Talk:lolicon

RFV 1

This entry has survived Wiktionary's verification process.

Please do not re-nominate for verification without comprehensive reasons for doing so.

---

It's an improvement but what happened the picture? Gerard Foley 01:22, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

I've re-added the picture. Please do not remove it again without comment. Thanks, Gerard Foley 01:50, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

There's no kiddies in the picture; it does not describe the word.

Is it just me, or does that comment not make people feel sick? Gerard Foley 00:59, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

It's a rather arbitrary selection and really isn't appropriate in a dictionary. If people want pics, they should check out the wikipedia article. Adding pictures of sexually explicit or controversial concepts is just going to offend more people than it attracts. Pragmatically, it's a really bad choice and I've removed the pic.

Peter ^Isotalo 23:49, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

I've put the link to the Wikipedia article up front. And the amount of detail there is surely enough to satisfy our Verification criteria (or do we have the nonsense that we can have an Encyclopedia article about a word, but the word isn't to be included in our dictionary. But I support not having the picture, for now, at least not when so few entries have pictures.--Richardb 17:02, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

I have restored the rfv. While evidence for the cartoon type is no doubt available, I am very dubious about the other two meanings. The relevant passage in Wikipedia for this is unsourced. The links on the rfv page are either invalid or main pages for some sites; one is for a members only site. A members only site would suggest that terms used there are the jargon of a private group rather than terminology that is widely used.

I have removed the alternative spellings; we are claiming that this is an English word. An alternative spelling would need to be used in English, and would not just be some fanciful romaji. Eclecticology 08:01, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Need actual usages for all three meanings. Eclecticology 08:31, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

1. Erotic art depicting female children, generally between the ages of 8 and 13.

1. Producers of the lolicon and bishoujo material often argue that the Japanese constitution guarantees their freedom of expression in this matter and that laws restricting these materials would be unconstitutional. - Megatokyo
2. Lolicon is a part of hentai anime with pictures of young girls ranging from ages 3-16. - fan listing
3. "loli-con for 'Lolita complex' comics, a genre of porn comics for men featuring young girls." - "Office Sluts and Rebel Flowers: The Pleasures of Japanese Pornographic Comics for Women" by Deborah Shamoon in porn studies (2004) →ISBN p. 101 n.8 - Linda Williams, editor

2. A pedophile fixated on young girls.

1. "There has been significant public outcry in Japan following the kidnapping and murder of an elementary school girl in Nara, Japan and the arrest of a suspected lolicon for the crimes. - Megatokyo

3. The sexual attraction to young girls.

1. Lolicon, or Rorikon (ロリコン) is the Japanese gairaigo term (usually short form) for Lolita complex (derived from the novel Lolita), the sexual attraction to fictional and real underage girls, or ephebophilia. (Strictly speaking, Roriita-konpurekkusu in Japanese means only psychological tendency of an adult man or older boy; rorikon, however, additionally implies persons who have such psychological tendency. This difference is important.) - Hentai:Lolicon:Definition

Fan listing site does not work; Megatokyo is a members only site; Hentai site is a general Lycos-Tripod main page. None of this verifies anything. While I'm confident that there may evidence for the first meaning, I am far from convinced about the other two. Eclecticology 07:19, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Fan listing sites are now excluded? Let's not count usenet either then. Hell, let's only take printed sources, the internet is dubious. Print sources should only be taken if there is evidence that the document has been edited by three experts holding masters or doctorates. That way we can be _really_ sure we define words how they are actually being used. Who sets these standards? Why are the arbitrarily applied? Why haven't you responded about A.? - TheDaveRoss 01:41, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

EC, go stick your head up a dead bear's bum with this stupid rejection of perfectly valid (though bad taste) entries. I'm removing the rfv. --Richardb 09:10, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Um, what happened to "no personal attacks?" Add valid print citations instead, if you feel passionate about it. Perhaps if you'd been around when it was nominated, you'd have seen there were more problems with this entry than meets the eye, now. Please also note that the ridiculous assertion made by adding this entry, is that it is a English term in widespread use (which this rfv process demonstrated, is false.) Sites that do not represent a published source at all, are not "durably archived" as per CFI. --Connel MacKenzie T C 14:35, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

consensus is to keep. Andrew massyn

No. Two people thinking it might be a valid entry is not consensus. The entry never found print citations, and the "RFV" tag was vandalously removed with an excuse that Wikipedia had an entry. As it turns out, the Wikipedia article seems to be a product of User:Primetime/w:User:Primetime (w:User talk:Primetime#I'm not very happy with your edit to Lolicon, the (now) well-known vandal/suckpuppeteer/copyvio promulgator. --Connel MacKenzie T C 09:25, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

This is as ubiquitous on the internet as it is absent off of it. If LOL is to remain, lolicon should also. - TheDaveRoss 06:26, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

That sounds like you are aruging that it has not entered general usage. Obviously, it is not as ubiquitous as LOL, or it wouldn't have been nominated. There are still no durably archived citations for this - I still think it does not meet CFI. --Connel MacKenzie T C 16:39, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Keep Huge no. of hits online. Andrew massyn 20:06, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

As no agreement yet reached moving to rfd. Please post further comments there. Andrew massyn 20:00, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

We need to reach consensus here. Please consider your responses. Thanks Andrew massyn 20:00, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Keep Huge no. of hits online. Andrew massyn 20:00, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Delete. The clear lack of anyone willing to dig up a citation of any durably archived sort is a pretty good indication that this isn't a word. It probably won't exist in a couple years - no reason for us to be the sole promoter of the term. PLEASE NOTE: at least half the "citations" on the sub-page are already gone. The other two won't load on my browser at the moment... --Connel MacKenzie T C 23:40, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

I would have a look for citations myself, but I'd be worried about what sites I'd end up finding, and I doubt that my argument would go down well in court (Yeah, Mr. Judge, I was looking for references for the word "lolicon" when I stumbled across this child porn site. And I needed 3 seperate references, which is why I went into 3 seperate child porn sites)! Sorry, this is not a helpful comment. --Dangherous 15:42, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Few books.google hits. 2 to be precise. Perhaps a term too new for inclusion here, but then, we've had similar cases that are still around, IIRC. — Vildricianus 15:47, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Well, the term isn't new, it has been around for 8 years at least, seeing as it has been on 4chan at least that long as a major category of posts (meaning sense 1) Also it has been included in at least 1 scholarly work. This term suffers from the fact that it's predominant usage is "verbal" (which can now be said to include instant messages, message boards, other forms of direct personal communication) so there isn't as much documentation of it's usage as we normally like. The fact remains that it is used VERY widely in sense 1, and less widely but still used in senses 2 and 3. If senses 2 and 3 are to go, so be it, but losing sense 1 would be unfortunate. - TheDaveRoss 16:45, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

That's an interesting perspective. To what extent do we include predominantly verbal terms? Anyway, that's where some of the idea behind any descriptivistic dictionary clashes a bit with its possibilities... spoken language versus written language. Has this ever been discussed before? — Vildricianus 18:24, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Cited. Also cleared the citations page (a couple of good references kept, but mostly forums or broken links) and added a fourth meaning I'd seen. ∂ανίΠα 22:36, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Good enough for me. Also, wow. According to the history, Dav has been working on this entry for the last five and a half hours! Nice job. Widsith 22:39, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Consensus is keep. Has been cited. Have moved this discussion to the talk page and removed rfd. Andrew massyn 11:11, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

3 June 2012 I removed it again. This was the first time I saw an illustration on the Wiktionary, and I am disgusted. This isn't an illustrated encyclopedia, you know. Nor is it a child porn website. Ask yourselves: is it really necessary to show what the art looks like? Most people will just be looking for the definition of a word they have seen online. This picture would be a nasty surprise. In fact, most sane laymen would rather NOT see 6-year-olds in lingerie. Get some dignity and some common moral fiber.

Adjective

I'm not going to edit this myself because I'm not familiar with Wiktionary's formatting conventions, but: "lolicon" as used by anime/manga/etc. fans is also an adjective, not just a noun. The quote from my Web site under meaning 3 (I'm Matthew Skala, and spotted this in my referrer log) and two of the others listed there illustrate that usage - it's being used as an adjective to modify nouns. The adjective usage derives from the way the word is used in Japanese, where the distinction between nouns and adjectives is fuzzy.67.158.76.126 01:35, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Cites are the ultimate judge for such claims, but as an aside, how does Japanese have a fuzzy distinction between nouns and adjectives? Are you talking about Japanese adjectives and verbs? Rod (A. Smith) 04:53, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

There's the class of wikipedia:Adjectival nouns - nouns that function as adjectives, formed by adding "na" after the noun just as nouns can be verbed by adding "suru" - and as described in wikipedia:Japanese grammar#Adjectives, "Nearly every Japanese adjective can be used in a predicative position"; that is, as the object of a sentence where other languages might require a noun. So: a lot of nouns work like adjectives, and "nearly every" adjective can work like a noun. As for cites: a significant number of the citations already in the article are examples of the use of "lolicon" as an adjective in English.67.158.76.126 13:44, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

OK. Now I see you were referring to na adjectives. Do you propose that lolicon is used as a na adjective? BTW, I wouldn't say Japanese distinction is any more fuzzy than in English. E.g., 平安 and 安全 are nouns without a trailing な, while 平安な and 安全な are always adjectives. Compare the more fuzzy English "peace" (n.) -> "peaceful" (adj.), "safe" (adj.) -> "safety" (n.), and "quiet" (adj.) -> "quiet" (n.). Anyway, if lolicon could be used as a na adjective, its adjective form be *lolicon-na, right?. Rod (A. Smith) 17:57, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

No, my claim is that "lolicon" is used as both an adjective and a noun in English. I don't know with certainty what the status of "ロリコン" may be in Japanese, or whether it takes a "na". I think that in Japanese, nouns and adjectives are in general closer to each other than they are in many other languages, including English, but that's a separate point. As you say, the same is also true to some degree in English (as compared to other languages beyond English and Japanese, like let's say French). That point of comparative linguistics is not important to me, nor relevant to the main point I'm interested in: that "lolicon" in particular is used as both an adjective and a noun in English. If it does turn out that that usage is significantly different from the usage of "ロリコン" in Japanese, it shouldn't be a surprise. Japanese is rife with loan words from English that don't mean the same thing they meant in English, and "hentai" is an example of the same process in the other direction - it doesn't mean the same thing as 変態.67.158.76.126 01:37, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't deny that it can be used as an adjective, but your reasoning is confusing: "The adjective usage derives from the way the word is used in Japanese, where the distinction between nouns and adjectives is fuzzy." You mentioned na-adjectives, which ロリコン cannot be since it's an English-derived 外来語 (i.e. it was imported much later than the the na-adjectives, which were all originally adjectival 漢語). Now you say that lolicon can be an adjective because it need not follow the rules of Japanese grammar.

A more supportable approach to giving it an adjective definition would be to find citable uses of the word as an adjective. Rod (A. Smith) 04:09, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

My reasoning has confused me, too. I think I'd better drop that. I may simply have been wrong on that point. However, I'd like to draw your attention to the several citations already in the article which (despite being used to support the noun definition) appear to be using it as an adjective, in English. All the current citations under sense 1, and all the current citations post-2000 under sense 3 (including one which is a quote from me), appear to be using it to modify a subsequent noun: "Nacchan's Lolicon ways", "a Lolicon country", "Sakura's lolicon tendencies", "a lolicon title", "hard-core lolicon manga", "some hentai (and by the looks of it, lolicon also) book". Also the first two citations for sense 2 include "Char is said to be Loli-con" and "This guy is 'Lolicon!'" with no article before "lolicon". Normally you only say "he is foo" with no article when "foo" is an adjective; if "foo" is a noun, you say "he is a foo" with the article "a". It looks to me like the majority of the citations already in the article support the claim that it's often used as an adjective, though some of the citations under sense 2 show that it's also a noun.129.97.79.144 19:55, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Sounds reasonable. If you do the bold thing and add the adjective heading, just move the adjective cites to that section. Rod (A. Smith) 03:53, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for considering this issue so thoroughly. I'll leave the Japanese to you, but in English as well there is a gray area. Since nouns can also modify nouns attributively, it would be helpful to have citations where the use is clearly, unambiguously an adjective. In my opinion only "lolicon tendencies" lends weight. The most obvious case would be a comparative or superlative, although some adjectives exist that do not have these forms, hence the gray area. DAVilla 07:53, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Something is very wrong here

The majority of "citations" are from blogs; specifically prohibited in WT:CFI, since they are not durably archived. The ones that previously got 404 errors (presumably made up) now no longer have the links to those non-existent pages. I think the "rfvpassed" conclusion may have been misplaced. Since these were all internet references, the ones without working links should be removed. The blog entries should be re-removed. --Connel MacKenzie 18:49, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

To be "specifically" prohibited would require that blogs be named as an example of something that is not durably achived. Actually the CFI does the opposite, listing blogs as an example source. I don't know if that's correct or what "durable" means anyways (paper decomposes too) but that's what it says. DAVilla 23:48, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

By the way, the "unverified" sense you deleted was never put through RfV. Probably difficult to attest so I'll leave it out, but just in case you were wondering what it was doing there. DAVilla 23:58, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

Most of the so-called evidence is not very useful, in addition to being from blogs and Usenet. Simply saying, "He is so lolicon," is of no help whatever in trying to understand what the word means. Eclecticology 03:25, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

If that line doesn't make sense to you out of context, then look it up in the original context. Or are you saying that the quotations are too short? DAVilla 10:02, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

That's not exactly what I said. The expresssion, "He is so xxxx," where "xxxx" is any adjective is so generic that it does nothing to illustate the meaning of the word in question. It does nothing to support the meaning which you allege. Eclecticology 19:08, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

Okay, I'm working with you. Are you talking about any specific quotations? Because I can't find "so" anywhere on the page. I thought it was the quotation I linked above, and in that case the meaning is only made apparent in a larger context that I stripped out. In general I agree with you, which is why it takes as long as it does to screen the search results, as long as you understand that a single quotation isn't going to definitively pin the concept. I'm told that dictionaries usually use something like 30 different quotations from various sources, at minimum, for that purpose.

Incidently, shouldn't this word be marked as a neologism and/or borrowed? DAVilla 16:35, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Your last point can probably be covered in the etymology. Nevertheless, I feel that this is relatively less important than the wholde matter of verifiability.

I agree that the word "so" did not appear in the quotations; the one that I had in mind was the Cynthia Ma quote for the fixated individual. By contrast the Matthew Skala definition for the erotic art makes the meaning very clear. I would also suggest that if we should ultimately retain all these definitions they should be put in chronological order with the oldest first. This helps for the tracing of the word's development. I don't want to get into the question of the validity of blog and usenet material. I personally don't find them reliable, and it would help if more effort were applied to finding more solid evidence. Eclecticology 06:27, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

On the light side of OCR

I looked this word up in Google Book Search, and received a snippet from several public domain texts from the 19th century. Most seem to look at the all capitals word "CATHOLICON" which by some OCR quirk reads the right half of the letter H as /L. There is still the possibility of establishing a French usage for the word in a journal about the French religious wars at the end of the 16th century, but I need more than a poorly photographed snippet to prove it. Eclecticology 01:16, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

"Lolita complex"

The story "The Night That All Time Broke Out", published in 1967, includes the following line:

"Attaboy! You know I have a touch of the Lolita complex!"

(with the same meaning as lolicon: "You must have been very sexy in your preteens...") I'm not sure exactly how Wiktionary is laid out; can someone else take care of this? I don't know if it should go here or a new Lolita complex entry. --NE2 00:40, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Preteens? Um no, the Lolita complex is attraction to girls slightly under the legal age - 18. Yes, it should have its own entry here. --Connel MacKenzie 06:40, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Not at all. It's a common misconception that "lolita complex" refers to an attraction to pubescent/postpubescent girls. However, while it can sometimes refer to ephebophilia, it is for the most part used exclusively for paedophilia. The objects of lolicon manga are almost always depicted as prepubescent girls - quite often explicitly identified as 小学生 or even younger. I could point you towards examples; for instance, こどものじかん (Kodomo no Jikan), a commonly cited example of a (non-pornographic) lolicon manga, revolves around a 9/10 year old girl with a crush on her teacher. More generally, all (as far as I have seen) Comic LO publications focus on prepubescent or very early pubescent characters only. I imagine the story is much the same with other major lolicon publishers as well. 203.206.108.182 05:38, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

--- Doesn't the term "Lolita complex" come from the 1966 psychology book The Lolita complex by Russell Trainer? I notice the entry doesn't mention this and I would add it in but I don't know the proper procedure. --76.27.245.106 16:04, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Age of consent?

Ask anyone who knows much about the subject and you'll realise that this is an inaccurate and ambiguous definition. First of all, the age of consent varies around the world from as low as 9 to 20 and above and can also be affected by other factors. This alone should be reason enough to fix the definitions. Secondly, if we take the age of consent to be say 18, the definition no longer actually describes "lolicon" which is attraction to/drawings of prepubescent girls.

I thought I'd just bring it up here before I fixed it to let interested parties voice their opinions. 203.59.104.44 03:32, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

As the saying goes, qui tacet consentit ("silence implies consent"). I'll fix it up now. 203.59.104.44 14:10, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Not all citations meet attestation standards

Some of the citations are of blogs, which we don't consider durably archived. DCDuring TALK 16:20, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Lucky Star

I think the conversation between Konata Izumi and her dad Soujiro might be relevant to quote for popular cultural references. The pop idol who hosts Lucky Channel at the end also mentions Lolicon regarding her biggest fans in the audience. Where do we go for ideal translating? Ty 17:21, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

I understand an English dub version of the anime has been released (volume one here); if the reference is left intact in that, you could use it. However, using the Japanese version probably isn't acceptable (even if it is fansubbed) because it is only really showing that the word is used in Japanese. 124.150.44.166 16:05, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

RFV 2

This entry has survived Wiktionary's verification process.

Please do not re-nominate for verification without comprehensive reasons for doing so.

---

Two senses tagged, not listed, with explanatory comments embedded in the page source. Equinox ◑ 20:38, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Certainly the third sense (erotic art) should be easily citeable. However I haven't got time to look right now, but the source of that page sis a perfect example of why we should always use the templates for quotations - without them the source is a right mess and it's hard to pick out the definitions from the quotations, and hard to work out what each bit of information about the quotation is. Thryduulf (talk) 22:49, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

Note: the following comment was previously in a separate section.

Rfv-sense Its primary function is not to make an artistic statement but to arouse sexual sensation — This unsigned comment was added by 97.120.253.250 (talk) at 00:13, 19 October 2010 (UTC).

Like Thryduulf, I would expect the third sense to be easily cited; indeed, it has two valid citations now. (Correction: one is hyphenated.) I am less certain of the second sense, which has one questionable book and one questionable Usenet citation. - -sche (discuss) 22:15, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Alright, I'll cite this in the next few days (or fail it, if I cannot find citations). - -sche (discuss) 22:52, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Cited. - -sche (discuss) 01:43, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

Passed. - -sche (discuss) 21:36, 12 August 2011 (UTC)