Posted in bi visibility, bisexual, bisexual awareness, queer, tagged Gender on 2015/09/19| Leave a Comment »
Sept. 23 is Bi Visibility Day and Sept. 20-26 is Bi Awareness Week!
Speaking of bisexuals, these two. #mutantandproud [Image from X-Men First Class of Charles Xavier rescuing Erik Lensherr from the water. Erik: I thought I was alone. Charles: You’re not alone.]
Posted in Anime, Conventions, Gender, Manga, tagged AMV, androgyny, anime, anime music videos, bisexuality, bishōnen, Black Butler, Ciel Phantomhive, creepy crossdressers, cross-dressing, Dick Saucer, Dude Looks Like A Lady, fan disservice, femininities, Fujioka Haruhi, Fujioka Ryōji, Gender, gender fluidity, gender norms, gender performance, gender play, gender rebels, gender roles, gender sloths, Gourry Gabriev, Ikari Shinji, manga, masculinities, Ouran High School Host Club, passing, Ranka, Sword Art Online, transvestism on 2014/05/30| 14 Comments »
In Part 3 of this series, Kathryn and I will be examining cross-dressing in comedies and comedic tropes about cross-dressing. Can cross-dressing be treated as more than the butt of a joke? Yes!
Part 2 here. All images safe for work. Mild spoilers for the works discussed; some larger spoilers for Ouran.
Haruhi Fujioka has no time for your gender nonsense. Via Gagging on Sexism.
Posted in Anime, BeruBara (The Rose of Versailles), Conventions, Gender, Manga, tagged androgyny, anime, BeruBara, catamites, chūseibi, cross-dressing, cultural relativism, Dream Girls, femininities, Gender, gender fluidity, gender performance, gender play, gender roles, Ikeda Riyoko, Japanese literature, Japanese society, Japanese theater, kabuki, manga, masculinities, musumeyaku, onnagata, Oscar Francois de Jarjeyes, otokoyaku, samurai, seigeki, Takarazuka Revue, Tenjō Utena, The Rose of Versailles, The Tale of the Heike on 2014/05/23| 8 Comments »
How can she be a girl if I love her so much?: A novel by Rosalie Lamorlière.
(Joyce Farmer discovers Ingrid Bergman’s Joan of Arc in No Straight Lines, p. 25.)
In this section, my co-author and I explore cross-dressing in the theatre, specifically all-male kabuki and all-female Takarazuka Revue, how these productions queer our views of the gender binary, and how the main character of The Rose of Versailles disrupts tropes about women cross-dressing as men. Part 1 here.
Posted in Anime, Conventions, Culture, Geek Culture, Gender, Language, Manga, tagged anime, cross-dressing, femininities, Gender, gender and fashion, gender fluidity, gender performance, gender play, gender roles, gendered pronouns, gendered terms, gendering, genderqueer identities, Japanese language, Judith Lorber, manga, masculinities, non-binary genders, Paradoxes of Gender, Schrödinger's cat, superpositionality of gender, transgender identities, Translation on 2014/05/20| 15 Comments »
Today I’m pleased to bring you an essay version of the panel I gave with Dr. Kathryn Hemmann of Contemporary Japanese Literature on cross-dressing in anime and manga at Sakura-Con in Seattle on April 19, 2014. Because we’re no longer limited to 70 minutes and a projector, we’re able to include more notes, resources, and a proper discussion of Ôoku, which we unfortunately had to cut short at the panel. Enjoy!
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Oscar Françoise de Jarjeyes: hero, soldier, noble, woman of the people. Ikeda Riyoko, The Rose of Versailles, vol. 3, p. 296.
Gender bending is often cited as one of the defining themes of contemporary anime and manga, which are filled with examples of handsome women and beautiful men, not to mention cross-dressing characters who never fail to steal the spotlight. What is cross-dressing? How does it challenge and reinforce gender roles? What role has cross-dressing historically played in popular entertainment in Japan? Does a female character cross-dressing as a man mean something different than a male character cross-dressing as a woman? In this essay, we’re going to discuss ideas about gender, provide some terminology, and examine a few examples of how cross-dressing is used by characters in anime and manga as a means of exploring gender issues in contemporary Japanese society.
This essay is divided into seven parts in four themes. In the first part, we’re going to outline several terms and issues related to gender fluidity. In the second part, we’ll discuss Japanese theatrical traditions, specifically those of kabuki and Takarazuka, which continue to inform contemporary popular culture in Japan. In the third part, we’ll talk about cross-dressing as it appears in comedies, romantic or otherwise, to demonstrate how laughter can both undermine and bolster personal agency in choices relating to gender identity. In the final part, we’ll move on to cross-dressing in anime and manga that are more serious in tone and content in order to explore the more transgressive and more potentially transformative aspects of gender fluidity.
Content note: This essay contains minor spoilers for the anime and manga series we discuss. Although we’ll be focusing on stories and characters we love, our discussion will include issues relating to transphobia, misogyny, sexism, and bullying.
We’d like to start off our discussion with a serious topic: cats. And by “cats,” I obviously mean “quantum physics” by way of the famous thought experiment often referred to as Schrödinger’s cat. (more…)
Posted in Ôoku, Blog, tagged cross-dressing, Fujioka Haruhi, Gender, Hiraga Gennai, Ooku: The Inner Chambers, Oooku, panel, Ōoku on 2014/04/20| 6 Comments »
First of all, many thanks to the audience member who attended Kathryn‘s and my Sakuracon panel “Cross-dressing for Fun and Profit in Anime and Manga”! You were all great, and we enjoyed your questions and feedback. We’re planning on publishing a version of our presentation on our blogs (and hopefully elsewhere if we’re lucky) complete with images and hyperlinks, so stay tuned.
Hiraga Gennai, though (Vol. 10, p. 104)
Although we ended up having to rush through the section on Ôoku, there seemed to be a lot of interest in the series. I realized when I was writing down information on Ôoku for a lovely con-goer who approached us afterward to chat about the series and Hiraga Gennai that I really, really needed to better organize my Ôoku posts instead of sending people to the category, which is starting to get rather large. (more…)
Posted in Reblog, tagged Gender, masculinities, masculinity, reblog on 2014/04/05| Leave a Comment »
Great post introducing intersectional masculinities.
By: C.J. Pascoe and Tristan Bridges
Originally posted at Girl W/ Pen
What it means to be masculine changes over time and from place to place. After all, men used to wear dresses and high heels, take intimate pictures with one another and wear pink in childhood. In our scholarship and blog posts we have been grappling with making sense of some of these more recent changes as we’ve watched (and contributed to) a discussion about what it means to be an ally and changing views on gender and sexual inequality—primarily among men (see here and here). We recently published an article thinking through changes in contemporary definitions of masculinity allegedly occurring among a specific population of young, white, heterosexual men.
We sought to make sense of some complex issues like the contradiction between what seems like an “epidemic” of homophobic bullying alongside rising levels of support…
View original post 826 more words
Posted in Gender, tagged Chie Shimpo, disaster relief, economics of sex, economy of sex, fear of women's power, Fukushima, Gender, global gender gap index, LBGT, LBT, queer, Tohoku, Tohoku Disaster on 2014/03/19| Leave a Comment »
In this edition of the gender reader: queer issues in the Tohoku Disaster recovery, the Global Gender Gap Report 2013, why the “economics of sex” video is wrong, wrong, wrong, and more!
Let’s reclaim this image. “Sorry, bro, the goddesses have spoken. Misogynists don’t get sex OR vintage NES time.” (Via Business Insider, originally from The Economics of Sex by the Austin Institute)
Posted in Ôoku, Geek Culture, Gender, Manga, Reblog, tagged Fumi Yoshinaga, Gender, genderswap, Have You Nerd?, manga, Ooku: The Inner Chambers, Translation, Yoshinaga Fumi, Ōoku on 2014/03/07| 3 Comments »
Vol. 8, p. 188. Yoshimune and Hisamichi
I know most of my readers are familiar with Yoshinaga Fumi’s Ôoku, but in case you’re new here or would like to recommend the manga to a friend, I wrote a guest post over on Have You Nerd? introducing the English-version of the manga.
In 1716, Tokugawa Yoshimune, the great-granddaughter of the first Tokugawa shogun, become shogun herself, despite being the third daughter of a branch family and having a low-ranking concubine as a father. During her reign as Shogun, Yoshimune enacted a number of reforms, though she maintained Japan’s closed-country status for fear of a foreign invasion if anyone learned that the country was actually run by women.
Not the version of Japanese history you learned in school? Then get thee to a purveyor of fine manga, for you have much to study.
Full article: “History Lessons from the Tokugawa Matriarchy: Ôoku: The Inner Chambers” on Have You Nerd?
If you’d like to read my more in-depth analyses of the Japanese version, check out my Ôoku masterpost here on the blog.
Posted in Reblog, tagged Gender, harassment, rape culture, University of Ottawa on 2014/03/03| Leave a Comment »
“‘If these men face no consequences for their actions – indeed, if they are able to press charges against Roy for publicly addressing their comments – what are the students going to learn from this? They’ll learn that rape is a joke, that women can be terrorized into silence, and that it’s useless, maybe even dangerous, to speak up. Are these the lessons that we want our student leaders to be instilling in the heads of seventeen and eighteen year old kids?'”
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The Lobster Dance 