What /is/ this?

[branchandroot]

Okay, seriously, what the fuck?

My rant on women in KHR was far from the first thing I've written castigating some anime/manga or other for presenting women as useless frills or objectified sex shows or whatever other negative stereotype was in question. I'm fairly sure it wasn't the first time such an entry has been linked on a meta comm.

So why is this particular entry drawing so much fire? I just ran across yet another (annoyingly clueless) screed against it while googling for a KHR timeline for pity's sake!

Is there really such a concentration of anti-feminist women (I shudder that such a phrase can still be written) in KHR, or did this particular entry just happen to fall into the orbit of a small knot of them and I have the bad luck to keep stumbling over their excrescence?

Comments

[annotated_em.insanejournal.com]

That really does seem... weird.

Especially that these are things that are being posted openly. Seems to me that if you want to take issue with someone else's rant--but without engaging with the original rant/ranter--you ought to filter or flock your response.

But then, I suppose I have odd ideas about internet backing-and-forthings.

[akai_senshi.insanejournal.com]

I can see what you're saying in that rant, but I defend all female characters on principle. Not just the ones who can fight.

The thing is, there's two different kinds of feminism. One is the strain where women get judgmental on each other for adhering to patriarchal standards, which should work, and yet doesn't. The other one recognizes that all women are different, and no one should be punished for liking to cook, liking babies/being a mother, or being a girly-girl.

It's not really the characters' fault that they're written so bad. (Consider that Amano-sensei IS a woman, and...yeah.)

[midorigirl.insanejournal.com]

Delurking to comment on this...I found the posts in question and I'm AMUSED (not really) that so many of them argue that we need to look at manga/anime from a Japanese perspective instead of a Western one. I wonder how many of them actually have lived in the environment over here (or grew up in it)? Have they considered how Westernized Japan has become since the 1800s? Do they think in stereotypes?
Japan isn't the world they're imagining, where every woman dons an apron over her very pregnant belly while kissing her husband good bye. These attempts at modeling the "pure" woman are merely grasps at keeping a status quo from long ago...Japan HATES to be rattled out of anything unless its a literal earthquake. Japan is changing and it scares the crap out of them, culturally and societally. The Japanese government would love for all women to be baby machines since the birth rate is dropping scarily over here, but more women are opting not to get married right away. Many are choosing college, single life and careers. The economic situation, when Japan's bubble burst, forced many women (and elderly) into the work place in order to make the household budget actually work. Plenty of my children students are only children. Japan's youth are slowly rejecting Japanese things including food and lifestyles. Japan's government is looking at a cultural meltdown and is flapping its arms trying its best to stop it.
These are not the droids they're looking for.
At the same time, the simple fact that I CAN fix a computer still shocks all my students. There's some room for improvement.
Nevermind that whole trying to justify the anti-feminism based off the magazine's NAME. *facepalm* Shounen Jump...yeah sure, it literally means "Boy Jump" but since when has a name dictated who reads it? The majority of the people I see reading the weekly publications are salary men or college age men. I see more of them reading the Shounen Jump manga. The actual BOYS are still reading things like Doremon and Pokemon. Like it or not, Shounen Jump is hardly aimed at actual boys over here.