In the 2020’s Annual Symposia, we focused on “Postfeminism” as a social phenomenon/ assertion/movement, which accepts the fundamental values of feminism, like gender equality. Even though in “Postfeminism,” these values are considered the goals already achieved, or as the goals hard to reach by feminism connected with inflexible female identity. To analyze the complexness of “Post-Feminism,” three panelists reported their findings. The first report was by KIKUCHI Natsuno on the effect of neoliberal capitalism on the Japanese phenomenon of “Post-Feminism.” The second report was by TAKAHASHI Yuki, on the young females in their twenties who surrender their freedom from gender roles to seek their liberty for sexual attractiveness. The third report was by CHIKAMOTO Satoko, on the female’s struggle today in consumers’ cooperative societies, the alternative organization for anti-capitalism consumption and production, which had attracted many “housewives’ activists” in the 1980s.

  Through these reports, we could recognize the importance of figuring out the phenomenon invisible from a superficial perspective, like selecting “self-motivated” femininity, abandonment “low-productive in the capital society” females in trouble, and the difficulties of protest to patriarchy. Moreover, we need to critique it and make a commitment to minorities.

  This paper aims to outline postfeminist theories and read them in the Japanese context. First, I will organize an overview of postfeminist ideas in the US and UK and introduce a concept of neoliberal feminism.

  Next, I will examine “neoliberal gender order,” as in postfeminist theory, which is located specifically in the Japanese political economy. Furthermore, I will analyze a social phenomenon where the situation of postfeminism has changed, and “new feminism” has appeared. Finally, I will conceptualize a perspective that will overcome this postfeminist condition through the example of “Feminism for the 99%.”

  This paper aims to explore the discourse patterns of the postfeminists and clarify their features. The term “postfeminist” was spread in the Anglo-Saxon world, especially in the USA and UK in the 1990s (Genz & Brabon, [2009]2018). It is a new type of anti-feminism in neoliberal culture. To resist this, we need to understand how they think about “femininity” in a neoliberal cultural-social environment.

  By reviewing postfeminist/postfeminist studies in the Anglo-Saxon world, we could find three types of reasons why postfeminists declare they are not feminists. 1) “Feminist” always sees women as “victims” in a male-dominated society, but I don’t think I am. 2) “Feminists” have a negative attitude toward hetero-romantic love, but I like to have a romantic relationship with a boy/man. 3) Because our society has achieved gender equality, we don’t need feminism anymore.

  At the same time, when the term “postfeminist” came to be used frequently in media culture in the 1990s, the rate of a positive attitude toward gender division of labor was increased in the USA, demonstrated by GSS (General Social Survey) date (Cotter, et, al., 2011). There was the stagnation of the decrease of gender roles throughout USA society from the mid-1990s to 2006.

  In Japan, a positive attitude toward gender division of labor increased from the mid-2000s to the early 2010s. Especially women in their 20s had an explicit change in trend on gender roles. So, we need to understand how they (women in their 20s in mid-2000) think about the gender role and “femininity” in Japan.

  I analyzed Can Cam’s Japanese fashion magazines to investigate what made the widespread fashion phenomenon known as “mecha-mote” in the 2000s. “Mote” means “being loved by many people mainly by the opposite sex,” and “mecha” means “very much” in Japanese. By analysis, we can find that women have positive feelings toward “femininity” and accept existing gender roles because they desire to enjoy romantic relations with others. We can conclude that these romantic/sexual desires and self-images reproduce biased attitudes toward gender roles even in the postfeminist era.

  Consumers’ co-operative movement has evolved as a business model for female consumers and male social movement activists. Japanese consumers’ co-operative activities have focused on the developments and sales of ‘secure and safety products.’ However, UK female consumers’ movements have conflicted with business companies, based on the key phrase ‘consuming as voting.’

  After the 2000s, the Japanese co-operative movements were calmed down by the dietary fulfillment of most people, excluding the extra poor. Few consumers’ co-ops test commodities with their strict security standards. Twenty million members, up to 95％ are female, shop daily at a Japanese co-op. Their division of labor by gender roles is solid, eroding‘ the breadwinner role’ model. The annual survey of Japanese co-ops in 2018 shows a slight change among young households, but 90% of females answered that they manage their family dietary lifestyle at the nationwide survey of Japanese co-ops in 2015. These Japanese co-op members’ gender division of household labor remains unchanged in these 30 years; capitalist workplaces have relatively realized gender equality ahead rather than the intimate spheres of households.

  Mothers who manage their family`s dietary lifestyle are not free from the loneliness of ‘one operation’ childcare, even if they are not housewives. The female burden of feeding other family members, which is increasing because of the covid-19 pandemic, causes harmful damages to their careers. No one can say the Japanese family has already achieved gender equality. After signing the Workers’ co-op Act in 2020, the Japanese co-op movements’ attempt to create a new work style changed from a kind of feminism for GYN equality, such as the workers’ collective movement, into a gender-neutral and regional economic development project of each community.

  Family and the caste of gendered workplace demanding self-sacrifice are essential components of the ‘postfeminism’ situation. The increasing percentage of unmarried people represents female’s final resort to avoid gender discrimination.

  Seitõ, founded in 1911, is recognized as a forerunner of Japanese feminism. Previous research has found that in Seitõ discourse, female same-sex love was defined as “sexual inversion,” a term that originates in sexology, implying that lesbianism was excluded from the “natural” and “genuine” category of “woman.” These studies, however, focused only on Raicho Hiratsuka’s critical articles and overlooked the literary works representing female same-sex love in Seitõ. This paper examines four lesbian novels in Seitõ concerning the social environment to evaluate the “exclusion of lesbianism” in the magazine. Around 1913, the Seitõ Society came under attack by the media and society in general. As the issue of lesbianism among its members received keen attention, female same-sex love became a “social concern.” In response to the emergent discourse on female same-sex love, Seitõ’s novels presented diverse patterns of lesbian intimacy that could not be categorized as “exclusion of lesbianism,” radically questioning the norm of heterosexuality. These novels deny or reject the scandalous discourse on female same-sex love by subverting the distinct marks of homophobia directed against female same-sex love. Furthermore, even after Seitõ characterized same-sex love as “sexual inversion,” these texts challenge the sexology term and the “exclusion of lesbianism” that occurred in Seitõ society by recognizing lesbian desire. I will reveal a hitherto overlooked aspect of Seitõ’s lesbianism by looking into these novels.

  Through qualitative research, previous studies have revealed that misogyny and homophobia are observed in college and high school athletic club activities for male athletes to bond with each other. The purpose of this study was to reveal the reality of misogynistic/homophobic conversations in school athletic club activities and how they are related to sexism through an analysis of group interviews and questionnaires.

  The group interviews were conducted in three groups, with three participants per group. Three cisgender, heterosexual women did not engage in misogynistic/homophobic conversations during school athletic club activities. In contrast, three cisgender, heterosexual men had misogynistic conversations that regarded women as sexual objects and homophobic discussions about homosexuality being a taboo among male athletes.

  The questionnaire survey was analyzed in detail and a multiple regression analysis was conducted with attitudes toward asymmetrical sexual relationships, in which women were regarded as sexual objects and men as sexual subjects, and attitudes toward gay men as the dependent variables. The results showed that most men affirmed asymmetrical sexual relationships more than the majority of women, which was mediated by their experience in athletic clubs and misogynistic/homophobic conversations in athletic club activities. In contrast, misogynistic/homophobic discussions did not positively affect attitudes toward gay men. Additionally, both dependent variables were strongly related to the factor of biological essentialism that assumes men and women to be inherently different.

  The analysis reveals that misogyny and homophobia in school athletic club activities cultivate sexism. It is necessary to question the tendency to assume differences between men and women as natural to address this problem.

  This paper investigates the history of queer activism in 1990s mainland China by featuring Chunsheng Wu (Gary Wu), one of the first gay activists in the country. Wu is being forgotten despite contributing significantly to early queer activism and providing valuable documentation related to the Chinese queer community in the 1990s. By analyzing the first-person narratives of queer people documented in Wu’s books and documentary film, this paper aims to portray the formation of queer discourse propagated by queer people themselves through queer activism during the early 1990s, a time when the decriminalization and depathologization of homosexuality had not yet been achieved. There was a dichotomy between “the mainstream medical and scientific representation produced by experts” and “the alternative cultural and artistic representation produced by queer people themselves” that emerged during that period. This paper will conduct a comparative analysis of the practices conveyed by the experts and queer activists such as Wu, including social research, book publications, and filmmaking. With the experts’ discourse of homosexuality as a point of reference, this paper will articulate how the different kinds of queer discourse were formed and reveal their limits by analyzing how queer people narrated themselves. The author believes that this investigation will help illuminate the non-confrontational strategy developed by queer communities in the 2000s and provide insight into negotiating with the current backlash inflicted on queer activism by authorities.

  This study considered the difficulties of preventive education on dating violence. We analyzed the pre-and-post-question descriptions of high school students who received dating violence prevention education. The method used context analysis, which can be read and quantified from the context. We visualized the educational effects by the appearance of the substantial entities (semantic combinations of words). The words “human rights” and “gender” that we supporters expected to find rated lower on the scale, such as 28th and 29th place. However, the words such as “the feelings of the other person,” “my feelings,” “each other,” “equal relationships,” and “my opinions” frequently appeared, and these words could raise the conscious awareness of human rights or gender. Therefore, we can say that preventive education provides students with necessary information. We also found that each group provided appropriate preventive education according to students’ situations. Indeed, there was a limit to the context analysis in which we analyzed the meanings manually. However, if we continue to utilize machine learning systems in the future, we can expect more effective preventive education.

  This paper summarizes the trends in transgender oral history research in North America and presents typically found analytical perspectives. First, transgender oral history research has attempted to document the voices of transgender people, who are susceptible to discourse by medical and other professionals and are less visible. They have also tried to highlight multiple interpretations of critical events, such as the Stonewall riots. In recent years, the need to depict the transgender history of African American people, indigenous people, and Asians has also been pointed out. However, historicizing transgender people’s voices can also reify their identities. Second, without assuming the category group to be self-evident, the shifting experiences that categories such as “transgender” have enabled people to enact have also been depicted. As “transgender” has been institutionalized, academic and secular discourses have been transformed. Third, a perspective focuses on the interaction between the researcher and the research participants in the interview. In this perspective, the possibilities and difficulties surrounding the emotional responses of the research participants when recalling past events and the interpretation of emotionally non-normative episodes have been emphasized. Fourth, how transgender people work and live in the city has been closely tied to urban culture and networks with transgender people involved. These studies have focused primarily on transgender women working as sex workers. Despite the linguistic and cultural differences, this research has implications for defining the analytical perspectives and methods for transgender oral history research in Japan.