Forum - View topicINTEREST: Kingdom Hearts, Evangelion Singer Hikaru Utada Comes Out as Non-Binary
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Suxinn
 Posts: 245 |
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Uh, I know. I'm Chinese (or, more accurately, Taiwanese). I was referring to the fact that 他 used to be the only third-person Chinese pronoun, until westernization hit China and the authorities decided to make 她 a thing to better relate to their western counterparts. This change was first suggested in the early '20s but wasn't actually implemented in a widespread manner until the '50s (post-Chinese Civil War), so the appearance of a gender neutral pronoun in any capacity in Chinese is a relatively new occurrence, if you think about it. (FYI, there have been attempts now to reintroduce gender neutral pronouns into written Chinese, such as X也 or Ta (spelled in pinyin). Though I'd personally just like to go back to the days of 他 as neutral pronoun and get rid of 她 altogether.) Anyway, I was curious about Japanese because, since there was a long period of time where China dominated as the cultural force in East Asia, it made me wonder if Japanese used to be a gender neutral language like Chinese did. If so, when did that change? If not, why was their language gendered in the first place? Interesting linguistic questions. |
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CrowLia
 Posts: 5509 Location: Mexico |
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Not sure if it's strictly considered a pronoun but あいつ (aitsu) is a gender neutral term to refer to a third person, although depending on the tone and circumstances, it can be considered quite rude. However, Japanese in general doesn't use pronouns very often, and specially 3rd person pronouns are not super common, since it's more customary to refer to people by their name |
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Break Xerxes
 Posts: 222 |
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That’s so cool, I’m really happy for them!
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Rentwo
 Posts: 184 |
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Sugar coating Japan being a safe-haven for LGBT people isn't any more helpful than the people saying LGBT doesn't exist in Japan at all. These issues are a lot more complex than that. Overall, I would say America has a lot more laws in place to protect and an overall more accepting attitude towards LGBT people. When persecution and discrimination does happen, you're far more likely to see justice in America than Japan. No, you're not as likely to be assaulted in the street in a hate crime compared to America, but that extends to everyone. Japan has much lower violent crime in general. There's still tons of discrimination though, and it's probably more open because there's not as many consequences to being open about your bigotry in Japan. There's a lot of celebrities and creators in Japan who have made off-color remarks about LGBT people and received zero consequence or bad press due to it, which is completely different here where any kind of slurs or bigotry is usually met with an immediate termination and pushback. The fact almost no Japanese company celebrates Pride says a lot on the overall attitude, I feel. |
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HueyLion
 Posts: 904 |
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Wow just in time before LGBT month has ended.
Great stuff. |
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SHD
Posts: 1752 |
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Japanese second-person pronouns traditionally didn't really map exactly to those in English (and most other Germanic or Romance languages), and also in general even today Japanese tends to avoid using second person pronouns in favor of referring to the person by name/position/etc. The closest that the language has to "he/she" is "kare/kanojo" where "kare" historically carried no gender - it was assigned as male, and "kanojo" invented as its female counterpart, specifically to facilitate translation/general handling of he/she, er/sie, il/elle, etc. in western languages. As for whether Japanese is a gendered language, someone better educated on the concept of "gendered" can say more but while the language has (and traditionally had) gendered words it has no grammatical gender (which has nothing to do with biological gender, mind) and gendered pronouns are a thing but it's all not extremely clear-cut, and the language doesn't really use pronouns to begin with. There are, however, various registers commonly associated with males and others with females. (Although there's debate on how much most of these can be seen as actually gendered, instead of expressing certain traits that are traditionally associated with men or women, eg. registers associated with women are generally "softer", more polite, less assertive, etc. and also skew closer to general polite speech which is not gendered.) Anyway, frankly I think people are overthinking this western vs eastern thing and often drawing wildly inaccurate conclusions based on wishful thinking, basically. The whole alt-right "Japan is untouched by the degenerate west" stupidity aside, just looking at the linguistic part: my first language is Hungarian, technically a "western" language, and yet we have no gendered pronouns, no registers used by men or women, and while it's possible to gender words (so we have the equivalent of say, "actor/actress", or even "doctor/female doctor") there's no grammatical rule compelling this, it's just linguistic tradition that a speaker may or may not conform to. And yet, sadly Hungarian society is deeply misogynist and homophobic, and for most people concepts like "transgender" or "non-binary" are alien and weird and scary. (You might have heard of the disgusting anti-LGBTQ law that our Dear Leader pulled off just these past days - that was basically the cherry on the top of a sh*tpie of anti-LGBTQ moves the government has been piling up for the past one and a half years or so.) Language in and of itself is no indication of a society's attitude to gender identities. It's just language. |
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ChimeyChime
Posts: 63 |
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Ooh, awesome! I'm happy for them!
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residentgrigo
 Posts: 2458 Location: Germany |
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Good for them and this can only help others to come forward as neither the industry nor Japan are great with this topic. Anno is known to have progressive views so it's not a surprise that he threw his weight behind this coming out.
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Hellsoldier
 Posts: 780 Location: Porto,Portugal,Europe,Earth,Sol |
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Research the Hijra from India. Third Gender identities have existed for Millenia. This to say nothing about the biological sex variant, the Intersex. Also, fallacy at display here. People living their lives free from prejudice has no impact on issues of death and starvation. I mean, actually there is an impact. 25% of people who identify as Non-binary in the US get rejected for Health Insurance. |
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shabu shabu
Posts: 79 Location: Tokyo |
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Are you aware if someone wants to officially be recognized as a different gender than the one they were assigned at birth in Japan they have to undergo surgery and sterilize themselves before the Japanese government will even consider their request? I'm not sure what you're taking an issue with by people saying different cultures have different views. Utada was born and raised in America and currently resides in the United Kingdom. Of course that upbringing impacted their views and beliefs compared to the average native Japanese. At the very least they can actually live the life they want to by living overseas. |
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AdélaïdeSimone
Posts: 1 |
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It's considered "formal", but English does have a gender-neutral, always singular pronoun, "one." E.g. "What is one up to today?", "One should not do that," or "I am one," (rather than I am she/he).
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SHD
Posts: 1752 |
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...? Yes, I am aware of all that. what I'm not aware of is what it has to do with what I wrote, which was mainly about language and how in itself it doesn't reflect delicate social attitudes. |
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Juno016
 Posts: 2397 |
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Just wanted to highlight your explanation. Pretty accurate! I have a degree in Japanese studies, specifically in linguistics, and both myself (I'm not Japanese) and several Japanese friends are all LGBTQ+, so I have the pleasure of joining in their discussions. There's actually quite a few questions about how to use language in Japan to outwardly indicate gender (including non-binary) without being obnoxious about it. One of my trans woman friends simply uses feminine self-referring pronouns excessively and it doesn't seem to bother anyone around them, but it does end up sounding stereotypical to some extent. Some cis gay men also do this, which can cause confusion as well, especially when they dress in drag ("jousou"). There doesn't seem to be any truly universal patterns on gendering language aside from adjusting self-referring pronouns, so much of my friends' tactics all seem to be outward, like clothing choice, hair, makeup, behavior, etc. Anyway, congratulations to Hikaru! I still have a playlist of their music on my iPod from ages ago. Sounds like a good time to return to it~ |
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MrBonk
Posts: 192 |
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I feel like i'm going to date myself for attempting this post.
I'm kind of struggling to form everything into sentences that makes sense without mis-identifying Utada. Sorry. Uh, since Utada likes "mx", how do we use that in a way that is grammatically correct? Do we just use it interchangeably and just try to get our brain to normalize it? Such as; "Mx (he/she/they/them like(s) to sing every morning in the shower" In the case of "Them" is "Them likes to sing every morning in the shower" supposed to be just as correct, or should we be rewording it somehow? I want to support everybody, but my brain has a hard time reconciling the specific use of each term to make it seem natural with what was ingrained from what was taught in school growing up. I've encountered a lot of people in transition with hormone therapy in my job and i've always tried to make sure to refer to each person with the pronoun and gender they identify with. But I always have a hard time asking because i'm afraid of mis gendering someone when I have to enter their information into the computer. As we may have an old record of their birth name or gender (And not necessarily have an option in the system for non binary for example. Depending on the exact claim being submitted NB has to be entered as an override). I remember once several years ago accidentally referring to someone as a he/boy/man without having any context before hand and how elated he was that someone referring to him as he felt. That was an accident with a good outcome and i've been terrified of having something like that happen again and being wrong. But at the same time i'm always afraid to bring up the topic to ask and i've never had the opportunity to actually get to talk in depth with someone about it. Also for the NB folks here, is it just that you don't feel like the typical traits, behaviors and expectations for your biological sex don't fit your mental image of yourself? Like "I have a Daikon down there, and in society men are expected to adhere to the idea of masculine ideas and interests. Shouldn't like certain things because only girls or gay people are. But I don't like those things and don't identify with them. At the same time I don't necessarily feel the idea of the typical things women are supposed to like or have interest in fit me either" This feels like a very crude way to ask this question, i'm having a hard time articulating exactly what I mean sorry. To a certain degree, I understand not being able to what society typically expects of how men should behave or look like or what they should be interested in. Especially when it comes to body image (Something i've always struggled with.) and how attractive men are supposed to look and act like according to media and other outlets. (Especially media aimed towards the female gaze. etc). And what "Normal" healthy male interests are. I can definitely relate to not being able to relate to characters in media based on how they look when I stop to think about it. I've never really felt like any character i've ever seen resembles myself, regardless of skin color. But maybe i'm not quite getting the idea and i'm missing something? I want everyone to feel comfortable with themselves for sure. I ask purely out of ignorance and i'm trying to understand a viewpoint maybe I can't necessarily relate to.  I hope this isn't too cringe inducing.
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DuskyPredator
 Posts: 15519 Location: Brisbane, Australia |
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Honest questions are good. It is going to depend on the non-binary person. For me, it was a long journey, and it can just start as hard to describe senses of being uncomfortable with the expectations of how a man should be, and when I found out that my name could be unisex, something about that just made me feel really happy. It wasn't really any interests in things not normal for males, I honestly could just explain away any senses of uncomfortable with expectations of being a man onto just new aged thinking of gender expectations. What I found out after a long time of not feeling comfortable with myself, such that I felt almost physically painful to create a "masculine" warrior character in a game to represent myself like an avatar, it flipped when I used a female character as the avatar instead. I kind of realised that it was something like the different parts that make up my mind, some just felt like they were not comfortable being seen as male, it wasn't reflective to who I was as a whole. And I feel a lot more comfortable with myself since identifying as non-binary. |
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