Much to my chagrin, I have discovered that something I wrote has been quoted in a "paper" ("tract disguised as scholarship" seems a more fitting description) that essentially tries to legitimize sex between adults and minors. There is nothing illegal or even unethical about the exact manner in which my work was cited, and I am a firm believer in free speech, even if I find the speech contemptible, so I have no intention of protesting to the author. But I will respond here to the passage in which my work is cited. Anyone who wants to read the whole sorry mess in which I am cited is welcome to do a search for the title, "Research on pedophilia in academia, and writings on pedophilia in heavyweight journals -- an internet research-guide for students and scholars." I will not do the author any favors by including a link here. Here is what the anonymous author writes:Three cultural studies essays about Japan, where the age of consent is 13 and where religion and literary and art censorship have not developed as they have in the West: Unlikely Explorers: Alternative Narratives of Love, Sex, Gender, and Friendship in Japanese " Girls' " Comics - http://www.matt-thorn.com/sexual_ambiguity.html What Japanese Girls Do With Manga, and Why - http://www.matt-thorn.com/jaws.html Girls and Women Getting Out of Hand: The Pleasure and Politics of Japan's Amateur Comics Community - http://library.thinkquest.org/C0115441/article2.htm These articles are by Matt Thorn, an anthropologist and admirer of shōjo (girls) manga. The first two are at his site. Thorn eloquently describes the powerful effect of a 1974 shōjo manga, Tōma no Shinzō ("The Heart of Thomas"). Thorn says that the story,begins with the suicide of fourteen year-old Thomas, whose love for an older boy, Yuri, has gone unrequited. In his final love letter to Yuri, Thomas writes: To Yuri, one last time, This is my love. This is the sound of my heart. Surely you must understand. In the end we discover that Yuri had in fact been in love with Thomas, but felt that he was unworthy of Thomas' love...Tōma no Shinzō was a major contributor to the rise of shōnen-ai (boyslove) manga, and eventually, in the 1980s, to yaoi, which depicts the teenage heroes of commercial anime and manga in homoerotic/homosexual situations. A leading U.S. yaoi storywriter has created a character whose name is also Thomas. Her Thomas is the epitome of a youth who enjoys sex and romance with younger boys and older men. Her stories describe the sex explicitly and joyously, as something beautiful and necessary. In her country, a child such as this would be condemned as sexually acting out and in need of therapy, or locked up as a sexually violent predator (as indeed some children are); his older partners would most certainly be imprisoned. In Japan, schoolgirls read such stories in comic book form on the train (the drawings leave little to the imagination). There, such love is considered in many ways an ideal. Both Thomases give the lie to the West's ideology that children's sexuality must be repressed. Yaoi has become a major popular culture form in the West among young women. Perhaps it has a potential for subverting some of the Western conceptions of children and sex.Here is a classic example of the kind of poor logic used in shoddy scholarship. I describe a story about two teenaged boys in love. The author notes that the work I described was "a major contributor to the rise of shōnen-ai (boyslove) manga, and eventually, in the 1980s, to yaoi, which depicts the teenage heroes of commercial anime and manga in homoerotic/homosexual situations." This is true enough in itself. The author then introduces a completely different story by a "leading U.S. yaoi storywriter" (Who? What's the title of the story? Could the author of that story be the author of this pathetic article?) featuring a "youth" (How old?) who "enjoys sex and romance with younger boys and older men." The only connection between the story I introduced and this second story is that each includes a character named Thomas, and the second story is categorized as "yaoi," a genre which was influenced by the first story. The author then states "In Japan, schoolgirls read such stories in comic book form on the train (the drawings leave little to the imagination)." By "such stories," the author presumably meansThe Heart of Thomasand the second story by an unnamed author. Here is the first outright falsehood. I have seen girls read a manga likeThe Heart of Thomason the train, but of the thousands of girls and women I have seen reading manga on the train in Japan over the course of twenty years, not a single one was reading one like the second story this author introduces. Such manga exist, but their fans read them in private. What the author does not note is that no sex takes place between Yuri and Thomas inThe Heart of Thomas. Indeed, the only instance of sex even hinted at is a non-consensual one, in which Yuri may or may not have been sexually assaulted by one or more upperclassmen. This incident with the upperclassmen is traumatic to Yuri, as I pointed out in the rest of the passage partially quoted by this author:In the end we discover that Yuri had in fact been in love with Thomas, but felt that he was unworthy of Thomas' love because Yuri had apparently been gang-raped by a group of older boys when he was an underclassman.Why did the author choose to end his quote in the middle of this sentence rather than reproduce the whole thing? Could it be because the end of the sentence undermines his entire premise that sex between persons of different ages is just hunky dory? That's how it looks to me. I don't know about the second Thomas, but I can state unequivocally that the first Thomas does not "give the lie to the West's ideology that children's sexuality must be repressed." The author should read Hagio's much later work,Zankoku na kami ga shihai suru("A Savage God Reins"), in which the protagonist, a teenager, is severely traumatized by sexual abuse he is subjected to by his stepfather. The boy's trauma remains long after the stepfather is dead and buried. And the ending suggests that while the protagonist may be able to find happiness, or at least a semblance of normalcy, he will never be entirely "cured" of the trauma of sexual abuse. And now we have the second and most outrageous falsehood: "[In Japan], such love is considered in many ways ideal." By "such love," the author presumably means sexual relationships between boys and men. Such "relationships" are certainly not idealized or even tolerated by the vast majority of Japanese, nor even fans of yaoi. Yaoi are fantasy stories created by and for a certain niche of heterosexual women. And while some yaoi manga may portray sex between underage boys and adult men, the creators and readers would be the first to admit that this is a fantasy that corresponds to the fantasy of "girl-on-girl action" in heterosexual men's pornography. I have never heard of a yaoi fan suggesting that sexual relationships between boys and men in the real world should be legitimized. This assertion by the author is utterly baseless. The author also says that in Japan, "the age of consent is 13." This is a distortion. In Japan, as in many countries, it was once not unusual for parents to arrange for children to be married. In some cases, a minor of either sex would become engaged to an adult of the opposite sex, though in such cases, even if a wedding ceremony was performed, the two would not actually live together as "man and wife" until the younger partner was at least in his or her late teens. This law the author refers to was created long ago as something of a bridge between such traditions and 20th-century standards of democracy and free will in choosing a mate. The law assumes that the two individuals will be married. And I have never heard of a case in recent decades of an adult marrying a minor who was more than two or three years younger than himself. Among middle and upper class Japanese, and most working class families as well, it would be scandalous for a child below the age of 18 to marry. By no means does this law make it acceptable for someone, say, 25 years old, to have a sexual "relationship" with someone 14 or 15 years old. In fact, there is a movement among legal experts today to amend or clarify the law and bring it more in line with the laws of other developed countries. Suffice it to say, Japan is not the NAMBLA paradise this deluded author wants it to be. There is absolutely nothing inThe Heart of Thomasor anything I have ever written to support this author's basic assertion that it is normal or healthy for men to have sex with boys. This is another case of NAMBLA-type pedophiles to try to gain legitimacy for their desires (and often their crimes) by piggy-backing on the gay rights movement. It's creeps like this who perpetuate the equating of homosexuality and pedophilia. I may send the author a copy of this response, but if he or any of his supporters try to respond here on this forum, I will remove their responses immediately and ban them from this message board. This is not "censorship." Just as a Jewish newspaper is not obligated to run an advertisement submitted by a Nazi group, I have no obligation, legal or ethical, to make this private message board available for anyone to promote ideas I find abhorrent.

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Matt Thorn

Department of Comics Production

Kyoto Seika University