Yuri to Boushi to Hon no Tabibito

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The role of girl/girl relationships in the adult media – The intrinsic pornographicity of the penis

Posted on | September 17, 2008 | 9 Comments |

| My whole argument hinges on the fact that looking at this doesn’t make me feel dirty…maybe I’m just blase about this now -_-;;

I find it very interesting to look at the adult industry these days – purely since most of the people that invest in such materials are loath to look at the actual mechanistics of the whole thing, it’s interesting to see how different kinds and levels of media target different audiences.

In my humble opinion, I believe there is a division in most people’s minds between the “softer” and “harder” materials in the adult world. For simplicity’s sake, the softer material can be referred to as “Erotica” while the harder as “Pornography”.

To quote Steve from Coupling when his girlfriend finds the video “Lesbian Spank Inferno”, he replies “NO! I do not use pornography! Well, I enjoy erotica, if that’s what you mean…”

Erotica and pornography are two ends of a spectrum of adult material. You may want to stick “Fanservice” on the beginning of erotica and “Really perverted shit” on the end just to make up the complete spectrum, with the higher points on the scale being associated with a greater social onus and increased feeling of “being dirty” when you watch them.

To put a definite meaning to each point on the scale, I would define Erotica as: “Material containing nudity and or non-graphic sex, usually better art quality and increased emphasis on love and storylines” Pornography, on the other hand is “Material containing graphic sex, usually with less focus on storyline and lower production values”. So to tell the two apart, I could go into broadcasting language and say that while Erotica may show two people very much aroused and making love, there is no graphical representation of this, whereas in pornography, this is where the focus lies.

So my question for this week is: “Where does girl love lie on this scale?”

In my distant past, when I did indulge in real-life “adult movies”, I was briefly drawn to the lesbian genre, probably for all the reasons that I enjoy yuri now – There is no male to be jealous of and the actresses curvyness was not offset by chiselled male musculature. However, I lost heart in the whole thing very quickly possibly because of my long running quest for increased perversion – in other words, for frank pornography, I didn’t find girl love dirty enough.

Why would this be so? Girls “acting” in pornography have every bit as much potential to be as dirty as their male counterparts, and indeed, the onus is often on them to act their part, since the men are usually there to fade into the background as much as possible. I would guess that girl-love doesn’t quite arouse the same dirtyness because there is less visible arousal (less sticky stuff), a less obvious conclusion or climax and perhaps controversially, less penetration (yes, I know there can be toys involved, but we’ll come to that later). In addition, many girls love relationships in anime are depicted as gentler affairs and are less prone to over-pornification. (I made up that word)

So by that reasoning, I think the problem with the pornographic end of the girl-love spectrum is that the base dirtiness factor is lower than it’s penis-toting counterparts. In fact, if you consider the other side of the spectrum with boys love, there is an intrinsically dirty feeling even to watching the erotica end of this spectrum (which I’m sure many fangirls are used to), and so one might hypothesise that the number of penises involved increases the basic dirtyness of the material.

Therefore, you might take one step further and debate whether the depiction of the erect penis in itself is a graduation from erotica to pornography. As I stated before, I think that the separating line between the two grey areas is drawn with the depiction of definite arousal – That’s a hard-on to you or I. Or indeed penetration, or any other way you could think of.

And so, as an artist of the yuri persuasion (of which there may be a fair few), how would you adapt your erotic art to appeal to the porn-craving masses desperate for some girl girl loving? There are a number of options in this case:

  1. Add extra features to increase the dirtyness factor (for instance, general perversions such as bondage, non-consensual sex, toys)
  2. Definite and copious graphic representations of arousal (juices ++)
  3. Add penis (Futanari – depiction of hermaphrodites)

So by this reasoning, Futanari as a genre of perversion was probably invented to increase the perversion factor of yuri in the pornography end of the spectrum. In fact, the complaints from many yuri fans that there “just aren’t any yuri doujinshi out there” is probably evidence of this fact, since the whole girls love doujinshi market is pretty much taken up by futanari whereas pure yuri hentai doujinshi are generally few and far between. Therefore, from this, we can say “Futanari = pornography”, though there being one exception to this rule – the title “Boku no Futatsu no Tsubasa” (a Toshiki Yui creation), in which he successfuly (if somewhat weirdly) managed to weave a coherent storyline with non-explicit sex scenes around the central concept of a hermaphrodite girl. Madness.

So where have we reached by the end of this discourse? First of all, it is very easy to take a lesbian couple and end up with erotica, but it takes extra effort to turn it into truly dirty pornography. Secondly, by addition of penis, the base-dirtyness is increased and it becomes pornography more quickly. And lastly, we have the debatable conclusion that more penis = more perverted. I’m sure that’s something that many people would contest, though ^^;;

Category: Editorials, Hentai/Ero-games

Comments

9 Responses to “The role of girl/girl relationships in the adult media – The intrinsic pornographicity of the penis”

  1. Chilipop
    September 17th, 2008 @ 11:32 pm

    Dude, you are awesome, but sometimes I think you over-think things too much too.

    Cheers

  2. Jaden
    September 18th, 2008 @ 2:46 am

    The reason it comes off as not dirty is the simple fact not enough is shown. You equate the existence of an erect penis to dirty, more or less. But would it be dirty at all if the penis was limp? The real problem is that is basically what is being in regard to female arousal, they aren’t being shown as aroused. You can blame censorship laws or the artists themselves, but it all seems to end the same way. basically all we get seems to be vaginal fluid.

    I acknowledge that yes showing female arousal is harder since it is more stuble than the male, but with some effort is can turn out great. The simplest thing that can be down is to pay attention to the clitoris. So often just by showing this level of care it can change so much. As example look at Morinaga Milk’s Sweet Lips, I will admit that it is already dirty due to the mild bondage but with attention payed to the clitoris it just makes it one of the most wonderful things ever. And from the same comic another point, just don’t make the vulva one big whole. This I feel a reason that it fails to make a jump to dirty, it isn’t even sexual it is just this magical space. Show the parts, if you do that than you can show the arousal.

  3. Yeppers
    September 18th, 2008 @ 4:35 pm

    Maka-Maka was plenty hot without penis.

  4. Nemo
    September 20th, 2008 @ 12:21 am

    @Yeppers: Tru dat.

  5. Joku
    September 20th, 2008 @ 4:02 am

    over-pornification ftw. Uhm I don’t know who to blame for this but actually I really hate the male leads and toys (and especially futanari) and all those things in my Hentai/erotica(pornography~) and I really would enjoy if they made a nice yuri porn without all that. (Maybe I just don’t want to feel dirty watching it…)
    And just mentioned by the way, there really is not enough yuri out there.
    It’s not that I don’t like penis or that I hate men or something. I just think it’s enough to know what they actually do to make the erotica do the thing it should. And most of actual adult content have really ugly males…

    But about what you want to say with that: I agree ^^’

  6. Hendayo
    September 20th, 2008 @ 4:51 pm

    I have some marimite and read or die doujin which goes against your argument, and an awesome ranma doujin which sort of goes towards it (fun w/hot and cold water).

  7. Lore
    September 21st, 2008 @ 6:54 pm

    yeah! you´re right about that ^^

  8. LWL
    September 22nd, 2008 @ 1:13 am

    So, over 9000 penises = ultimate porn?

    Great post, reminds me of why I read your blog.

  9. Joku
    September 27th, 2008 @ 1:02 am

    By the way is there a higher solution version of this picture?
    (sorry for double comenting)

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