> The conflation of the two is absolutely a neo-puritan problem.
No, I think you're quite mistaken. Japanese culture is even more male-chauvinist than American culture. Gender roles, while loosening a little in recent years, are still extremely rigid. How long do you think it will be before Japan has a female Prime Minister? 50 years? 100?
The presentation of girls and women in fiction is part of the culture, both reflecting it and playing some role -- probably not small -- in perpetuating it. The relentless, unceasing portrayal of sexualized women characters sends the message that the value of women is in their sexuality -- not their intelligence, their emotional perceptiveness, their leadership qualities, or any of hundreds of other positive attributes I could name and that women, like men, possess in varying degrees. That drumbeat -- inescapably present in American culture as well as Japanese -- is heard clearly by both girls and boys, and shapes their attitudes about gender roles.
I'm not trying to play cultural superiority here. Most cultures on this planet have a problem in this area, and the US is no shining exemplar. But holding Japan up as having particularly healthy gender psychology is rather naïve.
No, I think you're quite mistaken. Japanese culture is even more male-chauvinist than American culture. Gender roles, while loosening a little in recent years, are still extremely rigid. How long do you think it will be before Japan has a female Prime Minister? 50 years? 100?
The presentation of girls and women in fiction is part of the culture, both reflecting it and playing some role -- probably not small -- in perpetuating it. The relentless, unceasing portrayal of sexualized women characters sends the message that the value of women is in their sexuality -- not their intelligence, their emotional perceptiveness, their leadership qualities, or any of hundreds of other positive attributes I could name and that women, like men, possess in varying degrees. That drumbeat -- inescapably present in American culture as well as Japanese -- is heard clearly by both girls and boys, and shapes their attitudes about gender roles.
I'm not trying to play cultural superiority here. Most cultures on this planet have a problem in this area, and the US is no shining exemplar. But holding Japan up as having particularly healthy gender psychology is rather naïve.