By David Futrelle
Unable or unwilling to deal with real-life women, more than a few misogynists have turned to imaginary substitutes — from video game hotties to hypnogogic hallucinations they think are succubi.
But the imaginary ladies they feel the strongest about are of course their anime waifus, whom many misogynists have come to feel are superior to IRL women, and not just because their giant eyes would be better to see with,
Now one dude has apparently decided that his obsessive love of 2-dimensional women isn’t just a slightly sad kink but is his actual sexual orientation. You know, like being gay. According to a quite possibly true posting in the Am I The Asshole subreddit, he recently “came out” as an anime lover to his parents and his extremely annoyed sibling.
Anime dude really needs to learn the difference between a fetish and an orientation.
The post inspired quite a debate on Reddit before it was deleted by the subreddit mods.
H/T — @AITA_reddit on Twitter for the Reddit post and the DisgustedAnimeGirls subreddit (yes, this is a real thing) for the graphic.
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Anyone who has seen “Alita: Battle Angel” will know how just flat-out wrong those big anime eyes look on a human being (I know the character is a motion-capture CGI creation but her appearance is human in all other respects)
Why is it always anime? I’ve never heard about anyone having a fetish for stop motion animation or CGI, but at times it seems like half the internet is hentai and other anime fetish stuff. I don’t want to shame anyone, and I don’t have a problem with people masturbating to anime porn than any other porn*, but I’m curious as to why anime has such a large amount of fetish stuff relative to other forms of media.
*Though, as with real world porn, I’m aware that some (a lot?) of anime porn is misogynistic (especially ero guro and lolicon), and I do take issue with misogynistic pornography, for the misogyny.
@Cat Mara
So I’m not the only person who finds the giant anime eyes a bit unnerving?
Once you go 2D, you are never the same again.
That would be more a fetish than a sexuality per say I would say.
I agree that it’s not a sexual orientation, but I’m still somewhat torn on this.
It’s not harming anyone if someone wants to just be into anime and doesn’t want to date or have sex with other actual people. The problem with these waifu fetishizing guys is that they do tend to disparage women. The declaration that Gal Gadot is too wide waisted certainly hints at that. No one is obligated to be attracted to Gadot, but there’s no need to rag on her either. Especially since by no means is she wide waisted.
I’m attracted to 4D people. Fucking on a tesseract is the best. /s
Side note: it always annoys me when places (usually museums) advertise 4D films that are 2D or 3D films with water and smell and stuff as a part of it. That’s not what 4D means, and it’s disappointing that the movie doesn’t let me see 4-polytopes projected into 3D space.
/end math major rant
@WWTH
Or what he said about how all real world women smell. By fetishizing anime, he’s being misogynistic by holding real world women to a literally impossible standard. It’s like when people watch live action porn, then complain that their girlfriend won’t do some sex act that they saw in porn. Or complain that few women look like porn stars. I’m not opposed to people using porn or anime, but when they become misogynistic because women don’t live up to the impossible standards of those mediums, that’s a problem.
To answer the poster’s question: Yes. You are an arsehole. Your brother’s sexual business is his own and (to the extent that he trusted you all enough to tell you) your family’s – not some fuel for rando humour on fucking Reddit.
Well, my waifu is Yrel from World of Warcraft, but I’m pretty sure that having a thing for blue-skinned space-goat-ladies doesn’t count as a sexual orientation. Nor do I decry real women’s lack of blue skin, horns, hooves, tails, or those weird little tendril things near their ears.
Naglfar says:
Capitalism.
A large percentage of the contemporary anime industry (and adjacent industries, like gaming) has grown up around appeasement of Japanese incels who are the hardcore fans willing to spend ridiculous amounts of money on stuff. Series these days often start out as fan-produced web novels that get picked up by a publisher and, when they do well, get made into various other media. The obvious example is Sword Art Online. Others start off as low-budget visual novels (choose your own adventure games) such as the Fate franchise.
Because the fetish-loving incels are going to make their fetish-infested, wish-fulfilling spank-material anyway, corporations can just wait for hints of popularity to percolate through the fan community and buy up the property. Then they clean it up a bit to widen the audience to adolescents, but a lot of the original fetish stuff only gets toned down and not taken out entirely because they don’t want to lose the hardcore fans who are there for the fetish stuff.
This all reminds me of Krieger in “Archer”, who gets legal permission to marry his holographic waifu girlfriend. Wonder if the OP’s brother is a fan?
I’d have to echo other commenters though – the whole sharing-your-brother’s-private-business-online kinda reeks. There are plenty of things this man needs – ridicule isn’t one of them. It sounds a lot like he’s absorbed some really questionable ideas straight out of the incel/MRA/MGTOW stable of rotten concepts. But, just like with anti-vaxxers, entrenched ideologies of this kind are never shifted by scorn and ridicule – in fact, they tend to become more embedded.
@Lucrece
Yup,then the waifu is killed so Krieger creates a ‘daughter’ of the original one using bits of leftover code and marries that one . Then in one episode they get into a augment and someone asks how doesn’t kill her to which he replies “Oh but I do. every night.”. yeah just a bit creepy
@Lucrece,
Heh, I went straight to the comments to see if someone else made that connection.
It’s odd to think about sexualized cartoon women. Like, for at least a century, cartoon women have been drawn in a way that’s influenced by the sexual preferences of the cartoonists, which were mostly straight men for a significant amount of time. Then each generation grows up watching those cartoons, which in turn probably influence their ideas of sexuality (having a “cartoon crush” when growing up is amazingly common), and the cycle repeats.
I guess sexually confused people like the guy referenced in the OP are a natural consequence of this.
“Once you go flat, you never go back”? Is that what he’s saying?
In all seriousness, though: This guy creeps me out, but his parents creep me out even more for accepting/enabling this weirdness. Seek help, all three of you.
If someone’s kink is anime, I’d take a ‘you do you’ attitude so long as no real – world harm is done. FWIW as a horny teen in the 1970’s I crushed for a while on Velma Dinkley, no idea what that says about me as She Who Must be Obeyed looks nothing like her.
Is anyone here familiar with the 80’s anime Saint Seiya AKA Knights of the Zodiac–about a predominantly male team of superheroic holy knights in the service of the goddess Athena, and marked by its glam-rock character design? If my old anime club and correspondence were representative, the (North American English-speaking) fanbase was primarily female, and the fanfiction teeming with female Authorial Proxies romancing the heroes.
So is that a legitimate sexual orientation, or does it make the Saints Toonchads? And what about slash fandom?
Perhaps this guy is asexual, but lacks the vocabulary to describe himself that way? Nothing wrong with that, but he’ll probably be happier once he figures it out.
As for Gal Gadot, googling suggests her waist is 61cm (24″), so anyone who thinks she’s “too wide” either has unrealistic standards, or is just reaching for excuses.
@Moggie : perhaps, but there’s also people who love sex, just not the people they had to do it with. Or who are attracted to impossible sexual practice. (also, isn’t there a distinction between aromantic and asexual ? not being able to connect romantically with someone can certainly be a cause for not having sex)
As for that guy, my gut feeling is that the problem is social pressure on him, but really the description is too short to conclude anything. Heck, even if 27 is relatively old, it could still be youngness and inexperience that talk.
There is no brother. & the guy knows he’s a jerk for his so-called “sexual orientation”.
@Moggie
That sounds possible, but if he was asexual would he be attracted to cartoon women? I think the more likely option is that he’s straight, but has an extreme paraphilia.
The difference between fetish and paraphilia is that a fetish helps someone get off but isn’t necessary, but a paraphilia is necessary. Judging by his story, this is the latter one.
Another idea that occurred to me is that he wants a fully submissive waifu. Real world women have needs and desires of their own, while anime women do not. A few people in the Reddit thread talked about how anime women are often submissive, and I think part of his dislike of real world women could be that they aren’t 100% submissive to him. Seems like a MRA/incel type complaint, so it’s possible he’s an incel.
This also reminded me of this case, sent to Dan Savage’s Savage Love column. This is in no way an endorsement of Dan Savage, who is awful in a thousand different ways (transphobia, biphobia, acephobia, racism, fat-phobia, misogyny, virgin-shaming, etc), but the letter sent to him seems to be a similar case to the OP’s brother. Dan’s response in this case isn’t that awful, but the real focus should be the letter about the person attracted to Pokémon.
So, what’s the difference between kink and orientation?
My best understanding is that orientation describes your sexual interest as it relates to who you will have sexual relationships with. That’s an aspect of sexuality we can’t or shouldn’t have to keep in private. (That is, assuming it’s even possible to seek consensual relationships with people you’re attracted to.) That’s the only meaningful distinction.
Of course it’s kind of complicated. For example, if someone has a strong preference to a certain body type beyond sexual dimorphism, we tend to call that a kink rather than orientation. Then again, it might not draw that much public attention or have social ramifications, like your partner’s sex/gender would.
Just lacking a public sexuality can get you socially singled out (pun intended). That must be annoying to asexual people, but is it different from being annoying to all the other people who are persistently single for other reasons? What makes asexuality a valid orientation? I’m curious to hear people’s thoughts on this.
@Lumipuna
I’d say the difference is that orientation relates to what gender someone wants to have sex with. For example, if you’re a man who is attracted to women then you are a heterosexual man. OTOH, a kink is a non-human object, activity, or isolated body part that someone is attracted to. For example, if the heterosexual man is attracted to women with very large breasts for their breasts that would be a kink.
Naglfar:
Is that some official definition? What if you being dependent on one weird kink doesn’t cause any problems to yourself or others? What if you have a few interchangeable kinks, all weird, but none of them are necessary as such? What if your kink is actually some pretty vanilla thing but very specific and important to you?
I suspect it’s a red herring in this case anyway, since we’re discussing on fetish vs. sexual orientation, not fetish vs. paraphilia.
@Lumipuna
No, but it’s the definition commonly used.
Then there’s no problem. My comment didn’t imply a value judgement, it was merely trying to figure out what’s going on. Neither of these are necessarily problematic, they are only considered such when they cause distress.
Then there’s no problem. Again, neither of these things are bad in and of themselves. I have kinks, and I’m doing just fine, and I know lots of other people who are. Not trying to imply that there’s anything wrong with any of these, merely trying to apply the correct term here.
I know that, I was adding another idea to the discussion and trying to see if another term better describes the situation. If anyone else is more knowledgeable about these, please correct me if I’m using the terms wrong.
Naglfar:
I’ve seen this definition before, and the underlying theme, if there’s any, seems to be the public vs. private aspect of your sexuality I noted above. However, this whole distinction smells vaguely arbitrary to me.
Maybe I’m just in the mood for nitpicking definitions. For example, a woman having huge tits seems to me like a personal body trait rather than an isolated body part, and as such not fundamentally different from being physically female. I guess it depends on the specific manner of the other person’s interest. Like, if their interest is very much focused on just the huge tits (a specific body part), then it’s a fetish, otherwise it’s not either a fetish or orientation but a relatively insignificant “sexual type interest/preference”. Conversely, one could also have a fetish for female-type breasts generally, or human breasts generally.