Fun Bible Trivia Part 2!

Relying on Wikipedia for my quotes again - I don't know what translation they use. Anyway, Ham, Noah's son, in Genesis 9:20-25

And Noah the husbandman began, and planted a vineyard. And he drank of the wine, and was drunken; and he was uncovered within his tent. And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren without.
And Shem and Japheth took a garment, and laid it upon both their shoulders, and went backward, and covered the nakedness of their father; and their faces were backward, and they saw not their father's nakedness.
And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his youngest son had done unto him. And he said: Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren. And he said: Blessed be the LORD, the God of Shem; and let Canaan be their servant. God enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and let Canaan be their servant.

Yeah, so, this one isn't as 100% accepted as the feet one, but still pretty widespread among scholars - there's a theory that when they say Ham "saw the nakedness of his father". . . yeah, actually, he sodomized him. There's another theory that it refers to castration but I learned the sodomy one. You have to admit that raping your drunk dad is a pretty good reason to curse someone forever. Way better reason than just seeing your dad naked, which is already a punishment in itself. Oh, bible.


Anyway, I've got at least one more of these in mind for tomorrow, although it's not dirty. XD Stay tuned!

Johnny's Fans for Women project thingie?

Okay, now that I've got your attention with dirty stories about Noah. . . oh, wait, this would come first as you read the entries on your friends list. Oh well - now you know what you have to look forward to.

Anyway, the 5LDK clip posted here made me think, as I often do, of how much sexist crap we see the boys in Johnny's entertainment spout. In that case the most offensive and horrible thing is the idea behind the segment itself: polling men (and TOKIO) about how they want women to dress so women can make themselves most pleasing to men and thus get married. This is bad on so, so many levels. It's easy to get fixated on the "women are told they must catch a man" thing, but actually what upsets me most is the idea of men dictating how women should act. WOMEN AREN'T FOR YOU. THEY ARE FOR THEMSELVES. I DON'T GIVE A FUCK IF YOU WANT TO SEE WOMEN IN SKIRTS. IF THEY LIKE WEARING SKIRTS, THEY SHOULD WEAR THEM. NOT BECAUSE MEN WANT THEM TO DO SO. ARRRRRRGH.

If it was just TOKIO, it wouldn't even be so bad because that would sort of be saying "You like Taichi, right? You want to meet a guy like him? Here's what guys like him like!" It's even more of an "am I their type" thing - problematic, but less so. But that they went and asked guys on the street and did rankings of the most popular types of clothes based on that, and said "Tights and pants, fashions that don't involve skirts were unpopular! It seems men want women to wear skirts," as the conclusion. . . SO FUCKED UP.

There was other stuff, but getting into this isn't actually the point of my entry. What I realized while watching and discussing the clip is that I hate the thought that, because the boys in Johnny's are otherwise so sweet and charming and great, people (young girls) who watch them and hear what they say are automatically assuming that what they say about women is okay too, and it is not.

I really, truly do not think that this makes them bad people or misogynists in any way. Some of them may be, but on the whole I think the majority of them are actually sweet guys. Good guys. They're just raised in a culture that has a lot of institutionalized sexism. (I don't want to get into some comparison of American and Japanese sexism, cos it's really not the point.) So even though they're good people, a lot of their comments about women are sexist. I regularly see them say stuff (as Taichi did in this segment) like "I want my girlfriend to be modest because only I should see her body." This is a problem! This is saying "if she is my girlfriend, I own her and should control her sexuality." Not "have a say in her sexuality". Control it, because it is mine.

I don't want people to think "oh, I love ____ and he says this and how could he ever say anything bad because he's so sweet, so it must be okay and right to say that." Young girls are crazy about these guys, and I'm sure they do try to make themselves into the types of women they say they want. (By the way, off the top of my head, Sho gets the most points for the vague, "I like women with the same values as me." Yes, that is a good reason for being interested in a person, and it's also not something that can make his fans crazy trying to fulfill. Or maybe it does but then it's definitely the fans' problem.) So yeah, I want people to be aware that these things are problematic, that they shouldn't accept it just because a guy they love has said it, and that they should be thinking critically about the stuff they're a fan of.

I don't really know if there's any way to do this. I think it probably does require a certain level of sophistication, and it seems like making the distinction between "is a bad guy" and "says a bad thing" is going to be difficult. Just the idea of "they're not perfect" is difficult. But it seems like it might be something worth doing.

The idea I was tossing around in my brain was an LJ community where people could just post this sort of thing when they find it, maybe explain why it's problematic. That way there'd be someone out there pointing out that this is not an okay thing to say and that you should not accept it no matter how much you love the person who said it. I mean, look how I start this entry - obviously I love TOKIO more than, you know, average. XD And I feel like I can call them out and be critical of them when they say dumb crap without it being in conflict with my love for them.

But I'm not sure if it'll work. So I was wondering if you guys had any thoughts, any suggestions? Do you think it's just completely hopeless? I'd like to at least say something, somewhere, to at least plant the ideas in people's heads about this stuff - to just reach some people, at least. Do you think the community would just be a huge problem? If you think it would work, would you post there? I'm not reading so many translations now. . .

[Edit: kegom suggests just pointing it out wherever you see it, mentioning it to people - saying something, in some way. I think it's definitely an excellent start, that will hopefully have some effect!]

The fact that it wouldn't be bashing anyone or saying that anyone is bad seems like it would really be a tough idea to get across - that it's criticizing the ideas, not the people behind them, since the ideas are pretty much universal in the society in which they live. And we live, often. But it's something I'd really like to say, to bring to people's attention.

Edit: As people are apparently seeing this anew, I figured I'd add a couple things.

First off, I wrote a sort of follow-up a few days later, with a more concrete, and sadly more extreme example of the type of negative influence that idolizing these guys can have on their fans. It shows that people will convince themselves that a terrible action is no big deal or is even totally okay rather than admit that one of their idols might be at fault.

I also wanted to point out Glossed Over as an example of the type of critique that we're just not getting in the Johny's fandom. It points out some of the inane things that women's magazines do - general stupidity, blatant attempts to sell really expensive items in an insulting way, and some feminist critiques of the subject matter. If someone is doing something like this in Japan, we're not getting it translated.

But Glossed Over actually brings up another reason why I wanted to do this for fandom. (I already articulated this in the comments but it seems worth putting here.) A very small portion of the people who read women's magazines read that blog, one assumes (actually, one might also assume that more of her readers do not read women's magazines). The number of people who are excessively idolizing western celebrities would be impossible to reach. But fandom is a community. Not that I could get a message out to everyone, but it just seems like more of a sensible, purposeful idea - people I don't know have apparently already seen this entry. Voices in fandom can be loud. If something gets enough attention, people will link to it and see it. So not only did this seem like something that needed doing, it also seemed like something that might yield results, might come across to some people who wouldn't normally read something like a feminist blog.

I also wanted to say that if people know of any other examples of times when the boys have said something inappropriate, I'd be happy to add the relevant bits to this entry.