Alright, settle down class. Now, today we're going to be talking about Gay Porn.

Okay, guys. Thus far, I've tried to keep this blog relatively family friendly. I don't know how well I've succeeded, but dangit, I've tried.

But there's no way to sugarcoat what this entry is about. There's gonna be adult content, and probably some strong language. So if you're under 18, or just don't want any part of all this, then go away NOW. There'll be a new entry soon about an awesome trip I took, that you'll enjoy way more than this. But I just gotta get this off my chest.

Gone? Good. I wish I was.

I don't think I've talked too much about my classes so far. I'm taking four: Two of them are Japanese language classes, one of them is about Everday Life and Culture in Japan, and the other is about Japanese pop culture.

Thus far, the pop culture class has been my favorite. The everyday life class is pretty dry and involves a lot of "theory." And the language classes are, well. Language classes.

So the pop culture has been the best by far.

Why am I bringing this up now? Well, like the title of this post states, today we're talking about gay porn.

Now, generally, I feel the same way about gay porn that I feel about homosexuality in general: I don't really care, as long as I don't get any on me.

Well, I got a big huge faceful today.

And where did I come in contact with this? Why, where else but my culture class.


Yeah. You putting all the pieces together, chumly?

Quite frankly, I've always suspected that my teacher was a little Light in the Loafers. But this pretty much cinched it.

Technically, the syllabus says that today's lecture was about Dōjinshi and yaoi.

Now, Dōjinshi is pretty interesting stuff. They're amateur comics, and there really isn't anything like them in the states. This is because in Japan, the copyright laws are hardly ever enforced, so fans can get away with making almost professional grade comics about existing characters and sell them for cash money, as long as they don't make too much of a profit.

Sure, a lot of Dōjinshi are pornographic. I guess that's only natural. After all, that's what's gonna sell, right? The hardcore stuff that real publishers won't touch.

And it just so happens that a lot of these "adult" Dōjinshi are, in fact, Yaoi. Don't recognize that word?

Good.

Were you expecting a blue link? You're not getting one. And for god's sake, don't type it into a search engine.

Yaoi is, in a nutshell, a pornographic manga about two male characters, oftentimes lifted straight from a legit manga, who fall in love and do the horizontal monster mash together.

Yeah, real appealing, right? It doesn't even matter if said characters are, in the work they're lifted from, completely straight, married with children, violent homophobes, etc. Because one of the rules of Yaoi is that EVERYONE is gay in Yaoi.

We had a reading about this that I had to do last night. Yeah. 35 pages about gay porn. I tell you, that's how I like to spend my evenings.

Technically, six pages were about other things. But the vast majority was all about yaoi.

Despite this, it wasn't THAT bad. I actually read it, partially out of a sense of duty towards my class, but also because it wasn't about the medium itself, but about the psychology behind it.

Because this stuff isn't produced or targeted at gay men. It's made by and sold to women and girls. They freaking eat it up here. Why? Well, that's what the reading was trying to figure out. Because it really doesn't make any sense. There are hardly any women in these things, and if they do exist, they're usually evil, or annoying, or just there to cause jealousy and strife. They're hated characters. And apparently, the pretty boys in the yaoi hate women in general.

So why do women eat this stuff up? Good question. Go read 35 pages about it, and then maybe you'll figure it out, even though I haven't.

So, yeah. That wasn't so bad. How did it not cross my mind that after doing the readings, of course we were going to have a CLASS about it? I should have known as soon as my lunch rang up as 444, the unluckiest number in Japanese culture, that things were about to go downhill.

So, it might not have been so bad if we had stuck to the culture aspect. The only problem is that lately, the prof is doing this thing where he lets a group of classmembers lead the discussion.

And today was about Yaoi. Dear god, if that's not a recipie for disaster, I don't know what is.

So they start by passing the stuff OUT to the class. In fact, the prof has some issues of his own that he passes out. Every gets at least one copy of this stuff. I didn't take one, so eventually one of the girls doing the discussion comes and forces one on me that she says doesn't have any sex in it.

So while all the girls and the one gay guy are all giggling and exclaiming over this stuff, and the guys are sitting around awkwardly, one of the discussion leaders leaves to fetch a video cable, so she can show us her powerpoint presentation on the subject. What was on this powerpoint?

I have no idea, and god willing, I'll never find out. They couldn't get it to work.

So we skipped right to the next part: the prof pulled out a DVD that he had bought on the internet, that was a fansubbed copy of a "shounen-ai" piece. "shounen-ai" is Japanese for "Boy Love." It's basically yaoi, with the explicit bits taken out.

Put that in a nutshell, and our professor showed us a tape of tame, animated, gay porn.


It was the most surreal thing I've ever experienced. Here we were sitting in class, watching this cartoon about boys who love boys. Some people say that anime is not realistic, but if that's true, then this crap was completely disconnected from any sense of reality. All the characters are tall skinny males. They're ALL gay. It's not even a question. If two of them run into eachother, there's never any uncertainty, they just automatically start lusting after one another's bods.

Like I said, there was the bit appearances of women, but their only job is to hang all over the dominant pretty boy and make the girly pretty boy feel jealous.

And here's the kicker. The title of this thing was something like "papa kiss me in the dark."
Well, it was about a gay love thing going on between this guy who's JUST STARTING HIS FIRST YEAR OF HIGH SCHOOL and a person who appears to be his FATHER, although there appears to be maybe a two-year age difference between them.

Just... there are no words. It was the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen. Every time two characters meet, they end up in eachother's arms. They don't talk like human beings. Two guys meet for the first time, and one of them acts like a little girl, and the other one talks about him being cute. It breaks all rules of normal human behavior.

Like I said, there was no explicit sex. But oh, the sex was there. You never saw anything below the belt, if you know what I mean, but oh, it was fucking there in every other possible sense.

And then, after that, the class was over.

That was it. We showed up to class and the only thing we accomplished was to look at gay porn. And to quote the professor "We'll be continuing this Friday."

WHAT THE FUCK. What in God's name was the point of all that?

And while I was writing this, one of my juggling balls split a seam, and so now I can't even do that, which is always good for putting me into a really level zen state.

What a day this has been.

Screw it. I'm gonna go find some violent video games to play.

This is TIM, signing out.