First Rant - Sexism and the Manga Heroine

since i have an extremely unfilling job in a cubicle for a dot com, i spend most of my day looking at stuff on the internet. stuff that's not at all related to my job, of course. lately i've been lurking around the "women and comics" sites, like When Fangirls Attack, and girlwonder.org, and places like that. the amount of misogyny and homophobia that comes out when comic book nerd boys get angry is astonishing. obviously there are lots of reasons why members of society who are generally benefitting from being part of an oppressive group react this way to criticism, even of such generally thought of as inconsequential matter as comic books. but that subject is covered much better by a lot of other bloggers and i'm not going to go into it right now. what i'd like to address is a small thing, something that is often kind of tossed into the argument as if it is a well-established fact. it's the idea that manga is an inherently non-sexist comics alternative that is more women-friendly than DC or Marvel (and according to some angry nerd boys, women should just be happy they have manga, and stop critiquing mainstream American comics).

my response to this is that manga is hardly a feminist utopia. for one thing, the term "manga" is generally used to refer to almost any kind of graphic novel format that comes out of Japan. any statement lumping all manga into one category is a gross generalization. i've even heard a lot of women describe manga as egalitarian. i'd have to assume that we're not including hentai titles, or boner-ific manga for adult men, or even most shonen stuff. personally, i've found manga to have just as many problems with sexism (and racism) as american-made comics have, and that's just within the mostly shojo stuff that i've read over time. the different culture results in a different form of sexism, but it's definitely there.

i remember how excited when i first found Ranma 1/2 in high school. as i read more of the comics and watched the tv episodes (and horrible movies, and OVAs) i slid more and more towards disappointment when i realized that despite Ranma's constant sex-changing, there was still an overarching binary gender role system that had to be conformed to, at least by the end of the story or episode. akane always had to fail at whatever she tried, and ranma could save her, because even though sometimes he had a female body, he was still really a guy. i realize that the series did put in some little things that showed that 'girlishness' is mostly learned behavior, like when ranma starts liking sweets (something that in japan is mostly attributed to women). it wasn't enough for me. the same formula of heroine who just isn't strong enough needing to ultimately be saved by some guy, usually her eventual boyfriend/husband, applies to tons and tons of shojo and shojo-shonen crossover titles. it even happens in series that have super-powered girls as the main characters (i.e., sailor moon, which i always hated). even the often-strong female supporting characters had unfortunately sexist characteristics. in ranma 1/2, shampoo is an almost unbeatable opponent for anybody (except ranma), but she is happy to use her "feminine wiles" to get what she wants most of the time. she's sneaky and manipulative, and shallow.

since high school (many years ago), i've been hunting for satisfyingly strong heroines in manga. they're really not that easy to find, especially in manga that isn't for small children. certainly i want heroines that are believable, and human, and have shortcomings like real people. but why do the shortcomings always have to be "she faints a lot," or "she's just not strong enough," or "her spirit is too weak," or "her love of a certain boy makes her too vulnerable," or "she's extremely simple-minded (but cute!!)," or whatever?

there was an statement made in an interview with hagio moto that i read online (somewhere, i can't remember the exact site, but the interviewer was matt thorn). she commented that one of the reasons that shonen-ai manga became popular was because women are very critical of other women, and female characters in stories. therefore, making the main character a young boy (who falls in love with another boy) let the female reader identify more readily and positively with the main character. this is an interesting statement, and a sad one. i think it's still true in both japanese and american culture that women are taught to hate themselves, and to put anything that's considered "feminine" hierarchically lower than what's considered "masculine." this can even apply to who the female reader identifies with in a story. i think it's similar to the idea in american children's and young adult literature that it's a better bet to make the story about a boy, because while both boys and girls can identify with a male protagonist, boys can't identify with a female protagonist.

unfortunately, a lot of manga with a male protagonist that's about "boy love," be it shonen-ai or yaoi, deals very harshly with its female characters (if they're present at all). usually they're bitchy, or monstrously controlling, or just in the way all the time. and don't get me started on the extremely problematic frequency of rape-themed sex scenes in yaoi. yikes. i can't help but think of how the "uke" is usually coded as "feminine," and the sex scenes always pan out to the Dominant Masculine raping the Passive Feminine and it's all supposed to be So Very Sexy. i'll probably post on this topic a lot more after this.

getting back to the search for heroines in manga, there are other factors that turn me away from titles that could promise strong female characters. most of the stuff that makes it to america is for children or preteens, or is just too fluffy for me to enjoy. i read japanese at about a 1st grade level and it's a real struggle to read the more adult stuff i find in its original language. being a big gay gay wad, i also get turned off by stuff that is just about straight romance between the heroine and some boy(s).

anway, some of the stuff i've enjoyed through the years: inu-yasha (both kagome and kikyo are strong characters, kikyo especially is a bad-ass), revolutionary girl utena (although anthy is uber-passive, utena is a very intriguing heroine), basara (although the love-interest subplot is annoying), and joan (except for the distressing and unnecessary rape scene).

i think it would be a good idea to examine some of the more popular shojo manga from the last few decades and compare the heroines. it will give me a good excuse to read more manga, anyway. and i can pretend i'm doing something productive.

My Comics Timeline

1987 - My older brother found the 2nd collection of Elfquest at a garage sale. I read it about 1,000 times but he still refused to give it to me.

1987-1989 - I sneak into my brother's room whenever he's at a friend's house, or on a boyscouts camping trip, or whatever, and read as many of his DC and Marvel comics as I can. I read through all the SpiderMan comics I could find, and followed them up with SpiderHam comics, for a different perspective. Those comic-book protector bags were the bane of my existence--I was trying to keep my brother from finding out i was reading his comics and the sticky thing on the bags would sometimes stick to the front of a comic while i was taking it out and rip a patch of color off...oops. In this timeframe, I also discovered a small stash of naked lady pictures my brother had. I found them frightening.

1990-1995 - Obsession with Elfquest continued. I was still reading a few of my brother's comics, but my interest in straight superhero stuff was waning, probably because of the lack of female characters that I could identify with. I remember kind of liking Spawn.

1996 - Discovery of anime and manga. Mostly Ranma 1/2. I usually had to find someone to drive an hour with me to get to the closest store that sold manga or anime videos. On one of these trips, I randomly chose "A, A' " by Moto Hagio. My first gay-themed manga.

1997-2000 - No time for reading comics because I was too busy being a gay college student.

2001 - Find a comic-book store downtown that didn't make me feel intimidated. There was even a gay comics section. Most of it looked really crappy to me at the time. I only liked Allison Bechdel. My first Banana Fish book was bought at this time. When I went back in to ask the store clerk if he could order more of them, he says, "Banana Fish...I looked at that one and it just wasn't any good." Yeah, whatever, just put in the damn order!

2002-2005 Frequent manga purchases online or at the Golden Apple in L.A. Infrequent glancing at independent comics.

2006 - For some reason, I inspired my girlfriend to read comics. She found some interesing non-manga titles at her local comic store, and I became interested in non-Japanese comics again. We read through everything by Los Bros Hernandez that we could get our sweaty meat-hooks on.

2007- Started a blog about comics.