One day, I can only pray we stop treating girls of all ages with kid gloves and forever stop saying No Girls Allowed. As time goes by, however, my prayers seem to be getting answered less and less.

In recent news, manga publisher Udon censored their release of the manga Summer Time by refusing to show the bust and behind of one of the female characters. Their reasoning behind it is that, as the character depicted is 15, depicting her breasts would be considered child pornography, thus, illegal. On the surface, this argument makes sense...

...but if you believe that, then it should come as a massive surprise that Dragon Ball, published in the US by Viz Entertainment, does not censor 12-year-old Goku's privates despite him being far younger, and an actual child. Of course, a 16-year-old Blooma is also censored in the english release, the same areas as the character in Summer Time.

Obviously, if a 15-year-old and 16-year-old need to be censored, then a 12-year-old needs this even more. Yet, he is not, while the girls are. The panels are not too explicit, even with the bared breasts, and the context is not of a sexual one. Of course, if the reasoning behind the censorship, flimsy as it is, is any indication, then these people believe the female body to be "inherently sexual", ignoring the fact that boys can also serve as objects of lust from pedophiles. So, in doing this, these manga publishers can get away with cowardice and continue to make boys and men the butt of the joke, often literally.

As I have said time and time again, handling girls differently on the basis of them being girls is immoral. I'm not sure what's a worse message to send: girls being superior... or boys being inferior.