Equality Now going to far

Ok this is probably going to be a long post but yea...
Back story first for people who have no clue what is going on. Equality Now is a feminist group supposedly helping women get more rights which is absurd considering their more recent actions. It all started out with one women complaining about a Eroge game called "Rape Lay" or something I forget the name... This game is a bit more extreme than others but it involves going through the scenarios and ending up raping the mother and 2 daughters of this family in various places i.e. the train, bathroom, and their house. Also this game unlike others during the sex scenes you can actually move your mouse to thrust and other nifty things like that. The feminist started sending mass spam to Amazon, and the original creators of the game and first Amazon folds and stops sales of this game to save face and then a little later the creators fold and stop producing this game. Since the eroge industry gave up an inch the feminist took a mile and they started demanding the ridiculous. The following series of events if probably out of order it happened a few months back so I don't remember too clearly. The feminist moved to ban all school uniforms in porn even if they could prove the actors involved were over the legal age. Btw the tactic the feminist used was SPAM the Japanese government until they folded under foreign pressure saying they are "weird". The feminist also moved to get a tighter ban on all loli manga/anime because current laws were jacked up for anime/manga and said something along the lines of as long the dominate party showed remorse and all genitals were censored it was ok, and this law was being used very loosely. Note all Japanese pornz genitals have to be censored one reason why all our yaoi comes so heavily censored . If it gets translated for American sales it can be uncensored though because no such law is in the states. The feminists got a tighter ban on the material but failed to make any progress there the tighter ban was pretty useless administration was just changing in office and all so things were busy. Feminists wanted a complete ban on the material and failed to obtain a complete ban, so what do they do they don't just quit they set their sites on something entirely unreasonable. They want any fetish hentai banned so no rape no foot sex no ropes no S&M NOTHING unless it was consensual sex despite this all being 2D pornz. Obviously this failed even more so than the last one. Also now this is where I can't place certain events so I'll just list some more things that happened along the way that I'm not entirely sure of the order. Feminist team up with UNICEF to be more of the strong arm to get things done considering there spamming of hate mail wasn't cutting it. UNICEF also wanted to have Japan kicked out of the United Nations for not complying to their every wish to censor freedom of expression. This obviously failed again dumb feminist never realized how dumb they were being. Equality Now released a statement saying they had a surprising amount of backlash well no **** you did you tried to censor freedom of speech.
"The Japanese arm of moral crusader group UNICEF is pushing for a ban on all depictions of minors in “sexual” poses, with swimwear in anime mentioned specifically." Yep not even joking.
They also put up on there site comments of people who were TROLLING to them saying this is the kind of person eroge gamers are! I know they were trolling because BOTH of the trolls admitted that they were just trolling, but equality now would wasn't convinced. I could go on for days with more stuff they have done but I'll wrap this crazy long post up with one of my favorite quotes from their speeches. There is also a article about a ton of their mega dumb quotes but I can't seem to find it I am determined to though.
"People who think of children’s nudity as a tool don’t need freedom of expression.”
Also much nicer written/layed out argument here (in)Equality Now: Equality Now is doing a great disservice to women around the world. Here's why. This is all I could manage this late at night but I wanted to post something.

Ok finally found the quote article I was looking for. Note that these quotes are translations and thus so not perfectly accurate to the dot, but the intent behind the statement reminds the same. Also note Diet member is a high ranking person in the Japanese government.

"“Whenever anyone tries to ban this material, the mangaka and their supporters send them huge amounts of protest mail; however you look at it, this is violence. Against such violence there is no need to discuss the basis of the law.”
“Isn’t it necessary to spread the idea that the people supporting the readers of these sexual abuse manga are causing denial?”
“Please refer to the following: ‘On the Denial of Schizophrenia’.”
“They are suffering from denial, they keep arguing that you can’t ban something with no evidence against it. We have to think of a counter to this.”"

"“As a society, as parents, we can’t forgive this. Indeed, it is madness that these disgusting forms of extreme sexual expression are allowed at all.
Why are these things even allowed to be published? We have to change Japan’s culture and values, and tie these manga to the promotion of sex crime.”
“This isn’t a matter of just not letting minors read them, or of there being no victims in a manga. There are lots of adults who commit crimes based on these. Without a shadow of a doubt, anime and lolicon culture cause sex crime. If they can’t be relied on to regulate themselves, there must be a ban.”
“For the sake of the publishing industry, we should be gradually imposing more and more penalties on them to weed out the bad ones.”
“It is absolutely incomprehensible that they are allowed to do this to children just because they don’t exist.”
“In other countries they have bans. Only in Japan can we not get a ban. A ban is so obviously right that there is no need at all to provide an explanation or data to the mangaka groups.”"

“There was a Diet member who objected to the ban because it would ban some famous nude artwork. Agnes Chan did him right! ‘Do you really want to see pictures of 15-year-old girls that much? What’s artistic about that? Why can’t you wait until they’re 18?’ she said. He was lost for words.”

"“It is simply bizarre that any kind of manga can be published simply because no actual people appear in it.
On the subject of a ban, I heard that a Diet member received a huge amount of threatening mail just for proposing it. For that reason, something must be done about this.”"

"“But there is no evidence that child porn manga increases child rape. Of course, there is no evidence that the manga exerts a cathartic effect and reduces crime either.
… but I think it is wrong to think that just because there is no data supporting a link that manga does not influence sex crime. It is nonsense to suggest you need evidence to support a ban.”"

In my opinion these feminist are clearly against freedom of speech. Read the bold if nothing else..

I've read a lot about this kinda thing lately actually...and i had quite a long discussion with some friends couple months ago...
It seems more and more people are having manga seized for being illegal 'child porn' etc

On one hand it's very easy to say 'well i read/watch/ play these and i'm perfectly normal'
which is certainly my argument XD

but on the other hand you have to recognise there are some people who aren't well adjusted 'normal' people and often something as simple as finding out what kinda books they read is the key to stopping them before they DO hurt someone.

Also bear in mind Japan may not have a ban on this material...but Japan also has a fairly high rate of strange men groping teenage girls in inappropriate places....

I think you need to look at the context in which the material is being viewed before you can decide whether it needs to be confiscated or not.

For myself i have some shota anime and manga, i have a couple OVA's and two or three volumes of manga, in the large scale of things given my 100+ volumes of manga and 700 gigs+ of anime/japanese dramas etc...that really isn't that much.
As one of the lawyers for a guy who'd been arrested for importing shouta manga said...'it's part of a larger collectiong featuring items from all genres'

This is important, if ALL i owned was shouta anime and manga..then you should start getting concerned...

I can understand where people are coming from...when i first heard about shouta i foudn it very strange and was a bit put off by the idea..tbh i still am...but watching and reading them...ages are VERY ambiguous and unless you actually sit there thinking about it..you really don't know.
Yes some people have over reacted, and i do think it's ridiculous to ban erotic games or shouta manga but i can see where they're coming from.

Well about watching it and being normal I would like to say myself that 90% of my favorite couples are 16-17 sometimes 18 years old! I never realized it until some people were talking about shota and I thought of all my favorite bishies and I was like :ohnooo: but then I was like fine ok I guess I'm a shotacon or whatever they are called! I also consider myself quiet normal so I think it isn't unusual for people who are lolicon shotacon I don't think they are going to go out and rape some teen but the world does surprise me. Just from my experience irl and among the people I know who watch and read it aren't the kind of people who would do anything to real people. I know 3 of these people and 4 counting myself and I can't consider any of them dangerous. I also don't really think this is fuel to the fire I don't see manga or anime of this sort converting anyone to raping irl or even trying for any irl stuff, but I can see people who want irl stuff like that get interested into this genre which seems to blur the line of what happened inbetween an actual incident happening and maybe finding some of this material in their possession at their house or something. Like you said if this is all they own on the lines of anime/manga it could be a problem. What kills me the most is that they have NO actual evidence proving that this fuels problems. They only use the argument well it's obvious so we don't need evidence which pisses me off.
Just on a side note I'd be a little more concerned about a 40+ year old compare to a 1-21 or so because I mean what they are looking at is still probably in there age range. I myself am 18 so and by law it is saying I can't have interest in my age group well maybe 18+ but 16 and 17 are still in my age group. I've also had my chances to go out with 15 and 16 year old as 18 but I have declined both I really don't find much of an interest in those age ranges. To be fair though I swear I'm going asexual because I feel like I don't even care about that stuff any more but meh I might just not have might the right person...

I'm really not a fan of taking issues such as rape and child abuse and making it into a situation of people's sexual enjoyment. I admit I've read a few mangas with rape situations, but they sometimes just make me uncomfortable. I'm honestly not a fan of shotacon. If you like it that's your story but the whole loving ten year olds is not my idea of fun. I tend to like older men and stories with more older men. I really don't consider school life shotacon. Example: 17 and 18 year olds because I'm eighteen and a highschool senior and I don't know anyone in my grade who has not had sex. Infact, we have sexual conversations pretty normally.

ps. I loathe lolicon. I cannot stand lolicon. If they want to ban it then so be it. I'm actually not a feminist at all, but I just cannot stand lolicon and I don't even see how people enjoy it.

I find shouta con very odd...i read and enjoy them..but not for because they feature younger characters...i enjoy the story and treat it as i would any other yaoi...i honestly don't even know how old the characters are.
I know the japanese culture has somewhat of an obsession with youth hence the genre's of shouta and loli, and that interest doesn't really translate into western society, howver i can still appreciate the plot and overall story.
i have read western books that feature not neccesarily underage relationships but certainly inappropriate ones between teachers/students younger/older i.e 16 yr old and 30 yr old. and certainly they fascinate me. perhaps some of it is the taboo-ness of the subject but it's also the relationship older and younger people have and how a sexual relationship changes that. it's not always about the sex.

i find it quite strange how people react differntly to shouta and loli ^^ i suppose girls are still viewed as more vulnerable. although in most loli they are deliberatly portrayed this way i suppose..