Jan. 30th, 2009 at 1:28 PM
My rant on women in KHR was far from the first thing I've written castigating some anime/manga or other for presenting women as useless frills or objectified sex shows or whatever other negative stereotype was in question. I'm fairly sure it wasn't the first time such an entry has been linked on a meta comm.
So why is this particular entry drawing so much fire? I just ran across yet another (annoyingly clueless) screed against it while googling for a KHR timeline for pity's sake!
Is there really such a concentration of anti-feminist women (I shudder that such a phrase can still be written) in KHR, or did this particular entry just happen to fall into the orbit of a small knot of them and I have the bad luck to keep stumbling over their excrescence?
Comments
Especially that these are things that are being posted openly. Seems to me that if you want to take issue with someone else's rant--but without engaging with the original rant/ranter--you ought to filter or flock your response.
But then, I suppose I have odd ideas about internet backing-and-forthings.
The thing is, there's two different kinds of feminism. One is the strain where women get judgmental on each other for adhering to patriarchal standards, which should work, and yet doesn't. The other one recognizes that all women are different, and no one should be punished for liking to cook, liking babies/being a mother, or being a girly-girl.
It's not really the characters' fault that they're written so bad. (Consider that Amano-sensei IS a woman, and...yeah.)
I have no problem with women enjoying fashion or cooking or nurturing, any more than I have a problem with men enjoying that.
The problem is not that some of the women characters enjoy doing 'girly' things. The problem is that none of the women characters outside of a villain or two are permitted to participate successfully in the life-or-death important things. They are they deliberate creation of an author, and, in KHR, they are denigrated by the author's narrative structure, placed constantly and explicitly as second-class--unless they're raving psychos. THAT is what I have a problem with.
Don't confuse defending the personal choices of actual women with structures that perpetuate a lack of choices. KHR's brand of story is one of those structures.
Which would be why the rant was written about the trend of the female characters in the source, rather than as an attack on the characters themselves. Look, I get the urge to defend female characters on principle, but that doesn't change the frameworks in which they're placed, and those frameworks are flawed.
Also, there are several branches of political feminism, and several modes of expression. To say there are "two kinds" is incorrect.
Japan isn't the world they're imagining, where every woman dons an apron over her very pregnant belly while kissing her husband good bye. These attempts at modeling the "pure" woman are merely grasps at keeping a status quo from long ago...Japan HATES to be rattled out of anything unless its a literal earthquake. Japan is changing and it scares the crap out of them, culturally and societally. The Japanese government would love for all women to be baby machines since the birth rate is dropping scarily over here, but more women are opting not to get married right away. Many are choosing college, single life and careers. The economic situation, when Japan's bubble burst, forced many women (and elderly) into the work place in order to make the household budget actually work. Plenty of my children students are only children. Japan's youth are slowly rejecting Japanese things including food and lifestyles. Japan's government is looking at a cultural meltdown and is flapping its arms trying its best to stop it.
These are not the droids they're looking for.
At the same time, the simple fact that I CAN fix a computer still shocks all my students. There's some room for improvement.
Nevermind that whole trying to justify the anti-feminism based off the magazine's NAME. *facepalm* Shounen Jump...yeah sure, it literally means "Boy Jump" but since when has a name dictated who reads it? The majority of the people I see reading the weekly publications are salary men or college age men. I see more of them reading the Shounen Jump manga. The actual BOYS are still reading things like Doremon and Pokemon. Like it or not, Shounen Jump is hardly aimed at actual boys over here.
And, seriously, even from just the non-systematic research I've done it's obvious that the "Japanese perspective" is very fragmented right now. Which has got to be weird to experience from the inside, given how much Japan's (historical period) Modern image hinges on unity/harmony.
I think some of the people who wrote those have bought the last-ditch "we are one" propaganda wholesale, which does rather amuse me.
Sorry...I babble more at night.
One the one hand you have the technological centers of Japan, Osaka and Tokyo, where the fragments are large and glaring but the attempts to deny it are just as out there. I don't see as much pink/lace/frills with equal parts severe hairstyles/black suits until I go into the urban cities.
In contrast, my own little city has more women who work in large tool/manufacturing companies and handle the international business. They don't dress "cute" or "professional". Most of the women have been to college or technical school and are living past the "Christmas Cake" age without getting married, but with active social lives.
One of my students routinely yells at her much older male counterpart when he's being an idiot, and bitches about him to me later. That's all the evidence I need on the "pure woman" front.
Re: Sorry...I babble more at night.
That makes sense, though. The history I've read seems to paint the cities as the points of crisis and contact--the places where big politics happen, the places people try to capture in wars, the places where everyone is compressed enough to put extra work into asserting their own place/identity. Kind of like shouting over the 'noise'. Maybe the more rural areas have enough elbow room to change less noticeably, more gradually. Maybe small communities just produce a stronger consensus, with less room for dramatic breaks between parties and more need to keep everyone at least marginally happy.
I'll be kind of entertained if the government looks around one day and realizes that everything is already re-negotiated, grassroots, while they weren't looking.
Re: Sorry...I babble more at night.
In talking to my children, only two of my girls have plans for after MIDDLE school. The rest of them think college is a waste of time, but they don't want to be housewives either. They're still young, so I have hope. I also don't know if its the rural (actually my area is more like suburban but with farms) mentality, where its better to stay at home and help the family.
At the same time most of Japan's small towns and villages are disappearing as the children from those towns realize there's so much more in the cities, and not just in terms of money.
My students are a little less likely to think in terms of "We Japanese" but they still show signs of it from time to time. Getting them to discuss something is like watching a meeting of Yes Men.
Re: Sorry...I babble more at night.
I am going to be very curious to see what Japan makes of itself next. Based on its history it seems to be a culture that can be amazingly adaptable and amazingly stubborn at the same time. At some point I really may have to see about writing up some kind of article on Japan and the US as mirrors of each other. The same and reversed, both.
Re: Sorry...I babble more at night.
Have you read "Why The Japanese Can't Think"? I can't find it online, and of course the copy I have with credits is back at my office, but its an interesting read. This is a slightly updated, tho economy based, view of the same thing: http://www.newsweek.com/id/73117
I think its a scary reflection on my younger students...there is little to no expansion to the basic structure I teach them. Today was "Did you _____?" and most of them gave the rote answers. When I started mixing it up with "Did you ______ on the _______?" then I got confused stares, even after translating it into Japanese for them. It can be fairly disturbing.
Re: Sorry...I babble more at night.
Oh, ouch. Yeah, if that happens intellectually too I can see how it would lend itself to nothing but rote.
And of course the established interests would like it that way and not see the threat or problem, long term. It's comfy that way. Even in US schools, which allegedly place a far stronger emphasis on critical thinking and problem solving, there is almost zero support for actually trying to change the curriculum to teach those things. Argh.
Re: Sorry...I babble more at night.
On the plus side, there is this bit of sunshine concerning Japan. At least they're trying to do something about their demographic problem that ISN'T encouraging women to be constantly pregnant. However its disheartening that Japan wouldn't do anything until now to encourage thinkers to stay. Even if they article focuses on poorer immigrant families, imagine what language programs could do for its intellectual community. I will point out that some McDonald's already offer English language programs to their workers, for very reduced costs.
Re: Sorry...I babble more at night.
*stares at the article* That's... that's huge. I mean, Japan's public and approved image for the last *thinks* four hundred years almost has been so completely insular. So utterly anti-outsiders. Wow. If that initiative works, I imagine it really will be a turning point.