Dolls, Desire, and the Perception of Reality

What I was refering to, was that several people came off as rather judgemental about yaoi. The complaints people make about yaoi, are the same complaints that could be made about a lot of erotic art/writing, since the genres of sex and romance are often unrealistic in the way they portray both men and women. Not that there was going to be a sudden push to ban all yaoi

I can understand a gay person looking at yaoi or a yaoi styled photostory and thinking "wait, that's not how it really is!" However, that's not really the point of the whole thing. And while I have heard the anti-yaoi comments from the gay community before, I have also heard some gay people say they like it. It all comes down to what we like individually, and we all have the ability to hit the back button on our computors, or as someone else said, put the book down. However, blaming a particular genre for single handedly screwing with the rights of gay people is going a bit far. I read the exerpt from the article that was posted, and I found it hard to take it as seriously as I might have, since the writer seemed to be bashing erotica and porn in general. Adults tend to have unrealistic or odd sexual fantasies--that's just life.

Edited to add (because I forgot, it's been a long day)--also, homoerotic art and writing has been around long before yaoi hit it really big, and not just in Japan. Look at all the fanfic and fanart produced just in this country that is boyXboy in nature. This is something fairly deep seated that's been going on for a long time. And naturally, it will also come out in some people's dolls--especially when many other types of dolls do not seem to have the prevelance of really good looking guys that exist in the bjd world.

 

Yes, that's what I would have said if I had gotten to my computer before you did. ;P

Although I don't always have faith in humanity I have enough faith to believe that it doesn't get all of its info on any particular subgroup of society from porn. Or from doll stories. Goodness I hope not.

I have had a gay man say point blank online how offensive yaoi was, that gay men weren't around to be women's stereotyped fictional playthings. It sounds exactly like complaints women have about girly magazines, and yet I've never met a man who's been confused because I look and act nothing like Penthouse.

 

All my kids are related to the fantasy realm. I make their characteristics nothing like humans. Now that I think of it, the vast majority of my OCs are non-human.

Real life is a bunch of drama, so why can't dolls' "lives" be full of drama and such too?

I don't think doll characteristics or styles should offend anyone. For one, they're just dolls. It's not like they say "You must be like me!"

I'm not trying to start any arguments. I have a large variety of friends, and most see nothing wrong with my dolls. Most likely because my dolls are non-human characters.

I really don't think homosexual couples should be offended by yaoi or yuri. They may be all like "that's not true, bla bla bla" But if they don't like it, then they shouldn't bother to bring up the topic or protest against it.

 

I think you're right, and it's pretty much the exact same thing as women's complaints towards erotica/porn for guys. I wonder if porn for gay men is actually realistic--though I can't say for sure, somehow, I doubt it. Unrealistic pretty much goes with the territory.

And speaking of unrealistic--when it's dolls acting out the story, it does add a layer of unrealism automatically. While dolls, their characters, and stories can be a reflection of their owner or the real world, the fact that their dolls further seperates the viewer from reaiity. There will always be limits to what or how well we can depict things. Whether it comes down to being able to find find the right props, position the dolls realistically, make the story fit into what is basically a comic type frame, not to mention that dolls are, well, dolls afterall, photostories aren't quite the same as watching humans act something out, and the responses from viewers may not be the same either.

 

People shouldn't bother to protest about things that offend them?

Guess that whole British Tea Party thing was a mistake then.

The playgirl argument; all right I can accept that. But hundreds of women protest each day about porn - the feminist movement protested about porn.

Look. I don't want to tell you you can't look at yaoi or slash or anything that you like. I just want people to acknowledge that the fantasy that some people have about other people can be offensive. I feel like a lot of fangirls seem to take for granted that some people will feel that they are being stereotyped by them.

And I don't want people to think that I don't think they should look at whatever they want to look at - but that this fantasy of perfect slim and trim and angsty actually does bother people, and just like you have a right to look at it, they have a right to protest about it.

 

^ Yeah because we all know how well manga and anime portray the real world what with all the gundams, persocoms, magical girls and boys running around with a girl for their right hand I encounter on a regular basis. lol.

 

(OT!) Yay! Midori Days!

The thing is, porn offends people. It just does. Sex is one of those subjects where people can't help but have strong opinions: arousal, disgust... big, emotional reactions. Or no reaction at all, of course, but you get my point.

Just as there is porn for almost all tastes, there's porn out there to offend just about anybody, too.

Some people aren't bothered by anything much, others get upset about seeing certain things portrayed.

When you think how many wars are fought over religion, & punch-ups started over sport, it's hardly surprising that sex makes for protests & angry articles.

What I don't understand is why anyone is surprised by this.

It's SEX. An awful lot of people take it way too seriously.

And I do understand that being a gay person in a conservative country is harder right now than being one where there is a wider portrayal of gay people in the general media, so I'm not entirely unsympathetic to the anger of our quoted Japanese gay writer, just feel his anger may have proven to be out of proportion by this day & age.

Anyways, enjoying the debate, & it's put me back in touch with a dear old friend, who also commented here, & I haven't seen in... oooh... fourteen years?

Lucy

 

I tend to want to create fantasy characters - elven princes, fairies, rags-to-riches peasant girls, etc. - I've been doing it for years. This does not mean I think that they exist. I don't search the English country side hoping to find clues to a magical world (for one thing, I don't live in England xD), I don't leave bread crumbs out for trolls, I don't expect prince charming to show up at my door with a bouqet of yellow roses (don't I wish, though!).

I do admit I put a lot of my ideal "moralisms" and "characteristics" in my dolls. I'm sure one of my future dolls will be a lot like my ideal boyfriend/husband - but as I've never experienced romance, perhaps I'm a bit warped and don't know what it's "really like" in the dating/marriage world xD

 

Hehe, one of my dolls looks a little like my husband, I'll admit.

If you ever want to send me on reconnaissance missions to scour the English countryside for magical creatures, I'm your gal!

Well-known for skipping widdershins around fairy mounds with white roses, & leaving jelly-beans out for the boggarts...

Lucy

 

Heh xD I know that I could do all those things for fun, but I wouldn't truely believe that I'd find something, or if the food was gone the next day a fairy took it - but I think, in the back of my mind, I would hope! I'm pretty much a little kid even in my "old" age

 

I have BW dolls, girly boys, and BW girly boys. They do sort of represent what I think is ideally attractive, but I don't see what's wrong with that. I don't feel I'm living vicariously through them, I just have a set of esthetics I like represented in my dolls. My drawings are mostly of people with similar physical attributes to that as well, but I find real people more attractive in that they are real. Does that make sense? I guess what I'm saying is as long as it doesn't hinder the ability to appreciate the beauty of real people, having unrealistic ideals that you can express in other ways is fine.

 

My dolls are my fantasy. They can wear dreads, have ghost eyes and be elves while I'm living in my conservative middle-class small town life. They aren't me - but they are whatever I can think of! ('scuse - sitting at my desk and have just drunk a bucket of coffee......)

 

Well, Archangel_Raphael pretty much summed up what I've been thinking. People don't usually take well to having something as personal as their race, nationality, gender, religion, or sexual orientation interpreted into a mere fantasy.

I've already said my piece about cultural appropriation in the "pet peeves in the BJD world" thread. If most people can agree that mindless Asiaphile fangirling and ignoring historical inaccuracies are stupid and laughable, then I don't see why it's such a big deal for that Japanese intellectual to take offence to stereotypical depictions of gay men. I know many BJD owners here are put off by photostories where gay dolls are serial ass bandits who wouldn't know what a real relationship was if it sod - well, I won't go any further.

This is a hobby that allows people to anthropomorphize the best of their imagination, and at times, the worst. The common "it's only a doll" counterargument can only go so far sometimes. Otherwise, we wouldn't be so adamant on expressing our standards of normality and deviance, nor would we have the 45/60 discussions, our desire for dolls that aren't so skinny & stylized, the forum ban on certain subjects, etc.

And unless robots and persocom are fighting for their civil rights in real life, I don't think their depiction in anime or manga is relevant here. Video games, movies, and books all feature things that aren't real, but that doesn't stop people from getting into debates about realistic characterization or syrupy Mary Sues and whatnot.

 

Very interesting bit of information. When you think about it, who would be helped holding real people to anime or manga standards? Even allegedly mousey sidekicks are often above the average. Your post brought to mind a director who, in one of his movies, portrayed an old couple making love. There was quite a bit of shock according to the director; people just did not want to think about that sort of thing.
Society seems to tell people in many ways that only beautiful people are worthy.
I'm not sure a doll reflects an owner's perception of reality. Maybe it reflects a person's ideals? Or how the owner wishes the world to be? Sometimes a doll could be just a doll.
And so..if someone thinks Beauty White is an ideal or something to be glorified, or thinks the same of the Girly Boy, I have to think that is their right and opinion. We all have different standards.
People really can't claim to know what is going through a person's mind who only prefers BW dolls, unless that person explains.
My life is no waking nightmare but I would rather not have my doll reflecting my current reality. We do think a lot alike, however

 

It should not matter unless the doll owner is starting to assign facets of the doll reality to human reality where it makes no sense to do so. I.e. you start believing everyone's a gay elf in disguise.

My dolls somewhat reflect my own reality. (When I am referring to aspects of the dolls' personalities and say "dolls", I mean the characters I have assigned them, kk?) I only have one angstbucket character and it's not something that gets too focused on...my dolls are happy, well-adjusted types, even the children. Heck, I have a character from Interview with the Vampire and even she has been adjusted to be a lot less of a whiny brat. (And she is NOT BW, either, tsk tsk me.) I have one full lesbian couple and two more dolls who are waiting for their girlfriends to come--I am a lesbian myself *shrug* One of my dolls is based off one of my friends. I have a real pet rabbit, and two rabbit dolls. In this way I suppose my dolls reflect my reality. But then again...if you look at them you'll find that only four out of sixteen have a "normal" hair colour--most are wearing shades that don't appear in nature (or in the case of my white-haired dolls, shouldn't appear so early in their lives). I have one beauty-white doll with a default Gothic faceup who looks like he's never seen the sun. I've never explained why that is, either (the fact I dress him in suit jackets and whatnot means he can resemble Vincent Price, so he gets a pass on everything due to that!) Everyone gets along and doesn't mind anyone else's quirks. (You try to find that in any group of sixteen humans.) The rabbits are anthropomorphic and speak. Reality? Not so much. But they're my toys and I can do whatever I want with them.

When I start believing my real rabbit can stand on her hind legs and demand to wear a dress and to have a cup of tea, and get angry when she won't, then I'd say it goes too far. If someone else starts seriously believing that you have to be a femmy emasculated floppy-wristed thing to be a gay man, well, fine. Just don't start shrieking at real gay men who don't fit the stereotype, you know?

Beauty white and the pursuit thereof has always been a fixation in Asian culture. How we choose to take it is our own responsibility, both individually and as a group.

 

I think it's impossible and unfair (putting the debate of girlyboy gay man and BW being the way to go aside) to make such a general, broad psychological statement about everyone's reaction to their dolls. It's probably safe to say that for some people, their dolls do reflect their perception of reality. The boom in minimee scuplts based on various celebs/characters I think reflects that little desire to 'possess' that we all get when we get fixated on an unattinable figure. It is, perhaps, part of the same reason why people by action figures based on stargate characters (for example). But again, that is another broad, unfair generalisation as to why people get these heads cast.

However for many others the dolls can be pure escapism to a fantasy world, or collectables, or just other methods of being creative and stretching their skills.

 

I don't think it's right to ask ANY erotica to carry the burden of social/political responsibility. The main point of Fantasy, in itself, is that it does not carry the burden of Reality. Nobody asks men's girl-on-girl porn to serve as correct, accurate depictions of lesbian couples, or expects it to provide role-models for actual gay couples. Nobody asks hentai to be a little more realistic in its depictions of male-female relationships. But, laughable as it may be, that's how it should be. So why single out the boy-on-boy stuff that's written by women for women, then? Why is yaoi expected to transcend being mere erotic entertainment?

Similarly, I don't think it's right to ask a doll collection to carry the burden of exact representations of any particular race (or species, for that matter). You can't make people want to choose different colors/types for their collections... and you can't draw an accurate conclusion of their cultural worldview from the colors of the dolls they choose.

 

omg I made a post about this and it got deleted before I could send it. It was so long too! Damn firefox! DAMN YOU!!!

 

Expression is a two-way street. People have the right to produce depictions of x scenario, and the viewers have the right to respond that there's only so much reality you can skew before it becomes downright objectifying and offensive. Social/political responsibility is exactly why privately owned forums have rules against posting questionable material (especially regarding children), why racial caricatures and fantasies about "yellow fever" are looked down upon, etc. That responsibility crosses into real life and law as well, because expression without consideration for consequences is akin to yelling "fire" in a crowded theatre or doing disruptive/obscene things in public. Both of which are illegal in most places.

Yes, they do. You cannot throw a stone in social awareness circles without hitting something about how porn is demeaning for all participants, and to female participants in particular. Feminist porn is a genre of its own in response to all that. Just because someone brought up a Japanese anti-yaoi gay activist doesn't mean that yaoi is held up to a different standard; that's just being relevant and specific to a point in discussion by providing direct examples.

With the exception of a few shows, realistically portrayed gay and lesbian relationships are still hard to come by nowadays. If that's all people have to form their views on homosexuality (and face it, who goes out of their way to access heavy academic literature about the LGBT community), then things like a steady stream of badly done yaoi can limit their understanding of the subject matter. We take often activism for granted without thinking of places that simply don't accomodate quick social changes. People today still hold views like "being gay is a choice, it's a disease, etc" simply because they don't know anything else. Then there's the whole [OT] can of worms on marriage rights.

And if you look at most gallery art on DoA, the outrageously made homosexual relationships are mostly between males anyway. There aren't that many depictions of lesbians and from the few I've seen, they're relatively tame and palateable. Hence, the expected attention on yaoi and feminine/promiscuous male dolls.

I don't think anyone advocated buying ethnic-looking dolls for the sake of being PC. It's your money and your choice to buy BW/tanned sculpts or whatever. However, accurate representations of a race/ethnicity are an entirely different thing. If you can't research and do it right (as in national costumes, histories, and names for dolls), then don't bother doing it at all because it comes off as treating an entire culture as a mockery and a plaything. The most often seen motivation for dressing up a doll in kimono is just "Ooh! Pretty!" without consideration for how it's properly worn, whom it's meant for, the social context behind it, and other details like that.

 

so im supposed to know the history of the kimono before i make one for my doll because it looks nice? ^^; my dolls arent real and neither is the culture behind them. they come from the land of fruit in an alternate universe. if I were to wear a kimono i think what youve said should be researched - i wouldnt just randomly wear a cultural garment! but when it comes to fashion and fantasy, i dont know, im not feeling its the same. if you flick through fashion books theyre are many designs which are twists on a cultural garment - to look nice

my dolls are fun escapism, which have a cute backstory - i dont want to traul for hours on the net when i consider if what theyre wearing is done corectly, because yeah - the land of fruit actually, doesnt exist, and there, they might wear their kmionos backwards @__@

i find it odd how people are so quick to cry how unreasistic certain things are or ethnocentric - "everyone isnt white" you know what? people cant change into sailor senshi either. i dont mean that to sound derogatory, but until a show claims that it IS FACT, or start claiming things as truth or offensive, i dont see how thats offensive.