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- Convenor:
-
Ami Kobayashi
(Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf)
Send message to Convenor
- Chair:
-
Andrea Germer
(Heinrich-Heine-University)
- Discussant:
-
Anne-Lise MITHOUT
(Université de Paris)
- Section:
- Anthropology and Sociology
- Sessions:
- Friday 27 August, -
Time zone: Europe/Brussels
Short Abstract:
Based on the analysis of ethnographic data collected at universities and schools, as well as ministerial documents and school textbooks, this panel will discuss the questions of how sexual minority students perceive their heteronormative school setting and how they can may obtain a safe space.
Long Abstract:
The so-called "gay boom" in the 1990s and the "LGBT boom" in the 2010s seems to have increased the public presence and acceptance of sexual minorities in contemporary Japan. The number of cities issuing same-sex certificates is growing and more and more schools have started introducing so-called "LGBT-friendly" school uniforms. These changes give us the impression that the quality of life of sexual minorities has improved in legal as well as educational realms.
However, many activists have pointed out that Japanese educational institutions hardly provide any safe spaces for sexual minorities. In fact, many of these institutions are still very heteronormative and have often failed to provide role models for sexual minorities. Thus, in the existing heteronormative school and university setting, it is difficult for sexual minorities to believe that they have the same prospects and opportunities as cisgender and heterosexual students. We would like to understand how sexual minority students perceive their heteronormative school settings, how they might cultivate a safe space, and whether they can feel secure, be themselves and think about their future positively.
The scope of this panel covers a wide range of educational levels, from primary schools, secondary schools (junior high schools and high schools) to universities. Each paper will focus on the different stages of education and discuss whether and how respective educational institutions can provide spaces for sexual minorities. At the same time, as each paper uses different types of sources, such as ministerial documents, school textbooks, and ethnographic data (interviews and participative observations), this panel can present perspectives of various actors and agents who are involved in this issue, namely: students, teachers and facility members, prefectural educational committees, school book publishers as well as the Ministry of Education.
Our discussant is specialised in special education in Japan, so can lead a discussion on the intersectionality between disability (visible minority) and sexuality (invisible minority). The panel chair is an experienced researcher in the field of gender and queer studies and history.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Friday 27 August, 2021, -Paper short abstract:
In my presentation I will analyse schoolbooks and prefectural guidelines for sex education, and discuss if they encourage schools to open up spaces for sexual minorities. My research shows that the spaces currently opened up for sexual minorities are too small to change current school setting.
Paper long abstract:
"Homosexuality may disturb the healthy development of heterosexuality. It is against the social morals and destroys the sexual order. Thus it is unacceptable and should be treated." These were the words of the Japanese Ministry of Education in 1979. In 1994 the Ministry of Education finally removed homosexuality from the list of deviant behaviours. In the 2010s the Ministry issued several documents encouraging schools to take sexual minorities into consideration, for the first time. While the latest teaching plan (2020) still does not include any information about sexual minorities, new schoolbooks and prefectural guidelines for sex education started to refer to sexual minorities.
In my presentation I will analyse schoolbooks and prefectural guidelines for sex education (grade 7-12), and discuss the following questions: 1. How much and what kind of information about sexual minorities do they provide? 2. Do they encourage schools to open up any spaces for sexual minorities?
While textbooks for high schools only refer to sexual minorities in the connection with themes like discrimination and family, two ethics textbooks for junior high school mention sexual minorities in school context. Here we can find small spaces for them, like unisex bathrooms and, if they are lucky, there are individual teachers who understand their sexualities and can provide them with a sense security.
Guidelines for sex education provide a limited space for sexual minorities. Indeed, the guideline of Tokyo Metropolis encourages better understanding of sexual minorities in the school context. However, model lessons in this guideline are highly heteronormative and there is only one sentence encouraging teachers to take supportive action for sexual minorities, namely "Tell students, that if they have personal problems including the issue of sexual orientation and sexual identity, they should contact their classroom teacher or school nurse".
I would thus argue that in a small number of schools there are very small spaces that have opened up for sexual minorities. However, currently the spaces are so small and hidden that they may neither change the existing school system nor make majority of students aware of the presence of sexual minorities in their own school.
Paper short abstract:
By analyzing ethnographic data, we aim to elucidate how "queer spaces", such as the gender-and-sexuality-related facilities situate in Japanese universities and how these spaces are cultivated and maintained.
Paper long abstract:
In Japan, people often feel pressure to conform because of cultural homogeneity and collectivism, and those who do not fit into the social norms may be vulnerable to discrimination and exclusion. Surveys by The Life Respect White Ribbon Campaign (2014), UNESCO (2015), and Human Rights Watch (2016) indicate that sexually diverse and gender non-conforming youths in Japan often feel unsafe, and many of them had experienced bullying at pre-tertiary school. Although limited studies have been done in the college/university context, such a condition may persist due to a lack of institutional support and acknowledgment of LGBTQ issues (Kawashima, 2015, 2017).
In challenging the prevalent heteronormativity and cisgenderism, many queer scholars have offered critical analyses on queer identity and resilience. For instance, Sara Ahmed (2006) suggests that contact with other queer individuals creates a queer space that can extend itself and disturb the heterosexist world, thus allows the queers to be able to live and survive within it. College and university classrooms can be such a space by offering courses in queer theory, sexuality studies, or LGBT studies. Moreover, student groups, dedicated centers, and facilities on campus can also serve the very purpose. These spaces do not exist on their own but come as a result of the interactions of various actors.
Actor-Network Theory suggests that both human and nonhuman actors have an agency that provides a tool for tracing how they work collectively in "networks" of action. Therefore, using ANT as a framework and analyzing interviews with queer students and faculty members, we aim to explain how these queer spaces, such as the gender-and-sexuality-related facilities situate in Japanese universities by focusing on the facility backgrounds, disciplines, and activities. In addition, by looking at external factors, such as the involvement of international students, faculty members, institutions, social networking services, we aim to draw connections between various components and examine how these components perform in creating and maintaining such spaces.
Paper short abstract:
An analysis of MEXT official documents concerning primary schools and fieldwork research (interviews with primary schools teachers) will present the effectiveness of LGBT-inclusive measures at schools.
Paper long abstract:
Concerns for school-based homophobia is increasing in Japan, yet there is a tendency to focus on individual incidents of homophobic bullying rather than the cultural and institutional factors supporting them. This topic is now mostly related to high school and university period. However, since the 2010 decade, the Japanese Ministry of Education published for the first time some notes and survey about the measures to include LGBT pupils at primary school and also junior high schools. Those documents were issued in April 2010, 2014, 2015, 2016 and the latest in 2017.
Through the analysis of these official documents, we will show that far from being LGBT friendly, the Ministry of Education trying to focus only about medical assistance for transgender students. There is clearly a disjunction between transsexuality, perceived only as a medical anomaly, and the sexist and heteronormative school settings, symbolized by the 1999 MEXT Guideline of Sex education never revised due to the gender free bashing in the 2000s. This disjunction is by no means a coincidence: it allows the conservative part of the body politic to keep its ideals of feminine and masculine roles fixed, while recognizing the presence of transsexuals in Japan.
This analysis of the MEXT official documents will be confronted with fieldwork data, through participative observation of primary schools and more specifically, to gender-equality research group of Y city and sex education research group of M city, in 2014 and 2019. These data will show the role of teachers and school directors when the MEXT edit notes and surveys but do not change the compulsory textbooks, which rejects any questioning of gender norms, especially with sex education program.