Thread:Gilgameshkun/@comment-3345501-20141104125834/@comment-995426-20150720030553

I went back to look at the edit history of the now-removed thread. In fairness, we did go off-topic on their message wall. Are you referring to this comment of mine? He's publishing them very, very slowly, for free on his Blogspot.

Anyway, I also find turtlecest in very poor taste, because it would directly go against the &mdash;where it's hard to be sexually attracted to someone you grew up with in a family.

Anyway, I also thought it likely that Splinter was bisexual, and so could any of the turtles be. But again, except for Leo+Radical and Mikey+Regenta, mutant turtle sexuality was scarcely addressed in Mirage. (We're not counting the non-canon guest era issues, or Image volume 3, which Peter Laird didn't consider canon.) If any of the turtles were gay (and not just bi), I would think Raph would be the most likely one. He's never had a canonical female love interest, and seems to bond best emotionally with other men. But of course, the evidence is inconclusive.

And though I had considered Japanese culture to play a factor, I know it's actually more complicated than that:

Modern Japanese domestic culture tends to frown on homosexuality, not for religious or moral reasons, but because it goes against parents' expectations of their children (and even employers' expectations of their employees) marrying a presentable spouse and having children. It's largely about appearances and filial piety, and it doesn't always matter if a husband and wife actually love each other, which is also why Japan's post-retirement divorce rate is so sky high. Of course, modern Japanese society also by and large lacks the warrior element of earlier periods, and instead today revolves around the corporate workplace.

However, Splinter was raised by Hamato Yoshi and Tang Shen. The first clue that they weren't an ordinary post-war Japanese household, was that Yoshi was Japanese and Shen was Chinese&mdash;intermarriage between Japanese and Chinese is still largely frowned upon in both cultures. But of course, Yoshi was in the Foot Clan&mdash;an organization that practiced ninjutsu long after ninjutsu had been banned in Japan from 1868. If we look at similar outcast cultures like the Yakuza, they often live by a different set of social standards, and are far more accepting of social outcasts. And make no mistake&mdash;the Foot Clan, even under Karai's relatively benign leadership, would be a criminal organization in Japan, and this was no different when Hamato Yoshi was a member. This means their existence and operations would have to be kept discreet on a regular basis. So it's no surprise if members of the Foot Clan keep a system of social standards different from mainstream Japanese society. Yoshi could probably function well in mainstream Japanese society and even New York society, but his ninjutsu and some of his Foot Clan culture would have necessarily been a secret.

Why would these things matter? Because the fact that the Foot Clan practice ninjutsu and carry weapons makes them appear anachronistic in modern Japanese society. They more resemble something out of Japan's Edo period, which ended a century and a half ago. And if the Foot Clan's subculture preserved elements of that period's warrior culture, they may have preserved other elements as well&mdash;such as samurai macho bisexuality, or the intimate relationships common between Zen Buddhist monks during that period. Since Splinter is almost certainly a devout Zen Buddhist and seems to value bushido in some form, it's certainly possible that neither he nor Yoshi had much of a hangup with same-gender love, at least in other people, regardless of whether they themselves were actually straight.

Cultural studies can be fascinating, don't you think? :)

Of course, the turtles themselves were born in 1971 (Generation X), and grew up to some degree exposed to popular American culture, so their own attitudes on the topic could have varied. I'm not keen to consider incest, but something like Leo+Usagi or Raph+Leatherhead might not have been too far-fetched at some point or another. Raph+Casey might have been a possibility, but I think Casey was honestly quite straight, and Raph would have respected this. We know Peter Laird really didn't care for interspecies relationships, but that may have been more a matter of personal distaste for him. Interspecies relationships (with men or women) would have had to be a realistic consideration for the turtles. For one, since reading volume 4, I think it likely that Donnie may have had a long-suppressed unrequited love for April, especially in the unique zeal he had to save her from Baxter's nanite infection.

And, just as a zinger, here's another possibility: Most turtle and tortoise species have little or no sexual dimorphism, meaning that their males and females don't look any different from each other. Besides the obvious implications that there's very little distinction to be sexually attracted to in the wild (besides possible scent, etc.), it made me realize that some of the mutant turtles themselves may actually be biologically female, but are merely assumed to be male by their look and appearance. Personally, I think they're all male, but can we be certain? *trollface* :) Once again, as a disclosure, I don't want the turtles to be asexual, and while I have a great deal of respect for Peter Laird, I don't think he was right 100% of the time. I was speaking more in the role of historian than prescriptivist.