[Special Feature: Looking Toward CGS's 10th Anniversary]
Mameta ENDO
organizer, Idaho-net; co-director, White Ribbon Campaign
[The article below is the same as the article that appears in the sixteenth issue of the CGS Newsletter.]
Mameta Endo first came to CGS at around the same time as Akira Shimada. Mameta has helped set up Rainbow College, an intercollegiate network for sexual minorities, and also participated in the CGS-sponsored Japan-UK LGBT Youth Exchange Project. Mameta writes here about his own unique perspective on CGS.
As a student of a different university 15 minutes away from Mitaka station by train, I was always so envious... CGS seemed like paradise. At CGS, I would have friends. At CGS, I could say what was on my mind. At CGS, I could be myself.
Finding life increasingly difficult as a transgender student at my own university, I said candidly to a friend at ICU one day, "You're so lucky to have a place like this at your school. It's like Utopia!"
My friend responded, "Look, there's no such thing as Utopia. Even here, if you don't speak up for yourself, you're invisible."
I think that comment reflected trust rather than criticism. No place is perfect, but we can feel secure in (and perhaps only in) a place where we know that people will respond if we approach them. CGS is not only academic but also raw and down-to-earth, and that's what I like about it.
Feminism is essential if we are to truly regain our voice in a society full of repression and discrimination. But feminism is not a ready-made finished product; it is not a subject we can learn by just sitting at a desk. Rather, it is a dynamic value that is born only through live interaction as we hesitantly stumble and mumble through the storms of diversity.
In this sense, I have great hopes for the future of CGS!