[Book Review] After reading "Feminism from Zero" by Chizuru Ueno and Eiko Tianfang

There is currently no translation for Taiwan, I read the simplified Chinese version. (lazy XD)

The first time I knew Chizuru Ueno was when I heard Chizuru Ueno's super ferocious speech at the entrance ceremony of Tohoku University . Honestly, I think it's really cool for a woman to be able to say this in a group of uncles who are experts!

I myself come from the more conservative and traditional South.

(Of course, the patriarchal that melts into the air)

My experience is that being a woman, especially a young woman, is usually not taken seriously when speaking out to a whole group of men . (Unless the status is much higher than the other party) Sometimes they are even lectured in turn by men who think they are superior.

This kind of thing is not just in the public domain, it is also common in family gatherings. Later, I learned to be invisible in the crowd and silently bury my head in reading my own book. On the bright side, thanks to these annoying talkers, I have added a lot of knowledge that they don't even know. (laugh)

(Similar survival stories are also shared in cherng's illustration on social terror. www)

In addition, since I was a child, my elders often told me not to contradict my teachers (even if the other party was a locomotive), to be humble and polite, etc., and there were a lot of etiquette teachings that were not right (you know, some people are arrogant and like to put on airs).

So it's really hard to hold your head up and speak your mind in a situation where you're expecting a headwind, and you need a fighter mentality. So, when I watched that speech, I couldn't help but think Ueno-sensei was too handsome, right? !

Based on this fangirl mentality, I opened this book.

As a result, I read it in one go in four days.

After reading it, I think this book is really interesting, and there are a lot of visual complaints! So let's promote it enthusiastically!

In short, this book has two recommendations:

First of all, it is very short , and the whole text is carried out in the form of two-person dialogue, and the style is lively and not boring . There are also illustrations in the middle, so that people can understand the main concerns and basic concepts of feminism in an easy-to-understand manner.

Second, it covers almost all major gender issues in women's lives . From the original family, education, employment, love, sexual relations, marriage, parenting, housework are mentioned, it is really amazing! Several incisive rants made me laugh non-stop! Also passed it on to other friends.

"That's right! Those nasty men really do that!"

Overall: 4.9 points. ★★★★✮
(The word "feminism" in the book will suddenly become "feminism" www small deduction)

However , before talking about this potentially controversial book, a precaution: I have heard people criticize Chizuru Ueno's "Misomia" for being quite radical. (I haven't read it yet.) Maybe there are people who feel feminists are sharply aggressive in this book.

Indeed, this book greatly simplifies the complexity of feminism in order to be easy to understand, and therefore has an obvious and seemingly extreme discourse weakness: tying biological men and women with feminism or not.

"The real goal of feminism is the real equality of the sexes, not to provoke opposition and hatred between men and women ." Although Chizuru Ueno scoffed at this sentence in the book, after all, society still needs to go hand in hand with both sexes (nor is it not Aggrieved who achieves the surface peace) can develop well.

Among biological women, there are people who "man is good at everything, and women are degraded in various ways, even if they are degraded to the point that they are happy" (alias: "the physique that loves men" that no man will die ). The same goes for sexual orientation. Even trans women, trans men, lesbians and gays can replicate patriarchal thinking, discriminate or oppress others.

A division that is too easy to understand will ignore that no matter what gender or sexual orientation may become an accomplice of gender inequality.

(I heard a pair of gay men sitting on a bench in front of IKEA and saying that each other was as irrational as a woman , while I was thinking: the two of you who equate rationality with gender are already showing how much you are. Irrational. Congratulations!)

But on the other hand, we must also pay attention to the gender equality gap between Japan and Taiwan: According to the 2019 Gender Inequality Index (GII, the lower the more equal) of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), Taiwan’s then The GII index was 0.045 and Japan was 0.094. The GII gap between the two is 0.748/0.656 by 2021. In other words, gender inequality in Japan in 2019 was nearly double that of Taiwan. The book was published in January 2020 the following year .

Judging from the birth process of radical feminism in South Korea , I think the radical degree of feminism corresponds to the degree to which "the other party does not intend to listen and understand our difficulties", and to what extent is it transformed into a "who cares about your life or death" attitude of revenge .

Thinking about it from this point of view, whether it is still the food is still divided into male and female (mystery), the cancellation of the family name is not accepted (unlike a family), or the former executive of Yoshino family recently talked about "give the unexperienced " in the university freshman lecture The marketing strategy of women drugging in the world ”, or the absurd examples in this book: the father was found not guilty of sexually assaulting his daughter, the boss used to touch the female subordinate’s butt and chest at will, etc., it can be seen that Japan does not have high respect for women. .

Therefore, I think Chizuru Ueno's fighting ability is indeed fierce, but this fierceness is cultivated in such a closed society that does not respect women. Because the malice surrounding her is so powerful (and people who believe in this fallacy are so common), the resistance is so radical.

As she herself said, " I became a feminist out of personal outrage. "

(Hahaha this candor is awesome!)

Although it cannot be said that Taiwan is already very equal. After all, there are still many fools who want to replicate the prejudice of the previous generation. (Please refer to the election communiqué of the National Taiwan University Sex Peace Conference , which is very exciting.)

Therefore, when reading this book, on the one hand, it may be possible to take into account the differences in the above-mentioned cultural backgrounds, and it would be a better reading perspective to convert the object of their criticism to " people who want to continue to consolidate this culture of gender inequality ."

The whole book is actually very exciting. Due to the space, I only selected two topics that impressed me a lot. Finally, I will talk about another point of view in this book that I don't quite agree with.

I would have expected it to introduce feminism starting with some common sexist issues.

As a result, the first topic listed was unexpectedly the mother- daughter relationship !

(Let's start with why women make trouble for women!)

Ueno used a very sharp but also quite penetrating sentence to describe the phenomenon of poisonous mothers in a sexist society:

"She kept saying to her children, 'I didn't get a divorce because of you.' So she was just an ordinary poor mother who blamed her unhappiness on her children and made them feel meaningless in debt and guilt ! "

Ordinary, ubiquitous kind of mother who makes her child miserable.

This sentence is too incisive. (laugh)

Ueno Chizuruko happened to belong to the generation of the post-war baby boomer (1946-1964), and Tianfang Yongko's mother was actually the same generation as my mother. (Ueno-sensei looks very young, but it turns out that he has gone through the Todaidaikan , a contemporary of Yukio Mishima !!! I'm so shocked!)

Speaking of the poisonous mother phenomenon, my mother also said something similar. Every time she mentions her unfortunate marriage, she must say " Because of you, I didn't get a divorce. ". It was as if my existence was a bondage to her. Later, on different occasions, I also saw or heard other women mention similar things that their mothers said to them, and they were also tormented by these words.

This poisonous mother's starting style is eerily similar. Women in different cultures treat their children in the same way. This phenomenon shows an important core in the feminist movement: " personal is political" . The universal misfortune is not just a matter of personal luck, character or relationships, but a tragedy caused by the skewed structure of society as a whole.

Therefore, a casual sentence "These women are so strange, why can't they love themselves and live their own lives?" can't explain this phenomenon.

Because in their growing up experience, devaluation, exploitation and oppression existed everywhere. They do not feel that the society loves and respects them, so it is difficult for them to truly love themselves.

As my mother told me: women in traditional society are always outsiders. At home, it is raised for others, and when you get married, you say you are a foreign surname.

Ueno bloody restored Tian Fang's mother's predicament in school and employment : "(At that time) a woman would be finished once she went to a four-year university! "

Post-war baby boomer women, although ostensibly able to go to college or go to work, there is no room for women to develop in society. Usually at most a teacher or a civil servant. (I did hear when I was a kid that female teachers are a more popular industry in the dating market*)

Therefore, at that time, the average woman was a two-year junior college student, and then tried to find a way to enter a first-class enterprise, fake employment, and the truth. Therefore, in fact, the only way out is to get married, and financially they are forced to be tied to their husbands and families.

This phenomenon, even Tianfang, who has been separated by a generation, said: When she was an employee, a staff member who graduated from Dongda University said to her nonchalantly, "Do you know that the female staff in the entire company are all male staff's bride candidates? ?"

(Tianfang: Clam????)

*My aunt is indeed a teacher. But I always find it strange that female teachers are popular in the marriage market: the occupational disease of teachers is actually preaching. (Personal experience: Auntie people are really annoying, like a moral scale) Are you not worried about the teacher correcting you everywhere at home? www Similarly, what a good fantasy a nurse has. Do you dare to provoke a woman who has cut the whole body and has seen the stomach cut open? (The fundamental combat power is super strong, and you should know many ways to make your life worse than death other than cutting chickens? www)

Given this lack of economic freedom, skewed results are reflected in mothers' education of daughters .

Post-war baby boomer mothers were taught by their grandmothers that women should not read too much, get married early, and dedicate their lives to their families . In the generation of daughters, the requirements have become: you not only need to have a good job that can be financially independent, but also get married and have children . That said, the demands on women are doubled.

Maybe men will say: We also have to take care of family and marriage!

But in the traditional family view, the education of men will tell him to quickly get a wife to take care of the housework , so that you can concentrate on work .

That is to say, traditional thinking believes that only "jobs" in the public sphere are men's serious business, and family life in the private sphere is only a sideline . The housework can even be left to the wife to do, so the projects in charge are the same at first glance, but in fact the weight is very different. When women are still expected to focus on the family, but at the same time, you are also expected to be good at work, it's like a double-headed homework burn .

This change in requirements will create a conflict between the next generation and the next generation. At the same time, the relationship between daughters and mothers is fundamentally different from that of sons and mothers: "Mothers and daughters will put each other's lives on them."

If the daughter says that she is financially independent and does not want to get married, the mother will unconsciously feel that this is a denial of her own way of life , so the mother and daughter will have a conflict in values.

The reason why the relationship between men and women and their mothers is different is that although every man has a mother, the mother usually does not tell them how terrible marriage is to women, and what discrimination and harassment society has against women. After all, this kind of knowledge they do not use.

And in unhealthy (but not uncommon) situations, men will sanctify their mothers (where Ma Baonan was born), and mothers will heterosexualize their sons (see him through the eyes of a lover). As a result, men are generally less aggressive in criticizing their mother's values.

Furthermore, for Japan or Taiwan, becoming a mother-in-law is an escalation of power in a patriarchal society, so it will encourage sons to marry and improve their family status. (similar to grasping alternately )

But when a mother faces her daughter, it is more like facing her own copy, as if her life has a chance to start over. From the standpoint of protecting (and poisoning) her daughter, a mother with an unhappy marriage will consciously and unconsciously teach her daughter: marriage is a piece of shit, and I hope you don't step on it.

Therefore, when these daughters grow up and start to choose not to marry, most men of the same generation cannot understand the subtle reasons: many of the motives actually come from the pain of the previous generation of mothers in marriage (including resentment towards their husbands). .

As many mothers are unhappy in their marriages, there are as many daughters who reject marriage.

Seriously, is it a collective PSTD? (wry smile)

"The decline in the marriage rate is actually caused by the gender gap."

As Chizuru Ueno said: Times have changed, and women's ideas have advanced, but if men's views on family do not catch up with this change, they will be left far behind by women.

This results in a low marriage rate. This is not a national security crisis caused by women's nitpicking, but an inevitable historical result of skewed values. To put it simply, it is a communal explosion. If you want to blame, blame the old cup and grandpa of the previous generation! (We have also seen many men on PTT prove their ability to stay single is quite strong with words and deeds www)

In addition to the above-mentioned very superb analysis of the mother-daughter relationship, Tianfang and Ueno also talked about more neglected gender inequality in Japanese history, revealing another side of Japanese history that is little known to us. This is another reason why I recommend this book. There are too many details, so here are just two:

1. Gender inequality in social movements .

At first glance, the social movement seems to be formed by a group of like-minded people who also yearn for freedom and equality. How can there be gender inequality?

As we mentioned earlier, Ueno Chizuruko also participated in the East Daquan Co-contest. She said that the male students who were engaged in revolution at that time would distinguish the female students based on their functions. Those who did not fight and were in charge of logistical supplies were called angels in white, and those who fought with men were called Wudou Sara. It means to mock them for imitating the meaning of men wielding fighting sticks. (Does it also mean that the woman is waving a dildo? I haven't checked it yet, not sure.)

What's more, they also call those female comrades who are more sexually open "comfort women" or "public toilets". While taking advantage of these people, mocking them behind their backs.

"There's a passage in "Fearless": '[During the college fight] I was in the barricades, I never dressed up and fought with men, but the girls who wore makeup and dressed up became the girls of the men Friends. That's how I got involved in the women's liberation movement."

"Those male students shouted 'overthrow the emperor system' and 'smash the family imperialism', but their actual actions were no different from the fathers of the patriarchy. The boys who studied together at school and fought side by side were actually accomplices of the patriarchy. They The mind is all about revolution, but the body is the complicity of the patriarchal system.”

For Ueno, it was also one of the triggers for her awakening to gender inequality.

Looking back on contemporary protests around the world, she found that women who suffered from sexual liberation and protests at that time contributed to the origin of the first wave of feminist movements. Yes, indeed out of personal outrage. Because through social movements, these women discovered the ugly and disgusting faces of their comrades. So I decided to stand up to these people.

Those gender stereotypes (or the division of labor for women) that she speaks of, unfortunately, still exist so often today, sometimes even internalized as wars between women (bitch and good woman), even in TV dramas impressive.

2. The neglect of men's mental health under the patriarchal system.

We all know by now: "Boys can't cry." It's a stereotype. It will cause men to be unable to express their emotions normally when they are frustrated and fearful, resulting in psychological problems.

But the history Ueno is talking about is an advanced version of this prejudice.

In order to promote the heroic spirit of dedication to the country during World War II, the Japanese army found that many soldiers had PTSD after the war, but they denied it to the end and regarded PTSD as a personal weakness.

At that time, the United States had recognized the existence of PTSD. Helpless, the Japanese army was opposed to the US military, so the Japanese army insisted that the Japanese nation had no such weakness as foreign devils. Therefore, even if many military doctors find that soldiers suffer from PTSD, Japanese officials are reluctant to add psychological trauma to soldiers' resumes when they retire. (This makes the wounded soldiers unable to apply for pension benefits)

Even after the war, the Japanese army ordered the burning of all cases to hide the large number of PTSD cases in the Japanese army. Fortunately, an unknown doctor rescued some of the medical certificates and buried them secretly. Only later did it reveal the fact that the Japanese army also had PTSD.

Here Ueno mentions a very key thing: PTSD has never been mentioned in Japanese dramas!

After she said this, I remembered: Really! Everyone walked into the house as if they had come back from the supermarket next door, and they were all happy together! ! ! @@

But the truth after the war was this: Soldiers who were mentally traumatized but not recognized returned home pretending to be fine. Because of the sudden change of personality caused by PTSD, he began to drink and abuse domestically, resulting in family disharmony. They don't know why they've become this way, feeling powerless, grief-stricken (and self-blaming) in the face of a family split, yet acting like a man, not being weak and crying, and the vicious cycle continues. Finally died unfortunately.

Wrong ideology can really kill people.

Finally, there are several points in this book that I disagree with. Although the flaws are not concealed, I still record and think about why there is such a prejudice.

1. Is T's dressing a copy of heterosexuality?

Ueno believes that because there is no map of homosexuality in the love formula given by society, homosexuality has to follow the model of heterosexuality and open up a new route. Therefore, lesbians will be divided into T and mother-in-law.

But I asked the T friends around me: Why do you dress up as men? Their answer was: not to want to be a man (a common misunderstanding), but just to look good. Some people even say that they do this before they are in love, because they suddenly feel that they are so handsome and good-looking. On the contrary, after I cut my hair short, I received a love letter from a girl!

This fact is somewhat surprising. Do feminine looking lesbians wake up earlier? !

This reminds me of the phrase circulating on the Internet: "The so-called women's clothing is only once, or infinitely many times." Looks like menswear too. (Aesthetic awakening after wearing it?) XDDD

2. Are the heroines in shounen manga always passive?

I feel like there is a generational gap in this understanding. Obviously, in the harem animations I saw, the girls were very, unusually active, so as to highlight that the male protagonist seemed to be very popular. I don't seem to have read shounen manga where males are active and females are passive. In this regard, it seems that there are more girl comics with open minds? ? ?

In fact, I think the issue of entertainment creation and gender equality is a bit difficult to understand.

I don't think men should be criticized for how they fantasize about women, because women also fantasize about men from a shoujo manga perspective. If we have to resist even our imagination, is that considered mind control? The question should be: fantasy itself is fine, but reality must be distinguished.

So, what to say? It's better to read both shounen manga and shojo manga! This way you will know the full picture of what the sexes imagine of each other. Taiwan doesn't seem to have as many prejudices as Japan, and I've heard male college students say that they are also a fan of shojo manga. I think this is very good, everyone reads good stories, respects and understands each other, and that is the way for both sexes to get along.

3. To be equal, women should also go to military service?

PTT also loves to quarrel about it. Ueno's response to this was: war itself is an activity against human nature, so what we have to do is not who should be a soldier, but we should be against war!

It makes sense, but I think she avoided the issue of military service.

After all, if a country wants to prevent foreign aggression, it still has to organize an army. It is honestly questionable how long a country can survive completely without an army. Perhaps this will be more problematic for some conscription countries. (Israel seems to have a comprehensive military recruitment system, and both men and women should be recruited.) If both men and women recruited soldiers, everyone would volunteer to be soldiers anyway, and there would be no reason to argue that women should not be soldiers.

But pragmatically speaking, Taiwan has a small population, and it may be better for both men and women to have served in the military. Not to mention how good the physical fitness is, at least everyone has a little common sense about how to use weapons. (like a fire drill)

4. Are feminists also misogynistic?

Ueno said boldly: Of course it will! If I'm not misogynistic, there's no need to be a feminist!

"Feminism is a battle for self-reconciliation."

I see! These words are so enlightening!

These are my thoughts and comments on this book.

Hope you like it, see you next time! :)