It should also be noted this is just a more radical element with the UN. However, the UN is also calling on Japan to stop whale hunting and we have all seen the success that’s had.
Basically unless a secruity council resoultion is passed it’s basically at most putting pressure and they should just ignore it.
Quote from one of the comments. Seems like a resistance movement has finally organized.
I’ve got a half full book of stamps to burn. Why the hell not… better use 'em before the Post Office ups the price of postage again. I’ll go ahead and do it, just to see what happens or doesn’t happen. :o
Does anyone have an actual US address for this censorship group?
CEDAW or “Yes to Freedom”? Yes to Freedom is currently just an Internet movement.
The letter is… not terrible, but not as good as I was hoping for it to be. It’s wasting time attacking Equality Now, trying to make a very sketchy connection to show them as hypocrites, and making their own anti-censorship argument weaker in the process.
Directly quoting CEDAW’s mandate and blatantly trying to stretch it to mean something completely different? Really not going to win points with them. (For those who don’t see what I’m talking about, arguing that restricting all people from writing porn qualifies as a “distinction, exclusion or restriction made on the basis of sex” doesn’t fly.)
Still, it’s at least a polite letter, and a far sight better than that community had been doing previously. 
I’d suggest editing a little before sending it but it’s usable.
Rawr. It’s time for change.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/0 … index.html
Let’s hope the new guard, doesn’t handle eroge like the old guard.
That’s funny. EqualityNow was blatantly stretching the truth, making sketchy assumptions and trying to paint the Japanese Eroge industry into something completely different than what it truly is, and they made quite a bit of ground in their cause.
If anything, YTF isn’t militant/passionate enough in their “letters” to make it happen. I could even go as far as to say that they were too polite.
It’s all about knowing your audience. Equality Now is a group of feminists, so obviously they have an advantage from the start communicating with other feminist groups (such as CEDAW). Sending CEDAW a letter that sounds like it’s just slinging mud at Equality Now would accomplish nothing. They’re not going to listen to people that sound like anti-feminists. Convincing people is about telling them what they want to hear, in a way that nudges their line of thought down the path you want.
Their rhetoric seems to indicate that, ie less beuracracy, more indivisual freedom, more open market system (though not as much as the US).
However that doesn’t mean they will think the same when it comes to eroge.
IIRC, the new party is interested in maintaining the status quo regarding eroge (they spoke out against imposing new government regulations on eroge). Which is good, I suppose, but won’t change much. It’s not the government currently censoring eroge. It’s the industry’s own regulatory group (EOCS).
Oh, people will damn well listen to those who sound like anti-feminists, and I’ll bet they’ll agree with them if you’re firey enough, too. The situation works both ways–Feminists themselves are often seen in a negative light nowadays, even in mainstream culture. Feminists are often stereotyped as misogynistic, self-centered people that use the government to get special treatment and attack other people’s freedoms–That didn’t stop Equality Now from slinging mud at the eroge companies, painting them as pro-violence groups and getting what they wanted all the while sounding like the stereotypical “feminazi”, did they? So why should we let our own “looking glass image” stop us from slinging mud at them and painting in a similarly repulsive light?
If YTF portrays them anywhere near the same negative fashion that feminist groups are stereotyped as and attack them with every smear they’ve got up their sleeve as an organization, they will easily tell the people what they want to hear because a lot of people are often raised with the notion that feminists are freedom-hating misogynists.
I swear man. You guys have to get off your asses, grow some BALLS and accept the fact that you have to get your hands dirty sometimes, especially if your way of life/ideals are being endangered as a result. There’s no way YTF is going to get anywhere if it insists on limiting itself under the guise of “politeness”. No wonder why social liberals have lost so much ground in the past few decades.
You’re confusing target audiences. Equality Now appealed to the mainstream media (utilizing the media’s existing momentum as well). Mudslinging works there. Mudslinging doesn’t work when you’re appealing directly to a target that’s friendly to your opponent, not to mention one that’s well versed in the general topic (feminism). In such a situation, if you sound like a partisan imbecile, you’ll just get ignored. They get angry letters from misogynists all the time. It comes with the territory. If you want to start a mudslinging campaign, a private letter to CEDAW is not the place to do it.
No offense B173, but if you don’t fully understand the words you are using, then don’t use them, else you look like a fool. The word “misogyny”, and all words derived from it, contain the element “gyn” which is from Greek and refers only to women. Combined with the element “mis/miso” (also Greek) which indicates hate, the term as you used it makes it sound like they hate themselves. Perhaps the words you are looking for are derived from the word misandry (i.e. misandristic, misandrists)?
(Fun fact of the day for you all: Even though the word “android” through common use has come to mean an automaton in the form of a human being styled to look like either sex, the etymological roots of the word show that it was originally intended to apply to only male looking automatons. The much less used word that applies to only female looking ones is “gynoid”.)
It does have some implication with the dojin market which has been pushed by specific elements to be regulated.
Well, there are people who think that feminists are misogynists because they’re trying to destroy Woman’s True Pleasures In Life by ‘forcing’ them to behave ‘like men’, with the troublesome burdens of education and work instead of devoting themselves to the sexual submission, housework, and childbearing that will bring them fulfillment… (And on the flipside there are people who accuse the pro-men movements of being misandrist because a lot of them portray men as rabid beasts and idiots who just can’t HELP raping and murdering, it’s their NATURE) But misandry is more of a mainstream accusation for feminists, yes.
(There are indeed feminists who despise homemakers and will vilify any woman who chooses to be at home and make babies, but there are plenty of others who think homemakers deserve a hell of a lot more credit and financial reward. As said before, there aren’t that many shared beliefs in this disorganised non-movement…)
anyway, B3K, I’m not recommending people sit back silently and say nothing, only that they actually use some brainpower and consider their audience and how to make their words effective instead of frothing like a birther. And I have no interest in growing balls!
Ya know… I’ve always wondered if EN knows that Japan’s legal system operates under Civil Law instead of Common Law (which is… err… common to the West). The difference being that laws are codified and literally interpreted as set forth in the text (Civil), rather than interpreting what the law is (Common). Of course this all means that pushing for new legislature that bans eroge, works in their favor… and why organizations such as EOCS and CSA were created to prevent government mandating against eroge. But I’ve been curious if they knew that.
Will you PLEASE stop saying stupid things like this?
Have you EVER, in your entire life, met a raving pro-women anti-men campaigner who cared more about fictional women than real ones? Do you SERIOUSLY think that any raving man-hater in the world is not aware of the long history of violence against women?
And no, “Look at EN!” is NOT a valid answer. Yes, look at them. Look at what they’re doing. Look at their damned website and the long list of OTHER things they campaign against AS WELL AS this stupid hentai persecution scheme of theirs.
Sure, they’ve become more and more focused on this stupid hentai nonsense… because of the enormous outpouring of hatred and misogyny that’s been dumped on them for it. Look at the comments on Sankaku. Look at the stuff EN quotes on their page as reason for them to keep going and fight even harder.
Imagine you’re an innocent girl who knows nothing about hentai and you wander into the site of this pro-woman group and you hear about how all men on the internet hate you and want you to be raped. Imagine being an innocent girl and reading “The only way to defeat women’s rights and make things to the advantage of Men again is to brutally, publically, murder women’s rights activists en masse. Don’t you want young females of child bearing age as your wives (females gain the ability to have children at age 12, 13, or 14 commonly)? Yes you do. Don’t you want her to obey you? Yes you do. Don’t you want her to be nice to you? Yes you do (whatever “nice” means¬Ö probably quiet suffices). The only way you have a shot at getting any of that is if all feminists and those who support them are dead or ineffectual (dead really helps here as well).”
Do you think it’s FICTIONAL women that such a girl would be upset and scared for?
(It’s still a hysterical reaction - the crime is committed when nutjobs say/behave this way in real life. The game itself is not a crime.)
Yes, trying to get allies is a very good idea. Writing letters is a very good idea. Campaigning against idiotic movements is a good idea. But if you want to not piss off your allies, try to learn not to shove your foot in your mouth, K?
You know, now I wonder… If they can get a law that bans games which “promote rape and violence against women,” who judges whether a game “promotes” rape and violence or merely “includes” rape and violence? Couldn’t a game “promote” it for one player but the same game make another player totally disgusted at the act?
Expecting every person (or most people) to act in an educated manner and self-research every issue they come across is a bit utopian. Even educated people rely on impressions and unverified perceptions. Better to watch what you say and what those who (mis)represent you say than expect every onlooker to be understanding. In general, I expect people to be reasonable, but I don’t expect them to go out of their way to make a well-informed judgment. If you don’t make your case to them directly, you can’t really begrudge them when they get the wrong idea. Well, you can always condemn them for being irrational. But then you’d just be railing against human nature (I do my share of that too).