Last week, some folks paid Kotaku the kindness of noticing howâŠletâs call it âprogressiveââŠweâve begun to lean over the last few months since I came aboard as Editorial Director. (Dan Bruno, in particular; I had other discussions on Twitter.) Often there was a criticism behind the compliments: Why does an organization that unabashedly wants to encourage LGBT* and womenâs voices in gaming also unabashedly put up galleries of women in revealing cosplay or articles about the sex worker industry in Japan? Some critics used pretty unequivocal terms, calling some of our content âembarrassingâ or (and this may not be an exact quote) âpart of the problemâ.
I think itâs okay to have your cheesecake and eat it, too. Cosplay is an incredibly vibrant, edifying, dare-I-say-empowering movement that won me over from my jadedness with the overflowing amount of skill, creativity, and joy that the community pours into it. If a woman wants to show her body in a sexy costumeâeven if that costume or character is part of an occasionally staggeringly pubescent culture like anime or video gamesâthen I think it would be missing the forest for the trees to not celebrate and appreciate what sheâs chosen to do, even while I think itâs important to maintain contextual awareness about why itâs more âacceptableâ for a woman to don skimpy outfits in some communities but not as acceptable for men to do so. (There are a host of interwoven reasons here, including the often retrograde anti-feminism from an otherwise increasingly accepting geek community at large, but better to talk about those another time. And we will.)
As for discussion of sex work in Japan, bear in mind that Kotaku has, since its inception, both piggy-backed and reacted against the âtraditionalâ, often outmoded concepts of Japanese otaku culture, most specifically as perceived (and stereotyped) by Western audiences. Which is to say, we still think Japan is often culturally interesting when it diverges from Western culture. And we think sex and sex culture is interesting.
âBut Kotaku is a video game blog!â some say. A fair pointâvideo games are our bread and butterâbut our fascination with the quirkier or more risquĂ© parts of Japanâs culture isnât new. And if treated with enough contextual respectââHey, this one thing is weird; not everyone in Japan is into this specific thingââthen I think it adds a fun, compelling broadening of the work we do. Weird things are weird. Theyâre fun to look at. If we can celebrate them instead of mocking them, then no harm by my reckoning. (Itâs a very fine line, Iâll grant you; Iâd even offer that our Japan fascination is orientalizing at a meta-level, even if we try our best not to belittle in the actual articles. I adore the name of the âWhatâs Japanâs Fetish This Week?â column from a âgood headlineâ standpointâI named itâdespite that itâs pretty obviously poking at Japan being a nation of kooks; that the companion feature, âWhatâs Americaâs Fetish This Week?â sort of fell apart makes the whole joke fall apart, unfortunately. We need to get that spun up again or rename the Japan Fetish column.)
I have no grand unifying theory here, as should be becoming obvious. And while Iâm typically against âputting out ideas for discussionâ as a sort of bulwark against othersâ arguments, these sort of cultural questions are near and dear to my heart and I just canât help myself from talking about them despite not being entirely able to hold all the disparate factors in my head at one time. I donât want those who bring up these issues about Kotakuâs âresponsibility to the gaming communityâ (to use one common rhetorical example) to think Iâm discounting their point out of hand. I think the whole issue of otaku/geek culture, sexuality, and feminism is an ever-raveling ball of twine, knotting itself up just as fast as we can untangle it, but that doesnât mean we should just ignore it altogether. So, hi.
Someone recently asked me why Kotaku doesnât create more âsexyâ content for other genders and orientations than straight males. A few things: when it comes to, say, cosplay galleries, we arenât shooting the lionâs share of those images, simply collecting and sharing them, so while our editorial discretion is a factor, we sort of have to work with what weâve got, which trends towards normative T&A (which is not in and of itself bad!); secondly, donât let the Male Gaze steer you wrong, either in its default or in overcorrectingâpeople are finding things you wouldnât ever imagine to be sexy all the time; lastly, if youâre out there making images of queer or gay or generally underrepresented cosplay imbued with the same sort of joy and play as everything else we like to run, Iâd love to publish it alongside all the other cosplay and pinups out there. Just send it in! We may ultimately be sex-obsessed weirdos at Kotaku, but never let it be said we werenât equal opportunity perverts.
Image: Lan Bui/Flickr
You can contact Joel Johnson, the author of this post, at [email protected]. You can also find him on Twitter, Facebook, and lurking around our #tips page.
