{"id":73701,"date":"2020-05-11T09:30:38","date_gmt":"2020-05-11T00:30:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/weekly\/?p=73701"},"modified":"2020-03-31T11:01:08","modified_gmt":"2020-03-31T02:01:08","slug":"1-can-i-call-you-onee-a-discussion-on-lgbt-issues-with-bourbonne-and-associate-professor-moriyama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/weekly\/news\/2020\/05\/11\/73701\/","title":{"rendered":"[#1] Can I Call You \u201cOnee?\u201d: A Discussion on LGBT Issues with Bourbonne and Associate Professor Moriyama"},"content":{"rendered":"

In recent years we have witnessed the rise of \u201conee talent\u201d Matsuko Deluxe to the status of household name and the breakout success of unconventional television series What Did You Eat Yesterday?<\/em> (TV Tokyo), which depicts the everyday life of a gay couple,and Osan\u2019s Love<\/em>(TV Asahi), which depicts a love triangle between three men. Furthermore, the popularity of international reality shows RuPaul\u2019s Drag Raceand Queer Eye<\/em>(Netflix) reveals that sexual minorities, who once lived in the shadows, have gradually become more accepted. This trend can be seen at Waseda University, which, in 2017, established the GS Center, a support center for gender and sexuality.<\/p>\n

How do sexual minorities, who have experienced this apparent change in how they are perceived \u2014from\u201cspecial\u201d to \u201cnormal\u201d \u2014view this trend? To find out, we met with Waseda alumnus Bourbonne \u2014drag queen, producer of Campy! bar in Shinjuku Ni-chome, and general moderator of the sexual minority festival Tokyo Rainbow Pride \u2014and Noritaka Moriyama, queerstudies specialist and Associate Professor at the Faculty of Letters, Arts and Sciences.<\/p>\n

Please join us for this special, which is the culmination of numerous discussions in the editing room and extensive research on sexual minorities.
\n\"\"<\/h3>\n

#1 \u201cTrying tobe inoffensive\u201d is already offensive! The LGBT Community Doesn\u2019t Need to be Pampered<\/h3>\n

Q. In preparation of this interview, I familiarized myself with various information regarding sexual minorities so that I don\u2019t saying anything offensive.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Bourbonne
\nHmm\u2026Recently, a lot of people who come to my bar, or come hear me speak, say they don\u2019t want to be \u201coffensive.\u201d But don\u2019t sentiments such as \u201cyou can\u2019t hurt their feelings,\u201d or \u201cyou can\u2019t be offensive,\u201d sound like you\u2019re trying to pamper them?<\/p>\n

I think it\u2019s better to focus on the positive aspects of getting to know the LGBT community, namely, that it will expand one\u2019s worldview. It\u2019s fun to get to know people who differ from you, and, as a result, expand your perspective, don\u2019t you think?<\/p>\n

Moriyama
\nI think there are a lot of people, including myself, who feel that comments such as \u201cisn\u2019t this offensive?\u201d only serve to create distance between people. I wonder if there\u2019s a way for us to speak to each other more candidly.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Q. …it seems I\u2019ve already put my foot in my mouth. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Bourbonne
\nBut this might be more due to the media environment of the past 10 years. Because we\u2019ve constantly been told that so and so amounts to \u201cdiscrimination,\u201d we\u2019ve been led to think that we must speak in a way that doesn\u2019t offend anyone. With that said, it\u2019s not wrong to point it out when something is discriminatory.<\/p>\n

However, this might be why we\u2019re less interested in the depths of sexuality and more focused on not offending anyone. In some cases, there\u2019s not a black-and-white answer to whether something is discriminatory or offensive. People aren\u2019t monoliths.<\/p>\n

There are people who always angry, who say things such as, \u201cStraight people just don\u2019t get it!\u201d But there are also those like myself, who try to create space in the media. There\u2019s no right answer to this, though. Sometimes it\u2019s important to use anger to cut through on certain issues.<\/p>\n

After all, people have different presumptions and ways of thinking, and there is an infinite variety of ways to communicate information. For example, I adjust the way I speak depending on the situation, whether I\u2019m speaking earnestly, on a variety television show, or at a local community center with an audience comprised of mostly older folks.<\/p>\n

Q.\u3000I think it\u2019s true that straight people tend to be wary of committing potential blunders when speaking with LGBT. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Bourbonne
\nI think people would be more relaxed if they didn\u2019t spend so much energy on worrying about what is discriminatory or offensive, but rather on what brings joy to the person they\u2019re speaking with and what brings both of them together. However, Japanese people tend to focus on avoiding mistakes…<\/p>\n

Moriyama
\nI\u2019m one of those who is always angry, saying things like, \u201cThat\u2019s discrimination!\u201d But I always follow this up, adding that it\u2019s not simply a matter of words. It reminds me of something I\u2019ve experienced lately. A lot of students have come to me, asking if it\u2019s okay to use the word \u201conee.\u201d This word encompasses varying forms of sexuality, so I don\u2019t recommend using it, but, depending on the context, the word can be used as a term of endearment or as an insult. It\u2019s not simply a matter of \u201cthis word is bad and this word is good.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bourbonne
\nPeople only pay attention to the words. When one magazine used the term \u201chomo shacho (president)\u201d to refer to the president of my organization, Campy, the publisher reprimanded them, claiming the term was discriminatory. As a result, it was changed to \u201cgay shacho.\u201d For me and the president, \u201chomo shacho\u201d was perfect, but the nuance is completely different, right?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Of course, I would never use \u201chomo\u201d to refer to someone I don\u2019t know, but when referring to people in my inner circle, I think it\u2019s perfectly appropriate that I use it. For instance, there are LGBT who are upset that the word \u201cokama\u201d has become taboo. Don\u2019t you think it\u2019s strange to take away the rights of adults to use certain words?<\/p>\n

Especially within the context of sexuality, which represents a spectrum, I don\u2019t want to view things in such a black-and-white way, claiming that \u201cgay\u201d is good and \u201chomo\u201d is bad.<\/p>\n

If you view things from the outside and try to simply remove controversial aspects of a certain concept, you end up taking away the nuance. This doesn\u2019t only apply to LGBT. It applies to all forms of discriminatory language. I think it\u2019s a big mistake to think that you\u2019re in the clear just because you don\u2019t use certain words.<\/p>\n

[#2] Tiptoeing Around Landmines: LGBT and the Media<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

[#3] Removing the \u201cErotic\u201d Will not Eliminate Discrimination<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In recent years we have witnessed the rise of \u201conee talent\u201d Matsuko Deluxe to the status of household name and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3613,"featured_media":73726,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/weekly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/weekly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/weekly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/weekly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3613"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/weekly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73701"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/weekly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73701\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":73786,"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/weekly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73701\/revisions\/73786"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/weekly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/weekly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/weekly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/weekly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}