Tags: male-oriented

The Difference Blog

Roleplay cafe for women

Reuters (2008) reports that a new "roleplay cafe" has opened in Tokyo, this time catering to women. The roleplay cafe idea is not a new one. Author Neil Gaiman (2007) discussed maid cafes (see Wikipedia for cosplay restaurant) in his blog last September. However, the new "Edelstein boarding school" cafe claims to be the first schoolboy cafe, cashing in on the genre of boy-on-boy manga written for a female audience (see yaoi). The manager, Emiko Sakamaki, also opened the first "butler cafe" for women, according to Reuters.


So, my immediate reaction is "that's the kind of equality I'm talking about!" However, I suspect that while I'm not alone in this (they have customers), I get shot down for these suggestions on a regular basis. Women, I'm told, don't want to gawk at and objectify pretty boys. Expecting women to enjoy gender-swapped versions of male entertainment is expecting women to be men. My reactions can not be trusted as typical of any gender: I'm too male, too female, too bisexual, and too kinky for that. So, what do you think? Are cosplay cafes for women feeding into a male-centric paradigm, or are they just kinda hot?
The Difference Blog

The Homo Hypothalamus

The Times Online (UK) reports that PETA, with the support of tennis star Martina Navratilova is protesting research on "male-oriented" rams by researcher Charles Roselli. PETA claims that Roselli is trying to turn gay sheep straight, but in an interview with The Next Hurrah, Roselli says he finds accusations that he is looking for a cure for homosexuality "appalling and offensive."

In many ways, Roselli's research is reminiscent of Simon LeVay's (1991) findings about the human hypothalamus. The correlation drawn in both is that the same-sex orientation may be related to a nucleus that is closer to the female average than the male average.


LGBT bloggers are in an uproar, convinced that screening and aborting of homosexual babies is on the doorstep. I'm dubious, myself, but largely because I tend to disbelieve anything endorsed by PETA, and The Next Hurrah's piece sort of sums up my feelings on that. I wasn't sure that this story was really appropriate to Difference Blog, but considering how much time I spend documenting other differences between male-average and female-average brains, this really is right down my alley. I have a hard time arguing that research is a bad thing. Honestly, I think that designer babies are so far in the future that it's useless to extrapolate current social attitudes to their application.