YAOI ALERT: Be Careful When Traveling To Canada
As if we don't have enough to worry about lately, it has come to my attention a few days ago that the Canadian customs agents have been cracking down hard on comic materials coming over the border (this could be anything driven, flown or delivered into Canada except by U.S. mail, which apparently has stricter standards when it comes to "reasonable suspicion" and requires a warrant. Not so for private carriers like UPS and FedEx, which can be searched must easier.). This is not a yaoi specific issue, which actually makes it all the scarier since it covers such a broad scope of reading material. Here are three really good articles concerning the recent issue at TCAF (Toronto Comics Art Festival).
The last article points to past history of Canada's customs agents seizing materials and I want to point out these two links as they are very important. The first goes back to 2007 when customs agents seized gay comics from a French publisher that was shipping them to a Montreal book store. The second article is far more concerning as it pertains to manga. If everything this person says is true including the fact that he was detained because the title of one of his manga had the word 'boy' in it, I would be petrified to bring any yaoi materials over the border. Now this article is from 2006 but I haven't read anything saying they've become more lenient since then. Either way, it provides an excellent history of censorship in Canada.
Just so you don't think I'm being overly dramatic in my concern, the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, who brought immense attention to the Christopher Handley trial, is also showing concern over this situation. They wrote "an advisory for travelers on crossing borders with comic book materials" all about Canadian customs, what they can and cannot do and what lengths they will go to to search your belongings. Here are a few excerpts of great concern:
"In one recent incident, an individual was detained at the U.S.-Canada border while en route to an anime/manga convention. He was handcuffed and held briefly on charges of child pornography, and his materials seized."
"Customs agents also may search for information stored on electronic devices, including cameras, laptop computers, cell phones or other storage devices, or on electronic media, such as flash drives or DVDs. Such searches may be conducted at random, with or without reasonable suspicion, and are becoming increasingly common. According to information revealed pursuant to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the ACLU, over 6,500 people traveling to and from the United States between October 2008 and June 2010 had their electronic devices searched at the border. Nearly half of those searched were U.S. citizens."
"Customs agents frequently use an overly broad and inaccurate definition of “child pornography” in order to justify intrusive searches of materials that are fully protected by the United States Constitution."
"…CBLDF has gotten reports that travelers have been detained and their computers and expressive materials seized after customs agents found comic art that contained no depictions of actual children and no representations of sexual activity. Any photographic or artistic rendering that depicts nudity may heighten the risk of a search, even if the depiction has nothing to do with child pornography."
Page 8 and 9 give suggestions for avoiding intrusive border searches. I recommend anyone traveling to Canada to give that a thorough read to avoid any issues in the future.
UPDATE: There has now been a man arrested for child pornography upon finding his manga on his laptop.
~Jennifer LeBlanc
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So they will also search if it’s delivered through FedEX and UPS? How about DHL?
Also, does this applies to airports too? Because there’s some plan about me living in Canada, but I also want to bring my yaoi too :’(
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Jennifer LeBlanc AKA Asami's Girl Reply:
May 12th, 2011 at 3:25 PM
DHL as well. Any delivery service because it goes through customs. If you fly in, you still go through customs. No way to sneak into Canada with your yaoi without taking a risk I’m afraid. I would ship your books by U.S. Mail since it’s harder for them to go through the contents. When you describe the contents, don’t specify manga, just say books and leave it at that. Saying it’s manga triggers them to want to look from what I see. It’s a small chance I think but if they DO look, then you could be in a lot of trouble if your yaoi collection is anything like mine.
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lemur7 Reply:
May 24th, 2011 at 2:35 PM
thats very strange …I live in Montreal and never had any problems of my goods being siezed,,, and I have bought yaoi and hentai titles ..both manga and dvds ..all have arrived on time and with no problems … I have had packages opened and inspected …arrived a bit late and was charged customs and excise taxes …but still recieved by goods and that only happened on rare occasions
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Seriously, aren’t there better things they could be doing than preying on poor otaku?
It really is just a colossal case of people not understanding what they’re seeing. If you don’t understand what yaoi is, of course seeing some will send off alarms. Ignorance promotes foolishness. I don’t expect every mail worker, customs agents, etc, so be fully aware of any form of media out there, but for frak’s sake…. Take a better look, or ask some questions instead of automatically condemning something.
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Hmm… this puts a serious dampener on my plans to take a semester abroad in Canada and visit the conventions in america to look for comics/manga/yaoi i can’t find at home… Although i guess i could just ship them out of america and not even try to take stuff over the boarder…
Interesting. And kind of disturbing. I didn’t realise censorship was such a big thing there or anywhere
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Ohh wow. I was not aware of this.
I actually went to Sakura Con this year and bought 2 Yaoi artbooks and 6 yaoi manga. Of course my parents didn’t know about it but THANK GODmy dad did not say Manga. Now I guess i’ve got to be more careful.
But really, not all Otaku are pedos and are actually gonna go and do stuff that depicted in manga. I mean, I enjoy reading yaoi a lot, but its not like i’m going to go out and kidnap 2 boys and force them to do things for me just so I can re-create a manga scene. I like reading and watching Yaoi. I am not harming anyone by it.
And also, DMP has started selling in Canada. the Chapters site has many of their titles and i’ve even picked some up at my local Chapters.
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Wait, how is this even possible?? Amazon CA sells yaoi! In fact, they often have it before Amazon US!
It just does not make sense.
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Jennifer LeBlanc AKA Asami's Girl Reply:
May 12th, 2011 at 9:21 PM
It’s not that everything you have is not legal there, it’s just that they can detain you and your belongings until they deem it is acceptable material. Amazon could very well sell yaoi that skirts Canada’s laws. Ultimately it falls on the shoulders of the person who purchased and/or transported the materials if you get caught with something they feel is against their law.
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Aniko Reply:
May 12th, 2011 at 9:57 PM
Yaoi is not illegal in Canada, you can buy it everywhere and we even have the French BexBoy, the only thing that could be illegal is when it implies characters less than 16 years old or extreme violence, of course the border staff doesn’t have the time to read them and can see little ukes as children…but yes they can detain you and your belongings…and not only for yaoi but for plenty other things, searches are done randomly but thoroughly.
When it’s an importation by mail for instance, if they have a doubt and seize it you have the choice to abandon it (and then they burn it) or ask for an evaluation (and then they decide if it’s illegal or not) If your stuff is considered as “legal” they return it, if not…you are in trouble.
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Sakura Elric Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 7:31 AM
Do you know how often they seize packages? Cause I live in Canada and am thinking of ordering some out of print Yaoi from Chapters and since its used they ship from the US. >..<
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Aniko Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 7:54 AM
Rarely, it never happened to me or of any my friends and I order a lot. Just don’t buy shota, lolicon or hentai.
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Those were seized but probably not illegal, however hentai, lolicon and shota are illegal, virtual or actual child it’s all the same. The books seized from the French publisher contained “incest” which is (was) also illegal in Canada. I ordered plenty of Japanese magazines from Japan like BexBoy, Craft, Hertz…all searched by the customs and they didn’t seize them. Sometimes they seize manga that we can buy in the local store…I think it’s just because customs staff lack of training or are overzealous. Also the law of obscenity is rather unclear and changed every year.
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I can’t believe this, isn’t it a little bit extreme?
So in airports they check you too? S: I’m travelling to German and I make a stop in Montreal (and in Toronto when I return). I wanted to purchase some german Tokyopop yaoi mangas. Should I better not risk? Would a mexican girl would look like carrying some cute and sexy yaoi? haha
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Jennifer LeBlanc AKA Asami's Girl Reply:
May 12th, 2011 at 11:32 PM
If you are just flying through Canada and not actually exiting the airport, I don’t believe you have to deal with customs as it’s just a layover. I’ve flown through Canada before and I don’t recall dealing with customs. Just in the country I flew into and then the country I flew back into. Confirm that though just to be safe.
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Aniko Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 8:07 AM
(sorry for being a rash :p) I don’t believe you will have to deal with the customs either, but Tokyopop yaoi is rather inoffensive and sometimes you have to be firm (and polite) with the custom agent…like “listen, those books can be bought here in Canada, there is nothing obscene about it, I checked the quarterly list myself”
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Huh…that’s kinda bizarre of them, I’ve purchased stuff via amazon from here and the states and in stores and so far haven’t had any trouble.
Honestly..doesn’t customs have more important things too worry about than what were reading?
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Sakura Elric Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 2:22 PM
I totally agree. I mean if local bookstores carry it (big bookchains like Chapters) it should be just fine to take it over the border. I don’t understand WHY if we can buy it in Chapters and on Amazon.ca (both big chains) why would customs care.
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Katie H. Reply:
May 14th, 2011 at 3:26 PM
Exactly,why would you prevent people from bringing it across the boarder when it’s A)Perfectly legal here B)Not exactly hurting anyone.
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I really don’t think anyone should be worried, because the incidents here seem few and far between (actually – mostly centered around central/eastern Canada than Canada as a whole). I don’t agree that picking one article from 2006 shows the “history of Censorship in Canada”. Are there really no censorship incidents coming from the United States?
Canada is more liberal towards gays and lesbians, but this does not come as a surprise to me, because there are always groups of conservative people who use their power (this time, as customs agents) to their unfair advantage, even if it doesn’t reflect the views of everyone else in the organization.
I’d also like to note that it is becoming increasingly easy to enter into Canada without hassle – The Vancouver airport now sports computer automated customs agents, so you don’t even have to talk to a real person. Further, just last month my friends and I drove back from Sakura-con, and I was reading Jo-chen’s In These Words (which, I tell you – is very very NSFW) just before the border, where I left it on my lap when we talked the the custom’s agent. After hearing we came from an anime convention, he cared very little about what we bought.
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Jennifer LeBlanc AKA Asami's Girl Reply:
May 16th, 2011 at 3:32 PM
It’s great you have not been hassled but the reality is that it does happen and of those who had electronic devices searched (which is pretty serious), 50% were U.S. citizens. No one is calling Canada homophobic. The tone of the article is to be careful traveling and understand that it is very much up to the whims of your particular customs agent.
As far as the history of Canada comment, what I said was “Now this article is from 2006 but I haven’t read anything saying they’ve become more lenient since then. Either way, it provides an excellent history of censorship in Canada.” It does provide an excellent history of Canadian censorship… to 2006… which I pointed out. The comic people I’ve talked to in Canada have not said it’s gotten any better. Perhaps you’re in one of the good areas and have been lucky. Either way, I will still travel more safe than sorry and leave my yaoi at home. You are more than welcome to leave it out in the open.
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Jennifer LeBlanc AKA Asami's Girl Reply:
June 24th, 2011 at 3:38 PM
Have you seen this? http://theyaoireview.com/2011/06/24/yaoi-alert-canadian-border-patrols-arrests-man-for-manga/#en There’s your reason to worry.
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I can see both sides to this issue.
I agree with the idea that if you can walk into a store and buy something legally in a store over in Canada AND the USA. . . it should be a no-brainer that one should be able to cross the border either way and have no issues in doing so. HOWEVER. . . I recall that it was at least a year, if not two. . . before I started getting carded at stores like Borders for buying yaoi. I was still young at the time, and was shocked when I got carded once I was out of high school. . . after I had bought more than an armful of yaoi while still IN high school. Those are the people working AT the store with physical copies of the books and they had no idea what the content was most of the time. The people higher up the chain who ship the books out and yay or nay on whether they get sold in stores. . . I can’t imagine them being all that more informed.
Is this an issue for yaoi fans crossing the border a lot? Possibly. But there are a LOT of variables, even if you disregard the fact that searchings are VERY few and far between. . . How are you dressed, how do you act, what forms of visible clues do you have on you that are obvious just by simple conversation? How much yaoi are you carrying? What KIND of yaoi is it? Does 90% of your collection on you look more like the Finder series or Gravitation? How are you crossing the border? If you are in a car and all of the books at the top of the stacks in the boxes (that have no lids) with you are hardcore yaoi titles. . . there could be issues. If you are traveling by plane. . . having a whole purse of yaoi could net you the same danger.
Of course what officer you get, how rushed they are to get other people through who are behind you, what time of day it is, how long their shift has been, what mood they are in, and even what kind of person they are (This is said with no offense to the people who work the positions. I have no personal ill experience with any of them, all I am saying is that depending on the individuals views you could be searched or passed without a second thought) could also change the outcome.
It is important to remember that SEIZED does NOT mean “taken away and will automatically be burned”. You have a certain period of time to take action and ask that the items be returned to you at a US address if you believe them to be okay (and state why you believe them to be okay), or sent to you in Canada if THEY feel the items are permissible. I am not sure on the particulars there. . . like whether this means NON-permissible items could ALSO be sent back to a USA address. . . or if it means ALL non-accepted items WILL be burned. . . or if this is a case-sensitive deal. For example. . . if they found a volume of yaoi to be prohibited under Obscenity. . . but it broke no LAWS (no kiddie porn or incest) then would it be burned just for being prohibited? Or since it broke no laws would they be willing to send it back to a US address? I would be willing to assume that its case sensitive. The dealings with electronics is more vague though. I read somewhere (I can’t recall where, sorry >____<
Hetalia books. . . what I can only assume are Doujins . . . were all rated as Admissible. (Found in Q4 2010 in multiple sections)
But I'm Your Teacher was Admissible (Q2 of 2009)
Great Place High School – Admissible (Q2 2009)
Lies and Kisses – Admissible (Q2 2009)
Love is Like a Hurricane Volume 2 – Admissible (Q2 2009)
Sunflower 1 – Admissible (Q2 2009)
Embracing Love DVD – Admissible (Q4 of 2008)
Nothing yaoi was found as being prohibited. Hentai however. . . well. . . that's another story. It was actually amusing seeing titles like Night Shift Nurses and Bible Black constantly hopping from being Admissible to Prohibited nearly every quarter I skimmed through. Now. . . those are all fairly tame titles by some people's standards. Would the same ruling hold true of a more hardcore book like Finder? I am not certain. You can really only judge that one by the normal porn titles they banned. But even that is misleading.
I wanted to know about the titles linked above as well. So I dug around and found those as well. All the books found that were published by H&O from the gay comic seizure article were found to be prohibited. They DID include incest. Those books were listed in Q1 of 2007. It will be interesting to see how the Black Eye books fair.
Anyways, I won't carry on any longer. Most of it is open ended, but I felt that being COMPLETELY in the dark on what is acceptable and what isn't just was not a good thing. Something had to be done about it. It doesn't fix things, but it makes people a little more prepared.
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Latromi Reply:
May 18th, 2011 at 2:20 PM
Some of that got cut off in the middle, just before I listed the books. . . I said there that I found a website that had all of the seizures listed. The site is http://www.gomorrahy.com/index.htm
If it didn’t get cut off. . . and it is just displaying as such, then this isn’t important. But that link is sort of important for why I started listing off book names.
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Just wondering – does it apply only to U.S border or are the people flying in from, say Europe, also subjected to the possible search?
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Jennifer LeBlanc AKA Asami's Girl Reply:
May 22nd, 2011 at 5:41 PM
Any border, it’s customs. They check everyone regardless of what country you are from.
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Wao. I live in Canada, and I didn’t even know we were this bad. This is taking it a little far. Fortunately, my yaoi doesn’t actually contain…interesting material, because you can’t buy it without some kind of ID around where I live, and it’s too expensive to ship overseas (my laptop, of course, is an entirely different story x3).
It’s actually pretty disturbing, how far these guys are going. I mean, come on, teenage boys can buy porno mags at the local convienience store, and girls can get fucking detaind for having non-explicit manga on their person? Really? This is silly.
It does make sense, I guess, when you think of shota etc. I could understand the customs officers getting upset about that, but just because the uke looks like a six year old desn’t mean he actually is, guys.
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thats very strange …I live in Montreal and never had any problems of my goods being siezed,,, and I have bought yaoi and hentai titles ..both manga and dvds ..all have arrived on time and with no problems … I have had packages opened and inspected …arrived a bit late and was charged customs and excise taxes …but still received my goods and that only happened on rare occasions ….also you’ll have no problems at any border with yaio so long as your over 18 and can prove it …
to mod ..please delete my “comment” that was posted as a reply in another persons post …thank-you !
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Jennifer LeBlanc AKA Asami's Girl Reply:
June 24th, 2011 at 3:37 PM
Check this out: http://theyaoireview.com/2011/06/24/yaoi-alert-canadian-border-patrols-arrests-man-for-manga/#en
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haha… love the article pic
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Yeah, I agree with lemur7. I also live in Canada and I’ve been ordering BL books for close to 3 years now. I get them from Amazon and even order BL drama CDs and DVDs from stores in Japan, and I’ve also asked my friends in Japan to buy BL stuff for me, and so far I’ve never had any problems either. O_o
I’ve put BL manga in my hand-carry luggage too and didn’t really get in trouble for it in the airport.
But I’ve never travelled through the border carrying BL books though, so that might be a different story?
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Jennifer LeBlanc AKA Asami's Girl Reply:
June 24th, 2011 at 3:35 PM
UPDATE: http://theyaoireview.com/2011/06/24/yaoi-alert-canadian-border-patrols-arrests-man-for-manga/#en
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I think some of you are missing the point of this article. Yes, most of Canadians go through the border fine. But there are going to be times when you either get that grumpy officer to check your car, or some officer doing a random check and sees your yaoi stuff as inappropriate. It’s rare, like being hit by lightning, but it can happen. If you do continue to buy yaoi online then you should be aware of what the risks are is all she’s saying. I have bought items online and brought home a ton of yaoi doujinshis from Japan, and did not get asked any questions about it. Most of the time, border officers are more concerned with drugs, guns, and alcohol to care about books. But as mentioned, there is the rare(Maybe even very rare) chance that you can be caught with these and have your books seized.
This is why I’m very paranoid about the Bill C-32. If Canadian border officers are holding people for something they see as unacceptable to be in Canada, then what will the internet police think if they log into any yaoi fan’s activity history. Especially considering the Conservatives are a lot of more strict with rules.
But that said, I can understand their concern as well. If a man had these photos of young girls nude in his dark room, and he says it’s art, how many people are going to believe him? Maybe a few, but I’m willing to bet more people are going to see him as a pedophile. And how many real pedophiles actually have child pornography on their PC? A lot I bet. So I can understand to an extent where the officers are coming from, since they may see this person as a potential rapist or pedophile. In their minds, they are being cautious because they want to prevent crimes. Or, so in theory.
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I live in Canada and the U.S. (kind of like a snowbird) and cross the border several times a year. I have never travelled without my laptop and harddrive… which is full of every kind of yaoi you can imagine. I’ve never been stopped at customs and searched… I wonder what these people are saying to the customs officers to warrant their suspicion? Even if I get randomly chosen I highly doubt the officers have the time and patients to search through my extensive collection and find the few shota that I have kept. However this article has sparked my interest and it’s nice to be aware. I don’t think I will change my habits though and when I go overseas to Asia, I wouldn’t let this keep me from purchasing yaoi artbooks and the other merchandise that I usually purchase. So I hope this article won’t stop Canadian fans/travellers to Canada from doing the same thing. I think customs has better things to worry about, like smuggling in drugs and weapons. If I was one of the people who got detained and had their merchandise confiscated I would hire myself a really good lawyer. I hope instead of being scared people stand up for what it right… nude artwork of children does not lead to paedophilia just like first person shooter games do not turn people into mass murders -.-;;; >.> If someone decides to be a pedo, killer, rapist, they chose that themselves, they weren’t conditioned by multimedia.
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Jennifer LeBlanc AKA Asami's Girl Reply:
June 24th, 2011 at 3:34 PM
http://theyaoireview.com/2011/06/24/yaoi-alert-canadian-border-patrols-arrests-man-for-manga/#en
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[...] last month when I told you to "Be Careful When Traveling to Canada" with your yaoi? Yeah, I wasn't kidding. A mere month later and we now have a manga fan [...]
See the update to this story here:
http://theyaoireview.com/2011/06/24/yaoi-alert-canadian-border-patrols-arrests-man-for-manga/#en
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just to clarify canadian customs may be *blank* however this has nothing to do with canada, we have yaoi in our chapters as Ive bought them. and we also have various yaoi cons i just want to specify being canadian this is about authority not the country.
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Jennifer LeBlanc AKA Asami's Girl Reply:
August 1st, 2011 at 9:53 PM
I think the issue is more that customs is basing their decisions on some of the Canadian laws that are more vague and restrictive than U.S. law so U.S. citizens for sure have to be careful as we’re not used to that here.
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Lol, they dont check you at all if your actually Canadian. I brought a whole bunch of doujin back from Japan, just last May. Didn’t even search my suitcase. Was completely breezed through customs. Oh the benefits of being a citizen
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I always get Professor Layton Yaoi stuff shipped to me but most of it is the explicit kind while one is friendly doujinshi, I mean i live in Canada and getting them from Japan, I’m lucky mine never get taken away from crappy customs officers and people like i think if i get a warning, Every parcel i get would have to be looked at, including play-asia parcels, Am I actually lucky that I didn’t get caught yet? xD
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