Geisha Blog Tiff

I've been twittering a fair amount lately. Here's a twitter-inspired microblogpost:

It's a Geisha blog tiff, not quite a war.

I'm glad to see that Jenn at Reappropriate is back to regular blogging, at least for now.

More Geisha Nonsense

I'm superbusy at work, so I don't have time to give this piece the full angry rant it deserves.


Geisha grrrls

The author of a new book about gender in Japan sets aside Western stereotypes and talks about how ordinary women are fueling a feminist revolution that's transforming the country.

I read the above book review article at Salon.com while filled with disgust. There was a short period when I hoped the blurb might be true: that the author really does attack and expose stereotypes. Instead, she just confirms them.

"You can find a woman who works as a vice president at Canon and also really likes playing the shamisen, which is one of the traditional geisha arts..."

Again, Japanese tradition always has to be represented by the geisha. Nevermind that throughout their long history, the vast majority of Japanese women have been peasant farmers.

I left a comment at Salon.com. Given my previous posts on the subject here at my blog - Memoirs of a Ho Ho Ho and Memoirs of a Ho Ho Ho (Revisited) - it should be quite easy to tell which comment is mine. I suspect that my salon.com comment will soon be followed with lots of angry protestations and denials.

The author of the book doesn't get a pass because she's black, either, just as I wouldn't give an Asian woman author a pass for perpetuating stereotypes about black women. She should know better. I guess putting "geisha" in the title of any book about Japan makes it much more marketable.

Memoirs of a Ho Ho Ho (Revisited)

I asked in the previous post, "If geishas are so cool, so respected, if it's such an admirable thing being a geisha and preserving traditional Japanese culture… then why do you feel the need to defend them? If you're not Japanese, why on earth do you think you have a dog in the fight?"

I think I found an answer I wasn't looking for. There's a whole internet subculture of non-Japanese geisha fangirls who identify with geisha. See the forums at this website. They give themselves Japanese names, use geisha pics for their discussion board avatars and commiserate about how their families don't understand or respect their high-minded obsession with Japanese geisha culture. It looks like they descended en masse onto the comments of this webpage that happened to incorrectly identify a geisha and left plenty of scorching remarks decrying ignorance about geishas.

My first reaction is "that's totally insane". I could talk about the probable racial and sexual underpinnings for their obsessions and their defensiveness about those obsessions (especially since I have a hunch that they're very predominantly white women) but it's Christmas and I'm about to go and open presents with my family and I feel pretty generous about the whole world today. So I just reminded myself:

There are people out there who think they are ninjas.

There are people out there who dress up as Confederate and Union soldiers and camp out on old battlefields and recreate battles.

There are people out there who play vampire-based live-action roleplaying games. I've even met a few of them and they're pretty harmless. I asked how they determined the outcome of battles between vampires. Did they roll dice? No, they used rock-paper-scissors.

The human imagination is an often embarassing but overall very wonderful force.

Memoirs of a Ho Ho Ho

We interrupt regularly scheduled adoption-related programming to bring you a very special Christmas Eve anti-geisha post.

"Geishas are hoes! Hoes, hoes, hoes."

It really irritates a lot of people when I say that. The fact that it irritates so many people is, in itself, very irritating to me. They will say, "How could you disrespect geishas that way! You lack anthropological understanding! You impose Western standards of sexuality! Geishas are so much more than common prostitutes!" What I hear in those same statements: "I know more about "your own" culture than you do, and you should be ashamed of not knowing "your own" culture better. Asian women don't need feminism. Those common hookers get what they deserve."

If geishas are so cool, so respected, if it's such an admirable thing being a geisha and preserving traditional Japanese culture… then why do you feel the need to defend them? If you're not Japanese, why on earth do you think you have a dog in the fight? Would you react the same way if I said that the samurai were a bunch of violent social parasites with bad haircuts?

No matter how much people protest that geishas are so gosh-darn wonderful, they're selling sexuality for money and involved in a very ugly worldwide system. The crack ho on the corner, the young woman who marries a man she doesn't even like because he'll support her financially and she can't make it on her own, a high-priced call girl in Las Vegas… they're all involved in that system. Some of them have more power and choice; some of them are more victimized and exploited than others.

I don't feel the need to defend myself from being a prude when I condemn this system, because it should be condemned anywhere in the world. It’s the source of much horrible misery. In practical terms, in this country I support legalizing and regulating transactional sex, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.

I was once involved very tangentially in the sex industry; I spent part of a year cocktail-waitressing at a strip club in New York. With the generous tips there, I saved up enough money for an important educational goal. I wore a skimpy outfit but didn't have any other duties besides bringing drinks to tables and clearing them away again. I was hassled less at that job than at many other waitressing jobs, because there were two big, burly bouncers who kept the customers strictly in line. The club was clean and upscale. I noticed there were three kinds of strippers there: sad young party-girl cokeheads, sad older cokeheads and sad, solemn women who never spent their money on drink or drugs because they were sending it all to their extended families back in Russia or Brazil. I saw women at their worst at the club, but the dynamic seemed even more degrading to the men customers… towards the end I found myself growing unbearably cynical about men.

I learned from that experience that I don't like sex work, and I don't like indirect sex work (that is, women flirting with men for money). If I had a limited choice between sex work and another job I consider degrading, but in a different way, say gutting chickens for minimum wage, I don't know what I'd choose; it would depend on circumstances and my desperation level. I'm thankful I live in a very wealthy country and have a good education and a lot more choices than that. That's where I'm coming from.

Getting back to geishas -- if you asked a large group in Japan, "Are geishas prostitutes?" you'd get a wide variety of answers. I suspect they would range something like this:

1) Geishas are not prostitutes. They are artisans preserving traditional Japanese music and dance. How dare you call them prostitutes and insult our national honor.
2) Geishas are very high-priced prostitutes.
3) Geishas are only slightly like prostitutes and more like a combination of entertainer, hostess and professional mistress.
4) I don't know, it's very confusing.

If you asked the same group, "Would you like your daughter to grow up to be a geisha?" I think 99.9% of them would say "hell, no."

The topic of sex work and feminism is large and tangled. I don't have a firm position staked out in the debate. I do know, for damn sure, I wouldn't want any daughter of mine having to trade her sexuality for money. I want to raise her with more choices than that. I'd even be uncomfortable if she felt she freely chose to do it, because I think it would ultimately have bad effects on her self-esteem. I wouldn't reject her or cut her off in any way, but I'd let her know I didn't think it was a good choice.

I also believe that exalting women in geisha-like occupations and setting them apart from "the rest" is very disrespectful to women who don't have choices when it comes to transactional sex. I guess those immigrant strippers I worked with did have some choices… They could have supported their families another way. They could have gotten janitorial jobs and made a fraction of their stripper income. Still, I knew this wasn't a choice they wanted to make, at all. One of the women once told me she used to be a professional ballroom dancer back in Russia. Her posture was ramrod straight.

On a more personal and only slightly less political level, I absolutely despise the exaltation of geishas in America. I have a very nice yukata, which is a summery kimono-type robe, but I wouldn't wear it around the house or on the patio anymore, because I don't want ignorant acquaintances to make geisha comments. Nowadays people see any traditional Japanese dress and think "geisha". They dress their little girls up in "geisha costumes" for Halloween. I've made a rule for myself not to use profanity on this blog (I've heard it messes up search results and can bring unwelcome visitors) but if I were using it I would insert a long string of #&%@ and %&#! at this point to describe how I feel about that.

If you're not Japanese, I'm convinced you have no good reason to stick up for the honor of geishas and say they are oh so much better than common prostitutes. You are investing your ego in a fetishised submissive Asian woman stereotype. Stop it. I don't even think Japanese have good reasons to defend geishas, they just have less bad ones than other people do.

The only argument that would convince me otherwise would come from a radical sex-positive feminist perspective; I haven’t heard a good one made yet, but I'm willing to at least consider it.

Merry Christmas!