what subs are you using? it was clearly conveyed in the version i watched
My subs are for example constantly translating 'Eh?' to 'Picture', 'Touki' to 'transparent', and switching 'I' and 'you'. I try not to read them too much, because most of the time they're wrong.
If the subs on your version seem correct, could you tell me what wording they used in the section I translated? What exactly did they convey clearly? Ace or not?
So the English subtitles on this show are not very good and my Japanese is rudimentary. Can someone who is better at Japanese help me out?
In ep 4 around 9:30 - 9:50, does Onda essentially tell Sakura that he is asexual? If I translated this correctly, I think he says something like:
"Hm. 'Normal'... If I got a partner, I don't think I would want to touch them. I can fall in love, but I can't touch them. So I couldn't date anyone who doesn't understand that. You could say that isn't normal, but that's my normal."
Is that about right? And if it is, does that hint at asexuality or am I seeing what I want to see?
He's using the word '觊ăă' for 'touch'. I Googled to see what that word's cultural connotations are. It appears to mean 'light touch', and I don't think it's commonly used as a euphemism for sex (but I could be wrong). So maybe he's talking about touch aversion instead of asexuality? But I guess if he can't hold hands, then other forms of touch are also out of the question.
Also Stuck with me 3 minutes 2 love My only sunshine Somewhere somehow Buy my boss Shades The Dragon house Kanojo no kuchidzuke kansensuru libido Be ordinary Flat girls No Romeo Poisonous love Khom Khlang I'm your moon The last case
It seems pretty obvious to me that Tin and Kawin are going to end up together.
But also yeah there's a bazillion BLs and only in the past year we've finally gotten some hard-fought GLs, so it's a little rude to focus on the BL part as if women don't matter.
Why GL dramas are less popular than BL ? Because girls like to watch BL or any other reason?
GAP the series, the very first full length GL in existence, outperformed literally all BLs in terms of views (yes really), so I wouldn't say GL is less popular.
To check this for yourself, go to the YouTube channels of Idolfactory, GMMTV, MeMindY and Mandee Channel, then sort their videos from most to least popular, and you'll see GAP stick out far above literally everything else. Add the channel NineStarStudios to the list, and you'll see that the GL 'Blank the series' rivals even the most popular of BLs, meaning, GAP wasn't a freak accident. That level of success is reproducible.
GAP aired in late 2022, early 2023. Full length GL dramas are a very new phenomenon. GL audiences haven't found their way to kisskh yet, so on MDL GL gets less engagement than BL. New GL dramas still have to rely on the YouTube algorithm to find their audience, while new BL dramas can count on BL fans checking MDL, twitter and whatever else to find out about new BL dramas. That's why BL has a consistent audience for every release, while GL audiences show up more sporadically. For now.
It is true that there are fewer online authors writing f/f ships than m/m ships. The previous commenter said sexuality was the difference, meaning, there's fewer lesbians than straight women. That's not the reason, given the statistics we have about m/m shippers on the main shipping website in the west, AO3 (source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkD0m38E1Wg).
In sheer numbers, most BL fans are bisexual women, then asexual women, then straight women only in third place, then everyone else, e.g. lesbians, queer men, trans people of all varieties. Obviously, neither bisexual women nor asexual women have a sexuality-based reason to prefer men over women. Also, far more lesbians than you'd expect are into BL.
The YouTube video I linked above is a video essay (which I recommend watching) about why fewer f/f ships get written than m/m ships. There's actually a lot that goes into it. Misogyny and the avoidance thereof plays a big role, in several ways.
The people who prefer f/f ships over m/m ships seem to prefer video over written media. I have theories as to why, but they're only theories, so I'll keep them to myself.
This year has a lot of LGBT Thai dramas. Is it because same-sex marriage was legalized in Thailand?
No this isn't new. The rise of GL is new, but this volume has been the norm for BL since 2020.
The reason GL has been popping off this year is because Thai companies started mass producing GL after the gigantic success of https://kisskh.at/707221-gap in late 2022. Full series production takes a long time, so the GL wave is only now just starting to really hit. Far more GL has been announced for 2025 than 2024.
GL is snowballing much faster than BL because the BL industry is an easy template for GL to follow. All the infrastructure is already there. All they needed to do was add some female stars to the mix. Also, GAP was a much larger success than Sotus or Love Sick, in terms of views, so the financial incentives for Thai production companies to jump on the bandwagon are much larger.
I think I'd switch cause and effect. It's more likely that the volume and popularity of gay media in Thailand contributed to its legalization of gay marriage. But then again, the gay media was probably only possible because there was already a high degree of acceptance, so it's a positive feedback loop.
OMG please let this be a GL. If it it then it would probably be a first for Korea, unless there are Korean GL…
I don't think there's any full length full budget Korean GL dramas (and if this 'The Two Women' Drama Special ends up being GL, it's also only 60 minutes long), but there are some shorter indie GL dramas:
It seems to me that you are putting a lot of effort into finding reasons why you don't need to take my words seriously. I haven't been responding to it much, because responding to ad hominems is usually a waste of time, but in this case there really is a pattern I think you should become aware of.
First you assumed I was a conservative who'd never travelled, especially not to Europe, while in reality I've spent 29 of my 30 years on Earth in progressive social bubbles in Amsterdam (and am very thankful for that), and studied at Zhejiang University (Hangzhou, China) for the other year, befriending fellow students from every continent.
Then you assumed I'd never been to university, so I couldn't be trusted to find good data, while in reality I was a straight A student from kindergarten all the way through my master's degree (and there's the explanation for my dedication to data, has nothing to do with my gender).
Now you're assuming I can't understand women's issues and donât care about feminism, because I must be a man, while in reality I am nonbinary transgender, I was raised female, and I've been fairly involved in feminism for the past decade. None of the women's issues you raise in this post are news to me, and I agree with you that they are important.
But you've already predicted that you were probably barking up the wrong tree there too, so the next strategy is not just to find a reason to not have to take me personally seriously, but to find a reason to also throw out all data that does not conform to your confirmation bias, so that you can instead work off of personal intuition and anecdotal experience. I am sure your university must have taught you about sampling bias and the inadmissibility of anecdotal evidence.
So, I am aware that purity culture is a thing in a lot of (sub)cultures (not all, thankfully). However, in these cultures, expectations of abstinence on women are often paired with an opposite expectation on men, who gain social status through 'sexual conquest' (I hate that terminology). These are complementary because women have to be expected to resist sexual advances before men's 'conquest' can be considered an achievement. So if women are likely to under-report their sexual experience, men are likely to balance that out by over-reporting it.
In data I've seen, there is a slight discrepancy, with boys reporting slightly more and earlier sexual experiences than girls, but it is on the scale of decimal points, not whole years, which leads me to conclude that the data is actually fairly accurate.
I think it is important to trust that experts on this topic know how to weed out bad data. I think being anti-science, anti-data, and conspiratorial about âgovernment backed scienceâ is a bad thing (unless of course thereâs actual proof of conspiracy). I think it is deeply unreasonable to say that a significant number of studies on the topic have been edited or suppressed by governments across the world, and that this phenomenon has somehow not once been brought to light by whistle-blowers.
So let's look at the source you've provided me with. Censis surveyed a representative sample of 1000 Italians between the ages of 12 and 24. 56% of those had not had sex yet. They asked the 44% who had already had sex at which age they first had sex, which averaged out to 17,1.
Let's say I (hypothetically) go survey a thousand 12 year olds, and 10% of them say they've had sex. I then take that 10% and ask them at which age they had their first sexual encounter. Their average is probably going to be around 11 years old, but that says nothing about the actual average age at which the full population has their first sexual encounters. Using this method, I can make this number go as low as I want it to go.
Back to the real survey, 5% of respondents aged 12-14 had had sex before, 17% of respondents aged 15-17 had had sex before, 62% of respondents aged 18-21 had had sex before, and 79% of respondents aged 22-24 had had sex before. By far, the largest jump there is from the 15-17 group to the 18-21 group, so from this survey we can conclude that most young Italians have their first sexual encounter between 18 and 21 years old. This corresponds to all other data I have found on Italy. I see no reason to doubt its validity. The source you provided me with agrees with me.
So, womenâs issues, sex-negativity and purity culture. I do care about that, quite a lot. Misogyny affects me. At the same time, I also care about queer issues and ace issues and disability and etc, and I do understand how they all have their roots in the same structures and how they keep capitalism running.
I am not on board with oppression Olympics. In sheer numbers, yes, there are more women who are harmed by sex-negativity and purity culture than there are asexual people who are harmed by allonormativity and compulsory sexuality, because asexuals are a minority. Purity culture causes more total harm, and it needs to be dismantled. But that doesnât mean it needs to be done blindly, to the exclusion of other issues, or without examining the movementâs internal faults. If we go by âI have it worse, so we donât need to talk about your issuesâ, then there are many people on this planet who have it worse than you (an Italian university student who presumably has a home, no daily fear of being bombed, and enough to eat every day), but that doesnât mean your issues shouldnât be addressed.
Sex-positive feminism is at this point 60 years old already. I think the movement has brought about important and necessary changes to many (sub)cultures (including mine), and I think it still has a long way to go in others, but, crucially, no movement is perfect, and this one is no exception.
When a group of marginalized people first starts fighting an oppressive hierarchical system, often their first instinct is to flip the hierarchy upside down, rather than getting rid of hierarchy entirely (never universal, always a subgroup in the movement). For example, instead of the âpureâ virgin being considered good and the promiscuous girl being considered bad, some (not all!) sex-positive feminists started asserting that not having a lot of sex was actually a sign of internalized misogyny, repression, immaturity and being a boring person, in short it was bad, and everyone should be having a lot of sex, the more the better. They would consider themselves to be more adventurous, mature, interesting, sociable, progressive, fun, worthwhile, and just overall better people, for having more sex.
In my opinion, everyone is an equally worthwhile person, regardless of how much sex they do or donât choose to have. We donât need there to be so much judgement based on how much sex you have, in either direction. Kink and promiscuity are fine, and so is celibacy. There should not be a hierarchy.
I understand why people initially feel the need to flip hierarchies to put themselves on top instead of the bottom. Iâve probably done it before at some point. Itâs a logical trauma response. But itâs not a good form of activism. Itâs something to grow out of.
I do see this type of hierarchy-flipping in your words, for example when you say things like âItalians do it betterâ because you believe them to have sex earlier than youth in other countries, or when you would prefer to erase those who donât have sex (at all or early enough for your tastes) from discussions regarding sex, or when you suggest that Asian teens grow up slower because they donât have sex as early as European ones, and that this is not what âweâ would like best. I hope this âweâ excludes me, because I certainly donât have a preference for how much sex teenagers should have. I guess my preference is that they do it when they want to, when they feel ready, and they do it in safe and consensual ways.
In progressive subcultures (where I spend my time), an issue has cropped up where some women now feel pressured to be more promiscuous and kinky than they actually want to be, in order to be considered an interesting, worthwhile and progressive person. Among these women, there is now a rising narrative that hook-up culture actually really hasnât served women in the way we hoped it would, but that men sure get a whole lot of out of it. I donât think I need to tell you about the orgasm gap. Iâm sure you can imagine the dangers wrought by this pressure to engage in kink and hook-ups, especially early in life when people donât yet know where exactly their boundaries lie, how to communicate them, or how to respect them in others.
Obviously this is an issue for a sub-section of women, not all women. Two things can be true at once. Women in one subculture can be pressured to stay virgins, while the opposite is true in another subculture. But honestly, both pressures are often present in a womanâs life at the same time, which makes it even more impossible to âwinâ at being considered a good person.
I believe you when you say that in your subculture the pressure to be a virgin is much larger than the pressure to be progressive and sexually adventurous. But I donât think you can extrapolate your experience to the entire globe, and I donât think this allows you to be callous about other people having the opposite issue.
I understand that you have the best intentions, and a desire to make a positive difference in the world, and Iâm absolutely not here to call you a terrible person. Everyone makes mistakes. Iâm sure I held some shit beliefs and said some shit things when I was your age (which is what, 20? 22?), and I probably still do now, and when the opportunity comes, Iâll learn about those and become a better person in time, hopefully.
Itâs not great to extrapolate your experiences to the rest of the world. Itâs not great to speak for people who can very much speak for themselves, especially when you have not yet listened to what they have to say.
I speak Mandarin, so I went and Googled for discussions surrounding this show. Most of the discussion is happening here, 400+ discussion threads: https://www.douban.com/group/741691/#topics There is nothing about people being upset at the age restrictions. So I specifically added a number of words used for age restrictions onto my search query, still nothing. I tried Baidu too, not really necessary since thatâs for mainland China, but yeah, same result. Taiwanese people are not upset at this rating. And you bet there are Taiwanese feminists gushing about the show. The rating is apparently just not important to them.
One thing about activism that is very important to remember is that itâs best to focus your activism on things that are within your sphere of influence, that you have a stake in, or that you have expertise in. For issues that fall outside of that scope, the best strategy is allyship instead, which means you listen, learn, boost voices of people more directly involved, and you possibly fund their efforts or lend your time to their cause in ways that are asked for.
Itâs quite presumptuous and âwhite manâs burden-yâ to go âhelpâ people who didnât ask. âHelpâ is very likely to be counterproductive when you are unfamiliar with the local context. It is not the westâs job to teach marginalized people in other countries to be liberated and emancipated. We can support local efforts, but we canât lead them. It would be arrogant to do so. Past efforts that failed to cooperate with people directly affected have proven to be more likely to cause additional harm than to do any good.
Moreover, it is not okay to use horrific forms of oppression that are not a part of your experience (such as female genital mutilation or being stoned to death) in service of one-upping and dismissing another type of struggle (asexuality), especially when the topic at hand is as inconsequential as a rating increase for a tv show. These people are not a prop to throw around. Their struggles are not a card for you to play. This does nothing to help them.
Of course these issues are very important and should be addressed, but not in such an appropriative and instrumental way, and not without any input from people who actually come into contact with these forms of oppression. From what Iâve heard, women in majority Muslim countries donât necessarily appreciate their culture being painted as barbaric in a broad brush. They donât necessarily appreciate their local feminist liberation struggles being erased (âfeminism is just a word read in some forbidden magazineâ, not a movement). And they donât necessarily appreciate being portrayed as powerless and in need of saving by outside actors. There are feminists in every country, fighting their local fights. Effectively addressing their struggles requires a bit more tact, expertise and nuance than you have shown so far.
Lastly, I think you are working with an incorrect understanding of what âasexualityâ and âhypersexualityâ are. A person can actually be asexual and hypersexual at the same time, and not just theoretically, I actually know of people like this.
Hypersexuality according to Mayo Clinic: Compulsive sexual behavior is sometimes called hypersexuality or sexual addiction. It's an intense focus on sexual fantasies, urges or behaviors that can't be controlled. This causes distress and problems for your health, job, relationships or other parts of your life.
You canât be diagnosed with âhypersexualityâ unless it is distressing and has a significant negative impact on your ability to live your life. Just being very sexual, having a high libido, being promiscuous, kinky, etc, is not the same as being hypersexual.
Asexuality is usually defined as a person who cannot be sexually attracted to others or cannot desire partnered sex, in the same way that a lesbian generally canât be attracted to men or desire sex with them. Some asexual people can have sex for their partnerâs sake, but others canât bring themselves to do so. Asexuality does not have anything to do with libido or hormones. Asexuality is not the same as virginity or celibacy. These Korean soap characters are not asexual.
So itâs possible to be unable to be sexually attracted to people, but still have a libido or sexual compulsions that cause issues, so hypersexual and asexual at the same time. Theyâre not opposites. If you did know what these words meant, then itâs not really cool to compare an orientation with a disorder.
I know you donât care about asexual issues, so this is probably an exercise in futility, but: Do you perhaps care about conversion therapy? Asexuals experience that at higher rates than any other orientation, usually in healthcare settings. Do you want evidence of prejudice and discrimination? Here you go: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1368430212442419 Do you care about âcorrective rapeâ? Asexuals face that too. And rates of unwanted sexual contact (often reluctantly agreed to out of a sense of obligation) between an allosexual and an asexual partner are really heart-breaking. Financial consequences of being asexual and or aromantic? Google âsinglismâ or âfinancial costs of being singleâ. Pathologization? Asexuality is still in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders, minus an ineffective caveat, and that's the manual most psychologists around the world use. 25% of aces who disclosed their orientation to healthcare professionals (not only therapists) reported it having negative results on the healthcare they got, higher than any other orientation. Political pressure or hate speech? Just look at what notoriously queerphobic conservative darling Matt Walsh says about how asexuality is even worse than homosexuality, or look at what US vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance has to say about childless cat ladies. Conservatives are very displeased with women who refuse to provide men with sex and offspring, and it really doesnât matter if such women are lesbians or asexuals. They consider asexuality, sexlessness and childlessness unnatural and âfrigidâ, they fearmonger about it causing (white) societal/population collapse, and theyâd like it to no longer be allowed.
Iâm sure being a teenage asexual girl within purity culture is fairly comfortable. It does not stay comfortable after you reach an age where expectations of marriage and childrearing are placed upon you.
I guess Iâm just sad at how quickly you dismissed an entire demographic as insignificant, without putting any effort into learning about it. About 1% of the population is asexual. That means there are more asexuals than transgender people, and at the moment it doesnât seem like anyone feels that transgender people are too small a minority to deserve any attention.
In conclusion, I think you mean well, but are going about things in an imperfect way. I think you could really grow as a person if you put effort into finding out, rather than assuming you already know, whatâs going on in the lives of people halfway across the world; if you treated conversations like these as an opportunity to put your preconceptions to a serious test, rather than coming up with reasons why you donât have to; and if you put more effort into listening to perspectives and experiences outside of your own, rather than flippantly using them as tools for your own purposes.
Ethology sounds really fun though. Excellent choice :)
1
If the subs on your version seem correct, could you tell me what wording they used in the section I translated? What exactly did they convey clearly? Ace or not?
In ep 4 around 9:30 - 9:50, does Onda essentially tell Sakura that he is asexual? If I translated this correctly, I think he says something like:
"Hm. 'Normal'... If I got a partner, I don't think I would want to touch them. I can fall in love, but I can't touch them. So I couldn't date anyone who doesn't understand that. You could say that isn't normal, but that's my normal."
Is that about right? And if it is, does that hint at asexuality or am I seeing what I want to see?
He's using the word '觊ăă' for 'touch'. I Googled to see what that word's cultural connotations are. It appears to mean 'light touch', and I don't think it's commonly used as a euphemism for sex (but I could be wrong). So maybe he's talking about touch aversion instead of asexuality? But I guess if he can't hold hands, then other forms of touch are also out of the question.
I'm glad someone got something out of the effort I put in :)
If you don't care for the extra info, that's okay, someone else might.
Stuck with me
3 minutes 2 love
My only sunshine
Somewhere somehow
Buy my boss
Shades
The Dragon house
Kanojo no kuchidzuke kansensuru libido
Be ordinary
Flat girls
No Romeo
Poisonous love
Khom Khlang
I'm your moon
The last case
And 'mhom ped sawan', but that one is even harder to find.
But also yeah there's a bazillion BLs and only in the past year we've finally gotten some hard-fought GLs, so it's a little rude to focus on the BL part as if women don't matter.
To check this for yourself, go to the YouTube channels of Idolfactory, GMMTV, MeMindY and Mandee Channel, then sort their videos from most to least popular, and you'll see GAP stick out far above literally everything else. Add the channel NineStarStudios to the list, and you'll see that the GL 'Blank the series' rivals even the most popular of BLs, meaning, GAP wasn't a freak accident. That level of success is reproducible.
GAP aired in late 2022, early 2023. Full length GL dramas are a very new phenomenon. GL audiences haven't found their way to kisskh yet, so on MDL GL gets less engagement than BL. New GL dramas still have to rely on the YouTube algorithm to find their audience, while new BL dramas can count on BL fans checking MDL, twitter and whatever else to find out about new BL dramas. That's why BL has a consistent audience for every release, while GL audiences show up more sporadically. For now.
It is true that there are fewer online authors writing f/f ships than m/m ships. The previous commenter said sexuality was the difference, meaning, there's fewer lesbians than straight women. That's not the reason, given the statistics we have about m/m shippers on the main shipping website in the west, AO3 (source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkD0m38E1Wg).
In sheer numbers, most BL fans are bisexual women, then asexual women, then straight women only in third place, then everyone else, e.g. lesbians, queer men, trans people of all varieties. Obviously, neither bisexual women nor asexual women have a sexuality-based reason to prefer men over women. Also, far more lesbians than you'd expect are into BL.
The YouTube video I linked above is a video essay (which I recommend watching) about why fewer f/f ships get written than m/m ships. There's actually a lot that goes into it. Misogyny and the avoidance thereof plays a big role, in several ways.
The people who prefer f/f ships over m/m ships seem to prefer video over written media. I have theories as to why, but they're only theories, so I'll keep them to myself.
The reason GL has been popping off this year is because Thai companies started mass producing GL after the gigantic success of https://kisskh.at/707221-gap in late 2022. Full series production takes a long time, so the GL wave is only now just starting to really hit. Far more GL has been announced for 2025 than 2024.
BL took 6 years from a breakout success in 2014 https://kisskh.at/10872-love-sick-the-series to hit current volume in 2020, though I suppose you could start counting at the first international breakout success in 2016 https://kisskh.at/16667-sotus-the-series, which would make it 4 years. Here's a fun link for nerds like me: https://www.reddit.com/r/boyslove/comments/10ugk4r/updated_family_tree_of_thai_bl_now_more_like_a/
GL is snowballing much faster than BL because the BL industry is an easy template for GL to follow. All the infrastructure is already there. All they needed to do was add some female stars to the mix. Also, GAP was a much larger success than Sotus or Love Sick, in terms of views, so the financial incentives for Thai production companies to jump on the bandwagon are much larger.
I think I'd switch cause and effect. It's more likely that the volume and popularity of gay media in Thailand contributed to its legalization of gay marriage. But then again, the gay media was probably only possible because there was already a high degree of acceptance, so it's a positive feedback loop.
https://kisskh.at/743001-our-relationship-ended-before-it-began (<-my favorite of the bunch)
https://kisskh.at/54253-afraid-of
https://kisskh.at/736435-girlfriend-project-day-1
https://kisskh.at/52951-out-of-breath
https://kisskh.at/741249-she-makes-my-heart-flutter
https://kisskh.at/750245-welcome-to-the-lesbian-bar
https://kisskh.at/768075-lonely-girls
https://kisskh.at/745697-2pm-campus
https://kisskh.at/32089-am-i-the-only-one-with-butterflies
https://kisskh.at/770395-mayfly-angel
https://kisskh.at/778222-tendering-resignation
https://kisskh.at/768727-to-the-x-who-hated-me
https://kisskh.at/775867-red-whisper
'The Handmaiden' is about lesbians but doesn't follow GL conventions. I wouldn't call it GL.
The makers of 'The Painter of the Wind' insist that it isn't gay, but I don't think anyone believes them.
So, the nurses of Bologna are a secondary source, reporting on a survey from Censis, which can be downloaded in full here: https://www.asnas.it/index.php/notizie/98-ricerca-censis-sulla-sessualita-dei-millennial-e-dei-giovanissimi
Generally, when using secondary sources, it's a good idea to go find the primary source to see if it was reported on correctly, which in this case it wasn't, but I'll get to that in a bit.
It seems to me that you are putting a lot of effort into finding reasons why you don't need to take my words seriously. I haven't been responding to it much, because responding to ad hominems is usually a waste of time, but in this case there really is a pattern I think you should become aware of.
First you assumed I was a conservative who'd never travelled, especially not to Europe, while in reality I've spent 29 of my 30 years on Earth in progressive social bubbles in Amsterdam (and am very thankful for that), and studied at Zhejiang University (Hangzhou, China) for the other year, befriending fellow students from every continent.
Then you assumed I'd never been to university, so I couldn't be trusted to find good data, while in reality I was a straight A student from kindergarten all the way through my master's degree (and there's the explanation for my dedication to data, has nothing to do with my gender).
Now you're assuming I can't understand women's issues and donât care about feminism, because I must be a man, while in reality I am nonbinary transgender, I was raised female, and I've been fairly involved in feminism for the past decade. None of the women's issues you raise in this post are news to me, and I agree with you that they are important.
But you've already predicted that you were probably barking up the wrong tree there too, so the next strategy is not just to find a reason to not have to take me personally seriously, but to find a reason to also throw out all data that does not conform to your confirmation bias, so that you can instead work off of personal intuition and anecdotal experience. I am sure your university must have taught you about sampling bias and the inadmissibility of anecdotal evidence.
So, I am aware that purity culture is a thing in a lot of (sub)cultures (not all, thankfully). However, in these cultures, expectations of abstinence on women are often paired with an opposite expectation on men, who gain social status through 'sexual conquest' (I hate that terminology). These are complementary because women have to be expected to resist sexual advances before men's 'conquest' can be considered an achievement. So if women are likely to under-report their sexual experience, men are likely to balance that out by over-reporting it.
In data I've seen, there is a slight discrepancy, with boys reporting slightly more and earlier sexual experiences than girls, but it is on the scale of decimal points, not whole years, which leads me to conclude that the data is actually fairly accurate.
I think it is important to trust that experts on this topic know how to weed out bad data. I think being anti-science, anti-data, and conspiratorial about âgovernment backed scienceâ is a bad thing (unless of course thereâs actual proof of conspiracy). I think it is deeply unreasonable to say that a significant number of studies on the topic have been edited or suppressed by governments across the world, and that this phenomenon has somehow not once been brought to light by whistle-blowers.
So let's look at the source you've provided me with. Censis surveyed a representative sample of 1000 Italians between the ages of 12 and 24. 56% of those had not had sex yet. They asked the 44% who had already had sex at which age they first had sex, which averaged out to 17,1.
Let's say I (hypothetically) go survey a thousand 12 year olds, and 10% of them say they've had sex. I then take that 10% and ask them at which age they had their first sexual encounter. Their average is probably going to be around 11 years old, but that says nothing about the actual average age at which the full population has their first sexual encounters. Using this method, I can make this number go as low as I want it to go.
Back to the real survey, 5% of respondents aged 12-14 had had sex before, 17% of respondents aged 15-17 had had sex before, 62% of respondents aged 18-21 had had sex before, and 79% of respondents aged 22-24 had had sex before. By far, the largest jump there is from the 15-17 group to the 18-21 group, so from this survey we can conclude that most young Italians have their first sexual encounter between 18 and 21 years old. This corresponds to all other data I have found on Italy. I see no reason to doubt its validity. The source you provided me with agrees with me.
So, womenâs issues, sex-negativity and purity culture. I do care about that, quite a lot. Misogyny affects me. At the same time, I also care about queer issues and ace issues and disability and etc, and I do understand how they all have their roots in the same structures and how they keep capitalism running.
I am not on board with oppression Olympics. In sheer numbers, yes, there are more women who are harmed by sex-negativity and purity culture than there are asexual people who are harmed by allonormativity and compulsory sexuality, because asexuals are a minority. Purity culture causes more total harm, and it needs to be dismantled. But that doesnât mean it needs to be done blindly, to the exclusion of other issues, or without examining the movementâs internal faults. If we go by âI have it worse, so we donât need to talk about your issuesâ, then there are many people on this planet who have it worse than you (an Italian university student who presumably has a home, no daily fear of being bombed, and enough to eat every day), but that doesnât mean your issues shouldnât be addressed.
Sex-positive feminism is at this point 60 years old already. I think the movement has brought about important and necessary changes to many (sub)cultures (including mine), and I think it still has a long way to go in others, but, crucially, no movement is perfect, and this one is no exception.
When a group of marginalized people first starts fighting an oppressive hierarchical system, often their first instinct is to flip the hierarchy upside down, rather than getting rid of hierarchy entirely (never universal, always a subgroup in the movement). For example, instead of the âpureâ virgin being considered good and the promiscuous girl being considered bad, some (not all!) sex-positive feminists started asserting that not having a lot of sex was actually a sign of internalized misogyny, repression, immaturity and being a boring person, in short it was bad, and everyone should be having a lot of sex, the more the better. They would consider themselves to be more adventurous, mature, interesting, sociable, progressive, fun, worthwhile, and just overall better people, for having more sex.
In my opinion, everyone is an equally worthwhile person, regardless of how much sex they do or donât choose to have. We donât need there to be so much judgement based on how much sex you have, in either direction. Kink and promiscuity are fine, and so is celibacy. There should not be a hierarchy.
I understand why people initially feel the need to flip hierarchies to put themselves on top instead of the bottom. Iâve probably done it before at some point. Itâs a logical trauma response. But itâs not a good form of activism. Itâs something to grow out of.
I do see this type of hierarchy-flipping in your words, for example when you say things like âItalians do it betterâ because you believe them to have sex earlier than youth in other countries, or when you would prefer to erase those who donât have sex (at all or early enough for your tastes) from discussions regarding sex, or when you suggest that Asian teens grow up slower because they donât have sex as early as European ones, and that this is not what âweâ would like best. I hope this âweâ excludes me, because I certainly donât have a preference for how much sex teenagers should have. I guess my preference is that they do it when they want to, when they feel ready, and they do it in safe and consensual ways.
In progressive subcultures (where I spend my time), an issue has cropped up where some women now feel pressured to be more promiscuous and kinky than they actually want to be, in order to be considered an interesting, worthwhile and progressive person. Among these women, there is now a rising narrative that hook-up culture actually really hasnât served women in the way we hoped it would, but that men sure get a whole lot of out of it. I donât think I need to tell you about the orgasm gap. Iâm sure you can imagine the dangers wrought by this pressure to engage in kink and hook-ups, especially early in life when people donât yet know where exactly their boundaries lie, how to communicate them, or how to respect them in others.
Obviously this is an issue for a sub-section of women, not all women. Two things can be true at once. Women in one subculture can be pressured to stay virgins, while the opposite is true in another subculture. But honestly, both pressures are often present in a womanâs life at the same time, which makes it even more impossible to âwinâ at being considered a good person.
I believe you when you say that in your subculture the pressure to be a virgin is much larger than the pressure to be progressive and sexually adventurous. But I donât think you can extrapolate your experience to the entire globe, and I donât think this allows you to be callous about other people having the opposite issue.
I understand that you have the best intentions, and a desire to make a positive difference in the world, and Iâm absolutely not here to call you a terrible person. Everyone makes mistakes. Iâm sure I held some shit beliefs and said some shit things when I was your age (which is what, 20? 22?), and I probably still do now, and when the opportunity comes, Iâll learn about those and become a better person in time, hopefully.
Itâs not great to extrapolate your experiences to the rest of the world. Itâs not great to speak for people who can very much speak for themselves, especially when you have not yet listened to what they have to say.
I speak Mandarin, so I went and Googled for discussions surrounding this show. Most of the discussion is happening here, 400+ discussion threads: https://www.douban.com/group/741691/#topics
There is nothing about people being upset at the age restrictions. So I specifically added a number of words used for age restrictions onto my search query, still nothing. I tried Baidu too, not really necessary since thatâs for mainland China, but yeah, same result. Taiwanese people are not upset at this rating. And you bet there are Taiwanese feminists gushing about the show. The rating is apparently just not important to them.
One thing about activism that is very important to remember is that itâs best to focus your activism on things that are within your sphere of influence, that you have a stake in, or that you have expertise in. For issues that fall outside of that scope, the best strategy is allyship instead, which means you listen, learn, boost voices of people more directly involved, and you possibly fund their efforts or lend your time to their cause in ways that are asked for.
Itâs quite presumptuous and âwhite manâs burden-yâ to go âhelpâ people who didnât ask. âHelpâ is very likely to be counterproductive when you are unfamiliar with the local context. It is not the westâs job to teach marginalized people in other countries to be liberated and emancipated. We can support local efforts, but we canât lead them. It would be arrogant to do so. Past efforts that failed to cooperate with people directly affected have proven to be more likely to cause additional harm than to do any good.
Moreover, it is not okay to use horrific forms of oppression that are not a part of your experience (such as female genital mutilation or being stoned to death) in service of one-upping and dismissing another type of struggle (asexuality), especially when the topic at hand is as inconsequential as a rating increase for a tv show. These people are not a prop to throw around. Their struggles are not a card for you to play. This does nothing to help them.
Of course these issues are very important and should be addressed, but not in such an appropriative and instrumental way, and not without any input from people who actually come into contact with these forms of oppression. From what Iâve heard, women in majority Muslim countries donât necessarily appreciate their culture being painted as barbaric in a broad brush. They donât necessarily appreciate their local feminist liberation struggles being erased (âfeminism is just a word read in some forbidden magazineâ, not a movement). And they donât necessarily appreciate being portrayed as powerless and in need of saving by outside actors. There are feminists in every country, fighting their local fights. Effectively addressing their struggles requires a bit more tact, expertise and nuance than you have shown so far.
Lastly, I think you are working with an incorrect understanding of what âasexualityâ and âhypersexualityâ are. A person can actually be asexual and hypersexual at the same time, and not just theoretically, I actually know of people like this.
Hypersexuality according to Mayo Clinic: Compulsive sexual behavior is sometimes called hypersexuality or sexual addiction. It's an intense focus on sexual fantasies, urges or behaviors that can't be controlled. This causes distress and problems for your health, job, relationships or other parts of your life.
You canât be diagnosed with âhypersexualityâ unless it is distressing and has a significant negative impact on your ability to live your life. Just being very sexual, having a high libido, being promiscuous, kinky, etc, is not the same as being hypersexual.
Asexuality is usually defined as a person who cannot be sexually attracted to others or cannot desire partnered sex, in the same way that a lesbian generally canât be attracted to men or desire sex with them. Some asexual people can have sex for their partnerâs sake, but others canât bring themselves to do so. Asexuality does not have anything to do with libido or hormones. Asexuality is not the same as virginity or celibacy. These Korean soap characters are not asexual.
So itâs possible to be unable to be sexually attracted to people, but still have a libido or sexual compulsions that cause issues, so hypersexual and asexual at the same time. Theyâre not opposites. If you did know what these words meant, then itâs not really cool to compare an orientation with a disorder.
I know you donât care about asexual issues, so this is probably an exercise in futility, but:
Do you perhaps care about conversion therapy? Asexuals experience that at higher rates than any other orientation, usually in healthcare settings.
Do you want evidence of prejudice and discrimination? Here you go: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1368430212442419
Do you care about âcorrective rapeâ? Asexuals face that too. And rates of unwanted sexual contact (often reluctantly agreed to out of a sense of obligation) between an allosexual and an asexual partner are really heart-breaking.
Financial consequences of being asexual and or aromantic? Google âsinglismâ or âfinancial costs of being singleâ.
Pathologization? Asexuality is still in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders, minus an ineffective caveat, and that's the manual most psychologists around the world use. 25% of aces who disclosed their orientation to healthcare professionals (not only therapists) reported it having negative results on the healthcare they got, higher than any other orientation.
Political pressure or hate speech? Just look at what notoriously queerphobic conservative darling Matt Walsh says about how asexuality is even worse than homosexuality, or look at what US vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance has to say about childless cat ladies.
Conservatives are very displeased with women who refuse to provide men with sex and offspring, and it really doesnât matter if such women are lesbians or asexuals. They consider asexuality, sexlessness and childlessness unnatural and âfrigidâ, they fearmonger about it causing (white) societal/population collapse, and theyâd like it to no longer be allowed.
Iâm sure being a teenage asexual girl within purity culture is fairly comfortable. It does not stay comfortable after you reach an age where expectations of marriage and childrearing are placed upon you.
I guess Iâm just sad at how quickly you dismissed an entire demographic as insignificant, without putting any effort into learning about it. About 1% of the population is asexual. That means there are more asexuals than transgender people, and at the moment it doesnât seem like anyone feels that transgender people are too small a minority to deserve any attention.
In conclusion, I think you mean well, but are going about things in an imperfect way. I think you could really grow as a person if you put effort into finding out, rather than assuming you already know, whatâs going on in the lives of people halfway across the world; if you treated conversations like these as an opportunity to put your preconceptions to a serious test, rather than coming up with reasons why you donât have to; and if you put more effort into listening to perspectives and experiences outside of your own, rather than flippantly using them as tools for your own purposes.
Ethology sounds really fun though. Excellent choice :)