lol, spreading this article is even worse than i thought. the badge was part of a whole section of the store dedicated to menstruation. whole thing thought up by women at the company.
so to sum up
if you share “WEIRD JAPAN” articles, you’re racist
if you shared this article in particular, you’re robbing Japanese women of their agency so you’re racist and misogynist
odds are not nil that this story made it out of Japan due to some right-wing reactionary sharing it, so you’re possibly a collaborator on top of being a racist misogynist.
My dude, there are significant cultural differences between Japan and the US even with the significant cross pollination since the 1940s. There are many differences in sensibility that both the Japanese find funny or weird about the US as well.
Have you never seen americans portrayed in anime? Don’t get your underpants all knotted up.
True, even Buddhist genocide over religious minorities in Myanmar and such, kind of crazy. However, my point was specific to Japan – they simply are a more secular culture, and the “women are dirty and especially when on periods” vibe just doesn’t strike me as particularly Japanese, compared with 'Mercun religious wingnut.
Sharing this article isn’t really harming anyone. Obviously not all the staff thought it was normal either. I’m sorry but Japan is weird. I saw a calendar the other day called Cat Balls! That’s right 12 months of photographs of cat balls. If that’s not weird I don’t know what is. And if it’s any consolation for you there are plenty of TV shows here celebrating how “weird” everywhere in the world outside of Japan is.
Oh look, the “omg you don’t understand Japan is different! if you criticize backwards and misogynist thinking in Japan you’re racist!” people have appeared…
This is not a “WEIRD JAPAN” article, this showcases an attitude that is fairly pervasive in Japanese society, especially in the service industry. If you speak any Japanese at all, I suggest you start reading up on this. For example you can start with the WWD Japan Twitter thread, where you’ll see actual Japanese people talking about what a stupid, humiliating, invasive, and generally terrible idea the “menstruation badges” are.
“Robbing Japanese women of their agency”? Are you serious, man? Japanese women who are being pressured into openly announcing that they’re on their period, out of deeply backwards, male chauvinist ideas about women and their bodies?
What the… just start reading up about this incident in Japanese, I assure you that you won’t see a lot of “right-wing reactionaries” in the discussion. Even in Japan, right-wing reactionaries are generally not the ones criticizing anti-women attitudes. In fact, those are the kind of people who tend to support ideas like this, thinking that it must be good for men to know when women are on their periods, and that women on their periods should be treated differently.
The context here is not whether menstruation has negative connotations - it pretty much does as much as it does elsewhere. But the issue in this case is not the idea that menstruation is bad (although that is bad enough), it’s that even in Japan:
When a woman is on her period it’s her own damn business, not anyone else’s - especially not her bosses’ or her clients’. Pressuring female employees to openly announce that they’re menstruating is not just ridiculous, it’s invasive and humiliating. (Sure, they say it was not obligatory, but we know what that means in Japanese business environments.)
The whole idea that a woman being on her period means that she’s “disadvantaged” and needs special treatment is humiliating and misogynist.
As is the idea that other people should be aware and considerate of her being “different” during this time. It smacks of not taking women seriously as professionals, especially if they’re required to wear a stupid cutesy “period badge” with some mascot character.
As some pointed out on Japanese Twitter, there’s another dimension of danger in this, as stalkers and perverts could gain new leverage on their potential targets. And while this seems fearmongering, it’s not, Japan has (still has, damn it all) a pretty serious stalker problem, and there’s also a whole lot of creeps who are really into knowing things of sexual nature about women they’re attracted to. (Read up on this as well, it’s pretty terrible. Creepy otaku keeping track of when an idol they’re following is probably on her period, etc…)
And this is not just some “western sjw whining”, these are all points that Japanese people talking about this incident have brought up.
I’d love that. Just put mine on red permanently and let everyone leave me the fuck alone for ever. Sounds great (for my current job where I don’t really like people I interact with)
I would be deeply concerned about said employee if that erection was sufficiently persistent and long-lasting to still be relevant by the time they trotted across the store to HR for a badge. That’s either a borderline priapism or some weird kind of fetish. I mean, weird even by Japan standards. I suppose there could be some kind of electronic solution, though.
Maybe an e-paper badge showing a cute smiley face emoji for normal circumstances, and the same face with a broader smile and devil horns when the employee was sporting wood? I imagine that it would need to be manually updated, as opposed to somehow hard-wired and automatic. Seems like a a wired device to the relevant appendage would solve the problem by itself… Barring an entirely different set of fetishes.
Wow, you are really opening a can of worms here, Lexicat!
(And yes, I get the point: it is entirely inappropriate to broadcast personal conditions as badges. And thoughtlessly misogynistic to do so for menstruation. But still fun to overanalyze your alternative case, because internet.)
Setting aside everything else wrong about this, that manga mensuration mascot is godawful (especially on the actual badge). It’s certainly no Depression Kitty. But maybe I just don’t get the reference.
