“Extreme Pressure”: Gendered Negotiations of Violence and Vulnerability in Japanese Antiracism Movements

• In Event: 4360 - Mobilizing for and Against Violence in Pursuit of Social Justice

Abstract

Situated in the emergence of hate speech and antiracism counter protest in Japan, this article poses two questions: Why do activists enact exclusions while attempting to fight against social inequality? How do interpretations of gender shape activists’ understandings of antiracism? The author uses data collected over two years of ethnographic fieldwork to analyze gendered power relations within contemporary antiracism in a case study outside of the United States. This article explores three findings: activists conceptualize the risk of being targets of hate speech and abuse as both gendered and racialized; antiracist activists interpret antiracism as a practice of redirecting vulnerabilities—a practice that is, itself, gendered; and antiracist activist communities struggle with ambivalence around masculinity and other “gender problems.” The author argues that gender functions as a key lens through which antiracism is conceptualized but that, devoid of an intersectional analysis, movements can encounter exacerbated difficulties in resolving internal problems, such as sexual harassment. This article focuses on the theme of vulnerability, which the author argues is enmeshed with the vocabulary of gender. Through analyzing vulnerability, this article offers an ethnographic account to explain why the reproduction of inequalities persist, even within social justice movements that aim to promote equality.

Author

• Vivian Shaw, Harvard