edited 12/1/14 to clarify the last point
nine days ago renowned happy hardcore producer nanobii shared a screencap of a presumably transgender (who knows for sure with anime but iâll get to that) girl with the following caption
earlier today he was caled out by twitter user shufflejoy in an admittedly inflamatory manner
and the sHITSTORM STARTED WHOOOOO
it got pretty fucking bad
so letâs talk about some shit
itâs clear that in todayâs age japan and north americaâs net cultures have strong solidarity with each other and basically since the rise of the net the two have been buddies and have built a unified community built among âotakuâ and nerd subculture. and even though that partially due to western imperialization and moreover the much larger populization of english-speaking netizens, the default language of communication between the global community is english, the subculture jargon is a mishmashed jumble of english and japanese.
this brings a host of problems, to say the least.
the way i see it the reason why what happened today happened is under two fundamental reasons
1. by and large cis males are coining the vocabulary that everyone is using (more on this later)
2. neither side of the community has full knowledge of the societal contextualization of their subculture jargon
there is a book published in japan called How to Use Fuck
think about that. for a country repeatedly said to have the best ESL program in the world, you still need an entire book to explain the dozens of intricate and complicated ways to use one. god. damn. word.
japan does not have the decades required to pick up on the societal contextualization of shit we say daily.
similarly does many western netizens fully understand how much of an offensive slur katawa is to appreciate how audacious the title âKatawa Shoujoâ is? or the powerful and yet still somewhat dubious meaning behind women reclaiming the term fujoushi (lit. rotten girl, a reference to the societal disgust towards male gay relationships) for themselves?
so letâs talk about menâs role in creating the subculture jargon.
the uncomfortable truth is men have the most powerful role in nerd culture around the world. we can sit around here arguing about charts and statistics but the following is still true:
men are the most marketed to demographic in nerd subculture
men are the de facto face of nerd culture in outer society
so what men say have inherent power. i mean, fuck, the uncomfortable reality of living as a non-binary gendered person who was assigned-at-birth and still passes as male is that i still wield that male privilege as i write these damning words. this is self evident, but for sake of brevity letâs talk about just how women are treated. women character designs are sexualized by default and you bet your ass (ha!) the most popular ones gets body pillows, cheesecake shots, pinups, and a boat load of fan made (or officially sanctioned under rare cases) porn. ones who arenât made sexually appealing to men are often narratively ridiculed for their appearance, if they arenât in a series where seemingly every female character in view are reasonably attractive.
so that leads us to our predicament today. alarmingly women/feminine characters are categorized by their sexually appealing physical characteristics.
lolis are sexually appealing young, or young looking, characters
meganekos appeal to those with glasses fetishes
small chested, big chested, tanned, hair color, it goes on and on. and iâll be the first to admit iâm not adverse to this either. iâm an enthusiastic reader of adult doujinshii and i have my personal fetishes that appeal to me.
but these are all, to be blunt, porn terms. none of these categorizes are about the personality or role of the woman. The ones that do are similarly questionable: tsundere, moe, etc. They box women by how they appeal to a cis male audience, none of these terms involve the agency of the women characters or audience
which brings us to trap. a derogatory term in outer society, it refers to trans-women or otherwise non-cis effeminate characters that are still sexually appealing to the target male audience.
just within the subculture context this is offensive enough, diminishing queer people to merely yet another thing to bone. you can dress it up as much as you want, moe, character personality traits, whatever, but in the end theyâre still characters that look cute to you and who you want to date and maybe fuck.
the biggest problem, however, is the outer cultural context. away from otaku culture traps ate trans-women who by betraying the cis male expectation for gender presentation âtrapsâ males into desiring a supposed âfake girlâ, a âman in disguiseâ.
itâs still the fundamental problem of valuing women only for how they appeal to the male gaze, but here it can get a transperson killed.
you follow that? because of the power cis male hold in both society and the otaku subculture, and due to the inherent confusion over communicating in an international subculture, weâve got both sides of the line conversing with misogynistic jargon that neither fully comprehend what they represent
"so what the hell do you propose dumbass?"
look buddy Iâll be honest, in the short term, weâre fucked. when people say âtoxic nerd cultureâ itâs not because nerd culture is inherently toxic, itâs because nerd culture for far too long has had a shitty guys-only treehouse mentality, silencing the voices of women within the subculture. as inclusionary as we want to be individually or as a group weâre still standing on shaky foundations. and the worst thing is that thereâs no real way to get out of nerd culture. things that were once ânerdyâ; film buffing, anime, videogames, comics, are the norm. in a way, nerds have made it. nerds are king. but now nerd culture is a hyperexaggeration of all these traits and unfortunately that includes the non-inclusionary undertones of the subculture.
fixing things will take decades, maybe a century. itâs not gonna be one big fix, itâs gonna take a lot of individual readjustment of how we behave. so promise me that youâll do these things:
be skeptical of the language you use daily or within your subculture. is it diminutive of a group or otherwise robs them of their say?
if your subculture uses loan words as jargon, what do those loan words mean within the original culture it originated from? is it derogatory towards a group? is it meant to be deriding or offensive?
think before you speak. watch when you say, watch what others say. disengage from groupthink, what do the words you say mean, what does the media you consume say about their worldview.
remember: all media is inherently political. that includes any works that try to be apolitical because what that lack hints at what they believe is âpoliticalâ. similarly all subcultures around media are politicized. you can't say "i don't care about political correctness" and get away with using the same problematic-but-commonly-used jargon. Saying "trap" without knowing the implications means you're ignorant and a bit clueless. Saying "trap" fully aware of the implications just means you're a jerk.
Enoch Kim thinks too much about mediaâs effect on culture when theyâre not making dumb music and weird design shit. Talk to Enoch on tumblr at yahooeny or on twitter @yahooeny
