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Those Wacky Japanese

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08:12 / 05.05.03

Interestingly, I can now see that there is abslutly no reason why I would have thought you didn't understand that.

09:11 / 05.05.03

I just wanted to add that I've been heretofore unaware that the entireity of the Japanese population was into scat fetish. Will make sure to ask my students about this tomorrow. Thanks guys!

09:45 / 05.05.03

Transcultural differences in what provokes a disgust response are interesting. IIRC, in the short C4 series on Disgust, I seem to recall a statement that Chinese or Japanese people would feel disgust at some forms of British cuisine, specifically the disgusting thought of eating cornflakes with milk poured over them or the truly upsetting (to an Eastern-educated palate) concept of sponge pudding with custard. Perhaps echoing my own disgust as a child at the thought of eating abalones, sea slugs, or even oysters.

Clearly, given that I happen across scat sites more frequently than I'd like when surfing fetish sites for stuff that's more likely to float my little tugboat, the scat thing has appeal across many cultures. Have never in my life encountered someone with a "Scat Pride" badge on though. Haven't seen any coprophile clubs advertised amid the gallimaufry of perverted peccadillo pubs and clubs in the gay free press. Ah, the poor jobby-chompers, congregating in clandestine huddles in the utmost secrecy to blow the dosh they've saved on Andrex. Good luck to 'em. Here's mud in your eye!

09:51 / 05.05.03

Eat shit and prosper.

Regrettable Juvenilia

17:27 / 05.05.03

Hey - this is just for Chol and Randy: I'd just like to say that the reason that there may have been less initial objection to this thread than some of us would hope is that, personally, I just don't click on threads with titles like this anymore, and I'm sure I'm not alone. Barbelith has expanded, and sometimes it feels like a war: that's the way it is now, for better or for worse. It's like I said in another thread where this came up: there are certain issues where there are those on both sides of a divide who will never be reconciled, and yet the issues are not self-evident or crucial enough for the voicing of one side of the issue to be grounds for dismissal (for better or for worse).

Which is another way of saying: Hermes Nuclear and all that stuff about the Japanese being "broken" - fucking bullshit of the rankest kind. cusm's topic abstract: what utter shit. You do just have to sigh and see if you can gather the energy to start clearing away the shit again.

17:39 / 05.05.03

its only a war because you feel the need to say ill advised and irritatingly intolerant things like toksik's just consistently full of shit - has anyone forgotten this?

was that fiery enough for you, or were you looking for more aggresive posturing to match your own?

17:47 / 05.05.03

sorry, too much.
i have asked this post to be moderated.
i dont really want a fight with flyboy, this post would probably have started onein its original form.

18:13 / 05.05.03

I dunno, Flyboy, I don't really see a war here, in which we take sides, although I do recognise some truth in what you say. And even though I am fully behind Cholister here, I think that people have some justification for their feelings. Eating shit is wierd, the Japanese are wierd, maybe these are connected, right?

This is badly thought out, thoughtless even, with an unpleasant edge of racial stereotyping and general intolerance.

But people can take a step back and think, they can be confronted and challenged with different viewpoints that *might* make them see things from other perspectives. That's the strength of this place, isn't it? Besides, I'm getting the impression that much that has been written here stems from a gut reaction of disgust more than anything else.

19:22 / 05.05.03

Just thought this Map to human fetishes might be helpful...

er, enjoy.

ONLY NICE THINGS

19:36 / 05.05.03

Personally, I am far more disturbed by the fact that Hermes Nuclear got as far as "well, maybe some cuffs", before remembering that that wasn't the issue. FWIW, I think Toksy has improved a lot since his early days, and is not "consistently full of shit" - although he does tend to post before thinking, if by "before" we can understand that the prejudicial statement that thinking might occur subsequently is not implied.

And, yes, the reason I haven't posted to this thread is that it's just so terribly boring. I'm glad that others have, but when we start with "the Japanese must be so fucked up on account of the Bomb being dropped on them, they have shitting dolls!", not, presumably, having the Japanese to know how popular these dolls are, what section of the population might purchase one, whether more are bought in the regions of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and so on and so forth (unless I am hiseously misrepresenting cusm, in which case yoroshiku), then there really isn't much one can do. Especially when we go on to "But didn't the Japanese invent bukkake?", at which point one's only possible recourse is hapless surrender. Since there is, of course, no history of spuffing on people's faces in the sexual development of the West. That would be wrong. Jesus, I'm beginning to wonder if Hermes Nuclear's cuffs are some sort of sick, wrong cuffs made from lemur cocks or something... perverts and sickos and bears, oh my...

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

19:45 / 05.05.03

Personally, I find the idea of eating shit offensive to my palate. But I realise others don't. I know people who find the idea of eating mushrooms offensive to their palate.

My personal preferences run towards sleeping with women.

BUT I'D FIND THE IDEA OF MALE AND FEMALE ACTION FIGURES SHAGGING A LITTLE WEIRD!!! (Not necessarily wrong, though. Or even quintessentially Japanese.)

ONLY NICE THINGS

20:06 / 05.05.03

Your open-mindedness on the Orient will be your undoing, Stoats. Check out these weird Japanese erotic sculptures. Sinister ancestor-worshipping perverts...

What?

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

20:16 / 05.05.03

Yeah, but action figures. In blister packs and stuff.

(reads back first line of post)

I think my years spent selling action figures may have warped my perception somewhat.

ONLY NICE THINGS

20:29 / 05.05.03

Sick, wrong and ineffably Japanese.

Tom of Nippon, more like.

This article even contains the phrase those crazy Japanese continue to surprise the rest of the world with their bizarre sexual tastes. If you scroll past the Jenna Jameson action figure and the Playboy action figure. Proof if proof were needed.

20:44 / 05.05.03

Fly - that was completely unnecessary. There is no fucking war here.

Take a day or two off Barbelith if you feel like that. You'll normally find people are quite happy to have things explained to them in a manner that doesn't suggest they're self-evident; Chol did so, firmly and, I think, necessarily. I didn't really note any particular friction between her and toksik either, more refinement into concord by the look of it.

This thread is scoring about 80% here for good feeling, ironically given it's (tongue-in-cheek? Not the first one specifically about the Japanese either, I think) title. Especially beyond Cholister's first post.

I'm not linking to the images because I don't want to look at them, though. Anyway, I'm off to barbequote Bobossboy.

21:17 / 05.05.03

Well, this has gone a bit left of field, hasn't it?

For the record, my initial assessment of "wacky" is closest to how I thought of this. My use of "crazy sick shit" in the abstract was meant more in the idiomatic sense than the literal, but we all know how easily tense is often lost in text only communications. Mods, feel free to adjust the language as seen fit there, and apologies for the unintended slants to persons of particular persuasions.

I also really care little about what people do with their fecies. What prompted this post is the tendency of the Japanese to produce some truely notable things in the commercial sector, judgementalism aside. Further examples to those already posted here include soiled panty vending machines and public dumpsters for the elimination of unwanted pets, and I haven't even gotten into the game shows. Those range from the kidnapping of an innocent comic forced to live only on what he can gain through contest winnings to running contestents through video game like obstical courses while men in costumes and flying boulders with cartoony bomb faces painted on them attempt to knock them into ditches and rollers while they jump from platform to platform. And certainly, while other cultures participate in the arts of extreme sex, none have produced such volume of publicly accessible media as have the Japanese, from tenticle rape anime to images of truely artful ropework, masagonist fantasy is brought to new and exciting levels. At the end of the day, they still get the gold star for that.

I personally find it all quite fascinating what their culture can produce. I mean, take those dolls for example. Activity aside, they're beautifully made. We don't normally find examples of such craftsmanship in extreme fetish icons so easily elsewhere, though they certainly exist. I think it all says quite a bit for a culture that can produce such things on such the commercial scale that they do, and you can find both the positive and negative in that. I personally do think they are quite broken in some very hard to describe ways, and the results of this brokenness never cease to amaze me in what it can produce.

ONLY NICE THINGS

21:35 / 05.05.03

Well, yes, but.... that's what Americans look like to the Brits (I was rather surprised to find a number of magazines devoted to consensual incest on the newsstands in Brooklyn). That's what the Brits look like to the French (who believe us to be uptight bondage freaks with a spanking fixation), and that's just "contiguous" cultures. I'm sure you would find Masai sexuality and culture just as peculiar, if it were viewable over the Internet. And none of these four got hit by an atom bomb. Go figure.

21:43 / 05.05.03

I think Toksy has improved a lot since his early days, and is not "consistently full of shit" - although he does tend to post before thinking, if by "before" we can understand that the prejudicial statement that thinking might occur subsequently is not implied.

thanks.
that had me laughing out loud.
not for long, but it was nice.

...when we start with "the Japanese must be so fucked up on account of the Bomb being dropped on them, they have shitting dolls!", not, presumably, having the Japanese to know how popular these dolls are, what section of the population might purchase one, whether more are bought in the regions of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and so on and so forth...

i remeber reading an article(this goes back a few years) about anime and japanese culture that suggested the 'problem' was ours, not theirs. sure, they have a lot of crazy shit for sale over there, and they create some fucked up art, but we often forget the not-so crazy. in our importing tatses, we seek out the tentacle sex rather than the mundane soap operas, the schoolgirls panties rather than the interesting chewing gum.

the author was saying, basically, that our perception of the japanese is mostly based upon what we like of theirs, and our discomfort with that. not the be all and end all of the discussion, but i thought it was interesting.

21:46 / 05.05.03

i think what haus just said ties in with what i just said...

we see the wierd because we like to look for it, yes?

ONLY NICE THINGS

21:52 / 05.05.03

I think that's a very interesting point. The way the debate is sometimes constructed, you would think that the entire cultural and industrial output of Japan is "masagonist fantasy", with very occasional and grudging breaks for food so the toilet scenes can be done later. Certainly in my youth the only importer of Manga in large quantities into Britain, Manga Video, tended to focus on the sensationalist and grotesque - you'd have to look pretty hard to find Sailor Moon or Robotech, say, even compared to the US, whereas Uritsokidoji was one of the first imports.

Point being, if you judge a society by its pornography, or by the things hunted down and presented to you as "weird", you're going to get a warped picture. Britain isn't all blood pudding and femdom, America isn't all the world's biggest ball of string and the World's Biggest Gang Bang, and so on.

22:03 / 05.05.03

I think Cusm's point perhaps lies in the actual production of Scat dolls and used panties in vending machines, and not in the judgement of the body of people that entertain the notions of such things being a/acceptable or b/sexual.

I suppose it is irrelevant whether one likes such things, (in the true cliché phrase - Each To His Own) but what's interesting to me is how a culture defines something as acceptable, and how we each judge alien cultures on the basis of our own. We tend to look at things through the 'acceptable eyes' of the culture we were born into, and don't seem to have any kind of leeway for allowing other cultures (which we don't understand because we aren't part of them) their own idiosyncrasies and behaviours.

In Thailand, for example, it's perfectly proper for a man to have several partners at once before he chooses a wife. In England we would (in the majority) consider that completely wrong. It's *not* though, necessarily, it's just a rationale we are educated into.

22:25 / 05.05.03

Certainly in my youth the only importer of Manga in large quantities into Britain, Manga Video, tended to focus on the sensationalist and grotesque - you'd have to look pretty hard to find Sailor Moon or Robotech, say, even compared to the US, whereas Uritsokidoji was one of the first imports.

and those are exactly the kind of examples they were using. thanks for the memory jog.

(i am now semi convinced that i read all of this in Bizarre magazine, which will be familiar to british fans of the wierd and wonderful)

My Mom Thinks I'm Cool

04:26 / 06.05.03

Just having a conversation sort of like this at a friend's house this weekend. We were watching Takeshi (or somebody)'s Castle remade for TNN by American dub-over as some kind of super extreme contest, and it was so so rad. Anyway one guy argued that if we had grown up in Japan the show wouldn't have been nearly so cool, and we discussed both sides of that...I think what I decided in the end is that I'm glad I grew up in America because now I can rent japanese movies and appreciate them to a degree I almost never find in american stuff. I can't actually see the scat figurines being at work...but when I read the first post my thought was not "sick" but "that is so RAD!".

Anyway...sometimes I totally miss the ingrained whatever-it-is that I'm supposed to have that tells me what's "sick" or not. When I think about cannibalism or incest nothing in me says "yuck", although for health reasons I logically know they're a bad idea. Possibly related to this, I understand easily why pedophilia is bad, but why is it okay to say necrophilia is deranged or whatever? Is there some objective reason that's bad? this is in no way an attack, just a request for some sort of societal info I seem to be missing...

Regrettable Juvenilia

08:58 / 06.05.03

Okay, I feel I need to apologise to toksik: I went for the man, not the ball, and that was out of order. I've put in a moderation request to have my comments withdrawn, and looking back over this thread, I find it hard to see anything toksik said to justify the attack. Sorry.

I stand by my other assessments though. It's not that I think Barbelith *is* a war, just that it can sometimes feel like one. And to be honest, Duncan, that came from returning to the board after a couple of days away, rather than any over-exposure... But I did deserve a rebuke in part.

Our Lady of The Two Towers

11:29 / 06.05.03

I read it as a response to Randy on page 1 who seemed to be suggesting that everyone had looked at the page and the link and agreed with the abstract and had gone away without complaining when it seems that a fair number of the usual suspects here have, like me, not actually checked the thread at all until this point.

I could be wrong. Group huggle everyone!

11:34 / 06.05.03

Wouldn't a group mudlark be more appropriate?

11:40 / 06.05.03

I didn't really put much thought into people just not clicking on the thread, to be honest. It was more just the feeling that if *I'm* one of the first people to point out problems with generalisations in a thread, something's gone quite, quite wrong.

14:00 / 06.05.03

RE: necrophilia...

isnt it 'wrong' because of the taboo of desecration, and a bad idea because you risk disease?

14:05 / 06.05.03

While we're on the subject, isn't the general idea of sticking a blood-engorged penis inside another person's body pretty freaky anyway? You crazy fornicators.

14:27 / 06.05.03

you do what now?

do they actually let you?

14:40 / 06.05.03

yes, desecration. i highly doubt most people die thinking it's A-OK for someone to fuck their dead body. if, however, pre-mortem, they give their wishes, fuck away i guess, tho' aren't i allowed to think it's a little pathological? if i keep it to myself and don't go to, say, anti-necro rallies?

to speak for myself, i didn't mean to insinuate that all japanese people are sicko freaks in bed, if that's how it came across. i'm really feeling cusm's rebuttal about the consumer aspect. i mean, ok, personally, i think being into scat is strange to say the least. cos, well, it *is* unusual, right? but scat *dolls*...that to me is super weird, but as i said before, i think it's weird to have sex dolls anyways, especially ones that aren't even life size.

no, the japanese may not have invented jizzing on faces, but they did come up w/the idea of many people doing it at once and gave it a name, right?

16:01 / 06.05.03

masagonist fantasy

Mmmm. Fish eggs.

17:04 / 06.05.03

Thank you Grant, now I am properly shamed. That should have been misogynist, as in

Although the Japanese practice of cruelty to fish eggs is certainly well known also, the sick bastards

17:13 / 06.05.03

on the whole American incest thing ...

A friend of mine is working on a family health encylopedia for an American publishing company and the publishers have requested a section on incest...

ONLY NICE THINGS

17:16 / 06.05.03

no, the japanese may not have invented jizzing on faces, but they did come up w/the idea of many people doing it at once and gave it a name, right?

And the Athenians, who are the wellspring of the language you speak, the culture you inhabit and the sense of self you possess, used to sodomise adulterers with root vegetables. I'm not getting why inventing one (which appears subsequently to have been taken up eagerly by western consumers) makes a culture freaky-deaky and the other normative. But I can see we're likely to go round and round on this one.

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