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EP. REVIEW: Wonder Egg Priority

Just a suggestion, but maybe don't use a term when you don't understand what it means... a "terf" would be more likely to "shame" a person (regardless of sex) for presenting in a "feminine" way — long hair, makeup, fake nails, high heels, etc, which are all physical shackles (impractical, time-consuming, potentially dangerous) and capitalistic stereotypes of femininity that only apply to humans. I say this as a "gender" non-conforming homosexual woman (which apparently makes me a bigot!) who both wanted to be and wanted to be with characters like MGNK's Kashima or Aoi Hana's Yasuko.

Just a suggestion, but maybe don't use a term when you don't understand what it means... a "terf" would be more likely to "shame" a person (regardless of sex) for presenting in a "feminine" way — long hair, makeup, fake nails, high heels, etc, which are all physical shackles (impractical, time-consuming, potentially dangerous) and capitalistic stereotypes of femininity that only apply to humans. I say this as a "gender" non-conforming homosexual woman (which apparently makes me a bigot!) who both wanted to be and wanted to be with characters like MGNK's Kashima or Aoi Hana's Yasuko.

Given the historical oppression and repression that has plagued queer voices and representation, I totally understand the reactive movement towards clarity and explicitness. However, I think this reaction also sometimes loses sight of the inherent difficulty of translating any part of one's identity into language and art, which compounds exponentially when considering the inner, interpersonal, and societal complexities of gender and sexuality, neither of which are binary, nor necessarily rigid.

And I mean, what even is gender? I don't know! ....Gender is fake and a construct but it's also extremely real and painful and euphoric.
...After all, there are differences between the genders when it comes to suicide, but only because there are so many differences between how society treats and perceives those genders. The Acca bros gravitate towards a clean delineation, because doing so probably benefits them in some way. But like gender itself, this issue is a whole lot messier than a short binary platitude.

Most suicide attempts are just attention seeking or a “cry for help”

This is a potentially very harmful myth that attempts to diminish the suffering of people who have tried to take their life. Anyone who thinks about or attempts suicide deserves compassion and to be taken seriously.

What’s more, once someone has attempted suicide and survived, they are more likely to try again. In fact a suicide survivor is 100 times more likely to complete suicide than someone who has never previously attempted it. For that reason, they absolutely should be given attention.

“Overall, we found a disproportionate increase in female youth suicide rates compared to males, resulting in a narrowing of the gap between male and female suicide rates,” said study lead author Donna Ruch, PhD, a postdoctoral researcher in the Center for Suicide Prevention and Research at Nationwide Children's Hospital, Columbus, Ohio.

Dr. Ruch and colleagues investigated youth suicide trends in the United States between 1975 and 2016. The study included 85,051 suicide deaths of youth age 10 through 19.

Researchers identified a downward trend in suicide rates for both sexes in the early 1990s. Since 2007, however, rates of suicide have increased for both sexes—but suicide rates among adolescent girls increased more. Girls between the ages of 10 and 14 showed the largest percentage increase.

The study also found that rates of suicide by hanging or suffocation for girls are approaching those for boys.

...the rise in suicides has disproportionately affected women. Although they represent a smaller proportion of total suicides than men, the number of women taking their own lives is increasing. In October, suicides among women in Japan increased almost 83% compared to the same month the previous year. For comparison, male suicides rose almost 22% over the same time period.
There are several potential reasons for this. Women make up a larger percentage of part-time workers in the hotel, food service and retail industries -- where layoffs have been deep. Kobayashi said many of her friends have been laid off. "Japan has been ignoring women," she said. "This is a society where the weakest people are cut off first when something bad happens."
In a global study of more than 10,000 people, conducted by non-profit international aid organization CARE, 27% of women reported increased challenges with mental health during the pandemic, compared to 10% of men.

Given the historical oppression and repression that has plagued queer voices and representation, we have the right to be protective of our experiences and to ask who is translating our identities onscreen?

In this case, the staff is composed of cis men, and it's prudent to be cautious about their interpretations of our female, non-binary, trans and/or LGBTQ+ identities, as well as trauma survivors and people with mental health issues or experiences with suicidality. People have been speaking about us without us for centuries, and while that can result in resonant art, it can also result in reinforcing painful inaccuracies, misconceptions and stereotypes.

EDIT: That aside, I’m more than a little worried that the show is going to (intentionally or not) windup making Momoe’s friend come across as somewhat predatory (and the Predatory Lesbian is a trope that can go jump in a lake). It seems to me like Momoe has a lot of trouble refusing these girls’ advances, and she clearly felt, if not outright assaulted, at least extremely uncomfortable when her friend put Momoe’s hand on her breast. And I worry that if Momoe turns out to be a straight cis girl, it’s gonna be an uncomfortable episode to sit through if the show opts to paint the best friend as the oppressor in this situation, where Momoe felt pressured to go along to get along until she couldn’t take it anymore and rejected the friend, who then committed suicide.

The choice of suicide attempt is dictated by what people are trying to accomplish by committing suicide. People who just want to stop living will pick something that won't fail, people who are looking for help/attention will pick something that will probably fail. So while the difference in death by suicide come down to the means of suicide, those still show strong difference between male suicide and female suicide.
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Pretty sure the whole point of the term "TERF" is to call out people who identify as feminist but are transphobic (starting with some second-wave big names who would hold events with labels like "biological women only" and spout other transphobic rhetoric). The use of the term in the review would only make sense if you assumed Momoe is trans, which I doubt will turn out to be the case.

Also, can't believe I didn't realize it til now, but everyone is reliving their trauma with their Egg Wards: Rika gets idol fans, Momoe gets girls who fall for her/her appearance, Ai gets schoolgirls who have issues with teachers and/or bullies, and Neiru gets...older women? Girls who were preyed on by older men? That definitely suggests a lot of unpleasantness about Neiru's sister.

The first one we saw of Neiru mentioned things about money, which I think must be related to how Neiru is a president of a business, and how she is afraid if people might value her without what she might contribute capitally.

The hair egg scenario I think goes a bit into how Neiru may have some confidence issues about her own body, maybe too much of a leap to say whether her ethnicity, how she did not like her hair touched, but probably something about that scar on her back.

So my current wild theory this week is that this show is going to try to deconstruct (among other things) the fantasy of teacher-student relationships and/or the fantasy of dating older men.