01. From CGS: November 2006 Archives

Eiji TAKETATSU
Undergraduate Student, Toyo University

On May 23rd 2006, Ms. Kanako Otsuji, a member of the Osaka prefectural assembly who publicly came out as a lesbian last year, gave a lecture entitled “Towards a Society that Celebrates Diversity” at the International Christian University.
I participated in the lecture as an interested party, that is as a homosexual male. However, the lecture was basically comprehensible also for heterosexuals, who do not have much knowledge of LGBT.

Aiko IMAGAWA
Undergraduate student, ICU

On May 8, 2006, Ms Junko Mitsuhashi gave a talk entitled Sexuality in Transgenderism as part of the ‘Approaches to Gender Studies’ course at ICU. Ms. Mitsuhashi is a cross-dresser as well as a gender studies researcher specializing in the social history of sexuality. The talk was a powerful and comprehensive presentation on the reality of the Shinjuku cross-dressing community that did not belie her claim regarding her own candidness.

Yuko INOUE
CGS staff member

【The full text of this article has been deleted at the writer's request. The following is the same as the article that appears in the sixth issue of the CGS Newsletter.】

The CGS guest speaker in March, lesbian pastor Rev. Yuri Horie, has been engaged in issues of homosexuality, both within and outside the church. She warned that the church could indeed create hotbeds of homophobia. One factor that forms homophobia is the mind-set that reduces one’s coming-out, a manifestation of one’s identity, to merely ‘a confession of sexual conduct.’