Posted in Feminist Halloween, Gender, Media, Uncategorized, tagged Jos Truit, Silence of the Lambs, transgender, transphobia on 2016/10/09| 3 Comments »
As much as I wanted Season 4 of NBC Hannibal, I was terrified about how the character of “Buffalo Bill” would be treated–I can’t conceive of a way to use that character without transphobia. Best case scenario, the showrunners could have just removed the whole “woman suit” aspect and made it a people suit, gender removed from the equation. (Or, just vacation in Rio with Will and Hannibal. Forever.) (more…)
Posted in Beyond Binaries Book Club, Gender, tagged asexual, Every Heart a Doorway, fantasy, transgender on 2016/09/03| 1 Comment »
We’re back from our summer hiatus! I also totally missed the one-year anniversary of the book club in May 2016, so happy birthday, lovely book-clubbers and commenters.
Via Tor.com. [Image: cover of Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire. The cover shows an open wooden door in a doorframe in the middle of a forest.]
Posted in Gender, tagged eldercare, marriage rights, queer, transgender on 2015/05/16| 1 Comment »
“Off to flip a table at the PM!”
Hiromi Nakasaki holding an umbrella poses for a photograph in Tokyo. Now, Nakasaki visits Tokyo every month to promote herself as a freelance business consultant. Photographer: Tomohiro Ohsumi/Bloomberg
Not too many links this time, but some longer commentary on gender and eldercare, marriage rights, and trans rights in Japan.
Posted in Anime, Gender, Manga, tagged cross-dressing, femininities, gender identity, masculinities, trans*, transgender, transphobia, Wandering Son on 2014/06/19| 19 Comments »
Part 4 here. Throughout this series, we’ve mentioned the difference between positive reactions to temporary, Carnival-esque cross-dressing and the transphobic and especially transmisogynistic negative reactions experienced by people who cross-dress more permanently or who are transgender. One of the best illustrations of this is Shimura Takako’s Wandering Son (Hôrô Musuko,「 放浪息子」), a manga and anime that feature several characters who are perceived to be cross-dressing by their community, when in fact several of them are dressing toward their gender identity (not cross-dressing). The show also features instances of socially acceptable cross-dressing (theatre) as a contrast to the transmisogyny experienced by an adult trans woman and a child designated male at birth (DMAB) on the cusp of puberty.
In this section, we’ll be discussing a manga and anime in which trans characters dressing toward their gender identity are perceived as cross-dressing, and will be using the terms “girls’ clothes” and “boys’ clothes” a lot. Please keep in mind that we mean this in the sense of culturally gendered clothing and school uniforms in a narrative about minors who are not out and who have to deal with transphobia in their schools and homes. An article of clothing itself, as comedian Eddie Izzard comments, is not inherently gendered, though the intent for it to be worn by (certain) cisgendered bodies is present.
Content warning: this section contains discussions of transphobia, transmisogyny, and sexism. There are also major spoilers for the anime and manga.
To briefly introduce the characters, Nitori Shûichi1 is a preteen who was designated male at birth and identifies as a girl. Her friend Takatsuki Yoshino is DFAB and identifies as a boy during elementary and junior high school.2 The manga follows Nitori and Takatsuki as they graduate elementary school, begin junior high school, and eventually enter high school; the anime focuses only on them in junior high school.
Posted in Gender, Race, tagged comic, facebook, Gender, gender expression, japan, Masuzoe, onsen, Princess Princess, public baths, race, Rie Alkemade, sento, sex strike, skin whitening, strangelykatie, TERF, trans*, transgender, transphobic, women in yakuza, yakuza on 2014/02/19| Leave a Comment »
In this gender reader: the gendered politics of skin-whitening creams; public bathing; bad reporting on the “sex strike”; Facebook genders; and more–and I even think we can get through this without a discussion of giri-choco!
Chanel’s Le Blanc (ルブラン) skin-whitening cream. Image via Chanel Japan.
