- Convenors:
-
Christopher Tso
(Keio University)
Peyton Cherry (University of Oxford)
Kunisuke Hirano (Keio University)
Send message to Convenors
- Format:
- Panel
- Section:
- Anthropology and Sociology
Short Abstract
This panel explores how context-specific gendered politics shape acts of people raising their voices against social injustices and marginalisation, including sexual assault and harassment, and marginalisation of sexual minorities in contemporary Japan.
Long Abstract
This panel explores how context-specific gendered politics shape acts of raising one’s voice in contemporary Japan. Scholarship has argued that gendered injustices and marginalisation, such as sexual violence and stigma of sexual minorities, are often reproduced by cultures of silence that exert pressures on individuals to endure hardships and avoid direct confrontation, while subjecting those who do raise voices to backlash. In the face of silence, scholars and activists have in recent years stressed the importance of raising voices particularly for socially marginalised groups to create safe spaces of solidarity and effect wider social change, perhaps most prominently evidenced in the MeToo and WeToo movements. Yet, ethnographic analyses of people’s actual experiences of and reactions to raising voices and how these intertwine with specific place-bound gendered cultures remain sparse.
The three papers in this panel each address these gaps by focusing on how the gendered politics of particular cultural contexts shape acts of raising one’s voice. The first paper explores bystanders’ reactions to increases in people speaking out against men’s sexual harassment of women in masculine-centric corporate Japan. Amidst greater awareness of sexual harassment, it considers in-depth interviews to analyse how bystanders may reproduce but also disrupt misogynistic cultures that marginalise women’s voices and experiences. The second contribution draws on ethnographic fieldwork of older gay men’s communities and their experiences in seeking help with health, mental well-being, aging, and social isolation. It investigates how hegemonic masculine ideologies of independence and emotional distance intertwine with cultural norms of avoiding meiwaku to exert pressures of self-restraint and silence. The third paper examines Japanese grassroots consent activists’ experiences of voicing up through their sexual consent education campaigns. It analyses how desire for safe spaces and individual emotional demands play key roles in the groups’ cultures, while highlighting reactions of bashing/backlash as well as members’ experiences of burnout in their efforts to voice up.
In analysing the gendered, context-specific politics surrounding raising voices, this panel more broadly seeks to elucidate the kinds of cultures that allow people to speak out and the potential of marginalised voices in reshaping gendered social norms.
| Abstract in Japanese (if needed) |
Accepted papers
Paper short abstract
Drawing on ethnographic research, this presentation examines how masculinity among older gay men in Tokyo shapes difficulties in asking for help despite growing needs related to aging and care.
Paper long abstract
This presentation investigates how particular configurations of masculinity inhibit the ability of older gay men to raise their voices to ask for help in times of need. Existing scholarship on older sexual minorities in Japan has primarily emphasized their structural vulnerability, social marginalization, and minority status within a heteronormative and super-aging society. While this work is essential for understanding precarity and exclusion, it often portrays older gay men mainly as passive subjects of social forces, leaving under-examined how they themselves talk about, reproduce, negotiate, and sometimes resist dominant masculine norms in their everyday lives.
Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Tokyo, this presentation centers the voices and narratives of older gay men. I examine how ideals associated with hegemonic masculinity—such as emotional self-reliance, endurance, economic independence, and the avoidance of visible vulnerability—continue to shape their self-understandings, even though these men are positioned outside heterosexual masculinity. Rather than existing external to gay male cultures, these norms are often internalized, reworked, and policed within them.
The analysis demonstrates how such masculine ideals contribute to difficulties in seeking help related to health, mental well-being, aging, and social isolation. Many interlocutors frame asking for help as a personal failure or moral weakness, expressing a strong preference for “managing on one’s own” even when support is available. This reluctance is further complicated by the culturally embedded notion of meiwaku wo kaketakunai (not wanting to cause trouble for others), which reinforces self-restraint and silence. Generational experiences of stigma, secrecy, and survival—formed during periods of limited visibility and institutional support for sexual minorities—also shape these attitudes toward help-seeking.
By foregrounding masculinity as an analytical lens, this presentation complicates narratives that depict older gay men solely as vulnerable minorities. Instead, it highlights how vulnerability is actively produced and sustained through gendered moral frameworks that define appropriate ways of being a man. I argue that addressing the needs of aging sexual minorities in Japan requires not only policy interventions and community-based resources, but also critical engagement with the masculine values that constrain help-seeking practices.
Paper short abstract
Revisiting ethnographic data from working with two grassroots organisations with active sexual consent projects, this paper presents the timeline of recent consent activism in contemporary Japan and the challenges of ‘voicing up’.
Paper long abstract
Sexual consent education campaigns emerged in response to specific incidents of sexual assault and harassment, such as the internationally known case of Ito Shiori and the publication in the magazine Shukan SPA of rankings of universities with sexually promiscuous female students. Non-profits, such as Voice Up Japan (VUJ), formed in response to these ‘scandals’, driven by the fear, frustration, and outrage that young professionals and students—often female or gender non-conforming—felt they could no longer contain.
This discussion draws on both ethnographic vignettes and semi-structured interviews to analyse two Tokyo organisations that are ‘voicing up’ (koe o ageru) by developing sexual consent workshops and handbooks aimed at university students. Tracing the inception of these relatively small organisations and their resulting campaigns, this paper will discuss the notion of belonging, often referred to as iibasho or anzen na basho, as a powerful call to potential volunteer members to join a project. The emotional demands of participation were evident in the strong push and pull of individuals’ feelings that shaped the atmosphere and practice of these two groups.
Bashing and backlash are also relevant within the specific context of consent activism. The paper highlights the personal experiences of interlocutors with ‘bashing’, a colloquial term for activists’ negative interactions with public audiences when platforming their consent materials. Most of this bashing appeared to occur online, with Twitter/X being the most frequently mentioned SNS platform during these 2021 to 2023 interviews.
Lastly, this paper will examine a common symptom of these activist projects and organisations—the occurrence of burnout. Particularly because voicing up about sexual consent education is so emotional and personal—with many people drawing from their own or friends’ experiences with sexual harassment—individual activists often face burnout by the end of a brief yet intense campaign.
This paper presents the three stages of contemporary Japanese gender activism as the current, yet not final, evolution of grassroots and community organising. Instead, it seeks to ‘voice up’ about the characteristics of activist efforts and propose greater visibility—rather than stability or continuity—for these often-short-lived projects.
Paper short abstract
This paper explores bystanders’ responses to people who speak out against men’s sexual harassment of women in corporate Japan. It assesses the potential and limitations of acts of speaking out in disrupting gendered corporate cultures where women continue to be marginalised.
Paper long abstract
This paper explores bystanders’ responses to people who speak out against men’s sexual harassment of women in corporate Japan. Scholarship has made clear the challenges in speaking out against sexual harassment—more commonly known as sekuhara—or sexual assault, highlighting how cultural emphases such as group harmony, desires to keep intact career prospects, and fears of victim blaming intertwine with women’s subordinate hierarchical positions to reproduce cultures of silence. However, over the past few years, surveys indicate that greater awareness of sekuhara along with organisations more proactively enforcing formal mechanisms have led to increasing numbers of corporate women speaking out against or seeking advice about sekuhara. Scholarship, however, has yet to consider the responses to women who speak out and the broader effects of speaking out on gendered power relations in corporate culture.
Drawing on semi-structured interviews with white-collar employees of various hierarchical statuses from managers to new recruits, this paper investigates the various responses of bystander employees to women’s acts of speaking out against sekuhara. In particular, it focuses on how gendered backlash intertwines with corporate culture to inform bystanders’ often negative, dismissive attitudes towards women who speak out. These include assumptions that women are merely overreacting or that they are attempting to exact revenge on disliked colleagues. While such responses reproduce gendered stereotypes that marginalise women, the paper also explores the simultaneous disruptive potential of acts of speaking out. In other cases, bystanders’ fears that accusations of sexual harassment may damage professional standing result in disruption to their everyday interactions around women and ability to speak freely about gendered issues. Senior managers, meanwhile, attempt to disrupt cultures of harassment by wielding formal discipline over subordinate offenders.
By focusing on the gendered politics and effects of speaking out against men’s sexual harassment, this paper ultimately seeks to elucidate the potential of disrupting gendered injustices and creating more inclusive workplaces.