We Need To Get Better At Talking About Sex

Sex is great and all, but have you tried talking about it?

This is something that the games industry in general appears to struggle greatly with, since adult gaming is still in a weird niche where it’s commonly understood to exist and is appreciated by its core audiences, but at the same time it’s still not particularly accepted by mainstream outlets, who will take every opportunity to deride and downplay it.

The latest of many examples at the time of writing was presented by Nathan Grayson of Kotaku, who derisively pointed out that “two of Steam’s top games last month were anime sex games” before going on to complain about creators catering to “straight men’s sexual fantasies”. But really this is a broader issue that has been worth talking about for some time. And now’s as good a time as any.

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Honey Select Unlimited

I’m gonna share some behind-the-scenes insights with you, dear reader: looking at the popularity of various articles on this site, the most popular by a significant margin are those that explore games with sexual content of some description — be they explicit, or simply using unashamed sex appeal as part of their core aesthetic.

Top of the heap by far are my articles on Illusion’s Honey Select Unlimited, an erotic game that is mostly known for its detailed character creation feature and excellent photo studio mode; this game brings in steady traffic to MoeGamer every single day, and has done ever since I published the first of these pieces back in March of 2018.

More recently, my detailed writeup on Neko Work H’s visual novel LOVE³ -Love Cube-which features the distinctive artwork of well-established and beloved doujinshi artist Ishikei, has drawn in a noticeably larger than average influx of daily readers.

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LOVE³ -Love Cube-

These are far from isolated examples, either; running down my list of most popular articles of all time, I continuously find titles like Custom Order Maid 3D 2, Deep Space Waifu, Dungeon Travelers 2, Senran Kagura, Rance, Grisaia and Negligee all occupying spots high up in the table.

The conclusion we can draw from this is pretty simple: people want to know about these games. And those people are emphatically not being served by mainstream video game sites such as Kotaku, which in turn brings them to places like MoeGamer. I’m not going to complain about the latter aspect of things, but what does concern me a bit is why those people are not being adequately served by commercial outlets.

Let’s ponder what I mean by that before we delve into the possible reasons — and why I think this is an important discussion to have.

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Senran Kagura Burst

For approaching a decade now, commercial games journalism’s approach to games that feature anything from mildly provocative content to explicit sexual scenes has been to deride it in one way or another — often taking the time to insult the audience along the way. The word “embarrassing” often crops up, as does “pandering”, and the games are often accused of being “pornographic” — or, in the very worst cases, “child pornography” or “paedophilia”.

Need some examples? Okay. Here’s just a handful from my own casual observations over the last few years; there are plenty more.

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Senran Kagura Estival Versus

Here’s Chris Rooke from the now-defunct UK Official Nintendo Magazine claiming that Senran Kagura is “damaging the industry” and is an “insultingly degrading and misogynistic atrocity”.

Here’s Phil Kollar from Polygon declaring Dungeon Travelers 2 a “creepy, porn-lite dungeon crawler”.

Here’s Jed Whitaker from Destructoid outright calling players of Valkyrie Drive: Bhikkuni “paedophiles”.

Here’s Jim Sterling writing on his own site and completely failing to engage with Senran Kagura 2: Deep Crimson on any level beyond “tits”.

And here’s Mike Diver from VICE doing exactly the same thing, as well as suggesting those interested in Senran Kagura would be sexually assaulting strangers on public transport if they didn’t have this game to occupy themselves. (Senran Kagura, as a fairly high-profile Japanese series at this point, is a regrettably easy target.)

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Dungeon Travelers 2

These articles all have one thing in common: no attempt to actually explore, engage with and analyse the works in question. They make assumptions, they don’t bother to check if those assumptions are correct, and they spend more time making grand, sweeping moral statements than actually trying to have a conversation, offer any helpful advice or get to the bottom of why these games have become popular.

Actually, they have two things in common, the second being that they’re all written by men. But let’s concentrate on the actual content itself for now, otherwise we’ll be here all day.

When I say these articles don’t bother to engage with the games they’re deriding, I really mean it; Diver’s article, for example, proudly boasts of spending a grand total of an hour with Senran Kagura 2 over the course of five or six sessions (so no more than ten minutes at a time, then) during which he had no idea what was going on in the story (unsurprising, since he also talks about deliberately not paying any attention to it); Kollar’s article on Dungeon Travelers 2 was written well before the game had been released and was based entirely on pre-release promotional materials; Rooke hadn’t played Senran Kagura Burst at all when he decided to let rip and inadvertently made a lot more people aware of this series he irrationally hated so much.

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Senran Kagura Estival Versus

Many of these games have good reason for their content being the way it is, whether it’s subversive (as in the case of the early Senran Kagura games in particular, where the cheeky fanservice content was designed to be dramatically juxtaposed with the rather dark and tragic narrative aspect) or symbolic (as in the case of Dungeon Travelers 2, which makes use of a common Japanese trope where nudity represents vulnerability or exposing your “soul” to someone else) — but you wouldn’t know that if you didn’t actually play the games.

This applies to “sex games”, as Grayson refers to them, too; he describes LOVE³ -Love Cube- thus:

LOVE³ is a visual novel about a down-on-his-luck comics artist living with three women. Naturally, he sleeps with all of them. The game touts animations that “come to life and bounce up and down” and specifically notes that “all characters depicted are over the age of 18.”

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LOVE³ -Love Cube-

This is a gross oversimplification of LOVE³ -Love Cube-, as I’ve explained in detail elsewhere. While LOVE³ does feature a lot of explicit sexual content in its latter half and it’s not inaccurate to say that protagonist Ichinari sleeps with the three heroines, what Grayson’s description misses out completely is the context of that. This isn’t some gonzo porn where you hit “Play” and the fucking starts within a matter of seconds; this is a visual novel where sex is depicted as a natural part of a relationship — and, to make things more interesting and different from societal “norms”, a mutually consensual polyamorous relationship, at that. But again, you wouldn’t know that if you didn’t play it.

At this point, I’d like to share a few tweets from Meru, the translator for LOVE³ -Love Cube-, because she provides an interesting perspective on things — both as someone who isn’t me, and as a woman.

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LOVE³ -Love Cube-

Something the Kotaku article got me thinking about: while I acknowledge that most eroge are indeed aimed at men, what attracted me, as a woman, to them was the fact that you get to experience a relationship with the characters, making the sex scenes more intimate.

Sure, those scenes tend to be from a male perspective, and there are many things I dislike about the average eroge scene, but they offer something way more emotional than your average Western porn movie, and that’s the connection I was looking for.

Women are just as sexual as men, but (and this is a very broad generalisation) we often tend to enjoy porn with an emotional depth to it. It’s why bodice-ripper “romance” novels and fanfic are so popular.

Now I have no idea if this is something that’s innate or socialised (probably socialised, I mean most things are), but it is what it is. And there are female eroge fans out there who find a lot of joy in these games.

I’m not trying to destroy a narrative here or anything, as I’m not denying the audience for eroge is primarily male, but instead of ALWAYS looking for the negatives, it would be nice to see bigger outlets also look at some of the positives of these “anime sex games”.

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LOVE³ -Love Cube-

Meru makes a great point here about emotional engagement. Even in nukige that emphasises sex over narrative, developers and writers make an effort to construct characters in such a way that make us care about them: they provide them with personality, backstory, character traits, tics and habits… all the things that come together to make that character feel more like “a person” and less like just some text, graphics and sounds.

And her preference for seeing sexual scenes in the context of a healthy relationship is by no means exclusive to women, either; speaking for myself, I certainly struggle to engage with straight-up context-free porn (unless I happen to have what can euphemistically be described as “the raging horn”; it happens to the best of us!), whereas if there’s a significant attempt to invest me in the characters involved before anything even remotely sexual happens, I feel extremely emotionally fulfilled when things do proceed to another level. By extension, those erotic scenes, when they happen, feel much more powerful and meaningful (both emotionally and outright physically) as a result.

This is a particular strength of LOVE³ -Love Cube-, which takes plenty of time to introduce its main heroines and develop their relationships with the protagonist before anything lewd happens, but it’s something that Japanese visual novel writers in general have become extraordinarily proficient at as the medium has developed; the Grisaia series’ use of sex scenes as an integral part of character development is particularly noteworthy in this regard, but there are countless other great examples.

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LOVE³ -Love Cube-

Meru speaking up about Grayson’s article also raises another important point: these games are made by people. They don’t just appear from the aether, ready and waiting to fulfil every fantasy of heterosexual straight men without question. They’re the creation of substantial teams consisting of real people: real people who designed the characters; real people who wrote the prose and dialogue; real people who localised that dialogue to bring the work to a broader audience; real people who composed the music to complement the characters and the events that unfold; real people who drew 2D artwork and constructed 3D models; real people who animated characters and cutscenes; real people who provided their voices to play the roles of the various characters. And plenty more besides.

With this in mind, it feels fundamentally disrespectful to write off the work of so many real people as just an “anime sex game” — or to discard it based on its target audience. In the case of something like LOVE³ -Love Cube-, it’s not hard to imagine it being a particularly meaningful creation for its artist Ishikei, for example, since it’s a highly polished, quality product that features their artwork: something they can (and should) be proud to say they contributed to the creation of. On top of that, Neko Work artist Sayori’s contributions to the Live2D side of things also provides a rare opportunity for Ishikei’s work to be seen in motion; characters well and truly coming to life rather than being confined to the printed page. And not just during erotic scenes, either.

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Senran Kagura Peach Beach Splash

Everything we’ve talked about so far is true for non-explicit games, too; speak to any Senran Kagura fan and they’ll happily talk your ear off about their favourite girl, with how much they want to fuck them being pretty low down the list of priorities in most instances. Senran Kagura has endured and developed as it has done over the course of the last eight years because of this fact; most of the more recent Senran Kagura games go as far as de-emphasising the original plot in favour of in-depth character explorations and developing the relationships between the gradually expanding cast.

But even if the Senran Kagura series were ever to develop in an 18+ direction — unlikely, given that it is primarily developed as a console series, but let’s ponder hypotheticals for a moment — it would be absolutely fine, because these characters and their relationships are so well-established at this point that it would actually be rather heartwarming and emotional to see some of the more obvious “ships” get an opportunity to finally spend some on-screen intimate time together.

Emotional engagement is extremely important for a healthy relationship. And the most memorable relationships in games acknowledge both this and the fact that emotional intimacy often brings with it the desire to be physically intimate, too. And, I can’t emphasise this enough, that is very much OKAY!

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LOVE³ -Love Cube-

I made a specific effort to talk about this side of things when I wrote about LOVE³ -Love Cube-. I wanted to be completely honest about it, so I went so far as to describe my reaction to both the emotional and the erotic scenes in detail. While I was nervous about being quite so honest about the latter side of things in particular as it’s something that it’s easy to dance around without really saying anything, my honesty in that regard ended up being very well-received. (I will happily say that I was heavily inspired here by my good friend Infernal Monkey, whose extremely NSFW onahole review blog is one of the most admirably honest — and entertaining — places on the Internet.)

It’s popular in progressive circles these days to criticise heterosexual men for being unable or unwilling to open up and talk about their feelings and emotions. However, were a man to admit that they found themselves emotionally attracted to a particular character to such a degree that they harboured a desire to be physically intimate with them, you can bet that the emotional aspect would be quickly discarded in favour of branding the man in question a pervert (or worse) — or perhaps just pathetic for finding a fictional character attractive.

This seems somewhat self-defeating; if you want men to start talking about how they’re feeling, you need to then accept those feelings, whatever they might be, and then you can move on from there. (Go play Blue Reflection if this concept is difficult to grasp; that game is literally about understanding and accepting feelings that might be alien to you, and as such is a title I strongly recommend to anyone interested in developing their empathy… or just playing a gorgeous, emotional game.)

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Blue Reflection

It doesn’t stop there, however; all of the above goes out of the window if we’re talking about LGBTQ+ content. LGBTQ+ audiences are encouraged to be open about this sort of thing, and LGBTQ+ content is typically highlighted in publications that are often noticeably negative towards heterosexual content.

But that shouldn’t be it. Everyone should be encouraged to be open and honest about this sort of thing. No-one should be shamed for their preferences and the things they enjoy. No-one should be excluded or made to feel invalid based on such an important part of their overall identity. And at the moment, articles like Grayson’s in particular make a specific point to suggest that content intended for heterosexual males is somehow a problem because of a perceived lack of content for other audiences.

It’s important to remember that just because a piece of media was developed with a heterosexual male audience in mind, that doesn’t mean it will end up with an exclusively heterosexual male audience. This personal account, written by martial arts instructor “Atma Weapon”, describes how Senran Kagura’s Katsuragi helped her come to terms with her painful past and her identity as a lesbian, and remains an incredibly powerful piece of writing. It’s been one of my favourite examples of what we’re talking about here ever since I first read it a couple of years back, but I’m sure it’s not the only one out there like it.

And, on top of that, Grayson’s implication that LGBTQ+ content is lacking on storefronts such as Steam is simply inaccurate; just here on MoeGamer we’ve seen titles such as Ne no Kami and The Expression: Amrilato (both of which are available on Steam), which feature FxF relationships; popular localisers MangaGamer and JAST both have several explicit MxM eroge in their portfolios; and companies like Aksys specialise in otome games, which are specifically designed to primarily appeal to heterosexual women. These games exist, but as we’ve seen, the commercial press in particular is bad at talking about them. And especially bad at researching them before shooting their mouth off.

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The Expression: Amrilato

We need to get better at talking about sex. Sex is nothing to be ashamed of. It is a healthy, natural part of human existence, whether you are a heterosexual male who gets off on squishy, curvy mamas with big boobies or a genderfluid pansexual whose preferences change by the hour. Everyone should be able to enjoy themselves without judgement — so long as they’re not hurting anyone or breaking any laws, obviously. No-one should be excluded. And no-one should be shamed for enjoying one of the most pleasurable things life has to offer.

Two of Steam’s top games last month were anime sex games? I say great; let’s make it a regular occurrence!


More about LOVE³ -Love Cube-
More about Custom Order Maid 3D 2

More about Senran Kagura

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31 thoughts on “We Need To Get Better At Talking About Sex”

  1. I’m surprised nobody left a comment here since the article is getting shared a lot on Twitter. Anyway, these kinds of games aren’t really my thing, but I think they serve a purpose for a lot of folks. Some tell really great stories (it’s not like I’ve never played any) and can explore things that we wouldn’t be able to in our everyday lives, which is kind of what media is for.

    Enjoyed reading Pete 🙂

  2. I can’t agree enough. I just finished all of Nekopara, which I know also got ripped to shreds by several mainstream game reviewers, and I felt the same way about those games that Meru seems to have felt about Love Cube. The games built actual relationships between the characters that were believable and added a lot to the h-scenes beyond mere boning.

    It’s also interesting that so many of these self-righteous reviewers are men. I know there are a few female reviewers like Kat Bailey who are in the same crowd, but that seems to be more the exception than the rule. Maybe they’re just doing their best to act woke in order to advance their careers, because it’s hard to imagine they all believe the bullshit they write about these games. And without even playing them half the time. It’s no wonder gamers have lost faith in these sites as legitimate sources of information.

    1. A majority of the journalists who have been throwing shade and unnecessary criticism at these games were once fans of the genre. Jed once had a tattoo of Etna from Disgaea, Klepek could make adult jokes that he now can’t as he is visually sickened by Yakuza 0’s gravure scene more harmless than a sex scene in Witcher or Red Dead Redemption 2.

      When Steam sacrificed a large part of it’s potential library to EGS so that games from Neko Works and Dlsite can publish their titles on Steam. EGS will never allow such content on their storefront and so Steam’s VNs and sexual games must make up for it as we are stuck with it for better or for worse. So Grayson expects higher standards for the sacrifices made from Valve.

      But it really asks the question, why haven’t more indie games try to put games with LGBT themes that is done in an uncomfortable fashion that came from the West which have made much more active pushes than Japan did? That it isn’t always sunshine and rainbows with flags of transexual/bisexual flying proudly, but dealing with genuine social issues that the ideal secret garden greenhouses don’t provide. Sims 4’s Island Living Expansion had one of the most LGBTQ+ friendly environments with a lesbian couple and a transexual but still vulnerable to the whims of the players who would try to prune out such things or create a hostile environment for them as well the rebranding introduced LGBTQ+ couple on the front.

      The Western Console industry have experienced more sex than the soft touch of Japanese sexual content and Journalism asks for much more than just the basic in that regard

    2. Totally agreed on Nekopara. Hell, I did a whole detailed feature on the series a while back and was surprised and delighted by how much there was to say about it.

      Yes, the fact that the majority of the people making these comments are men is pretty telling. I also find it kind of darkly hilarious how many of them have turned out to be sex pests (or worse) — at least one of the people whose articles I linked to in this piece has been “unpersoned” due to some sort of past indiscretion, and Jed actually got fired from Destructoid for that Valkyrie Drive piece, much to the publication’s credit.

      Kat Bailey bums me out. I used to work with her on GamePro and she was always awesome and very kind to me. But at some point, like happened to a distressing number of people I used to know, some sort of switch flipped in her head and she became someone who writes about how Castlevania is bad because vampires are rapey and something something misogyny gamers are awful or whatever.

      In some ways, I’m sad that I had my career in the games press cut short by backstabbing and bullying. In others, I’m glad I got out and am now free to do my own thing!

      1. Great article Pete. I have to applaud your bravery in choosing to be an advocate for this side of gaming. Few people would stick their neck out like this given the nastiness and venom of the online crowd.

        I have to echo your concerns on ‘the switch’; it reminds me of Leigh Alexander, who made a start (back when her blog was sexy videogame land) writing sex-positive op-eds on how nobody should be ashamed of playing adult VNs and even bragging about hanging out on 4chan. Once she was more established her outlook took a very different turn and she joined the chorus of Western games authorities unable to write a word about sex in games without it being a put-down or a call-out.

        1. Yeah, Leigh Alexander is a specific case I think about a lot. I used to really like her writing, but there was a very definite change in her one day, and it seemed very sudden.

          I have… or probably more accurate to say had friends in the industry who have undergone similar changes. One guy who started in the business at the same time as me seems like a completely different person now. It’s so strange… and a little upsetting, I don’t mind admitting!

  3. This was really interesting, and you changed my mind on my attitude towards these games. Granted it was because I never really thought about it, but I was very glad to read this, thanks!

  4. “the fact that emotional intimacy often brings with it the desire to be physically intimate, too. And, I can’t emphasise this enough, that is very much OKAY!”

    This bit honestly moved me to tears. I’ve been so confused for my whole life about the validity of physical intimacy (thanks Catholicism), and while I’d kinda grasped at this idea earlier, I’m so happy to know that my feelings are normal.

    1. Happy to help. It’s something I’ve often struggled to express in reality too; writing words makes it much easier to express oneself. But yes, the point very much stands. It’s a valid, normal feeling to have, and not something you should feel guilt over.

      Thanks for commenting and sharing your thoughts.

  5. “And, on top of that, Grayson’s implication that LGBTQ+ content is lacking on storefronts such as Steam is simply inaccurate”
    Glad someone said it! In Japan, there’s plenty R18 otome, and BL (MxM) game aimed at women. They might not be popular in America, but it’s very popular in Japan. They even get adapted into anime (Togainu no Chi, DMMD, etc etc)!
    Also plenty Japanese women write eroge for men too! And they enjoy it

  6. I’ve found in recent years that I’ve become much more critical of the video game industry and the core gamer audience. As a self identified Feminist, I agree with this piece 100%, especially the part highlighting that all those articles were written by clueless men who are nowhere near as woke as they claim. Jim Sterling’s review of Senran Kagura 2 was one of the most grossly misogynistic things I’ve ever read.

    1. I have some friends like that, and it really feels like them trying to work through a massive guilt complex over being heterosexual men than anything to do with progressivism, and discussing sexual content in games, or even just games having attractive female characters, honestly makes me start to understand what being “mansplained” at feels like.

      I mean, I get the guilt complex, I had it too, but to me the key was realizing that the underlying ideas that the female body and images thereof are inherently and exclusively sexual in a way that appeals exclusively to men; and that sexual appeal towards men is inherently exploitative, are non-sequiturs. Playing Skullgirls for 10 minutes disabused me of the notion simply by me realizing “hey, these characters are attractively drawn, but I’m thinking about them as characters first, not as sexual fantasies”.

      1. I know right? It just goes to show you that none of these men even know the difference between being attractive and objectifying. As if they are under the impression that 1950s conservativism is now progressive.

        Sexuality in games isn’t a problem because “sex = bad” but rather due to the sheer amount of it present in many games where it just doesn’t fit. IE games with super serious plots that have women in Bikini Armor in cutscenes.

        Instead of coming across as a genuine male feminist ally, these types instead remind me of Mike Pence refusing to be in the same room as another woman without his wife present. Yes there’s a bit more restraint on their part than the drooling fuckboy pestering women for nudes, but it’s still telling of what they truly view women as. Also not to mention that many of them are homophobic as hell in regards to lesbians.

  7. The really tragic thing to me is that it feels like the motivation for that attitude towards women is to overcompensate for there being drooling fuckboys that pester women for nudes, and thinking that being comfortable with any feelings of sexual attraction would mean just being another drooling fuckboy.

    I mean, that’s where I was, at least, so maybe that was just me, but if it is the case then it makes the whole thing self-fulfilling, since there’s no one saying to these men “hey, you’re allowed to find women sexually attractive, that doesn’t make you a creep.” It feels like the only options presented are “unabashed boundary-defying pervert” or “sex-repressed busybody”. I mean, if a normal heterosexual man is trying to do the right thing, but gets constant messages that their sexual desires are harmful, there’s no way for them to grow into a mature understanding of sexuality, and it would make sense they’d choose to be the busybody if that’s the least bad option.

    1. Yep, this sums up the problem really nicely — not just with this topic, but with discourse on thorny issues online in general. There’s never a middle ground; it’s always one extreme or another!

  8. This article was a real eye-opener for me. Often, when a piece of media that I like includes sexual content, I end up wrestling with the question “but is it porn?”. Usually, I’ll come up with a bunch of justifications for why that piece of media is definitely not porn, and hence why I’m allowed to like it without being a pervert. It pretty much never ocurred to me that a piece of media could have sexual content as a main part of its appeal, and still have emotional depth or artistic merit.

  9. That’s a strong, resonating ending. I’ve espoused similar feelings for a few years now.

    I remember when I played Katawa Shoujo and thought that the sex scenes were quite important in developing the characters’ relationships.

    I, unfortunately, don’t remember which scenes got me physically excited.

  10. This was so thoughtful and well-written; thank you so much for these quite eloquent musings on why eroge matter.

    I do think the characters and narratives are key to understanding these games (and much of the Japanese otaku industry in general). The point of a lot of bishōjo games into move you emotionally through narrative, and sexual desire is but one part of the emotions these games are designed to make you feel.

    In addition, the singling-out of Japanese and Japanese-inspired games with erotic content by other news outlets smacks of a kind of orientalism that is sadly common, where Japan is seen as a land of eroticism and perversion: the anthropologist Patrick Galbraith calls this the “Porno Japan” discourse.

    Another thing those news outlets fail to take into account is the context in which these games are created and consumed: in his PhD dissertation “The Politics of Imagination” (which I highly, highly recommend), Patrick Galbraith (again) writes that the separation of fiction and reality is an everyday and conscious part of the eroge scene in Japan: he calls this the “ethics of moe.” “In the ethics of moe, proper conduct is to keep fictional characters separate and distinct from real people, even as fictional characters are real on their own terms and affect individually and socially. The contrast between these men and women in Japan and much of the world, however inadvertent, is political: It points to other ways of understanding imaginary sex, violence and crimes, and other ways of living with fictional and real others.”

  11. I Don’t know if anyone will read this because the article is quite old… missed out on this one. But after reading I wanted to write my feelings. I am happy being Non Binary and I am sexually attracted to anyone despite there gender. So you could definitely say I am apart of the LGBT+ community.

    Now what I hate is people trying to speak for me and or be offended for me. I have had real discrimination happen to me and that is a real problem. Some cis-het male getting off to a eroge game is the least of my worries or concerns. In fact I find it very unfair to classify all people who play these games as creepy perverts. Do they exist sure, but most people who play these games do it for fun and to embrace a sensual part of life. There is nothing wrong with that in my opinion as long as people know where fantasy begins and ends (which a majority of people do)

    To finish off I want to say that I love eroge games of all types (The plus of liking all genders) and play them quite often when I am in the mood. I love getting attached to these character and find these games much more stimulating then an adult movie. I think that eroge can be enjoyed by all people of all genders and sexualities and to act like it’s not a thing is ridiculous.

    I love making these robots of virtue signaling caught in a loop because they want to virtue signal about being supportive of the queer community but when I point out we love sex just as much as hétero people they dont know how to respond while keeping there narrative going.

    Thanks for writing this article. With <3 Nadia

    1. Hello, only just saw this but thanks for sharing your thoughts! Always glad to hear from people willing to share their feelings on this sort of thing — and don’t worry about this article being old, I refer people back to it frequently because, sadly, some time after I wrote it we’re not really any better off than we were!

      All we can keep doing is make an effort to speak up and be honest, though. Eventually people have to start listening!

  12. I 100% agree with you, Nadia. Every time I read one of these articles they keep saying that these games are just “straight men’s sexual fantasies” makes me want to leave a comment like:

    “Oh? Thank you so much! Your article has enlightened me and I have realized that my whole life has been a great error!”

    “I’m not pansexual, what a big mistake…”

    “I’ve been a straight white male the entire time! A Complete Straight Pussy Destroller! So many years of trying to get my family to accept me for nothing!”

    “Well, what I going to do?… I will break the good news to my boyfriend and end our relationship of years.”

    Way to the mirror

    “Wait a second! My skin is not white enough, it is a milky cream. But Bleach… What do I have you for if not for this?”

    A moment later

    “Now, World. This newly single Straight Man is ready to oppress you! Get ready because you’re going to like it!”

    Sorry for the drama but it’s pretty much what comes to me mind when I read that kind of thing.

    Just ridiculous and misandric against all straight white men who are practically portrayed as negative existences and irresponsible disgusting perverts or reliable old pedophiles.

    In addition, all this makes all members of the LGBTQ+ community who (like me and my boyfriend) enjoy these games created to fulfill “sexual fantasies of heterosexual men” invisible. I do not have the arrogance to represent the absolute totality of the community solely with my person but I know that I am not alone in this matter.

    And to all those who try to defend us and who even take offense at us with the best of intentions, I say “Thank you” because I cannot ignore that there are those who have good motivations behind their actions, I made them the ones who do it for goodness, to them goes my gratitude.

    But like everything in life, even the best of intentions can have the worst of results and speaking for us is not helping us but denying us the opportunity to express ourselves.

    All that excessive and blind progressiveism makes my stomach turn because they have turned a message that was supposed to promote dialogue and positive progress for humanity into a message of political and self-destructive hatred. It’s so sad that I can’t even laugh.

    In a way this reminds me of when I first shared the “I like Pans” meme because I found it funny and a random guy who wasn’t even pan called me intolerant and that I was ridiculing pansexuals. At that time I was like:

    “Really? Should I laugh or feel insulted?”

    Outsiders feel even more insulted than we are by simple trivialities.

    Thanks to Pete for this very emotional article. I only found this blog due to an accident of fate but after this I hope to read more of your work. Thank you so much.

    Love to the Eroge. Love of his art that attracts us. Love of their stories that immerses us. Love of their voices, fascinating as the song of a mermaid. Love to all those who create these wonders, thank you all.

    The day that western industries achieve Japan-like quality products in this area and put aside the contovercia and media booms in favor of doing their best to make these games that address sexuality more enjoyable for their players then that day: I will consider moving the market. Meanwhile… Nipon Banzai! Ai Banzai!

    Sorry if my English is not the best 😉

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