga), even if there's a lot of fanservice, there will be virtually no sexual content -- even a kiss is usually a big deal.

qwertyytrewq Wrote:I assume you are using a negative tone here. In that case, would you consider this morally wrong or objectively wrong?

I'm not the person you're talking to here... but what exactly is this supposed to mean? Objectively wrong typically means 'not true,' which is obviously not what you mean here.

Ah, okay, I see what you mean. The terminology was just a bit strange to me, since both "subjectively wrong" and "objectively wrong" would be "morally wrong," since morality and ethics is the field you're dealing with here.

[Zgarbas]

qwertyytrewq Wrote:So there's nothing with a person finding younger girls attractive, as long as he doesn't tell anyone, or show anyone?

There is a difference between looking at someone and thinking "hmmm, nice" and acting on your impulse. You can't really blame a 40-year-old man for glancing at a 14-year-old's cleavage, but you can blame him for various activities he can do beyond that.
Acknowledging certain fetishes and dubbing them acceptable will also directly lead to the abuse associated with them. The more people become open about it, the more of a community they will have, the more followers it can get(people who may or may not have had that particular fetish but did not act out on it, etc.), the greater the request for more material, the more material.

Quote:Anecdotal evidence aside, one thing worth mentioning is that males place a much much higher importance on physical appearances (often the sole requirement) than females (who have multiple requirements).

That is totally sexist, btw. It's a vicious cycle, but killing the prejudice can be what kills it. When men are no longer raised with the idea that they should be mindless drones who only care about looks and bootay maybe it will be socially acceptable to be, you know, human.

Quote:Ignoring teenagers for a second, this is why older-man/younger-female relationships are so much more common than older-female/younger-male relationships.

It's not just that males like younger females, younger females also like older men!

Again with the sexist generalisations. Ugh.

There is a variety of reasons why a young female would go with an older man(obviously, it depends on the age gap). Let's be honest here, the main reason why the 20+year gaps don't matter is for financial reasons, though it's not unheard of for men to be the gold-digger. It's just that when a female does it she gets more publicity.

When it comes to a small gap(say, 5 years) it's just that whilst women are encouraged to mature more quickly men are encouragaed to stay forever young. If a girl chooses to stick to playing with dolls past a certain age she is shunned, whilst if a 25-year-old guy plays with his legos he's "young-minded and cool". It's because the mass subconscious still holds on to the idea that women are not naturally gifted and have to work hard, whilst men can take their time. If a girl DOESN'T mature quickly enough she is labeled as a barbie or dumb or whore or what not. So yes, the majority of 16-year-old girls I've met where about as mature as the majority of 20-year-old boys(and neither was too mature, tbh).

Quote:Sure, you can easily tell the difference between a 20 year old woman and a 10 year old, but what about say, 18 and 15?

I can. It's pretty easy. And even if some are more ambiguous than others, once they open their mouths it becomes clear. I may perceive an 18-year-old as being 15, but I never confused a minor with someone legal.

Quote:Perhaps you should've just stayed stupid and ignorant, like the rest of them.

Not sure if you're insulting that guy's friends or a population of over 130 million based on a few stereotypes. Do you have a problem with stereotypes?

Quote:Well, at least there's no Christian influence here, so they don't have to worry about the abstinence as a form of birth/STD control debate.

And we all know how well that's working in America.

Quote:Hysterical Americans these days view anything as porn, whether the person is nude or clothed.

Oh, ok. You really like stereotypes. Christianity ain't the only thing that's pushing abstinence, and Japan has enough things to promote abstinence without Christianity.

BUT HEY GUYS WHY DON'T WE HATE ON TWO STEREOTYPES WHICH NO ONE LIKES BECAUSE BY PUTTING THEM IN A SORT OF HALF-ASSED ARGUMENT I LOOK ALL BADASS AND EVERYONE AGREES, RITE?

Zgarbas Wrote:

qwertyytrewq Wrote:Anecdotal evidence aside, one thing worth mentioning is that males place a much much higher importance on physical appearances (often the sole requirement) than females (who have multiple requirements).

That is totally sexist, btw. It's a vicious cycle, but killing the prejudice can be what kills it. When men are no longer raised with the idea that they should be mindless drones who only care about looks and bootay maybe it will be socially acceptable to be, you know, human.

I'm not saying that qwertyytrewq is right or wrong about this particular claim, but 'sexist' is not the right word. It happens to be true that women and men place different values on different things when choosing mates, in a way that goes beyond culture. Humans are animals, and all animals in which one of the sexes devotes more initial resources to childbirth (in our case, bigger eggs and a 9 month pregnancy) have different goals in mating in order to give their genes a higher chance of being passed on. That's just biological fact.

Sexism, on the other hand, is beliefs, attitudes and institutions that promote an unfair advantage of one sex over the other economically, socially, or politically. It's completely possible that men could place more value on physical attractiveness, and if that were true admitting it would not be sexist. Even if it's not true, saying it is true would be a mistake, but it would not actually be sexist if it were not promoting economic, social, or political inequality.

(I guess I should say that for the record I don't agree with qwertyytrewq's view on this particular topic, at least in the way he's stating it, which I believe is far too strong.)