In many cases, local middlemen tasked with procuring prostitutes for the military lured women with promises of work in factories or restaurants.
Japanese women were the first victims to be enslaved in military brothels and trafficked across Japan, Okinawa, Japan's colonies and occupied territories, and overseas battlegrounds. According to testimonies, some young women were abducted from their homes in countries under Imperial Japanese rule. However, many women ended up being forced to work in the brothels against their own will. Originally, the brothels were established to provide soldiers with voluntary prostitutes in order to reduce the incidence of wartime rape, a cause of rising anti-Japanese sentiment across occupied territories. The number of Papuan comfort women from New Guinea is unknown. Some women of Papuan origin including Japanese-Papuan girls born to Japanese fathers and Papuan mothers were also conscripted as comfort women.
A smaller number of women of European origin were also involved from the Netherlands and Australia with an estimated 200–400 Dutch women alone, with an unknown number of other European females. Stations were located in Japan, China, the Philippines, Indonesia, then Malaya, Thailand, Burma, New Guinea, Hong Kong, Macau, and French Indochina. Women who were used for military "comfort stations" also came from Burma, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaya, Manchukuo, Taiwan (then a Japanese dependency), the Dutch East Indies, Portuguese Timor, New Guinea and other Japanese-occupied territories. Most of the women were from occupied countries, including Korea, China, and the Philippines. Įstimates vary as to how many women were involved, with most historians settling somewhere in the range of 50,000–200,000 the exact numbers are still being researched and debated. The name "comfort women" is a translation of the Japanese ianfu (慰安婦), a euphemism for " prostitutes". Sexual slavery in the Imperial Japanese ArmyĬomfort women or comfort girls were women and girls forced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army in occupied countries and territories before and during World War II. Now, with Disney's acquisition of Fox's film division, the door has been opened to several mutants with various sexualities that could be part of exciting, fresh, and memorable stories.Comfort women from Korea being questioned by the US army after the Siege of Myitkyina in Burma, on August 14, 1944. While many fans hope that Marvel Studios continues to diversify the superheroes they bring to live-action, Eternals recently took a significant step forward by presenting Phastos as part of the first openly gay superhero couple in the MCU.
Updated on January 6th, 2022 by Quinn Levandoski: The Marvel Cinematic Universe has continued to grow exponentially, and the franchise now contains hundreds of characters across both film and streaming series. Here's a selection of openly gay Marvel characters who deserve their time to shine in the MCU.
It was just a shoehorned-in director cameo in which a grieving man recovering from his losses in “the Decimation” and getting back out on the dating scene refers to his date as a 'he.' Still, viewers can hope that this was just the start of things.
RELATED: 15 Times Disney Featured LGBTQ+ Characters In Movies & TV Shows The character wasn’t a superhero or a villain or a cop or a soldier or a scientist. Avengers: Endgame gave us the first openly gay character in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but it left a lot of fans (who have spent the last decade waiting to see a gay superhero join the Avengers) pretty underwhelmed.