Welcome to Gaia! :: View User's Journal | Gaia Journals

I am from Kyuushyuu, Nagasaki.
Every year on those two days, we know what it is to be helpless.
To die while burning from the inside. To be utterly beaten, and have no hope to what tommorrow with it's poisonous, polluted water will bring. We have old men and wemon that will undoubtedly by dead in the next five years tell us how they ran, how they were struck senseless with fear, how they could do nothing but hide, how they saw their older sister rot away in a matter of minutes from fire that came from the sky.
Did they deserve this? Because their government had decided to do what everyother country was doing either economicly or millitarily, or religiously? Did they deserve to see their homes turn to ashes, to see their proud landscape ripped apart from some scientist's curiosity?
Blood for blood, some say, but when will the scales balance out?
Some people have a way of saythings, like, improper conduct in war. As if it is all right to bomb a base with people in it, or to kill thousands of humans on a battle field because it is a dying ground.

Countries continuously blame the losers for their pitiful, wandering conduct. In Japan, we are screamed at by China and the world for visiting our poor, dead, misguided ancestors at their lonely grave at the Yasukuni Shrine. In America, where I occassionally live, I am told, "We won the war" "Go back to pokemon-land", and "We'll drop another bomb on Tokyo".

Japan is seen as deserving the Atom bombs, but America is in an outcry over 9/11. People regularly tell me that dropping the atom bombs were the right things to do, but I receive death threats and decilinary action if I mention that the treatment of the middle east by America may have caused the attack on New York.

Would the reaction that we deserved it be the same if a third world country retaliated unto America?

Does the end truely justify the means? Blaming the Japanese people, saying we deserved it, is senseless. Seeing the tauntfull, hating faces at my school, I wonder how many of thow white faced children are hated by the countries America has subjugated?

Even if is not in text books, we still remember. My grandmother shakes her head at the stupidity of humans when it is mentioned, and the tears that fall from the corners of her proud eyes is evermore a lesson to me than the dehumanizing words upon a textbook could ever be.

Think "well, duh!"? Well, you'd be suprised.

I hear people ask why the majority of us are supportive of non-heterosexuality around here, and a common response I hear is "well, there are a lot of people here, and a great deal of them like yaoi, and-".

Stop there.

What does liking yaoi have to do with tolerance?

I am quite frankly afraid of the number of people who claim that yaoi is "realistic" or is the same as "real life homosexuality". It isn't. In fact, the majority of yaoi is full of stereotypes. A large number of gay men in Japan hate it.

Stereotypes?

Well, let's start with the entire "seme/uke" concept. For the most part, it's pure bullshit, and is seems like an invention of heterosexual women who subconciously feel every relationship needs a man ("seme" wink and a woman ("uke" wink . It assigns men the gender role of being the strong, dominant one (often an a*****e who rarely expresses emotion), and the woman being the weak one who depends on him.
Even worse? The "height rule". It dictates that, in every gay relationship, the guy who's taller is the one "topping" the other. So, in other words, if you're short, you need a big, strong man to take care of you; and if you're tall, you're the boss.

Then, the fact that many fangirls seem to assume that a**l sex is 100% necessary for gay men to be doing, while statistics show that gay men are far likelier to be performing oral sex. They seem to think that all gay ever do is blow each other up the butt and that only gay men ever do it. Um... wrong? Both heterosexuals and gay men have a**l sex. Even lesbians, with the presence of toys, can do it.

Another thing which makes me sick are all the "Love Is Love" banners. The concept in itself isn't bad. Some of the couples in them and series in them are. Gravitation, anyone? The anime obviously promotes abusive relationships, although the manga isn't nearly as bad. I am not really talking about the manga, though, because most of these banners are pictures from the anime. Abusive relationships... I'm sure that is really going to encourage people to support gay rights and gay marriage. It's really going to give people a good impression of us.

One decent rebuttal I received once is that there is a whole genre of boys' love manga in Japan based off the idea that abuse makes two people "grow". Now, I don't know about you, but if my boyfriend beat me up, or if I was raped, I certainly wouldn't hug him and love him forever for helping me grow. Abuse, under any circumstances, is still abuse. No one deserves it, and no one has the right to abuse. Maybe his abusing me taught me a few things about the world, but would he be able to get off easy in court by saying that he was beating me up in order to help me grow? I don't think so.
------
<b>Edit:</b> Related to this is the portrayal of rape in a large number of yaoi fanfiction. Big, bad seme rapes little, weak, uke. Little, weak uke falls in love with his rapist. He confesses his feelings to big, bad seme. Cue a "OMG twwu luuuuv!" relationship. This is offensive to just about anyone who actually has been raped.
------

There are examples of healthy gay male anime/manga pairings which could be used in these banners instead, if you really feel it's necessary to include yaoi/boys' love couples in your images. There is nothing wrong with the relationship between Touya and Yukito in Cardcaptor Sakura. There is nothing wrong with Kunzite and Zoicite in Sailormoon. Those are just two examples.

Then... we have some of my favorite people. Fangirls.
I don't hate all fangirls. However, there are quite a few which piss me off to the highest degree. They preach about being tolerant, yet many of them say "ewwww... heterosexual relationships are icky, icky, icky!", or they hate almost every female character there is for being "annoying", "whiney", or "dependant" (and are fast to bounce around and yell "kawaiiii!!!!" when a male acts the same way). Heterophobia and misogyny. Great job, girls. Great job.

Do I have a problem with yaoi? No. Am I some gay-basher out to call all of you idiots? No because I am not exactly heterosexual myself, and I am trying to give you some food for thought.
What I have a problem with is the people who say "OMG i liks yaoi luv is luv support gay marriage!!!!!1111!". Saying yaoi shows your support for gay rights is like saying a man masturbating to lesbian porn is showing his support for gay rights.

I've never seen a man claim he was supportive of gay rights because he likes lesbian porn, yet people claiming they support gay rights because they like yaoi or boys' love exist in the thousands.