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QAC 73 – 【Asexuality In JAPAN】An Interview ♠【アセクシャルって？】日本ｘ英語圏 || #AAW2018
Happy Asexual Awareness Week! I hope you, reader, are doing well. Last month, I had the pleasure of sitting down with two activists in Japan to shoot this interview about a topic that is pretty dear to me; that is, about the current state of the asexual community in Japan. It goes without saying that everything that’s said in the video is nothing but the experiences and opinions of three people and should NOT be mistaken as being representative of the experiences or opinions of everyone, but at the same time, who better to ask than two of the most active and dedicated people that I know in what is essentially the current hub for ace activity in Japan (Tokyo)? In this 23-minute and 10-question long (bear with me) interview, I sit down with 21 year old YouTuber, ace activist and friend, Nakaken of Seisei Doudou / 性性堂堂, as well…
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「やがて君になる」/ “Yagate Kimi ni Naru”: an aro/ace coded, sapphic ‘love story’…?
cw: non-consensual touch and invasion of personal space this past Friday say the TV premiere of 「やがて君になる」 / “Yagate Kimi ni Naru” (“Bloom Into You”), a new anime based on the on-going manga of the same name by 仲谷鳰 / Nio Nakatani. while those who understand Japanese will benefit from the trailer shown above (and here, have another one), continue reading if you’re able to stomach my rudimentary rendition of the basic premise of the anime and what happened in the first episode that has me clinging to my seat in the hope that this particular series may not be your typical 百合 / yuri (sapphic / lesbian) story, but rather an aro/ace coded, mixed orientation ‘love story’. a story about two girls– one an avid reader of romance manga who struggles with having never once experienced for herself the love she reads about, the other having never experienced attraction…
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landscapes and fissures: navigating ace terminology in Japanese & English
the following post was written for the May 2018 Carnival of Aces on the subject of “Nuance & Complexity“. it may or may not be cleaned up and cross-posted to the YouTube channel Queer As Cat in the future. —— some feel that people in (English-speaking, anglophone) ace communities are “overthinking” things. that the amount of words and identities (also referred to as “microlabels”) which have been coined in such communities is not only “overdoing it,” but even potentially harmful. i’d hope that this would go without saying (but understand that it doesn’t), that i disagree with the former and vehemently reject the latter. regardless of whether i or you or that random person over there petting the stray cat that’s out in the street right now feel such terminology to be useful to us personally, the fact remains that others do and there is immense value in that.
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Q&A: “I share very similar feelings on the topic of asexuality [in Japan]….”
anonymous asked: I share very similar feelings on the topic of asexuality. I am also an asexual living in Japan, and I’m embarrassed to admit that I just recently learned the words and meanings for Aセクシュアル and ノンセクシュアル. Since I am not aromantic, that would mean I’m “nonsexual,” but I feel like the “A”/”ace”/”asexual” word itself is a big part of my identity. I feel a little upset over it. I want to still identify as asexual, but I also don’t want to confuse and have to explain thoroughly everytime. Thoughts? Ty! (for those interested, see: [ these ] [ relevant ] [ posts ] and [ this page ] of links) i felt and still feel the same way, so i just use Aセクシャル / アセクシャル / Aセク and deal with whatever confusion or misunderstanding may eventually result from that on a case-by-case basis. that, or i straight up…
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Ash Hardell’s “The ABC’s of LGBT+” in Japanese!
…..annnd look what i randomly* stumbled across at the bookstore tonight. Ash Hardell’s “The ABC’s of LGBT+” in Japanese! even Amazon Japan doesn’t seem to have it yet, but somehow Kinokuniya has it? which makes absolutely no sense, but hey! not complaining. it’s a complete translation of Ash Hardell’s book, including a lot of ace and non-binary terminology such as aceflex, quoiromantic, genderfluid and maverique transliterated phonetically into Japanese approximates.** even the [English] pronouns section is translated into Japanese, which i kinda have feelings about as to how helpful that and / or phonetic translations will be for Japanese people who will be approaching this book from a cultural and linguistic context that is not the same as that of a native English / germanic or romance language speaker. that said, at a glance, there does seem to be added explaination of English grammar to help non-English speakers better understand gender…
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Q&A: “Is the concept of a qpp common in the Japanese ace community?”
anonymous said: Is the concept of a qpp common in the Japanese ace community? in so far as i’m aware, no. i’ve never heard of anything that could be considered to correspond to the concept of (a) queerplatonic partner(s) (QPPs) or queerplatonic relationships (QPRs) in Japan. which isn’t necessarily to say that the concept itself does not exist at all, just that if it does i don’t think it’s common and i have not seen a single word or phrase used to describe such a concept… yet.
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Q&A: “do people in japan know about asexuality or intersex , graysexuals , aromantics…?”
anonymous said: i was wondering, do people in japan know about asexuality or intersex , graysexuals , aromantics…? they know about lgbt but what about these? is there any kind of awareness to it? ( i discovered that im ace flux and still questioning whether demisexual or graysexual, but also that im biromantic seemingly and was wondering if it would be a problem there? are people accepting or aware of them or just lgbt?) it’s hard to make a broad generalization about an entire country of people, but generally speaking, i’d say that awareness of intersex people, the ace spectrum and the aro spectrum– and indeed, LGBT everything– is behind where it is in, say, the US. at the same time, Japan is a very diverse place. within the same country, even among the same demographic of people, awareness can vary greatly. everything i’m saying and about to say is…
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Q&A: “I’ve explained to my mom a couple of times what asexuality and aromanticism are and how they differ…”
buffintruda said: I’ve explained to my mom a couple of times what asexuality and aromanticism are and how they differ but she can’t remember. She’s very supportive of me being aroace so I don’t think it’s purposeful. Japanese is her first language so it might be better to explain in Japanese, but I can only speak English. I understand if you’re busy, and this isn’t too important, but if you have the time and energy, could you link a website that fully explains it or write your own explanation? Thank you! hi! sorry for taking so long to respond to your ask. i’ve decided to respond to it publicly because others may find the information in it useful, but i will gladly take the post down if you’d so prefer. just let me know. i don’t know whether your mom will find this easier to understand or not, but this…
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Q&A: “I heard that “nonsexual” means non-aro ace and “asexual” means aro ace in Japan.”
anonymous said: I heard that “nonsexual” means non-aro ace and “asexual” means aro ace in Japan. I’m still confused about general Japanese terms in the ace community. If you don’t mind, could you please explain the most commonly used terms? hi, anon. you heard correctly, “asexual” (Aセクシャル) doesn’t mean what it means in English in Japan.
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Japanese gender / queer theory, anyone?
…so i randomly went to Book Off (used bookstore) today after work and happened to find two used books on gender studies / gender theory that not only ① explicitly discuss binarism and how society ignores those who are neither of the binary genders (male / female) nor either of the binary sexualities (gay / straight)– there’s also ② explicit mention of asexuality and the alphabet soup where the acronym LGBTIAQ is used and I is defined as “Intersex”, A as “Asexual” and Q as “Queer”. notably, these books were published in ① 2013 & ② 2006 and are original works by Japanese authors rather than books imported into Japan and translated into Japanese. below are super rough (because i’m starving, exhausted and need to go to bed damnit) English translations for the above snippets.
