Getting a Photo ID: More of a Burden than You May Think

Who am I to preach about privilege? I may not be a white, heterosexual man from a non-low-income background, but in terms of the various advantages that I have in American society, I am by all means privileged. So, I am not the best person to be writing about this, but I really can't stand when people have the advantages that I do or more make comments that are so utterly unaware of the realities of real people with real lives. In all fairness, I know that a person with a particular background cannot be expected to know about the realities of others without any contact, communication, or education, but I think it's when people spew out authoritative-sounding opinions about people from different backgrounds without having met any of these people or asked about them or read about them from any source without a political agenda that really gets on my nerve. I try to be careful to indicate that I am not the best qualified person to express certain opinions or that what I am saying is limited to my experience and what I have seen/read about other people's experiences...because that is the only accurate way to qualify where my opinion is coming from.

With that rant of an introductory paragraph out there, I want to get to the topic of this post: burdening the exercise of certain fundamental rights. For now, I'd like to stick to voting rights because it is, after all, election season. I have certain feelings about voter ID laws, but I'm going to put those aside for now, and talk about my experience of obtaining driver's license in a new state.

Sexism in Film and on TV: What is a Problem...and What is Not

I worship Geena Davis. Not literally, of course. But I love both her movies and her work on the representation of women in the media. In case you didn't know, she founded the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, which has produced a lot of great research on the representation of women in the media. Since this is a blog post--that is to say, not an academic article or even a journalistic one--I think it is acceptable for me to rely heavily on this one source for citation and will do just that. I also feel that I will not be making entirely flimsy observations given that I have read many articles and studies that reach similar conclusions over the past few years. (My point is that I don't think that a blog post requires citations in the first place, and I cite only to show that I am not pulling facts out of thin air and to help anyone who is interested digging a bit deeper than I have here.)

アメリカにおける『人種』：白人と黒人の意識のズレ

アメリカにおいて、「人種」や「民族」といった分類は、とても繊細で複雑な扱いを受けるものである。これには歴史的背景というものがあるわけだが、単に奴隷制や１９６０年代の公民権運動（Civil Rights Movement）について学ぶだけでは、現代の米国社会における人種問題を肌感覚で理解することはできない。また、アメリカ社会の「主流」（つまり白人中心の組織やコミュニティ）との接触だけでも、今、アメリカ社会が直面している人種問題がどのようなものか、捉えることは不可能だと思う。これは、アメリカの「主流」の中で生活をしている人々（主に白人）が黒人の友人をほとんど持たず、米国社会における黒人の生活が如何なるものか、知ってさえいないからである。（ちなみに、黒人以外のマイノリティーに対する差別及び人種問題における黒人の中心性についてはまた後日。）

私は、幼少の数年間と高校以降をアメリカで過ごしてきたが、全て中流階級上層（アッパー・ミドル）以上が中心のコミュニティに住み、同様の学校に通ってきたため、ロー・スクール在学中及びその後の活動以前は、「主流」の白人社会以外のアメリカ社会との接触はほとんどなかった。特に２００８年のオバマ大統領選出以降になって、人種差別の時代は終わり、真にpost-racialの社会に突入したと考える白人も少なくない。だが、私は過去数年の間、課外活動やボランティア活動、黒人コミュニティで育ったロー・スクールの学友を通じ、人種差別は、今もアメリカの「主流」社会で生活を送る白人が想像しているよりもはるか広範に存在しているものだという現実を知った。

Great Artists, Problematic Human Beings

Over the years, I have been disappointed by the behavior of countless artists outside of the realm of their professional work. But despite this disappointment, I often find it difficult to stop consuming these people's works or to stop recognizing their talent. And it makes me feel like a horrible person sometimes.

I should first clarify what I mean. By artist, I mostly mean actors, directors, singers, and the like. (I just realized that I probably should have chosen an expression that includes athletes, but I haven't been disappointed by an athlete that I liked in a while and haven't really had an athlete-related dilemma.) The behavior I'm referring to can come in various forms, but they usually involve making bigoted or overly ignorant comments or engaging in some kind of violent or sexually inappropriate behavior. I honestly don't care much about DUIs and other plainly stupid behavior, though I do experience some degree of embarrassment for liking an artist with a sloppy mugshot.

But back to my main point. I understand why a boycott of certain artists would send a strong message against whatever horrible behavior in which they have engaged (or continue to engage). Obviously, famous, talented people should not get a pass for criminal or otherwise despicable behavior just because they are famous and talented. At the same time, I wonder whether there is an acceptable way to properly punish them for their non-occupational misbehavior while simultaneously recognizing the merits of their professional work. I am a big fan of movies and music, and I do think the world would be a better place with more cinematic and musical talent. But at what point does the trade-off between that talent and horrible behavior become unacceptable? (In related news, there's the issue of misogyny and problematic stereotypes in good movies and music, but that is ripe for a post of its own...stay tuned.)

On Human Trafficking

On October 4, I participated in the Stop Modern Slavery WalkFest 2014, an annual event intended to raise awareness about human trafficking. Public awareness is a much needed element in the fight against human trafficking because of the widespread misunderstanding of what this term means. I think I have some basic knowledge to offer people who have zero background on this issue because I did a little anti-trafficking work in law school and have also been volunteering my time at an anti-trafficking organization. So for this post, I'm going to try a little awareness-raising of my own by talking about what I know about human trafficking in the U.S. and by hopefully helping debunk some myths that people may believe regarding the issue.

When hearing the term "human trafficking," most people imagine a group of young women and girls, being smuggled across borders from Eastern Europe or Southeast Asia and sold for sex. While this image is not inaccurate in the sense that it is one picture of human trafficking, it's far from a complete picture. Among trafficking victims are men as well as women and children--although the latter are affected disproportionately. Many persons are trafficked domestically and never cross any border of any kind. Sex trafficking is not uncommon, but labor trafficking is also a widespread form of human trafficking.

Finding the Right Strong (Japanese) Lady

Like I promised in my previous post, today's post is about how I settled on a Miyazaki film reference for my pseudonym and blog title. It was very important to me that if I was going to do this blog thing which I had carefully avoided for so long, I was going to do it right. Everything about this project had to be reflective of me. That meant the title had to be some Japanese reference (in English, of course), but it also had to have a feminist twist. (Note: when I use the word "feminism," it always means the primary dictionary definition, i.e., the correct meaning of the word.)

In the Beginning...

Over the years, I've had several people tell me I should start a blog...probably because I am not shy about expressing my opinions. I always thought that I don't have enough time or that I won't have enough posts for it to be worthwhile. Well, I think I'm going to do this anyway.

I'm still trying to figure out what this blog is going to be about, but I imagine that the content will be relatively eclectic. Some political, some social, some cinematic, some cultural. I'm also trying to make this a bilingual blog, since I write in both English and Japanese. Companion posts probably won't be exact translations but the same general thoughts on the same topic. Either way, I have zero experience in HTML, so we'll see if I can pull it off...

I don't want my first post to be long, but I did want to briefly explain my pseudonym and the title of the blog. If you're a Studio Ghibli fan, I hope I don't need to explain. I mean, you should not be calling yourself a fan if you need an explanation. Both are obviously an ode to my favorite Ghibli movie, Princess Mononoke. I'm not going to write a summary of the story, so if you haven't seen it, go do that now. But just to make things clear, Daughter of Moro is a reference to the title character, who is a young girl who was raised by Moro, the wolf goddess of the forest. The girl, San, wears a mask (clay face), which is where the name of my blog comes from.

I have some things I want to say about how I settled on these references, but I think that deserves a post of its own.

はじめに

よく友人から「ブログはじめなよ」とか言われてきたけど、今まであまり気が進まなかった。時間がない、そんなに書き込むこともない、など色々な言い訳（？）をしてきた。何故今になってという理由は特にないが、一先ずやってみようと思う。

実は、このブログの主題はまだ決まっていない。とりあえずは、米国及び国際政治ネタ、社会ネタ、映画関係、文化ネタなどなどを予定。英語と日本語両方でポストしたいと思っています。原文と翻訳という形ではなく、同じ主題についての考えを各言語で書いたというものにしていくつもりです。HTMLとか全然知識がないので、文字化けとかしないといいな。

ところで、ブログのタイトル及びハンドル（って今更言うんですかね？）ですが、大好きな宮崎映画『もののけ姫』に因んでつけたものです。Daughter of Moroは「モロの娘」（つまりサン）、Behind the Clay Faceは「土面の裏側」といったところでしょうか。やっぱり日本関連の名前にしたかったんですよね。この名前に落ち着いたいきさつは次回。