Gimme A Queer Eye If You Have Two
a queer & feminist critic / writer / vlogger / speaker / barowner
A guest lecture at Aoyama Gakuin University On Thursday, December 14, I went to the Shibuya campus of Aoyama Gakuin University to give a guest lecture in a gender & law class (taught in English). It was a big class, consisting of approx. 140 students, mostly beginners-level ESL speakers. That made giving the lecture quite
Continue Reading “Queer Theory as a Critique of Society: the Closet and Gay Marriage”
I was interviewed by a student in the UK and here are excerpts from my answers. On recent changes in Japan regarding LGBTQ politics First and foremost, the acronym LGBT has gotten currency in mainstream media. Many people now know what it means or at least have heard of it and have a vague idea of
Continue Reading “LGBTQ politics in Japan, gay marriage, and sex education”
For those in the progressive circles who’ve always seen the radical queer left and their anti-(gay)marriage politics as mere hindrance, or even a pain in the ass, the news of gay marriage legislations (possibly) lowering LGB suicide rates among the youth probably comes as a belated surprise Valentine’s Day gift. Now that gay marriage has proven to
Continue Reading “If You’re Not To Marry, Everyone Else Makes Sure You Want To Die”
Amelia said she wanted to interview me for the AniFem website, and I agreed, part of the reason being it’s a new website and yet they promise to pay all writers starting 2017. That should not be a big deal, but it kinda is when so many writers around the world are underpaid or not paid at all. That, and I just liked the idea of creating a sort of like an online hub where you can find lots of queer and feminist information, resources, critiques etc. about otaku cultures.
The Tokyo Rainbow Pride, which I talked about last year on this blog, marked its 3rd anniversary on April 27, 2014. Its commercialization and increasingly neoliberal, militarist, and conservative crystallization of LGBT politics have become almost intolerably, grotesquely obvious. I could go on and on about sponsorships and participation of embassies and corporations at the Pride, but today I am so devastated by the participation of Prime Minister Abe’s wife, Ms. Akie Abe at the Pride, that I am almost in a shock state.
I found this animated GIF by glaad for the ENDA campaign. I added a few more slides to show the larger picture of the way that labor laws operate in the U.S. To read more about this issue, click here to read Yasmin Nair’s “ENDA, We Hardly Know Ya.”
As I was going through the daily routine of browsing Facebook & Twitter, I found a NYT article, Gay Couples, Choosing to Say ‘I Don’t’, the title of which caught my eye, as I oppose the institution of marriage, and the like-minded people who shared the link in FB/TW seemed content with anti-marriage opinions circulating at last in the mainstream media. Excited, I read on, only to be disappointed, but in a way that was quite unexpected, by the elitist tone of the article.
Although this isn’t intended to be an exhaustive summary of history of LGBT politics in Japan, which I cannot possibly provide given my limited knowledge, I just couldn’t take anymore the shittiness of the news articles written about LGBT politics in Japan.
The most typical, all-too-common article written in English never fails to make the followings clear:
And I say, THIS IS BULLSHIT.
I have always been sick of the born-this-way rhetoric that mainstream gay activism has so proudly spread all over the U.S. I don’t have anything against those who were born gay or born whatever, but feeling that one was born gay and saying so are two different things. I understand that the born-this-way rhetoric has
So the passage of Proposition 8 (which I do not think needs any explanation since many people are talking about it, even here in Japan, which makes me feel that a disproportionate amount of attention is being paid to one proposition of one state of one country——not that I don’t care, just in case) has