Lolicon

Originating in Japan, the Lolita fashion subculture is identifiable by its frilly dresses reminiscent of Victorian, Rococo and fantasy themes. The resulting child-like appearance of the wearer, along with the fact that its ‘Lolita’ moniker is in reference to Vladimir Nabokov’s controversial novel of the same name, has fuelled suggestions that Lolita fashion celebrates under-age sexuality. This paper investigates these concerns, exploring the fashion’s primary origins, motivators and principles, as it seeks to determine whether or not it represents a malevolent influence that aims to eroticise our youth or a harmless, cute aesthetic.

This paper was presented to Mechademia’s Vol. 14.2: “New Formulations of the Otaku”, guest ed. Susan Napier, call of papers on January 1st, 2021 and reject by Mechademia’s Editors-in-chief on March 13th, 2021. The publication of this paper is made for the purpose of disseminate my academic work and open the debate on the criteria that these kinds of publications use to accept or reject the contributions they receive. Specially, when a work calls into question the arguments of their own collaborators: Patrick W. Galbraith, Sharon Kinsella and Ôtsuka Eiji.

El presente artículo señala el origen y el desarrollo del 'rorikon manga' como un género editorial propio de Japón que, a lo largo de la década de 1980, dio paso a otro tipo de productos editoriales que representaban de manera sexual a niñas y adolescentes de carne y hueso. Además, discute los procesos judiciales que ha enfrentado la industria de historietas japonesas para adultos, así como las decisiones (respecto a la censura) que se han tomado a partir de dichos veredictos. La propuesta central de este trabajo es que mientras se considere al 'rorikon manga' “pornografía infantil”, las estrategias de internacionalización emprendidas por el gobierno japonés terminarán fracasando.

Giard Agnès, « Des duplicatas de mineures vendues comme "poupée d’amour" : malaise dans la représentation sexuelle », in: Monique Jeudy-Ballini & Martial Poirson (coord.), Hybrid n°4, special issue « Malaise dans la représentation », 2017. Translation in English by Nicolas Cognard and Ana Wolf: “Duplicates of Minors sold as "Love Dolls": Disturbance in Sexual Representation”, http://revue-hybrid.fr
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In January 2016, a “grandmother” starts a petition to ban the sale of child sex dolls, portrayed as “sickening aids for pedophiles.” The media then started discussing the legitimacy of laws similar to George Orwell’s thought crime. What is the point in mistaking a depiction for reality? The petition lays the blame on Takagi Shin, managing director of Trotlla. He is one of the most important love doll manufacturers in Japan. Love dolls are romantic and/or sexual human replicas. The best- sellers look like prepubescent girls. What is the meaning the designers and doll users give to such transgressive representations? By studying the way love dolls are made and used, I would like expose the logic behind this phenomenon.

This petition argues that erotic comics are an important cultural record of the way in which diverse sexualities are understood and portrayed, and sexual fantasies explored. An Erotic Comics Anglophone Archive (ErotiCAA) will preserve these works for research by scholars in many different disciplines.

One of the biggest problems facing anyone researching pornography/erotica or comics, and therefore doubly so for anyone researching erotic/pornographic comics, is finding and gaining access to primary materials. So we have decided to have a go at establishing an archive in the UK to collect and catalogue English-language porn and erotic comics.

We intend to approach a number of libraries and research institutions to host and/or fund the archive. Persuading them to support us will be a lot easier if we an show that there is a need for this archive, so to help with that we’ve started this petition.

We’ve already got this kick-ass logo designed for us by Alison Lucy Stone and meetings set up with a couple of big libraries. Help us out by signing the petition? And if you’d like to be more involved, please tweet Dr Anna Madill @UKFujoshi or Dr Jude Roberts @tangendentalism - we’d love to hear from you!

The simple drawing style of Japanese animated pornography (hentai) and the incomplete messages transmitted through the handling short video clips instead of complete pornographic films or series on the Internet create a space in which users can reinterpret the content themselves and assign it meanings different to those originally intended by anime creators, the subculture or suggested by researchers. Based on the porn categories specific to the hentai genre, and keeping in mind the context and content of complete animated Japanese pornographic films, and the attitudes of their users, I will analyze the perspectives of users of short videos of both animated and feature porn on the internet. Through the use of an ethnotaxonomic approach, cognitive schemes and relations between categories have been uncovered. The self-reliance and distance of “alternative” subcultures represented through masturbation, sexual inferiority due to hypermasculine messages conveyed by big black penises as well as violence which does not allow the victim passive regression represented through the abuse of a teenage girl who is supposedly 18 years old, represent messages which correspond with the yaoi, tentacle rape and lolicon subgenres, as well as a subjective perspective in which any user behavior on the internet is legitimate, because of the users’ view that society doesn’t protect them, but protects those who supposedly do not deserve it. The oppressive force and villain of hentai narratives in pornographic feature films is the hyper-passivity of (not) allowing instant gratification, which aligns with the value assigned to the speed and availability of information in the “virtual” field.

Yaoi/BL Fandom Survey (only takes 10 mins to complete): https://leeds.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/blfandomsurvey

Boys’ Love (BL) is a genre of manga which portrays sexual and romantic relationships between young, often adolescent, men. Perhaps surprisingly, most BL mangaka (artist-authors) are female and most consumers are teenage girls and young women. However, despite a renowned artistic pedigree and global associated youth subculture - consisting of one of the most sexually-benign demographics - BL distributors and audience are vulnerable to prosecution under recent English prohibited images of children legislation (Coroners and Justice Act 2009). English child pornography laws have become increasingly stringent. Legislation was first against production and dealing and then extended also to possession; moved from a narrow, actual-age-based definition of ‘child’ to a wider, impression-of-age-based one; and expanded the type of prohibited image from the photographic to include also free-hand drawings of fantasy encounters which might involve imaginary beings. This paper argues that BL problematises key assumptions of the prohibited images of children legislation in that the law invites a literal, and privileges a singular, reading of such fantasy, erotic, visual texts. The legislation invites a literal reading through implying that given criteria coherent for the assessment of representational texts (e.g., photographs of real children) can be applied also to non-representational texts (i.e., fantasy drawings): specifically, that protagonist age can, within the ordinary everyday parameters of impression, be determined but also that a series of problematic foci (genitals or anal region) and acts can be described void of context and awarded moral status similar to that of the real. Perhaps even more problematic, the legislation invites a singular reading of texts through priming a search for the specified and reified elements by a defined audience (magistrates, District Judge, or jury) under the remit that a certain constellation may warrant prohibition. That is, it alerts hegemonically-empowered or hegemonically-representational groups to a paedophilic reading and disavows other possible readings as irrelevant if these groups can find that reading. Importantly, as an interpretative community, BL fans’ own reading practices and understanding of genre conventions are discounted. Hence, paradoxically, a demographic the legislation is designed to protect (young people) is now, under its auspices, potentially vulnerable to prosecution through their BL fanship.