The History Of Ahegao: Is It Damaging To East Asian Women?

Ok I’ve noted a few… flaws in this reasoning.

Ahegao is used predominantly in hentai. Hentai mostly depicts Japanese women. But, like… It’s a Japanese medium aimed at Japanese readers? Like… Of course it mostly depicts Japanese women. That alone isn’t enough to say it’s racist. Especially considering the fact that, well… There is a good number of hentai that DON’T depict Asian women. There’s been a surge in fantasy settings and usually, in those setting, a lot of the female characters aren’t supposed to be Japanese and aren’t really Asian-coded. There’s also a lot of Fate doujins, and in the Fate franchise, a lot of the characters are historical figures from all around the world, including many Western figures. And there is ahegao in those two cases as much as there is in any other hentai. So, yeah, there’s a majority of Japanese women in hentai, portrayed with ahegao, but it’s clearly not limited to them, and the fact there’s a majority of Japanese women in hentai is probably just a byproduct of the fact it’s mostly made by Japanese people for Japanese people. That’s a classic correlation vs causation issue, here.

But we could still argue that it is sexist, maybe? Now, don’t get me wrong, as I said, hentai does indeed depict a lot of non-consensual sexual encounters, and it does indeed show women and girls enjoying them. I’m not denying that part. We can talk about that fact and the impacts it may have on society, sure. But that’s not the main topic here. The topic is that ahegao is used in such depictions. And yeah. It is. But like… It’s because it’s just a depiction of extreme sexual pleasure. It’s also used in depictions of consensual sexual encounters. And, even better, it’s not even limited to women; I’ve seen yaoi with ahegao. Really, as I said, it’s basically just a way to depict extreme pleasure in pretty much all kinds of hentai. We could talk about this kind of extreme pleasure being shown on women much more than on men, but I’d say that’s beyond the scope of just ahegao at this point, and it becomes a larger debate about depiction of female vs male sexuality in general.

Now, there is a possibility that the idea that Japanese women are easier to pleasure and that you can easily pleasure them even without their consent could be conveyed by hentai that portray such things. But I’d say the problem here is the context of the pleasure and its depiction, not the pleasure and its depiction themselves. Again, ahegao is certainly not limited to such contexts, not in the slightest.

As for the history, well… Reading the comments, it seems there has been a lot of misunderstanding of the history, but in any case, just because “The earliest form of the term or depiction is fucked up” doesn’t mean that the modern use is necessarily problematic. Ahegao might have started this way, but even in Japan, its seems the modern use is much more widespread than this specific fucked up use. I don’t think even people in Japan necessarily draw a connection between modern ahegao and pedophilia or rape, for example. Things change.

There are a lot of things in life that have fucked up histories, yet they aren’t seen as problematic now. For example, Volkswagen was created by order of the Nazis. But nobody sees Volkswagen as a Nazi company today. You’d be surprised by how many companies have such a history. That’s why we need the full picture, the way it evolved, not just “Here’s the earliest known example”. If you looked at the earliest tools humans have made and decided to draw conclusions about the entire history of the species from that alone, you’d think all knives all throughout history were made by banging two rocks together. It’s a very flawed way to look at history and draw conclusions.

So yeah, I remain unconvinced. I am deeply sorry for those who were victims of disgusting racist men. I hope they can get the help they need. Trauma is no joke. At the same time, just because someone used a dildo to rape you doesn’t mean you should forbid people from using dildos, even if you have a negative response to seeing dildos because of your trauma. Unless you can show there is something inherently problematic with ahegao, you should let people do it, even if it makes you personally uncomfortable because of a very negative past experience (1). And right now, the arguments seem pretty lacking, sorry.

(1) : By that, I mean, you should let people not in your immediate circle be free. Of course, for your own well-being, you can ask people around you to not do, say, or show you things that make you uncomfortable.

“Ahegao, the popular facial expression when you stick out your tongue and cross your eyes, originates from Japanese erotica written by a man who fantasized about assaulting children. It plays off and reinforces the stereotypes that Japanese women are submissive, easily overpowered/manipulated, and that they want/deserve abusive treatment.”

Every single thing about this statement is incorrect. Shoujo Tsubaki isn’t “hentai.” People talk about this shit so authoritatively on the internet like they are real scholars, but make conclusions without knowing anything about the subject they’re talking about. “The earliest known example” they could find was Shoujo Tsubaki… that’s probably because that’s the earliest known example of Japanese erotica they know about, period, and they only know about it because they saw some youtube video about the anime adaptation, which totally misconstrued its content in the first place. They have no sense of Maruo’s actual interests or influences as an artist.

If you want to understand Shoujo Tsubaki, you have to learn about Eroguro. Maruo is influenced by Shuji Terayama, Georges Batailles, Kazuichi Hanawa, Toshio Saeki, Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, and much much more. Eroguro is not made to get a cheap rise out of the reader/viewer. It has a critical/philosophical intent. Many of Suehiro Maruo’s works, including Shoujo Tsubaki, are, specifically, directly concerned with objectification/fetishization and their effects. They’re not merely examples of emptyheaded, shameless fetishization in and of themselves. Suehiro Maruo is a serious and intelligent artist, it is shameful for someone without any understanding of his work to presume Suehiro Maruo is a shitty, shallow person just because they have a shitty, shallow reading of his work. I don’t know why so many people assume because a guy draws something, that means it’s his fetish. People draw things to make a point, sometimes, not just because they like what they’re drawing. What kind of world do we live in where people only do things because they like it? Have you ever actually encountered or thought about art before? Writers discuss what angers them; artists may paint or sculpt what they fear, or what repulses them; they may draw what they think the audience needs to see that they are too ashamed to confront. I doubt Maruo “fantasized about assaulting children” anymore than the average person might fantasize about swerving into traffic or opening the car door and jumping out on the highway. Sometimes fantasies that shock us pop into our own heads.

Ahegao is also much more simple and obvious than that. The idea is that women, behind their so called veil of innocence/disinterest, have immense, untapped sexual desire. Ahegao represents the loss of control, the admission of this desire, and its outward flood, through the eroding of conscious inhibitions. It’s like if “squirting’ were a facial expression. The idea is that women have an animalistic sexual side they are ashamed r protective of, but that a man (or whomever, not just men) can pry to the surface by giving her what she *really* wants, typically the phallus. Now, don’t take this to be a condemnation or approval of the fantasy, or practice; I’m just saying this person from twitter with a shitty fake anime drawing of themself for a profile pic doesn’t understand what is supposed to be erotic about it, just as they don’t know anything about Japanese erotica or Suehiro Maruo.

It has nothing to do with infantilization, or weakness. The only “power” men have over women in this case is that they allegedly possess the thing women secretly desire, but won’t admit. Actually, though, there is ahegao in lesbian/gay porn too. In any case, this “power” is insubstantial. The repetitiveness of this fantasy demonstrates the paranoia about his own lack that compels a man to prove to himself his possession of the phallus over and over again. The truth that may shock you is that men do not possess the phallus, “woman” as a conceptual, sexual object, is the “phallus.” “Woman” is the object of desire. But no woman is the “woman.” Men are the powerless ones in this dynamic, seeking to fill a lack that can never be filled. Of course that does women no favors outside of the fantasy, because women, who cannot escape the objectifying male gaze in our various patriarchal social orders, are not objects, they are subjects.

Mmmm… This is quite the “videogames make people violent” argument.

The reason it’s different from other kinks that are not inherently harmful but are often seen as such or could quickly become harmful if practiced unsafely, (like CNC or DDLG) is because ahegao is racially charged and literally popularized by actual depictions of sexual assault, not CNC. it’s associated with hentai, which depicts Asian women more often than not. And it was popularized literally because of sexual assault. No one makes that specific face naturally. In every hentai that the face is made in, it’s during a situation where unwanted sex becomes “pleasurable” and they can’t help but make it. Not only does this perpetuate the harmful idea that sexual assault victims secretly like or want to be assaulted, that the assaulter can “make them like it,” but white people who use this face are profiting off of clout or actual money by using East Asian aesthetics, trauma and stereotypes. There is a reason that America and Japan have such high rates of sexual violence. Ahegao and r*pe hentai is part of the normalization of it that causes those rates to be so high. It’s not comparable to CNC because the victims in hentai do not consent to it happening, no disclaimers are added.

^^

The problem here isn’t Ahegao, but violent people being violent. Deleting Ahegao won’t solve the problem.

The proof of that is in the big thread made by that girl, she said she has been molested but the rapist didn’t even ask her to do Ahegao. So she wasn’t molested because of a drawn face, she was molested because that man was an animal.

Drawn women have nothing to do with actual women being raped by degenerates.

If twitter was right, then there would be statistics showing how the number of sexual violence against Asian women increased as Japanese cartoons became more popular.

I am deeply sorry for what happened to that girl, but if she has PTSD of what happened every time she sees an anime, the solution here isn’t to erase every japanese cartoon or comic book, but to see a therapist and seek help.

This is literally the same as saying

“water is racist because white supremicists drink it”

Jfc get a grip