On 5/16/2011 10:55 AM, Chris McKenna wrote:
Pornography is defined as: "The explicit depiction of sexual subject matter, especially with the sole intention of sexually exciting the viewer."
The subject matter of this image is not sexual. Therefore it is not pornographic.
It's sexualized, even if it isn't (technically) sexual. Two lines are being crossed here. One of them is toplessness, another one is "Moe" character of the image.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moe_(slang) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moe_%28slang%29
Lacanian psychoanalyst Saito Tamaki notes that many people have a strong visceral negative reaction to Moe that's similar to the strong negative reaction many people have about homosexuality.
It's dangerous, of course, to bring this topic up because it gets to the heart of sexual politics. From a psychological standpoint, anti-gay feelings are very real. On the other hand, there's an increasing consensus that they need to be suppressed because they lead to harmful actions -- a person who lived in the room next to me in college committed suicide because of anti-gay harassment.
Now, that consensus is developing, of course, because of the political organization of the gay community. At this point Otakus can still get kicked around because there is no organization: and today, the RACE-class-GENDER grand coalition of the academic left isn't going to accept this as a "different kind of queer" because they're going to get hung up on "this image objectifies women" foreclosing any real thought on what it means.