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CW: discussion of sexual assault
I want to talk about the whole "don't do ahegao it comes from r*pe manga" thing that I have seen going around in the comments sections of ero models' posts. A thread (1/11)
I want to talk about the whole "don't do ahegao it comes from r*pe manga" thing that I have seen going around in the comments sections of ero models' posts. A thread (1/11)
So, the argument is that ahegao is bad because it originated from manga that depicted sexual assault, the face being (from what I've heard, I have not read any of this manga) the result of female characters being horribly assaulted but "turning" into enjoyment. (2/11)
Of course, sexual assault is bad. But it sounds to me like these erotica are written from consensual non-consent fantasies, one of the most common kinks that plenty of people have. They are not true stories of real assaults, they, like lots of BDSM porn, (3/11)
are containers to safely enjoy those fantasies. Coming from a vanilla perspective I can of course see how this would be shocking, but trust me, it is Very Normal among kinksters. There is nothing wrong with enjoying those stories in and of themselves, and (4/11)
enjoying them does not mean you want to be assaulted or assault someone for real, in real life. I can't emphasize that enough, really. But anyway, back to ahegao. (5/11)
Maybe if someone was cosplaying specifically from one of those original manga and acting out nonconsensual scenes specifically, I could see how that could be an issue. But........we're not. And I say "we" here to mean models & cosplayers. We're literally just making faces. (6/11)
Those of us who make our living selling sexy pictures have always stuck our tongues out, it's not new, it's something a lot of people like. The ahegao just also pairs nicely with cosplay or anime-focused aesthetics. It's trendy! The market demands it. (7/11)
And at this point, it's been so memeified that it's very far divorced from the original source material ANYWAY. Everyone knows it's from hentai but IME they recognize it more from cosplayers and e-girls doing it. (8/11)
All of this is not to mention that if you wanted to pick some problematic shit common in anime & manga to get mad about like.....make a fuckin list. There is SO MUCH. & there are other more iffy trends that have popped up among e-girls to criticize! (9/11)
of course not saying you can't care about multiple problematic things at once, I just don't agree that ahegao is a big problem and we all need to stop doing it. It comes from porn, we make porn, people like it, it sells. (10/11)
Even if I accept that it comes from CNC porn which is a bad thing, which I don't, we are consenting adults making money off of our own sexuality, which is about as much consensual of content as you can get. 
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A friend pointed out in another thread that some people also claim it's cultural appropriation which.......my god, please, no. There's PLENTY of problems with appropriation among cosplayers & e-girls, oh boy is there ever,
but unless I'm mistaken sticking your tongue out when you're horny is not a touchstone of any culture and it's super weird to treat anime & manga like representations of real life Japanese people???
a disclaimer that of course I am white and it is always, always, always up to people who belong to the culture in question to decide what is or is not appropriation, though it is also important to remember that PoC are not a monolith and you will often get differing opinions
