ＲＥＰＯＲＴ: Symposium on Gender

Ryō Kawaguchi, ICU student

The Minato City Center for Gender Equity Promotion held a “Gender Concepts Symposium” on March 25, 2006. As stated on their website, this symposium was planned as a response to the so-called “Kokubunji city incident”, along with an attempt to counter the resistance towards research activities and actions for gender equity, and the growing intensity of the backlash movement. The event was hosted by the Gender Concepts Symposium Committee with support from Image and Gender and the Woman’s Studies Association of Japan.
The Kokubunji city incident involved the Tokyo Metropolitan Education Bureau, which was commissioned by the Kokubunji Prefectural Office to chair a community education program on human rights issues. The Bureau rejected the commission, leading to the abandonment of the course, when it learned that the Kokubunji Prefectural Office was planning to invite Professor Chizuko Ueno as the lecturer. The Bureau’s reason was that Ms Ueno is a leading scholar in the field of women’s studies and an inappropriate candidate to represent the Metropolitan Government’s stance on gender-free issues. The incident took place in the summer of 2005 and became public knowledge in January 2006. Ms Midori Wakakuwa, the acting organiser, and other researchers delivered a public letter of protest to the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, with supporting signatures from 1808 individuals and 6 associations. This awakened a realization of the lack of communication among citizens, researchers, government and media concerning gender concepts, and this in turn led to the present symposium. I intend to give a concise report on the symposium followed by my impressions. It is based on my experience of reading gender/sexuality studies from the perspective of men’s studies, with particular emphasis on the future course for academia in countering the current conservative rebound.
The symposium began with a panel session. Ms Yumiko Ehara and other researchers introduced recent discussions and definitions of gender-related concepts, followed by topics such as the understanding of ‘gender-free’ in both theory and in practice, and issues in the reception of ‘gender’ by the media and the public. The panel presentations were followed by a debate among the participants over gender-free and the resultant backlash. There were over 200 participants, including teachers, local assembly members, and civil activists from all over Japan. Much of the discussion centered on the feminist self-criticism of ‘gender-free’. This was yet another attempt within feminist circles to re-evaluate the recent replacement of the term ‘equality of the sexes’, which had long been widely used, with that of ‘gender-free’. The slack academic response to the current backlash was also criticised. Indeed, attacks on policies concerning women’s issues in the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly had started as early as the late 1990’s. The reactionary intention is apparent even in the realm of education, as seen in the 2003 interference of the Tokyo Education Board and members of the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly on sex education at the Nanao school for disabled children, and the 2004 announcement of ‘the policy on non-employment of the term ‘gender-free’’ with the additional billeting for the ban on listing pupils in the ‘mixed’ sexes format. Yet, the academics in the metropolitan area had made little effort to take any co-ordinated action against these issues. This belatedness in response is yet again detectable in the fact that the attempt for coalition with activists and educators in retaliating to the backlash was not made until the Kokubunji incident against Ms Ueno, a leading authority in the field of women’s studies.
All of these criticisms are no doubt right on the mark. However, I still find it problematic that the discussion did not extend beyond the definition and appropriateness of ‘gender-free’. It is certainly true that opinion is still divided within feminism on the definition and use of the term ‘gender-free’ and one can hardly deny that this conceptual ambiguity has been targeted by the backlashers. It is also a fact that sex education and the ‘mixed sexes’ list of pupils were banned after ‘gender-free’ replaced the old ‘equality of the sexes’ education. Yet, is it the coining of the terminologically-unsettled ‘gender-free’ that was solely responsible for the rise of the current backlash? That cannot be so. As pointed out in the symposium, the backlash discourse is based on innumerable factual misunderstandings and errors; even their favourite objection against so-called ‘radical’ sex education is made without adequate knowledge of actual practice. In other words, their discourse cannot be founded on a logical judgement of the conceptual and practical ambiguity in the terminology of gender-free. Thus, even if we had continued to use the terminologically more clear ‘equality of the sexes’, it is likely that there still would have been criticism of ‘radical practice in equality of the sexes’. In other words, the rise of the backlash has its roots in the social background as much as in the ambiguity of the terminology. Is it not important to consider the context of this aggression if we aim to take an effective counter action against it?
I do not intend to deny the importance of discussion within the feminist researcher community regarding the adequacy and the use of the term ‘gender free’ in order to counter the backlash movement. However, this alone is useless unless we use such arguments to construct our own tactics and move on to take action. After all, we would not be able to achieve a concept of ‘gender-free’ that is unanimously accepted; even if we succeed in forming one, it would not necessarily check the spread of a backlash nor help promote ‘gender-free’ or ‘equality of the sexes’. What we need to do is to make clear the social context of the conflict, and consider the possible contributions of academia.
The anti-feminism campaign that was first taken up by the conservative media is now adopted at both local and national administrative levels, and not only Tokyo but other regions are experiencing the practical regress of it. Why is this conservative resurgence receiving support when its discourse is based on unfounded hearsay on alleged ‘radical’ sex or gender-free education? Who supports for what reason the negative campaigning in the media by members of the ‘New History Textbook Committee’? Academia has contributed to deepening the feminist debate by attempting to analyze the supporters of the backlash movement.
One such example is an article by Fumika Sato (Ronza, April 2006) in which she points out the possible new support for the backlash from elderly housewives and single, young male unskilled workers. Similarly, Umizuma (2005) comments that the fear of exclusion from the norm of ‘manliness’ or masculinity in their failure to fulfill its two major prerequisites - marriage and a job in a ‘good’ company - may have pushed these young males into the backlash movement. Unfortunately, these comments are yet to be academically proven and remain as speculations at best. With this in mind, Umizuma’s argument, that unmanly men glorify manliness to compensate for their own lack, still adds an important angle to men’s studies. It is precisely the objective of men’s studies to address such issues, the failure to qualify in a socially constructed frame of ‘manliness’ seeks to find fulfilment of the lost ideal through attacking the alternatives (equality of sexes or feminism) rather than questioning the oppressing social constraint of the manliness itself. ‘Manliness’ and its function in society has been a focus of men’s studies: we witness the social manifestation of this manliness in its most pure, characteristic form. If Umizuma speculates accurately, this is a tremendous opportunity for feminism to propose an alternative social frame. The joint social participation policy of the Japanese government has been implemented in relation to the national decrease in child birth rates and the empowerment of neoliberalism; yet, it has also acquired a significance of its own apart from the government’s intention in remodelling the traditional concept of ‘manliness’. With a very simple optimism, one may expect that those dissatisfied men on the internet, expressing their anger in failing the traditional norm of manliness with their unmarried status and unstable employment, picture alternative views on ‘manliness’ by forming an accurate understanding of the current situation. They might as well learn to rightly question the imposition of the institutionalised ‘manliness’. With this in sight, I should like to stress that it is this alternative view as well as criticisms of ‘gender-free’ and ‘backlash’ that the feminist academia should offer.
To me, the men participating in the backlash seem to be far from happy. If they are indeed tormented, it is not feminism that is to blame but, rather, the frame of ‘manliness’ that through rejection makes them all the more committed to it. Feminism-related research, especially men’s studies, needs to clarify the history and function of the norm of manliness in Japanese society. Research on manliness should not be restricted to individual psychological makeup but be approached from structural and institutional angles such as class, culture, occupation and labour, and sexuality, as one needs social reform, not individual enlightenment, in forming an alternative manliness. The commonly held view of manliness as an issue of individual psychology is also to blame for limiting the vision of the backlashers to simply (re)gaining their manhood. To change this situation, we need to demonstrate in a concrete form the alternative possibilities for society, work, gender and love.
I could not help being a little moved to see more than 200 participants as I entered the symposium hall. The ideals and actions for the realization of equality for sexes has remained strong since the intial days of the feminist and women’s liberation movements. I owe much to the efforts of predecessors in my study of Gender and Sexuality at ICU. I see the issues I have discussed here as a baton that is handed down to our generation from them, and a personal challenge for me as a heterosexual male.

REFERENCES
Sato Fumika. “Feminizumu ni iradatsu ‘anata’ e”, Ronza. Asahi shimbunsha, April 2006.
Umizuma Keiko. “Taikō bunka to shite no feminachi” in Kimura Ryōko (ed.) Jendaa furii toraburu. Shirasawa sha, 2006.