@Docstockk Others have surely answered already, but I'll add to the pack. (1) Read around. A very quick Google search will reveal plenty of pages explaining that, yes, generally it does mean "I'm fine with either." Why? Well, I'll speak for myself, and give two reasons.
@Docstockk First, because "they" is a neutral pronoun. It applies to everyone. "Someone lost their wallet." "I wonder who they are." Second, because some people don't feel 100% fully comfortable with the social constructs of "a man" or "a woman" and want to express that.
@Docstockk Some people feel that being called "they" instead of he or she helps reinforce their own feeling that they are being seen as a person first, an individual, and not first and foremost as representative of a social category - man or woman.
@Docstockk (2) Just because you don't see people performing or expressing gender-nonconformity doesn't mean they don't do it. Especially in academia. Plenty of people are going to dress in a more conforming way at work, in professional contexts, even if they don't on their private time.
@Docstockk And, no one owes you, or society, anything, in terms of presentation. As others have pointed out, one can be a woman and have short hair, wear pants instead of skirts or dresses, go against stereotypical gender norms in other ways. And so just the same for anyone.
@Docstockk No one has to perform androgyny or gender-nonconforming for you or for anyone, for their identity to be real, and personally meaningful, and valid. Think of your own relationship to womanhood; others' relationship to not being a woman is similarly complex, deeply felt, and real.
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Visited Tobu World Square yesterday - a theme park near Nikko featuring models of famous buildings from around the world. Kind of cheesy, I guess, but kind of cool. My main purpose in going, ofc, was my interest in seeing their new model of Sui gusuku (Shuri castle).
Very much looking forward to visiting Shuri again. We'll see when that ends up happening.
Some sites of modern Japan: the Tokyo National Museum, Akasaka Palace, Imperial Hotel (Frank Lloyd Wright), and Tokyo Station.
The quiet, unspoken, pressure to embody gender norms, to try to fit in and seem like a typical, "normal" guy/man/bro/dude, even when, who knows, maybe all the other guys are also pretending or self-policing in the same way, to fit in with you.
Even when you know the guys and they'd probably be totally cool with you being a diff sort of guy to them, I'm always sort of curious, how many of them aren't actually that sort of guy either? We all just sort of play along to try to fit in, but maybe *all* of us are pretending?
If only we could all drop the act all at once. I'm sure there's a movie/TV reference I could reference here, but I'm blanking. But surely, there's one where everyone is standing around, brewskis in hand, talking about football, and then everyone sort of eyes one another and then
My thanks to @softsoundingsea for bringing this article to my attention I don't know the author, and have nothing against them personally, but this seems a fine example of the kinds of things we see far too often in discussions of Okinawa & politics,
And an indication, perhaps, of the kinds of things that Tokyo Review publishes, i.e. the kinds of submissions they approve, or invite. I have been aware of the existence of Tokyo Review for a while, but only recently have started to get a sense of the character of the site.
As is very often the case with a certain brand of commentary on these issues, the article overall prioritizes the importance of the US-Japan alliance and security concerns over the well-being or democratic rights of the Okinawan people.
"Having settled where Loochoo was, he went on to enquire about the people ... On telling him that they had no arms, he said 'no arms - you mean no cannon, but they have muskets.' I said not only have they no cannon, they have no swords nor spears ... No, I replied, we never saw
any kind of warlike weapon. ... I stated to him they they had no wars, upon which he shook his head, as if the supposition were monstrous and unnatural."
Basil Hall was a British Royal Navy captain who visited Okinawa in 1816. He met with Napoleon the following year.
Thank you to everyone at @ucsc_omi for an incredible program today on the Koza Uprising which took place on Dec 20, 1970. Deeply moving, thought-provoking, and educational. I learned a lot, and gave me a lot to think about.
In the early morning hours of Dec 20, 1970, an American GI in Koza (now Okinawa City) accidentally hit an Okinawan man in the street with his car. Okinawa had been under US military occupation at this point for 25 years, 18 years longer than mainland Japan.
In that time, Okinawa had seen countless such traffic incidents, not to mention instances of physical and sexual violence which in most cases ended with the Americans involved facing no legal repercussions. Extraterritoriality, or unequal treatment under the law, was standard.
Those who have been following me know I'm working on a translation of a chronology of events of the Bakumatsu period - the years leading up to the fall of the Tokugawa shogunate + the Meiji Restoration.
Today, I came across an exciting line:
Kagoshima domain retainers Arima Shinshichi and Tanaka Kensuke; Ronin Tanaka Kawachinosuke, Maki Izumi, Yoshimura Torataro; and others gather around dawn and depart Osaka for Kyoto. They go up the Yodo River, arrive at Fushimi around dusk, and rest at the Teradaya inn.
The Teradaya Incident which resulted on 1862/4/23 is easily one of the favorite, romanticized, bad-ass fights for samurai weeaboos.
I'll give the text I'm translating, my rough translation, and then just a little extra comments :)