The "hentai" thread (237)

1 Name: !WAHa.06x36 2005-07-21 08:34 ID:hYd956KZ [Del]

Since this was being discussed in another thread where it was totally off-topic, I think it's time for it to have its own thread. Here we discuss the word "hentai" (and "ecchi"), and the difference in meaning between the original Japanese words and the English usage of them.

61 Name: Anonymous 2005-08-20 14:43 ID:Heaven [Del]

> love (and use) so much the word [...] they refuse to admit the two are related until overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Is that a reiteration of the "lolicon means pedophile" argument, or am I reading too much into it?

62 Name: Sling 2005-08-21 06:42 ID:Heaven [Del]

>>61
You mean those ones who are in denial about being branded a lolicon despite having tons of h-games of very young girls in sexual situations? Yeah, it looks like it's the same kind of reasoning. The words carry a large amount of shame and therefore accepting the labels would be tantamount to a confession of guilt - but they don't feel guilty! "Well, just a little... but it's a guilty pleasure, so it can't be that bad... or is it? People love those forbidden fruit stories, don't they? Plenty of brother-sister stories in the shops... I'm just adding one more taboo for the spice, it can't be THAT bad, right? Right? Please don't judge me harshly... I don't want to be branded for life! Becoming an outcast... Thrown out of society.. People whispering behind your back... 'He's a [insert category here]!' Noooooooo!"
:)

63 Name: Furi!EuK0M02kkg 2005-08-26 15:27 ID:Heaven [Del]

>>62
:) Very nice.

I think lolicon is yet another unfortunate case of word usage going astray. I don't know about you, but I'm pedantic enough to believe loli!=lolita.

It's the ones who use "loli" excessively and excitedly that are the ones with hard drives full of games that, let's face it, should probably be correctly be called "pedophilia".

I still maintain that lolita doesn't mean pedophile, it's just unfortunate that the term lolicon, which should be tied to lolita, now means pedophile.

(needs more sleep... coherency for the win)

64 Name: Anonymous 2005-08-26 15:33 ID:KHSt9qys [Del]

65 Name: !WAHa.06x36 2005-08-26 16:14 ID:WE9sTYH2 [Del]

66 Name: Furi!EuK0M02kkg 2005-08-27 14:55 ID:Heaven [Del]

Bugger. Okay, so should we discuss that we can be a lolicon and that that's not a Really Bad Thing? I argue that we can.

67 Name: Anonymous 2005-08-27 15:35 ID:Heaven [Del]

I am actually surprised they have a hikky board on 2ch but not a lolicon board.
I guess even Hiroyuki finds the idea of thousands of people trading U-15 links and WinNY cp hashes a bit creepy.
So yeah, it's really a bad thing. Shame on you, you dysfunctional deviants!

68 Name: Anonymous 2005-08-27 16:21 ID:SF3YTTdB [Del]

>>66
You're right, it's not a manner of black and white. There are many issues at hand, such as whether you also like women your age and whether you believe children can consent (cough*CV*cough)

>>67
There is a Card Captor Sakura forum which is mainly based around the topic of what they would do with Sakura if they saw her on the street.

69 Name: Furi!EuK0M02kkg 2005-08-27 17:18 ID:Heaven [Del]

>>68
This is something I actually wanted to bring up. Surely we must acknowledge a clear difference between young, completely undeveloped girls, and developing, pubescent ones, which I believe the term lolita was intended for.

Further to this, can one be non-sexually attracted to a sexy, nubile, "underage" girl (ie. a lolita)? I think so. Just because I appreciate a young girl's figure doesn't mean I'd "hit it" at the first opportunity.

And how about those definitions for "loli", namely the age? Many (usually Americans) quote the age of consent as the borderline for "loli". What they fail to acknowledge is that there's probably about 50 different definitions for "underage" in that country, and that there's a whole world out there full of other ideas on the matter, too.

It's also not unknown for young girls, say 14 or 15, to be fully developed sexually. That might get you banned on not4chan, and yet, ha ha, she's well under age (I'll use 18=adult for the sake of my current argument).

70 Name: !WAHa.06x36 2005-08-27 18:38 ID:Heaven [Del]

A topic owrthy of discussion, maybe, but not really related to the topic of this thread, yes?

71 Name: Sling 2005-08-27 19:42 ID:Heaven [Del]

>>70 Actually it's very relevant. The question is, has the word loli drifted the same way as the word hentai in English?

Let's make up some definitions.
Japanese's hentai: anyone who is perverted/not aligned with the group's way of thinking, in real life or otherwise, but mostly real life.
English's hentai: Japanese drawings of sexual situations.

Japanese's loli: anyone obsessed with female children, in real life or otherwise, but mostly real life.
English's loli: Japanese drawings of female children in sexual situations.

If this definition of loli in English is correct -- as in, most spread about, -- then it has suffered the same fate as the word hentai. (zomg oh noes!!)

72 Name: Furi!EuK0M02kkg 2005-08-27 22:09 ID:Heaven [Del]

>>71
I'd agree with that statement.
Perhaps also worth giving some thought: Does anyone know where "loli" came from? Clearly it's a derivation of lolicon, but was it the Japanese or the Wapanese (^_^) that coined it? As an aside, I personally dislike it, but only because people bandy it around like asshats.

73 Name: Anonymous 2005-08-28 01:48 ID:Heaven [Del]

Novel Lolita (1955) by Vladimir Nabokov

Character of the same name

Word for the prototype the character represents (a precociously seductive girl)

Word for any arousing young girl

In their neverending efforts to label social phenomena, the Japanese derive from the above the term "lolicon" for people who are obsessed with young/underage girls.

Since "con" is an abbreviation of "complex" and the other part of the word "lolicon" supposedly signifies the object of the complex, "loli" becomes a word for "lolita".

People in the western realm start using "loli" to refer to underage 2D girls.

74 Name: Furi!EuK0M02kkg 2005-08-28 07:31 ID:Heaven [Del]

If that's true, then we've nailed it down (ie. blame the Wapanese). I knew all the steps before that well enough.

I think what gets me the most is the way people end up using "loli". I'm sure the Japanese don't use lolicon lightly, yet you get online and somehow the English speakers won't shut up about how they're pedophiles. Let it be noted that I can't confirm this; I don't speak Japanese, nor do I frequent any Japanese boards. This is partially conjecture.

75 Name: Anonymous 2005-08-28 09:14 ID:SF3YTTdB [Del]

Japan is more frank about pedophilia than the West, but the Western use of "loli" is still pretty bizarre.

76 Name: Albright!LC/IWhc3yc 2005-08-28 12:31 ID:gIEbR0oz [Del]

>Japan is more frank about pedophilia than the West

In what way do you mean? (And be careful to avoid otaku-ish generalizations...)

77 Post deleted by user.

78 Post deleted by user.

79 Name: Anonymous 2005-09-11 03:38 ID:H1XREMgS [Del]

80 Name: Anonymous 2005-09-19 21:10 ID:bJc6mFLr [Del]

The definition has drifted to the point where the noun 'lolita' has been appropriated to mean eighteen and nineteen year-old females on the internet.
Yes, many English-language speakers equate 'lolicon' (or 'roricon' - I've seen this Anglisation of the word) to pedophilia. This ultimately serves to show how stupid and closed-minded they are. The correct noun for a person with this fetish is 'ephebophilia'. An ephebophilist is interested in adolescent females, of the 13-18 year-old range. (Not a preteen or a prepubescent.)

81 Name: !WAHa.06x36 2005-09-20 04:38 ID:WE9sTYH2 [Del]

Using a dictionary definition is "close-minded" now?

And the "ephebophilia" argument smacks of denial every time I see it used.

And of course this is still off-topic.

82 Name: Sling 2005-09-20 11:04 ID:IBshqPBt [Del]

>An ephebophilist is interested in adolescent females, of the 13-18 year-old range.

Wrong.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ephebophilia

83 Name: Anonymous 2005-09-20 13:11 ID:PFkZNcBs [Del]

>>80

  1. No it hasn't. Dumb porn sites can use any word to mean anything, but on the Internet "lolita" has the same definition as it does offline-- i.e., underage and clearly so.

2. If you honestly believe this is the case you must be deluding yourself, or browsing very strange websites. Go to not4chan.org and tell me how old the naked girls are on that website. 14 years old is the upper limit, the lower limit is something like 6 months.

84 Name: Anonymous 2005-09-20 13:23 ID:Heaven [Del]

There's a lower limit on not4chan?

85 Name: Anonymous 2005-09-20 16:03 ID:Heaven [Del]

>>82
From that link:

>Ephebophilia, from the Greek έӃŃς (ephebos) "adolescent" and Ӄǃί (philia) "love/friendship", is a sexual preference or orientation in which an adult is primarily or exclusively sexually attracted to adolescents (usually people between the ages of 13 and 16).

Close enough. So ephebophilia essentially means underage, but not prepubescent. As for the whole lolicon/pedo debate, I'm not touching that with a ten foot clown pole.

86 Name: Sling 2005-09-20 18:14 ID:IBshqPBt [Del]

>>85 I meant the female bit.
Actually using "ephebo-" is a bad choice for creating a word, as in Greek times it referred to young men in training for the army.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ephebos

87 Name: Anonymous 2005-09-21 19:32 ID:Hnq+usnU [Del]

I've also heard the word "hebephilia" used for the attraction to teenagers, which cracks me up as it reminds me of "hebephrenic."

88 Name: Sling 2005-09-21 20:37 ID:IBshqPBt [Del]

lol - who's coming up with those "scientific" words anyway? They are not in any standard dictionary, and there are already perfectly valid other words already.
Hey I can do this too. Lessee... Highschoolgirlphilia! Tamakinee-chan-o-philia! Making_useless_empty_words_doh_philia!

89 Name: dmpk2k!hinhT6kz2E 2005-09-21 21:02 ID:PYDxyMtk [Del]

> Tamakinee-chan-o-philia

I want to see a paper published in a respectable journal use that. If only.

90 Name: Anonymous 2005-09-22 02:31 ID:e6AqjEtg [Del]

http://www.robobunny.com/cgi-bin/dislexicon will help you create mock-words
Example:
1: stereobullshitmetric (stereo-bullshit-metric) relating to measurement of solid or three dimensional bullshit

91 Name: Anonymous 2005-09-24 13:33 ID:wUkkfhdI [Del]

92 Name: Furi!EuK0M02kkg 2005-09-29 02:58 ID:Heaven [Del]

Someone remind me where this conversation is going again? I'm finding it interesting, but we're losing direction.

If we're on the topic of what "lolita" means offline and online, I'm generally willing to agree they're the same. Sexually attractive, but "a bit" underage. We seem to hit a problem with lower bounds here.

My take on the issue:
I believe lolita applies to a girl in puberty. I feel this is consistent with the "dictionary definitions" that we've got. Prior to puberty she's sexually undeveloped. As a direct consequence, she can't be sexually attractive. Sexual attraction to a prepubescent girl then becomes fetishistic (ie. an attraction with no logical basis).

Now for the -philiae. (No, I don't know if that's linguistically correct).
Ephebophile, as I understand it, should mean adolescent love. It's not gender specific, and I figure it should cover a similar age range/level of maturity as "lolita".

In contrast, pedophilia is a love of children. I've hit a small inconsistency here as Wikipedia reckons ephebophilia doesn't necessarily imply a sexual attraction, but the writer for pedophilia clearly believes otherwise. I don't know what's correct, nor am I saying we can trust wikipedia. The truth of this will ultimately lie in its social interpretations.

That aside, the point is that pedophilia is restricted to pre-pubescent entities (by my own understanding). Once again, at this point it becomes fetishistic and illogical.

I'm willing to argue at this point that pedophilia and ephebophilia are distinct and exclusive bahaviours. Both are equally valid for usage if you wish to use them. Calling yourself an ephebophile is not some cop-out, in-denial way of being a "pedo".

Taking stereotypes for a moment, being a "dirty old man" that molests little boys is pedophilia and has a particular stigma attached to it. Being an adult in a relationship with a rapidly-maturing adolescent who is still "underage" (according to local jurisdiction) has a different stigma again. Only one of these is pedophilia, and conciously or not, this doesn't seem to go unnoticed by society (there are different stigmata).

Now, discuss.

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