Comment by Rea on Shota Oni - Chapter 0.17 : extra.17.5

@Yoon buum i meant the grown a** women reading this are the pedos. And sure pedophilia is when an over 18 person likes an under 14 person. But do you think its healthy or okay for a fuc**** 16-17 year old to date/like/do anything romantic with a 7-10 year old?? Even if theyre both minors, even a 3 year agegap is very bad for teens and kids. You mature and change so much in 3 years

@Rea While I get having an instinctive ick respose to art with this kind of content, calling everyone who reads this a p*edophile is not the slam dunk you think it is. There are many reasons why someone would choose to engage with a manga like this one. People who have gone through CSA find media like this helpful for coming to terms with what happened to them, and not just via the more realistic, grim portrayals like Lolita or My Dark Vanessa.

Media like this does have its place as wish fulfillment for some victims. A fun power fantasy of having control in a relationship where you would realistically have very little. It's no different from someone reading a shonen manga to see the MC become powerful and get a harem of gorgeous women - it's pretty much the same fantasy of having control over your life. That's why some people like smalldom series like this. Surely you wouldn't say that someone who reads Berserk is a rapist because the plot contains ra**? People have other reasons to read things beyond being attracted to the characters.

If you care about the wellbeing of adult victims or underage people in this respect why don't you try advocating for better s** education in schools, or having better education around what is and isn't appropreate touching/behaviour from adults?

@PucksBetchi i was sexually assaulted as a small kid and also last summer when i was 15 by an adult. I don't feel the urge to read something like this as "coping". Yes last year i was mature enough to understand what happened. But when i was a child, i couldn't understand yet i never wished it turned out somehow else. It was my cousin and i find it disgusting, it IS disgusting, it HAS to be disgusting. Yet this manga romanticizes child x older relationships. Sure, everyone deals with stuff differently, but the healthy coping mechanism is NOT engaging with more stuff like this. Especially because we know japan is weird and pedophilia is normalized. The intention of this manga probably wasnt to spread awareness.. its a kink unfortunately. People get off to so called shotas. If you get turned on by small childrens body then seek help. So i understand you and this isnt to argue sorry i ius wanted to share my thoughts

@Rea I'm sorry to hear that you have also been a victim of something this vile. I hope you have people in your life that you can talk to about this who won't shame or blame you for it. If not there are communities on reddit that can be helpful for venting if that's something you feel you need to do at some point. I know what it's like to feel isolated when you are going through stuff like this. 

If you don't find it to be a helpful or productive cpoing mechanism that's your call. I'm not going to say one way is better than another because I'm not in your head nor you mine. We aren't a monolith and acting like there is a perfect way to respond to something like this isn't hurting the pedo's who act on it, or the mysogynistic ra** culture that pushes this idea (if you are hypersexual and/or consume shota you must have wanted it), but ourselves.

This isn't an argument dw, we just happpen to disagree on some things. Your opinion on loli/shota is your own. I take no issue with that. You are free to think it's weird. I guess my question to you is where is the line in terms of what is acceptable in fiction? BL is full of ra** and default heterosexal sadomasochism by default are you okay with that?

I don't want to see the same tired overused tropes and dynamics all the time either but when you are a short dom top who likes taller and bigger guys being subby there aren't many things out there for you to read. Gay culture tends to be quite hostile to anyone who doesn't fit a specific bodytype mould when it comes to roles. Sometimes you have to spit out the seeds to find representation that works for you.

@PucksBetchi thank you for being undersanding! My personal opinion about r@pe/ sexual assault in BLs is the same as my opinion about shotas. It is absolutely disgusting when it's romanticized and i try my best to avoid those bls. However i do read bls that contain it in a "good way" (it sounds weird lol). When it's realistic, harsh, rapist has CONSEQUENCES and is represented well, i appreciate it because it spreads awareness. I have the same opinion about CSA though. Imo this manga is disgusting because its portraying a child's body in a sexual way just out of pure fetishization, not representing anything. However, i dont know if you know the manga "Nii-chan" by Harada. That work is absolutely beautiful. Realistic, represents what actually happens to the victims, and I really like it (except the ending.. i dont want to spoiler if you havent read it yet but plan to). Anyways, while I know that these are fictional, they could be harmful.

i'm sorry but in my opinion, liking shotacon is wrong. Its not opinion-based. Liking cute faces is one thing. But why do people enjoy seeing children in sexual ways? Its deeply concerning. Some pedophiles might start with just reading about it, then move to actually harming children. Or if a younger audience finds something like that, they might think this is okay.

@Rea As for why people might like this kind of thing in fiction, there's a bunch of reasons but you are laser focusing on the idea of people attracted to the shota charactes in particular which is not the only demographic reading this story.

Here are some of the reasons I've heard from friends who like this kind of content:
- the child characters are not repressenting real children but a fantasy of a partner who is not a physical or social threat to the reader.
- The child characters are a disempowerment fantasy for the reader to self insert into.
- Fictional size kink tends to be limited to dominant large man x submissive small (wo)man. This leaves people with the fantasy of being (with) a big woman or small man in the lurch.
- Adult characters are free to act more 'against type' when paired with child characters like being tall but submissive or shy and anxious but powerful or tomboyish or butch women being seen as desirable by their innocent partner. These traits are considered cute and appealing instead of being seen as whiny, annoying, clingy or something that needs to be 'fixed'.

@Rea  

- The boy isn't expected to take responsibility in leading the relationship or during s** by default.
- The boy ca get angry without it being percieved as a physical threat or as something that should be automatically accepted/taken seriously by the love interest.
- The boy can cry and act out without the audience throwing a fit and demanding an arc about him becoming a real man. Men in general getting to be emotional outside of anger jealousy and lu** is basically a core part of the subgenre's appeal.
- Childish characters can be bluntly honeest playdful prankish or nerdily passionate about things. A lot of people like these traits and consider them cute and wholesome but romance media tends to portray them as undesirable in a mature partner.
- For woman x boy in perticular the woman has to step up and be an equal partner to the guy in the relationship/bedroom without getting to coast by of the man having to do everything. If they are submissive to the guy in the bedroom they still have to be a responsible adult outside of it.
-Related to the above: some people like the fantasy of being taught how to have s** or being with a parter who is experienced and knows what they want which is a rarity among women in stright stories, and among bottoms in gay ones. It's much less rare in this subgenre.
- Men are often told that they shouldn't want to have someone take care of them and self inserting as a boy is a consistent way to find mommy/daddydom that is aimed at men.
- Shotadom is a full inversion of BL's typical seme/uke tropes something that is consistently hard to find. BL is already a full on daddy/boy dynamic in a lot of cases so why not lean into it at this point? If Jinx's uke is cansidered acceptableby most people's standards then is it just that they need to say they are over the age of 18? Or do they have to act mature, or is it about how they look and present themselves?

@PucksBetchi ok i dont feel comfortable engaging with you anymore, this is MAD weird. Yk da** well that these aren't your friends' thoughts, they're YOURS. I couldn't even read all of it this is insane get help genuinely. Some of the "reasons"  as to why you like these just means you're into little kids. No we shouldn't produce or read about child x adult/much older relationships, its not okay! If this is your coping mechanism then switch to something else. If you genuinely enjoy this then you're a pedo or a weirdo, and its a fetish.

@Rea

You asked me, in a rude a** way, why anyone would consume this. So I answered you, you little weirdo. For one, I'm not a woman yet I'm talking about perspectives on this that are not for men. You know that like 40% of women have ra** fantasies, right? They clearly don't want to experience that IRL. Two several of those positions obviously contradict each other. Three, I've treated you nothing but nicely, with kid gloves despite how (frankly) rude and judgemental you've been the entire time, and here you are accusing me of being into little kids. I'm also a survivor, you utter dunce. You say I'm a predator for wanting art where I can self insert as a small person domming a huge, buff one so that I can imagine having control in a situation where I had none? The only thing on that list that applies to me, by the way, which you'd know if you'd read my comments and didn't just tlak past me the entire time about your opinions (which are apparently fact???).

Go on, tell me more about how I should be responding my own abuse. I've talked about advocacy, I've talked about real life trafficking, I just disagree with you that going after fans of a comic is going to help anybody. That's just an acceptable target for you to vent at. Problem is, you don't seem to respect others. You just want to tell them what to do and feel better than them while you do it.