yaoi

[toastykitten]

Yesterday on the train coming home I picked up this week's issue of SF Weekly, and was amused to see that the cover story was on yaoi and Yaoi Con, specifically. You know a subculture's hit the mainstream when my sister tells me she and our cousin attended the con. The actual feature article itself was decent (points for mentioning slash), although there were a few moments where I wanted to kick the writer (does every article about anime have to mention tentacle rape? and oh my god women and girls have sexual fantasies! sometimes violent!), and brought up a lot of issues I hadn't thought about before. For example - wouldn't a lot of the genre fall under child pornography? Do you sell them to minors, especially when they're available in the manga section of Borders? (I think the more hardcore are shrink-wrapped.) One of the companies decided to divide into two - an adult version, and a kiddie version to resolve this problem, although I don't know if there's anything they can do about little kids finding their sisters' manga.

Really, though, is any of it different from boys finding their dads' Playboys? Do parents freak out over that?

I think a couple months ago I took a manga away from Kaitlin because there was a rating on the back that said M for Mature. I kind of regret doing that now, though, because now that I think about the stuff I got my hands on when I was her age - it really didn't do any damage to me. The next day I tried to find a decent kids' manga for her in the library, and I got Kodocha, which is a manga about an 11-year-old. I flipped through it, though, and then I realized that I would have to explain to her what a "gigolo" is, and I really, really didn't feel like doing that at all. (And yes, the "gigolo" part is a joke on the main character who doesn't really understand what it means.)

I totally forgot what it was like to be that age. I should just let her read the manga.

Comments

[toastykitten.livejournal.com]

Huh, you must be the only nerd I know without an Asian significant other. :P

It's about the same as VC Andrews (which I haven't read either, but there was a period when my friends in high school devoured every book), but it might be considered more explicit because all that stuff is drawn in pictures. The article mentions one story where a guy gets anally raped with a corncob, something that yaoi fans find hysterical. There seem to be a disturbing amount of incestuous pairings, but I've never figured out why.