I'm going to stick my neck out a bit here. I've been tempted to post in here a few times but have honestly been a bit scared to do so. I'm mostly just reading along to better educate myself. Any time I've been tempted to disagree with something so far, I've tried to take it as a chance to reflect on my own biases and bad preconceptions.
On we go.
This point sticks out to me as a tangent (your word, not mine!) that really doesn't help your case too much. There are actual, legitimate medical reasons why you might not want to plan to have children past the age of 40. My wife was 36 when she got pregnant and, from what I remember, there was already an elevated risk of all sorts of things which meant extra scans and checks for her. If this risk was for the mother alone, maybe fair enough but the reality is that there's an increased risk to the unborn child as well. This is not to say "never have a child past X years old", more just to balance out the view you presented and to suggest that people should try and make an informed decision about such things.
While I'm here, I may as well add that I'm conflicted about the "don't label Japan as a whole" and "it's not the country's fault" argument. I agree with the idea that to
discriminate against people for things out of their control (sex, gender, ethnicity, nationality, sexual orientation, age, disability, religion etc) [EDIT: I personally don't understand why religion in on this list, given that people can and do choose to change religion all the time, but it's on
the list 🤷] is a really bad thing to do. What I don't think is reasonable is to therefore have whole groups that become immune from criticism as a result; criticism is not discrimination. It's reasonable to criticize Japan for
lagging behind in criminalizing child abuse imagery and explicitly making exceptions for such depictions in anime and manga. If the UN can do it, why can't we? What is the law if not an explicit set of rules codifying what is and is not acceptable in a given society and the punishments you can expect for violating them? (My daughter actually asked me "what does 'law' mean" the other day 🤯)
If people can't accept that a government explicitly allowing a whole category of child sexualisation to continue unchecked
and lagging behind in legislating against actual child abuse imagery is indicative of something about the country as a whole, then we are at a bit of a dead end. It doesn't take a genius to see how this is something you can directly link to artists who end up working on games in the Japanese gaming industry and the kind of art they think is acceptable. The vibe I'm getting here is almost "don't label the whole country because #NotAllJapanesePeople" . In contrast, I think anybody who came in here arguing back with a #NotAllMen comment saying they are offended by being lumped in with the rest of their gender would get, rightly, shot down.
What am I missing?