Nipposexual (1)

[imomus]

This is Nipposexual Weekend. We'll need two days, because this question has shapely legs and will surely run and run. To sprint a bit faster through the subject, I'm going to use a notes format. There are lots of huge issues here, issues of race, gender and cultural identity. But the basic theme can be put very simply: Is it okay to be a nipposexual?

Definition: a nipposexual is a non-Japanese person whose primary sexual orientation is towards Japanese people.

Experimental metaphor: a nipposexual is like a homosexual. However, many people who wouldn't dream of persecuting homosexuals because of their chosen sexual orientation do persecute nipposexuals. Well, tease them and scold them, anyway.

Example: Yuki, on her lively blog Kissui, recently told a self-confessed nipposexual to "get lost". "Too bad you don't like your European girls Metsn, but then why is it all of a sudden it's Japanese girls that you're aiming for? People like you should like, eh, live in a deserted island in the middle of the ocean."

Hisae's take: "I don't mind if a guy's last ten girlfriends just happen to have been Japanese. But I do mind if he says he only dates Japanese girls. I think it's the way you say it that's offensive."

Momus's take: there are some ideological contradictions here. First of all, Yuki posted a photo of a hot European guy in response to an entry I made showing a photo of a hot Japanese girl. So she was saying "You can fetishize us, but we can fetishize you back". But then when Metsn cheerfully admitted to doing this, he was banished. So is it "We can do that too, you know!" or "You shouldn't do that?" Personally, I prefer "We can do that too, you know!" I'd have no problem with a girl who fetishized Scottish guys, as long as she also appreciated how I differed from the average Scottish guy. I am Scottish, and quite proud of it.

Funny paradox: It's typically Scottish to leave Scotland and travel the world.

Contradiction: We don't think it's suspicious when people have a gender prejudice ("I tend to date only women.") But we do think it's suspicious when people have a cultural preference ("I tend to date only Japanese").

Biographical tidbit: When I was in "the latency phase" at my Scottish boarding school I had a boyfriend. He was an oriental. It's perfectly possible to imagine someone who doesn't mind what gender their lovers are, as long as they're Japanese.

Another contradiction: In Western ideology we say "everyone is different, individual, unique" but we also say "everyone all over the world is the same deep down". Well, I guess that's not necessarily a contradiction, it's the same idea that's contained in the idea of the "glocal", that local differences and global convergence can co-exist. But it represents a measure of anxiety about the intermediate levels: an anxiety about difference based on race, culture, nationality, body shape, gender and so on. These specificities are unfashionable, downplayed, and even taboo. This makes it very hard to describe a friend without embarrassment: you just can't say "You'll recognise her at the station, she's the fat oriental girl." But you also can't say "You'll recognise her at the station, she's the truly unique individual who, deep down, is just like everybody else in the world."

Globalism: There's Phase 1 Globalism and Phase 2 Globalism. We're in Phase 1 right now. Phase 1 is when people still have strong local cultural identities (we're still recognisably "Scottish" or "Japanese") but have the opportunity to travel, to meet people from other cultures, to pick and choose (including making sexual choices) from a kind of supermarket of fairly well-established "brands". Phase 2 would be when travel, interbreeding and cultural hybridisation has make national typologies meaningless. When everyone is coffee-coloured and multi-cultural. I don't think we've reached that stage yet, and it's possible that we never will. It's still only minorities who choose to live outside their nation of origin, minorities who "miscegenate", and so on.

A possible motto: "Miscegenation is not misogyny!"

Shock horror: Wikipedia's miscegenation entry says: "the use of this term is invariably restricted to those who believe that the category race is meaningful when applied to human beings." I would disagree with this. Race may have no basis in scientific fact, but the fact is that it's very much still active as a shaper of human experience, therefore "meaningful". Race is still "a difference that makes a difference". To deny this is to attempt the erasure of enormous amounts of history, of lived experience, of cultural specificity. Wikipedia's stance here is simply a symptom of an American guilt about race and anxiety about the idea of difference which is not situated at the level of individuals.

Another paradox: America's anxiety about cultural specificity comes, paradoxically, from its own cultural specificity: it is still the only nation composed almost entirely of people who arrived from other nations. Its retreat from its own history of slavery also means that it associates an emphasis on difference as something shameful and divisive. These specificities make the American version of universalism ("we're all unique, and we're all the same") peculiarly unexportable. They also make it almost impossible for Americans to understand the desire of other nations, eg Japan, to retain a distinctive Japaneseness as anything other than negative.

Mr Jet Set: I'm personally very much a Phase 1 globalist. I've lived in different parts of the world, I've dated people of different nationalities, I even married the daughter of economic migrants, a second-generation Bangladeshi in London. Phase 1 globalism is integral to my view of the world, my vision of happiness. I take it for granted that I can sit in Germany eating food flown in from Japan. It has become my belief that you can have a culture of origin and a culture of destination, and that part of the purpose of life is detaching yourself from your culture of origin, travelling and experimenting, and finding (according, perhaps, to some principle of "elective affinities") one's ideal "culture of destination". For me, that seems to be Japan. Then again, I don't actually believe that I can ever become Japanese, and I'm fine with that idea. I want my "culture of destination" to remain aspirational, mysterious, exotic, utopian. This, to me, has become a great source of happiness, and I've often quoted Kafka's saying that "happiness is having a vision of contentment, and not advancing towards it". Although I'd say it's okay to advance very, very slowly.

No Phase 2: The other thing I want not to advance towards, though, is Phase 2 globalism: the melting pot. I don't want there to be no more truly Japanese people, just as I don't want there to be no more tigers or elephants in the world. I believe that cultural biodiversity is essential. Although Japanese personalities are hugely variable, there's still something that links all Japanese people, something I like very much, a national "operating system". I'm not essentialist or racist about this: another of my visions is the "Japanization" of the world. We can all be somewhat "Japanese".

Prejudice: I think it's okay to have a positive prejudice. The feeling that prejudice (judging without taking account of all the facts) is always bad, even when it's positive, might be a specifically anglo-saxon idea. There's a difference between anglo-saxon and continental thinking styles. Anglo-saxons are more empirical: they think that you neutrally gather hundreds of facts then form an idea based on your results. Continentals are more a priori: you start with the idea and group the facts around it. Anglo-saxons have a tendency to call this more ideological thinking "prejudice" because it stakes a position before looking at facts. Anglo-saxons are more inclined to think that they can be neutral until the very last moment, then leap across to a committed position. However, if you don't believe that neutrality is possible, it's actually modest and honest to begin by stating where you stand on an issue. I don't believe there's any such thing as neutrality, and I don't believe in the dogma of "equality of opportunity" for the same reason. Nobody is born in a neutral space. We have a culture even when we're in the womb. We have a cultural operating system, a habitus, a series of prejudices and preferences, right from birth. Equality of opportunity is just a dogma used to justify inequality of result. It perpetuates hierarchy and elitism. The least prejudiced thing you can do is admit that we're all prejudiced. Then sift and thresh your destructive prejudices from your creative ones, your kind ones from your cruel ones.

Nipposexual: Not only is it okay to have a positive prejudice, it's okay to have a positive sexual prejudice. A positive sexual prejudice becomes a preference, and a preference, after a while, becomes an orientation.

Come out of the closet: People working in the gay liberation movement of the 60s and 70s felt that it wasn't enough to be privately homosexual. You had to "come out", to proclaim your orientation loudly and proudly in the public realm. A good-looking homosexual ought to be able to say "I'm gay, actually" at a dinner party without fear of offending all the women present who might be attracted to him. It wouldn't be impolite of him to admit his orientation, but it would be impolite of those women to protest loudly, or look terribly disappointed.

Pompous universalism: Someone who said "people of all races have an equal opportunity to become my lover" might be a terribly pompous person. We might also suspect that he was more interested in himself than in the cultural specificities of the people he dated. This notion that it's terribly noble to wear a blindfold (because Justice wears one) is a mistake. Look at your lover. Yes, she's a unique person. But she also comes from a culture which is different from yours, and that's a big part of why she is who she is. Maybe you should also admit that it's part of the reason you love her. And maybe, when you admit that, you shouldn't get a ton of bricks dropped on your head.

Comments

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Western gender equality is "equality of opportunity", and the opportunity is the wonderful chance to become men, because men are wonderful.

When you use terms like "that culture is behind" and "submissive uneducated housewives", please stand a little further back and realise that you're being very dismissive and rude about other cultures.

Sure, if you ride into another culture on horseback saying "You are behind!" and "You are submissive!" some will believe you. But many will look at your own culture and conclude that your way of being "ahead" and "dominant" is in fact a great error. Others will say "There's some good stuff there, but some bad stuff, let's pick and choose". I think that's the best characterisation of the Japanese attitude.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

equality is about being treated with respect, respect for ones opinions, opportunity to move about freely, to make choices on your own, regardless of your gender, race, religion etc.

And when you used the phrase "submissive uneducated housewives", were you treating the people you described with respect? Did you respect the decision to be a housewife, to make the choice to marry? Were you ignoring questions of gender, race, religion etc when you made such negative assessments of Japanese culture? What about when you said most nipposexuals were just interested in submissiveness, were you treating their decisions, and the decisions of their partners, with respect?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Surely respect is meaningless if it's only respect for things you already approve of?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Also, I think your definition of equality

equality is about being treated with respect, respect for ones opinions, opportunity to move about freely, to make choices on your own, regardless of your gender, race, religion etc.

is a description of blindness ("regardless") to cultural specificities. It's precisely this contradiction which allows you to pose as being on the side of Japanese women while actually being rather rude about them.

[cerulicante.livejournal.com]

Momus got you by basically telling you to stop bringing simplistic Western idealism into a foreign culture that plays by a completely different set of rules.

Just because you have anecdotal evidence of a few women being angry at traditional Japanese feminine roles does not mean the entire country is ready to erupt in bra-burning fury like it did here 20 or 30 years ago. Those women have their reasons, but maybe they do not like the system because they could not compete in it. Maybe not. Who knows?

But to choose single examples to derive an entire ideology is not good policy. Read up on Japanese women; their books, favorite music, demographics trends, sociological thoughts and so on will reveal to you that Japanese women are very different from Western women and that they, in fact, DO have power (great power) within their own social structure. You just can't see it.

[hello-sailor.livejournal.com]

Ouch. This part is condescending:

Read up on Japanese women; their books, favorite music, demographics trends, sociological thoughts and so on will reveal to you that Japanese women are very different from Western women and that they, in fact, DO have power (great power) within their own social structure. You just can't see it.

The lady lived in Japan, ok? And re: power--I believe both Westerners and Easteners have it. There is no debating that. There is no saying "only Japanese women are oppressed" and "only Western women are oppressed." Both are true--in different areas.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

First of all, I didn't mean to seem to be shouty with you, but you have managed to touch a lot of my buttons, because your views are quite widely-held. I find it extraordinary that the nipposexuals you know actually say they value the submissiveness of Japanese women. I've honestly never heard anyone who's actually been in a relationship with a real Japanese woman say anything of the kind.

Then again, there is in Buddhist and collectivist and Asian culture a strong theme of capitulation as a virtue. And yes, in Japan patriarchy is still the norm, as it is in every society in the world. Men dominate, whether subtly or overtly, whether through the ideology of biology-is-destiny or the ideology of equality-of-opportunity (but inequality of result). As usual, though, Japan as "the other" gets singled out for doing things everyone else does. They distort their school textbooks, you know!

[fufurasu.livejournal.com]

Being desired for one's beauty and feminine qualities is no less respectable than being desired for one's intelligence and insight. This holds true for either sex; "femininity" here is a set of observed behavioural heuristics independent of sex. For me there is nothing objectionable in either kind of desire.

It is this stigma on the physical (perpetuated in western thought thanks to the church, most probably) that I find most damaging; not the reluctance of Japanese women to endorse western feminism (a set of principles genuinely alien to their culture).

(By way of identifying my position in all this, all my relationships have been with asian girls, and the vast majority of my lovers have been asian. Statistically, I am displaying a clear preference towards asian women, but in my mind, this is not to the exclusion of other ethnicities.)

[encyclops.livejournal.com]

it's astounding to me the tendency here to draw up western women as foul ugly undesirable creatures!?

The whole thing is a little mystifying still to those of us who are not "nipposexual," and I think you've made some excellent points. I'd be curious to hear the explanations for just what a "nipposexual" does find so attractive (to the point of exclusivity) about Japanese women, if not the "femininity" and "submissiveness." I don't remember seeing that explained; I just remember reading attempts to justify or excuse it, or claim that it needs no justification or excuse (which I find more plausible than the actual justifications, frankly).

[butterflyrobert.livejournal.com]

"but japanese males i dont have the same idea about because their extremely preened, attractive appearance belies their often very sexist attitudes to how a woman should be."

Let's not forget that there are Japanese men who are changing their views of sexual roles and behavior as well. They aren't all sexist.

And reading the post on the geisha (somewhere above), one has to remember that in feudal Japan, a legendary geisha was much more fearsome than a legendary samurai. The fact that it was inappropriate to discuss the legendary geisha's dealings at all gave her a near-impunity to do as she wished, as long as she maintained the appearance of her role in society, a role which could easily be viewed as sexist by westerners because her dealings were discreet in the extreme (and taboo to discuss at all). The legendary samurai, on the other hand, had a very difficult time doing much other than what was expected. Like everyone has said in one way or another, a different culture.

Interestingly, the public charade of traditional Japanese culture somewhat resembes the court politics of Edwardian (and to a lesser extent, Elizabethan and Victorian - you have to ignore the queens lol) england.

I agree that its nice that one can branch out, and, as momus said, embrace a different culture (or aspects of a variety of cultures) by choice. But I also agree that the road is harder - nigh impossible - for some than for others. A westerner with a bank account and decent English has it much easier than, say, a teenage Iranian girl who lives on the poorer side of Tehran.

[cerulicante.livejournal.com]

If you cannot speak Japanese, then you cannot fully realize what the Japanese culture is. I am being an elitist, but, knowing both languages and growing up in the culture, I know that Japanese people come to believe that English is a rude and brash language in which one can eschew the complex layers of emotion and politeness that Japanese entails. Just like you speak with ease in unproven generalities ("rape is common, but it isn't reported"), the Japanese also learn to make bold and unchecked statements that they would never say in Japanese. Also, Japanese that come to the US are often as much expatriates as foreigners in Japan. They're often leaving Japan to escape problems and, of course, their opinions on their own culture are going to be colored by their reason for leaving it.

You're basing your entire thought process on a translation of something, without really knowing whether or not it jibes with the reality. This is why Momus is railing away at you.


My advice is: learn Japanese, live in Japan and interact with the people THERE. You'll come to see things a lot differently.

[cerulicante.livejournal.com]

Then you are truly a winner. And I am bested. 'Lo, the curtain falls o'er mine eyes and the sun grows dim to the fading pulse.


I like shouting the loud, funny words, even if I don't know what they mean. Good for you to stand up and give me a snooful.