Just googled 'average age loss of virginity by country' and you're pretty far off. It's over 18 almost everywhere.…
Yeah, I think we agree on a lot.
With 'normal' I meant something along the lines of 'shouldn't be rejected, stigmatized or pathologized by society', and not something along the lines of 'average, common', and I think we agree there :).
Asexuality is often dehumanized, erased and pathologized, especially viciously by some sex-positive progressives with religious trauma, with sentiments like "all human beings want sex, it's simple biology and human nature, and if you don't have that sexual desire, you need to go get your hormones fixed, or you just need to stop lying to yourself, prude". But I can now see that that's not what you meant at all.
In English, the word 'anomaly' has strong negative connotations, especially when it's said about human beings, kind of like 'freak'. That's what threw me off. But you didn't mean for those negative connotations to be there. 'Exception' and 'atypical' are better word choices.
'Have a nice life' also has strong negative connotations. That phrase generally means 'fuck off and I hope I never see you again'. But I think you meant something along the lines of 'have a nice day'.
Also it's spelled 'hypersexuality', not 'ipersexuality', but I got what you meant because that is how that would be pronounced in French or Spanish.
According to the Dutch centre of expertise for sexuality, Rutgers, in 2024 the average age in the Netherlands is 18,7, and it is rising. I can't search in Italian, but I get this https://www.statista.com/statistics/784002/first-sexual-intercourse-by-age-in-italy/, which does not average out to 16,4, not even close. I can't find your Nurses of Bologna source, and I would like a link. It's okay if it's all in Italian, you're right that I can read that fairly well.
I'll admit that I initially used an easy to find source with not great credibility to quickly see averages by country all over the world, because I didn't feel like putting hours into scouring Google Scholar for every country individually (and I don't think you did that either). I used multiple such sources, and they all came up with similar numbers, generally over 18. Here's an example: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/average-age-to-lose-virginity-by-country. From what I've found, it's only the Nordic countries in which the average age hovers around 16. It's certainly not the same all over the globe.
But I guess if you count masturbation as well, then the 16,4 number would make sense to me. Most teens probably do do that, probably much earlier than 16 actually. I didn't count masturbation, and neither did all the stats and data I was working off of.
I agree that the rating of this show and the banning of queer books from school libraries have the same root cause (and I am with you in being upset at the cause), but they don't have the same material effects/consequences. I have a limited amount of 'upset energy', and I prefer spending it on things that actually have significant material consequences.
I didn't pick Latin back in high school sorry. Many regrets :( But yeah I could probably get the gist of your Italian.
Just googled 'average age loss of virginity by country' and you're pretty far off. It's over 18 almost everywhere.…
I'm sorry for not understanding what you wrote. I did my best. I don't speak Italian. If only it had been French or Spanish.
To be honest, I think if we managed to communicate, we might actually be in agreement. I think we both agree that it's fine for 16 year olds to watch this series, and we both agree that purity culture and censorship are bad. And I think we also probably both agree that it's also fine and normal for (some) teens and adults to not have sex at all, right?
So I think I won't agree to disagree, because I'm not sure we actually disagree all that much.
I don't know if you were being sarcastic with your 'best wishes and have a nice life', but I'll wish you the same, but in a genuine way.
Just googled 'average age loss of virginity by country' and you're pretty far off. It's over 18 almost everywhere.…
So your source is... traveling the world? You didn't even bother to look into any statistics at all?
I was born and raised in Amsterdam (the epitome of what sexually repressed conservatives like to fearmonger about), so your assumption that I haven't been to Europe is really quite funny to me.
Obviously I know that a lot of 15 and 16 year olds have sex, and I'm not at all opposed to them watching media like this when they want to. I just don't see why you have to phrase it like it's *all* of them, when according to all data we have, it's not even close to the majority.
I'm not sure if you meant 'anomaly' in a derogatory way, but it is coming across like that, especially when you say that you would prefer asexuality to not be discussed at all. It sure doesn't sound like you accept everything that exists to me.
And no I can't imagine getting upset at a rating like this. I get upset at queer books being banned in school libraries, because that's likely to actually restrict queer minors' awareness of and access to queer media, and impact their self-esteem and rates of bullying. But a 16 year old with internet access can manage to watch this series regardless of what its rating is.
Rating this 18+ is ridicolous! I would understand a 15/16+, definitely not an 18+, when all teenagers around the…
Just googled 'average age loss of virginity by country' and you're pretty far off. It's over 18 almost everywhere. The lowest I found was Brazil, 17.3. In Taiwan it's apparently 21.9.
I'm not sure why you're so upset. It's not like a 16 year old who wants to watch this couldn't manage to do it. Does the rating matter?
And I'm not a fan of this 'biology has its course in all human beings' thing. Asexual people exist and are also human beings.
but I legit am starting to feel that Khen is the one who is dead and not the other way around.. 😔
I just came here to say the same thing. My new theory is that they all died in the car accident and joined the ghosts already in the house, each continuously reliving their own worlds.
I agree that this series is shit and that Chinese BL has a tendency towards being shit, but at least get your…
That's fair. I'm tagging them as incest not because that's what it would be if it were real life, but because the taboo is the reason the authors made them family. The fact that it is taboo is part of the appeal/stakes/angst.
Same goes for the abuse/rape/power dynamics/age gaps common in BL and other 'romance' stories. The taboo is the point. "I want it but it's wrong, I want it but I can't have it" raises the stakes and the desire, and is therefore an effective storytelling device. It's about wanting to be wanted by the love interest so intensely that he'll do crazy shit and break social norms to have you. That's the fantasy that's being fulfilled here.
I'm not even really knocking it. Taboo stuff exactly like this has always been popular within queer writing on tumblr and AO3 as well (e.g. wincest and whatever they did with the onceler), and beyond queer writing too. I mean, 50 shades and 365 days were massively popular. I've heard quite a bit of fearmongering about the 'dark romance' genre lately too. It's not new and it's not unique to BL or to China.
Women have sexual fantasies, and sexual fantasies have a tendency towards the taboo. They don't generally map onto reality. Contrapoints has an excellent video essay on this, which pretends to be about Twilight, but it's so much more than that. I couldn't recommend it enough.
Women deal with so much misogyny, objectification, domination and hypersexualization, that I really can't begrudge them privately taking all of that, and putting it into their own narratives where they get to decide what to add and leave out to make it feel exciting and safe for them. It's safe because they get to control how the story goes, and in the story everything turns out fine in the end. (Also, not having a female character in your romance story is a very effective way of not having to deal with misogyny in your sexual fantasies).
There's this societal idea that women aren't supposed to want sex, because they should be pure and whatnot, so protagonists in these stories often resist the super hot love interest and get forced anyway, because that way they can have the hot guy without the 'indecency' of having to express their own desire. Hence rape fantasies and romanticization of abuse in stories.
A quote I really like is 'in the end everyone wants to feel desired and safe, we just have different ways of getting there'.
So yeah I think there is a place for these stories to exist, but I don't think that what happens in them should be mainstreamed/normalized. Not that I think there's much risk of that happening anyways. Age gaps, abuse and fucked up power dynamics are outside of social norms for a good reason, they harm people. Besides, if (in some screwed up world) they stopped being taboo, they'd also stop being appealing for their taboo-ness. Nobody wants this. People who have these fantasies do not actually want them to become reality.
I'm confused as to why Taiwan has to have these taboo plots but it's honestly draining. And I feel like the only…
I agree that this series is shit and that Chinese BL has a tendency towards being shit, but at least get your facts straight. Do you honestly think the CCP has censorship power over Taiwanese production companies? That's a whole 'nother country.
Uncle Unknown is actually mainland Chinese (obvious from accents, set and embedded Chinese subs in simplified characters). It's just pretending to be Taiwanese on paper to get around censorship, because it absolutely would not have gotten through CCP censorship. It has (fake) kissing, no way that would get through. 'Stay With Me' got through because it doesn't have that.
If you look at how the law banning gay online content was written, and then the weibo policy that followed it, it's obvious that no, they're not going to allow gay content that is perverted just to give gay people a bad reputation. Perverted content is exactly what they're trying to ban with this law. The law exists to prevent young women from becoming 'rotten girls'. Official Chinese communication mentions 腐女 fujoshis, 耽美 BL, and the 本子 smut they draw by name, all in slang that you'd only know about if you were specifically targeting the fujoshi demographic. Gay people in China are still allowed to be openly gay on social media. What's not allowed is BL. (And large scale organizing of any kind is also not allowed, whether queer or otherwise.)
The BL content that early Chinese fujoshis wrote was pretty rapey and abusive and taboo, and if you look at for example the stuff MAME wrote at that time, that issue wasn't exclusive to China. The explosive popularity of the first 'Addicted' show in 2016 was why the law banning gay webseries got made. It wasn't allowed to finish airing. 2016 Addicted is rapey as hell (if you want to see for yourself, watch episode 11). If the CCP wanted to portray gay people as perverted and dangerous, they could've just let that finish airing.
The real question is, why did Thai BL become so much more progressive over the years while Chinese BL stayed stuck at romanticizing abuse and incest? And the answer is that BL was mainstreamed in Thailand, while it remained niche and illegal in China. Thai BL had to become palatable to a wider audience, while Chinese BL stayed within a very specific niche that knew they were already breaking the law by writing BL at all, so eh, might as well break all social norms while we're at it I guess.
As for why Taiwanese BL series have a bunch of incest (unknown, crossing the line, the on1y one, close to you) and age-gaps (kiseki: dear to me, make our days count, right or wrong), I'm sure Taiwanese BL writers also read mainland Chinese BL and get influenced like that.
I have a genuine question.. I'm not a native Thai speaker so I completely rely on english subtitles when watching…
I don't officially speak Thai, but I do understand 80% of what they're saying, and I know for sure that the part that sounds like 'nad' is the part being translated to 'appoint'. In Thai it's spelled นัด, and I'm pretty sure it's the first part of the transitive verb นัดหมาย (nad hmay), or 'to make an appointment'. นัด (nad) can according to Google translate mean 'assign' and หมาย (hmay) means 'an expectation' 'note' 'warrant' 'intent'. So yeah, 'nad hmay', shortened to 'nad', broadly means setting up/organizing an appointment/commitment/agreement/date.
I've heard 'nad' used in quite a few Thai sentences by now, and I think it should've been translated to 'arrange', as in 'arrange a meeting with Kim for me'.
In thai grammar it's a very short construction, much shorter than in English. Like 'please nad Kim' = 'please arrange an appointment with Kim', 'nad tonight' = 'arrange it for tonight' and 'alright where do I nad that, your condo?'
I know it likely wasn't their intention, but some of the replies to my previous comment about how I personally…
As a fellow autistic, yeah, that's what I saw too. I wrote it down in my own review too, since episode 1 in fact haha. I didn't think a lot of other people would see it, so this comment came as a pleasant surprise. Thank you :)
This was a sweet first episode, but the two trans girls treated like 90's cartoon clowns... that's questionable. Either cut them out entirely or treat them like actual human characters.
Not GL... I feel like lesbians don't exist in Asia. I mean, there are 10,000 Boy Love dramas, but only around…
There's definitely a discrepancy, but none of these are short, censored or low quality indie productions.
Ayaka-Chan wa Hiroko Senpai ni Koishiteru (personal fave) The Secret of Us Reverse 4 You 23.5 Blank My Marvellous Dream is You Affair The Loyal Pin Yes or No Fragrance of the First Flower Sleep With Me Club Friday Season 16: Love Bully Tsukuritai Onna to Tabetai Onna Pearl Next Door Love Senior GAP the series Soshite, Yuriko wa Hitori ni Natta Deep Night Side Story: The Two of Us Chaser Game W Transit Girls Uranus 2324 Lucky My Love Show Me Love
(Hopefully) Upcoming: Apple Petrichor Unlock Your Love The Last Case Mom Pet Sawan My Ex's Wedding I'm Your Moon Pluto Mate Reverse With Me The Passenger Girllove Girlfriend Sunshine in the Wind Un-Trovert Skiu Projects: Sun Moon Light Love, Love in the Rain, The Perfect Song, Step Up
I keep thinking 'oh hey why are they playing Celine Dion's It's All Coming Back To Me Now' whenever they play that jingle they use for every soft scene.
1
With 'normal' I meant something along the lines of 'shouldn't be rejected, stigmatized or pathologized by society', and not something along the lines of 'average, common', and I think we agree there :).
Asexuality is often dehumanized, erased and pathologized, especially viciously by some sex-positive progressives with religious trauma, with sentiments like "all human beings want sex, it's simple biology and human nature, and if you don't have that sexual desire, you need to go get your hormones fixed, or you just need to stop lying to yourself, prude". But I can now see that that's not what you meant at all.
In English, the word 'anomaly' has strong negative connotations, especially when it's said about human beings, kind of like 'freak'. That's what threw me off. But you didn't mean for those negative connotations to be there. 'Exception' and 'atypical' are better word choices.
'Have a nice life' also has strong negative connotations. That phrase generally means 'fuck off and I hope I never see you again'. But I think you meant something along the lines of 'have a nice day'.
Also it's spelled 'hypersexuality', not 'ipersexuality', but I got what you meant because that is how that would be pronounced in French or Spanish.
According to the Dutch centre of expertise for sexuality, Rutgers, in 2024 the average age in the Netherlands is 18,7, and it is rising. I can't search in Italian, but I get this https://www.statista.com/statistics/784002/first-sexual-intercourse-by-age-in-italy/, which does not average out to 16,4, not even close. I can't find your Nurses of Bologna source, and I would like a link. It's okay if it's all in Italian, you're right that I can read that fairly well.
I'll admit that I initially used an easy to find source with not great credibility to quickly see averages by country all over the world, because I didn't feel like putting hours into scouring Google Scholar for every country individually (and I don't think you did that either). I used multiple such sources, and they all came up with similar numbers, generally over 18. Here's an example: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/average-age-to-lose-virginity-by-country. From what I've found, it's only the Nordic countries in which the average age hovers around 16. It's certainly not the same all over the globe.
But I guess if you count masturbation as well, then the 16,4 number would make sense to me. Most teens probably do do that, probably much earlier than 16 actually. I didn't count masturbation, and neither did all the stats and data I was working off of.
I agree that the rating of this show and the banning of queer books from school libraries have the same root cause (and I am with you in being upset at the cause), but they don't have the same material effects/consequences. I have a limited amount of 'upset energy', and I prefer spending it on things that actually have significant material consequences.
I didn't pick Latin back in high school sorry. Many regrets :(
But yeah I could probably get the gist of your Italian.
To be honest, I think if we managed to communicate, we might actually be in agreement. I think we both agree that it's fine for 16 year olds to watch this series, and we both agree that purity culture and censorship are bad. And I think we also probably both agree that it's also fine and normal for (some) teens and adults to not have sex at all, right?
So I think I won't agree to disagree, because I'm not sure we actually disagree all that much.
I don't know if you were being sarcastic with your 'best wishes and have a nice life', but I'll wish you the same, but in a genuine way.
I was born and raised in Amsterdam (the epitome of what sexually repressed conservatives like to fearmonger about), so your assumption that I haven't been to Europe is really quite funny to me.
Obviously I know that a lot of 15 and 16 year olds have sex, and I'm not at all opposed to them watching media like this when they want to. I just don't see why you have to phrase it like it's *all* of them, when according to all data we have, it's not even close to the majority.
I'm not sure if you meant 'anomaly' in a derogatory way, but it is coming across like that, especially when you say that you would prefer asexuality to not be discussed at all. It sure doesn't sound like you accept everything that exists to me.
And no I can't imagine getting upset at a rating like this. I get upset at queer books being banned in school libraries, because that's likely to actually restrict queer minors' awareness of and access to queer media, and impact their self-esteem and rates of bullying. But a 16 year old with internet access can manage to watch this series regardless of what its rating is.
I'm not sure why you're so upset. It's not like a 16 year old who wants to watch this couldn't manage to do it. Does the rating matter?
And I'm not a fan of this 'biology has its course in all human beings' thing. Asexual people exist and are also human beings.
Same goes for the abuse/rape/power dynamics/age gaps common in BL and other 'romance' stories. The taboo is the point. "I want it but it's wrong, I want it but I can't have it" raises the stakes and the desire, and is therefore an effective storytelling device. It's about wanting to be wanted by the love interest so intensely that he'll do crazy shit and break social norms to have you. That's the fantasy that's being fulfilled here.
I'm not even really knocking it. Taboo stuff exactly like this has always been popular within queer writing on tumblr and AO3 as well (e.g. wincest and whatever they did with the onceler), and beyond queer writing too. I mean, 50 shades and 365 days were massively popular. I've heard quite a bit of fearmongering about the 'dark romance' genre lately too. It's not new and it's not unique to BL or to China.
Women have sexual fantasies, and sexual fantasies have a tendency towards the taboo. They don't generally map onto reality. Contrapoints has an excellent video essay on this, which pretends to be about Twilight, but it's so much more than that. I couldn't recommend it enough.
Women deal with so much misogyny, objectification, domination and hypersexualization, that I really can't begrudge them privately taking all of that, and putting it into their own narratives where they get to decide what to add and leave out to make it feel exciting and safe for them. It's safe because they get to control how the story goes, and in the story everything turns out fine in the end. (Also, not having a female character in your romance story is a very effective way of not having to deal with misogyny in your sexual fantasies).
There's this societal idea that women aren't supposed to want sex, because they should be pure and whatnot, so protagonists in these stories often resist the super hot love interest and get forced anyway, because that way they can have the hot guy without the 'indecency' of having to express their own desire. Hence rape fantasies and romanticization of abuse in stories.
A quote I really like is 'in the end everyone wants to feel desired and safe, we just have different ways of getting there'.
So yeah I think there is a place for these stories to exist, but I don't think that what happens in them should be mainstreamed/normalized. Not that I think there's much risk of that happening anyways. Age gaps, abuse and fucked up power dynamics are outside of social norms for a good reason, they harm people. Besides, if (in some screwed up world) they stopped being taboo, they'd also stop being appealing for their taboo-ness. Nobody wants this. People who have these fantasies do not actually want them to become reality.
Uncle Unknown is actually mainland Chinese (obvious from accents, set and embedded Chinese subs in simplified characters). It's just pretending to be Taiwanese on paper to get around censorship, because it absolutely would not have gotten through CCP censorship. It has (fake) kissing, no way that would get through. 'Stay With Me' got through because it doesn't have that.
If you look at how the law banning gay online content was written, and then the weibo policy that followed it, it's obvious that no, they're not going to allow gay content that is perverted just to give gay people a bad reputation. Perverted content is exactly what they're trying to ban with this law. The law exists to prevent young women from becoming 'rotten girls'. Official Chinese communication mentions 腐女 fujoshis, 耽美 BL, and the 本子 smut they draw by name, all in slang that you'd only know about if you were specifically targeting the fujoshi demographic. Gay people in China are still allowed to be openly gay on social media. What's not allowed is BL. (And large scale organizing of any kind is also not allowed, whether queer or otherwise.)
The BL content that early Chinese fujoshis wrote was pretty rapey and abusive and taboo, and if you look at for example the stuff MAME wrote at that time, that issue wasn't exclusive to China. The explosive popularity of the first 'Addicted' show in 2016 was why the law banning gay webseries got made. It wasn't allowed to finish airing. 2016 Addicted is rapey as hell (if you want to see for yourself, watch episode 11). If the CCP wanted to portray gay people as perverted and dangerous, they could've just let that finish airing.
The real question is, why did Thai BL become so much more progressive over the years while Chinese BL stayed stuck at romanticizing abuse and incest? And the answer is that BL was mainstreamed in Thailand, while it remained niche and illegal in China. Thai BL had to become palatable to a wider audience, while Chinese BL stayed within a very specific niche that knew they were already breaking the law by writing BL at all, so eh, might as well break all social norms while we're at it I guess.
As for why Taiwanese BL series have a bunch of incest (unknown, crossing the line, the on1y one, close to you) and age-gaps (kiseki: dear to me, make our days count, right or wrong), I'm sure Taiwanese BL writers also read mainland Chinese BL and get influenced like that.
I've heard 'nad' used in quite a few Thai sentences by now, and I think it should've been translated to 'arrange', as in 'arrange a meeting with Kim for me'.
In thai grammar it's a very short construction, much shorter than in English. Like 'please nad Kim' = 'please arrange an appointment with Kim', 'nad tonight' = 'arrange it for tonight' and 'alright where do I nad that, your condo?'
Ayaka-Chan wa Hiroko Senpai ni Koishiteru (personal fave)
The Secret of Us
Reverse 4 You
23.5
Blank
My Marvellous Dream is You
Affair
The Loyal Pin
Yes or No
Fragrance of the First Flower
Sleep With Me
Club Friday Season 16: Love Bully
Tsukuritai Onna to Tabetai Onna
Pearl Next Door
Love Senior
GAP the series
Soshite, Yuriko wa Hitori ni Natta
Deep Night Side Story: The Two of Us
Chaser Game W
Transit Girls
Uranus 2324
Lucky My Love
Show Me Love
(Hopefully) Upcoming:
Apple
Petrichor
Unlock Your Love
The Last Case
Mom Pet Sawan
My Ex's Wedding
I'm Your Moon
Pluto
Mate
Reverse With Me
The Passenger
Girllove Girlfriend
Sunshine in the Wind
Un-Trovert
Skiu Projects: Sun Moon Light Love, Love in the Rain, The Perfect Song, Step Up
Lots of info here: https://kisskh.at/discussions/general-asia-forum/91593-gl-drama-lovers-club?page=180