Catholic All Women's Educational Institutions in Japanese Pop Culture/Rant on Views of Homosexuality
So, let's get this straight. I go to a small college. It's Catholic. The students in residence are also ALL FEMALE. There are some male students in certain classes that we get from the other two nearby higher education intitutions (one's a community college and the other is a University). All my classes this semester though are all women.
So yeah, I stumbled upon Strawberry Panic. Holy cow. I don't even know. It's like all women's Catholic school turned into some fantasy land boarding school complete with three different sets of uniforms... and of course everyone is a lesbian.
I'm not really going to say I was surprised despite stumbling upon it without really looking into it. I usually just look into things so I know I'm not stumbling upon some show with graphic nudity and violence that I'd rather not see animated. But I dunno... my mind wasn't really thinking and I was like... I liked Full Metal Panic!... maybe Strawberry Panic is unrelated but it seems like it's popular at the moment.
And then I hear that there's this Maria-sama ga miteru or whatever it's called and it's the same idea. Well, then there's also Ouran Host Club with the all girl's academy or whatever it is next door.
haha And then there's me here in the reality. It kinda makes me giggle. I watched a couple episodes of Strawberry Panic... definitely not in chronological order because I could tell right off the bat that I wasn't going to really like it and it had nothing to do with the shoujo ai aspect. I just don't like stupid fluffy blown out of proportion romance things where there aren't crazy idiot characters or some sort of twist. Like I never got into Kare Kano. My sister has like ten volumes of that stuffed in a closet now somewhere at home. I liked Fruits Basket, but that was a little different.
I'm here partially because I got a very nice scholarship. One of the nice (though has absolutely no relation to academics and is by no means profound) aspects of going to an all women's college is that I CAN WEAR PAJAMAS AND NO ONE CARES.
We do not have uniforms. Granted, all these ridiculous shows are high schools/boarding schools, right? And not universities.
But yes, if only people here knew there was practically an entire genre of (vaguely) Catholic(ish) All Girl's Academy Where the Students are either ALL Lesbians or there are Major Shoujo-Ai Subtexts in the "plot" (if soap operas can have plots)....
I actually saw some of Strawberry Panic err sometime this summer while I was looking into different series. But something reminded me of it and we got an e-mail a few days ago for national coming out week which is... sometime soon? I dunno... I forget if I even read the e-mail to be quite honest. We get a ton every day. But... we'll just say that the reality, at least in the U.S., of said institutions is quite the opposite. I'm just highly entertained by the extreme contrast. Last year people blew their tops when they found out the college actually has panels to discuss being a homosexual on campus for Coming Out Week. People got pissed. I actually am rather disgusted by the sentiments held by most of my peers. Someone several weeks ago compared homosexuality to both pedophilia and beastiality.
I think what's important is to treat people like people, y'know? No, I don't wanna watch two girls making out. But I don't wanna watch two anybodies making out. I think it's way more sick to condemn a person to be alone for the rest of their life than for a person who is gay or lesbian to act on that.
I dunno... this whole issue was really something I hardly ever thought about in high school. There might've been a couple of gay guys in choir, but I dunno... nobody seemed to really care.
And then here there's people who I eat lunch with, hang out with, watch movies with, study with who are normally more or less rational people become disgustingly hateful towards people that haven't done anything to them!
Ah well, I'll just end with some quotes from Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird:
"They're certainly entitled to think that, and they're entitled to full respect for their opinions... but before I can live with other folks I've got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience." ~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 11, spoken by the character Atticus
"I think there's just one kind of folks. Folks." ~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 23, spoken by the character Scout
"Sometimes the Bible in the hand of one man is worse than a whisky bottle in the hand of (another)... There are just some kind of men who - who're so busy worrying about the next world they've never learned to live in this one, and you can look down the street and see the results." ~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, Miss Maudie Atkinson
"'Things haven't caught up with that one's instinct yet. Let him get a little older, and he won't get sick and cry. Maybe things'll strike him as being - not quite right, say, but he won't cry, not when he gets a few years in him.'
'Cry about what, Mr Raymond?' Dill's maleness was beginning to assert itself.
'Cry about the simple hell people give other people - without even thinking. Cry about the hell white people give coloured folks, without even stopping to think that they're people, too.'" ~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
Sorry... this turned into a mini rant.^^;
Hopefully I won't get in trouble with anybody, but still, it's more or less the way I feel about things. Not necessarily elegantly put and half of this is just ramblings anyway, but the more I thought on the subject as I was typing... the more it led to.
I generally don't like to bring up polemic discussion here.^^; It's usually just fluffy nonsense junk... ah well.