....Where to begin? As usual, whenever the topic of gender comes up, these folk start talking out of their asses. This gem especially:
generations of repressed sexuality has a strange way of manifesting itself
Yeah, because of the long history of Christianity in Japan... OH WAIT -
I thought it was generally understood that not only were the Japanese
not sexually repressed, but that among the modern nations they had some of the weakest sexual taboos on the planet. Remember, this is a culture where graphic depictions of sexual activity were
essential elements of high culture(NSFW). I find it pretty telling of the crypto-neo-puritanism of the feminist blogs: when presented with examples of a liberated, non-repressed sexuality they hilariously confuse it with its opposite.
I think a more accurate description of Japan would be along the lines of 'a society with little sexual repression, where a great degree of representations of various forms of sexual activity are tolerated, but where, in the interests of promoting a
Western ideal of modernity, there exists a confusing jumble of half-enforced (but mostly ignored) laws meant to curb pornography but actually doing no such thing, as the instinct to do so is an imposition from the West, and not a native feature of Japanese society.' The Japanese author Yukio Mishima once made a similar argument about heterosexuality in Japan - stating that it was a Victorian imposition from the West, and that no Japanese man was ever entirely heterosexual in a psychological sense - hence of course the ubiquitous androgyny.
That being said, anyone who assumes that the average Japanese person is constantly watching tentacle rape porn all the time is an idiot. Of course they don't.
About tentacles - first - the conflation of tentacles and rape is absurd. For instance: here's one of the generally acknowledged great masterpieces of Japanese art - Hokusai's the
Dream of the Fisherman's Wife (super NSFW), which is clearly in no way a depiction of rape. Second - it exists for the same reason that pornography with animals exists in the West - because Westerners historically live in close proximity, ergo they occasionally feature in their pornography. The Japanese live in close proximity to the sea and things from the sea, ergo sea animals occasionally feature in their pornography.
As for
Host Clubs - it's very clearly just the Geisha phenomenon in modern form. The initial form was the
Hostess Club. The
Host Club I would think would actually be evidence of the opposite - the performance of a male Geisha role for a female - if anything a sign of gender equality. I'm guessing he's making that old ignorant Western assumption that Geisha/Hostess = prostitute. Says more about the West than it does Japan.