the video above is the commercial for season 2 episode 3 of the popular Japanese TV drama 家売るオンナ逆襲 /“Ie Uru Onna Gyakushuu” (”Your Home Is My Business! Counterstrike”), which just aired tonight...
…once again i get home from work, turn on the TV to see a panel show doing a special featuring trans women. despite the title of the special, shown on the top left of the screen as「13人のオネエ大集合」 / “Gathering of 13 Trans Women”, it was actually 13+ guests divided into three groups: gay men, cross dressing gay men and trans women. click the photos to see translations / context in the captions.
aaahhh, more annoying Japanese TV. despite what i said (in Japanese) while letting off steam livetweeting on Twitter, i know it’s not fair of me to expect anyone, let alone this guy (Jun Soejima, an actor / “talent” btw), to react any certain way or educate the people around him on behalf of other black people in Japan. i really don’t actually expect that or anything else of him, despite my whining, but it does admittedly annoy me when people on Japanese TV just laugh off some really shitty, problematic stuff that people say or do to them, be it re: racial issues, trans issues, or anything else. they’re in a difficult situation and have all kind of things to consider when they react to something, whereas i can huff and puff at the TV saying all the choice words i like without consequence. i get that…. but meh. it was…
on Twitter i live-tweet my frustrations with various things i see on Japanese TV, including how trans and non-binary celebs are treated. the downside to this is that tweets quickly get lost in my timeline and then it’s a pain in the ass to dig them back up if/when i want to reference them. this post is me digging up some of those tweets and putting them here for my own ease of reference and so others can see examples of transphobia & non-binary erasure in Japanese media.
tomorrow, May 25th @7:00pm on the TBS show 「私の何がイケないの？」 (”What’s wrong with me?”) will be airing a 2 hour special. the topic? “Lesbian Marriage”. apparently the show will be discussing the recent legalization of civil unions (Japan’s calling it marriage but it really isn’t) in Shibuya-ku, the “marriage” of a female geinojin to her wife, the relationship between a former Takarazuka star and her partner and a trans woman (they describe her using the term 女装, ugh) who teaches at Todai?? if anyone gets a chance to watch this, could you let me know what you thought of it? i’ll be at work tomorrow during it, but i’m already cringing a what will probably happen during the show, based on various past experiences with Japan’s media coverage of the LGBT community…
there i was, doing stuff on my computer completely ignoring my tv when i look up to some celeb guessing at what LGBT stands for, saying stupid shit like B stands for ばあちゃん/grannies and T stands for 父ちゃん/daddies to be funny. i only got my phone out in time to take photos during the 1 minute that was spent talking about the subject seriously in which the guy “educating” the panel of celebs talked about how approximately 5% of people in Japan are LGBT, about bullying in schools, about coming out and about how to respond if someone comes out to you. seriously 日テレ. it’s great that you spent 1 minute educating people, but you also spent 1 minute making light of the subject. not good enough.
