“Everybody is Oppressed by This Gender Inequality”

Hello! We're Erika, Nina, and Risako from Lean in Waseda and we are excited to present to you an interview that we had the honor of doing with Dr. Greg Dvorak.

Profile:

Dr. Greg Dvorak received his masters degree from the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa and his Ph.D. from The Australian National University. He is an associate professor of Pacific/Asian cultural studies and history at Waseda University, in the School of International Liberal Studies and the Graduate School of International Culture and Communications. He is also an adjunct lecturer at Hitotsubashi University. Having spent his life and career between Micronesia, Japan, and the United States, his research deals with topics related to war memory, militarism, decolonization, gender, sexuality, and art. His book, Coral and Concrete: Remembering Kwajalein Atoll between Japan, America, and the Marshall Islands is forthcoming from the University of Hawai‘i Press in 2018. He also works as a curator of contemporary art, having most recently served as curatorial adviser to the Honolulu Biennial 2017.

How did you become interested in gender? How did you start actively taking a part in gender issues?

Well, I think gender is something that is so everyday that we don’t really think about it much, except when you don’t fit the narrative of what gender should be according to what society says.

I was not someone who fit the narrative of masculinity in the places where I grew up. But, I didn’t stand out that much; it’s just I didn’t play sports, I wasn’t into the same things that other boys were doing. I didn’t understand what I was supposed to do, and I didn’t understand why people thought that was funny, or why I stood out.

There were also a lot of people around me who had similar issues, they were also on the margins, not being the cool guys or cool girls, even. Another thing is that I grew up at a time when women were asserting themselves more and more. And, my mother was certainly one who did.

My mom was out actively doing all kinds of interesting stuff outside the home, participating in activism and in women’s groups that sought change. So, I found it very strange to go to people’s houses, for example, and seeing their mothers fulfilling stereotypical “housewife” roles, staying in the house all the time, cooking pie. It’s not that I thought that was wrong, or that I think it is wrong to be a “housewife” today; it’s just that my view of women and their potential was so expansive and meaningful and empowered, and when I saw women who were expected to be silent and weak, I felt some sadness. My mom wasn't weak or silent. Not only was she working outside the home, when she gave birth to my brother, she stayed home for quite some time to really nurture him, as she had when I was born. My father took care of us a lot, too. It wasn't like my mom was out trying to become president of the United States, but she was quite an outspoken independent individual woman. Without realizing it, I had a lot of respect for my mother, but I just took it all for granted. And it’s not just my mother, there were many other women in my life—including so many women of color, Japanese women, and Indigenous women—who showed me through their own lives and through the ways they did things that women are powerful and they should be powerful and equal in the world.

It was through those kinds of childhood experiences that I always wondered: Why shouldn’t women have the same rights or do the same things or be able to have opinions? And why should men then also have to be playing sports and beating each other up and speaking in this weird way and not being close to each other?

And so those kinds of things always felt strange to me as I was growing up. Plus, growing up in the Marshall Islands, I was seeing the ways Marshall Islanders express their gender, which was quite different from the way, at least, white Americans living on the military base where I lived were expressing theirs. Women had much more of a say in things, they were much more respected, land was inherited between women. Then again, the American women on our base, they thought they themselves were really independent. In some ways, though, the Marshall Islanders, were much more so, because women have such a big role there.

And then I came to Japan, where I also saw a totally different read on this. I heard stereotypes of Japanese women being subservient to men, locked up at home… and all this kind of horrible stuff. But, what I witnessed didn't look like that very much. In the countryside, yeah, I would see that sometimes women had some very clear roles in the home, but they were also the boss of their homes. It’s true, it was common to go to someone’s house and the guy that I would be drinking with, the ojichan who happened to be the host, would say “Pour him some beer” or “do this,” telling his wife and his daughters to wait on me. I often felt a lot of discomfort about that, but I knew it was the culture, and I didn’t know how much I could speak up. Whenever I could, I would try to help clear the table or wash dishes, but sometimes the women themselves would laugh at me and discourage me from doing that. So I came to understand these kinds of gender roles as quite normative throughout Japan.

But yeah, I guess I became very interested in gender after I came to Japan. I really started seeing these kinds of differences and the ways some people have certain big privileges and other people did not have other rights, they weren't able to speak out, they were supposed to speak in a high voice, or they were supposed to be pretty in a certain way. It’s not as if that wasn’t true in the United States; it’s just that because I was in another culture it really stood out to me.

And in general, as I grew up as a teenager in the US, I also began to look at sexuality as another thing. Certainly the dimensions of sexuality and sexual orientation, etc., also interested me for a number of reasons. Partly, in my own life, but also in the lives of people around me and the ways in which some things that I thought were completely normal in my life were not considered normal to others—in fact, they were actually shocking and threatening and awful to people. I didn't understand it, and it was very painful to see that. I wasn't extensively bullied in my life but I saw how people could be, and it was terrifying.

And so, there's always been an element of gender studies in my work. I wasn't as expressive of it at some times in my work, because I was working mainly on thinking about the history of war and colonialism in the Pacific Islands (which is in fact very related to gender), but my undergraduate thesis was about masculinities in contemporary Japan back in 1995 and 1996, and I remember talking about that at Waseda when I was studying abroad here. I was interviewing people about that kind of stuff. And much later, I did my PhD at the Gender Relations Center at the Australian National University. So, when I put it together, I actually was doing gender studies all along, or thinking about gender, but it’s just that I have never felt that it's necessary to keep saying gender, gender, gender, all the time.... Because everything is gendered! What is important is that we not just take it all for granted and never question it.

Do you think that women's participation in the workforce issues are addressed enough in Japanese society?

No, not at all. I think that it’s correct to say that Japan is, like many places, a very heteronormative, hetero-patriarchal sexist society. I'm not trying to judge Japan in particular, even if it sounds that way, and I know that as a non-Japanese person it might sound that way. Yet, in fact, I am a permanent resident of Japan and I have lived here for most of my life, so this matters to me. I love Japan and I also love Japanese people and would love for there to be more equality for everyone. I’m saying this because so many Japanese women have said the same thing to me. And also because, I've seen that women really do get marginalized so, so often in this country.

Women in Japan are not asked to speak first, they are not asked to give opinions, and in the workforce, they often do not get equal opportunities or pay as men do. I have been fortunate enough to work in places where women are my equals, such as at universities. But even then, when women go to give birth to a child, their pay is often reduced in a certain way. And men are not usually expected or allowed to take time off to take care of a baby. And women are often expected to simply retire when they marry, or, if they have a child, to come back to the workforce in a lesser position. What frustrates me the most is working and living in Japan and seeing when women are forced to accept this kind of oppression. That is very unfair, and yet it is so normalized that even many women accept it as if it’s just “the way it is.”

So, no, I do not think women are accorded the same rights or privileges, or invited to speak up or listen in the ways they should be. And in the workplace, in particular… When I used to work in Japanese government offices, the majority of my female colleagues were the ones who had to wear these special uniforms and brought the tea, and without exception, they were pretty and young. They were clearly just employed as eye candy. I could see how there was this very heterosexist sexual kind of thing going on where the older senior people in the workplace were being pleased by these younger women being there and it was really kind of uncomfortable for me. To be a part of that corporate and government culture taught me quite a lot, because I felt I would lose my job if I protested this. Going out drinking with the men, the places that they go drinking, and the ways that they get served was also very uncomfortable to me, especially the way I was sort of drafted into being a participant in these outings even though I disliked the way women were treated in these environments. They were going to kyabakura and these bars… The way the women were expected to talk to these men, the way that the men objectified the women was interesting and also unsettling. I saw that very first-hand. It wasn't sexually appealing to me, it wasn't something I wanted, it was something uncomfortable, but by virtue of being a man in this power structure, it was hard to say no, and it was also an educational experience for me also to be there and observe.

So, I really saw how women are very marginalized in mainstream Japanese society, especially in the centers of power. I've been to the Gaimusho (Ministry of Foreign Affairs), I've been to these different government offices, I worked for the G8 Summit Promotion Council in Miyazaki, I was meeting heads of state, I was meeting ambassadors… and the ways that women were positioned within those power structures in Japan, even in other countries… was weird. There would be a woman holding a man’s bag and that was her job. It was clear that she would be a very intelligent woman, a really interesting person to talk to and someone who had some great ideas, but those ideas were not part of her job. And so, yeah, by no means are women taken seriously enough.

What do you think Japan can do to promote female empowerment and change traditional views?

Well, some of these things are so institutionalized… You can't just go and destroy the institutions. And I think a lot of people misunderstand feminism because they think that feminists are just trying to “attack” the existing patriarchal institutions we have. No, feminists are more about creating social change from within—by rethinking power and criticizing power inequality. I think these things have to crumble from within and from solidarity among people who are involved in those organizations. Not only women, but actually even more so, all the people who do have the power have to stand up, including all the men. I think more and more men have to know it’s their role to assume more of a gender equalizing position, and to be an ally to both women and to sexual and gender minorities. We normalize and reinforce these oppressive structures of gender inequality when we are silent and do not take action together.

And also, women's ideas and women's voices mattering is something that isn't taught much in Japanese schools. Clearly, women’s scores are better than men's on average throughout Japan and more and more women are studying harder. The only thing is, women are not expected to succeed or go very far, and sometimes they’re still treated like their parents’ property until they’re married. If you go out to the countryside in Japan, you really see this… women are encouraged to go on to learn how can you be a good housewife. Many women internalize this and believe that they should become housewives, seamstresses, nursery school teachers, or nurses. And I'm not saying these are also not worthy roles, but women aren't usually taught in ways even, to know that what they could say or do would be a major contribution.

And of course there are indeed women who go on and get into great universities and go into engineering and science and politics and law and so forth, but I really think that the majority of women are still sort of expected to be kind of pretty and childish and do stuff that’s really stereotypical. And for the most part they are almost forced to accept that. It’s not usually because they want to. And so I really think that it has to come from within where men are educated and women are educated at a local level throughout Japan as part of the curriculum, to really take on those kinds of opportunities, to think more about what that equality means…

But see, I think there tends to be this sort of gender studies allergy in Japan, because it’s all about this rigidly serious and unpleasant 男女平等 (gender equality) kind of 「差別なくそう」(“let’s get rid of sexism”) kind of let’s get rid of bullying rhetoric. That’s quite important, but that is not the only important thing about gender studies. Gender, and Gender Studies, is something that matters to everybody. It’s not just a welfare issue. What I mean by this is that when women’s rights and the empowerment of women is seen as something that just women do, and not only all women but certain women do, then feminism is misunderstood in a strange way. Part of what I'm trying to do in my Gender Studies class, for example, is to make gender studies mainstream. And to point out that it matters to absolutely everybody and that whether we’re talking about women's rights or we are talking about queer studies or any of those types of things, we are all part of gender and we are all part of sexuality. Everybody came from a woman, everybody is totally connected to the whole thing, you can't separate that out.

And yet we do it all the time and heteronormative men, in particular, are responsible for doing it, because they're like “well, we might have come from our mothers, but it doesn't really matter” and “oh, we might hook up with women, but that doesn't really matter” and “oh, these people might not have as many rights, but that's just the way it is.” And, that's how we support hegemony. And so I think that we have to develop strategies for defeating that hegemonic sort of view, and point out how everybody, absolutely everybody is oppressed, it's not just women, everybody is oppressed by this gender inequality.

People often just don't understand it because it hasn't been presented to them in that way. So we can't necessarily blame everybody, but at the same time, we can point out that the system marginalizes these gender questions. So, we can change this, partly by infecting institutions with the knowledge that everybody is in fact being oppressed in some way by gender ideology, by people being allies, standing out and saying “I won't stand for this!”

So you believe that changes in education will help people in doing that?

Yes, one thing is education. Another thing is in corporate culture and government culture, people who are otherwise very smart. And this goes for a lot of things in Japan really, people who are otherwise very, very smart say something in a one context or collude or cooperate with contradictory values in another context, and that is just unbelievable sometimes. They actually are witness to violence, and witness to a certain kind of power harassment without standing up. It's not just unique to Japan, but in Japan there is a special way of doing this. People often sit by silently and they don't act up. They won't even look like it makes them angry. They go along with it. A lot of these guys will get a job in a company and when a woman is being abused in some way or she's not getting the opportunity that she deserves, or there is some sort of offhanded comment about her not being smart enough or whatever, or her being pretty and “isn't she hot?” and let's give her a job because of that or not. They'll stay quiet, they won't say anything. So, we need to change that. That's the thing.

In some ways it's really important to preach to the choir, to speak back to people who need more knowledge about how to do the activism that they're doing, but I think it's also really important to try to engage the public and engage all kinds of people in trying to take responsibility and take a stand and be a real ally. Instead of just standing there. That's how these things happen to change eventually, and they do.

You actually see more and more people in Japan really standing up for women's rights and for equality, and for empowering younger women to do different things. I think it is changing. I just think that it's not changing fast enough because there tends to be this myth that Japan is so traditional—and it's not!! Japan is one of the fastest-changing countries in the world.

There is possibly no country in the history of the past 100 years that has changed as much as Japan has. Japan is, like, ridiculously fast in its rapid change, so what's this thing about Japan being traditional and conservative? I don't get it. I really don't. And a lot of the conservatism is actually based on regurgitated, revived stuff that came about in the Meiji period, it's relatively new. Conservative nationalists like to harken back to a time, just like they do in America, of so-called “traditional family values.” And yet, that’s not traditional! It was an invention, the whole ie system, all this kind of stuff—it's all relatively new. We just have to question these presumptions, and so that's what I think is most important: Questioning and empowering people to question, to raise questions.

So you believe that it’s important not just to teach about gender inequalities, but also to teach about how to speak up?

That’s right. Teaching people how to speak up, teaching people how to participate in society. And in a democracy, this is essential. Yet, in recent times, we find that neoliberalism tends to compel certain leaders to prefer that citizens simply remain silent, to be obedient consumers who just quietly do things and preserve the status quo.

I believe is the role of universities to encourage young people to learn about their role in society, to apply their knowledge to making the world a better place, to realize how politics actually stems from your personal experience. The university is a really important place to get to know other people and to think about these kinds of challenging issues. And, unfortunately, it’s often only the most elite in society who have access to higher education.

And that's another issue. How do you use the privilege that you have, how do you use the knowledge that you have, how do you use the literacy that you have to empower others who cannot, who aren't going to have the opportunity or literacy to sit down with a difficult book, or to talk to people who might believe everything they see on TV? How do you talk to the people around you and affect positive change?

But the thing is, it's a process. So how do you negotiate with that? That's my question. It's really about how to infect, subvert, the typical narrative in such a way that it's familiar, it's not shocking—so that it’s digestible to people? I think that's really key.

What can men do to support women trying to lean in?

When I teach gender, I make it a big point on my syllabus and so forth to say that this is for men as well. And I also make it explicitly clear that, although this is for the benefit of gender equality, men are also really suffering because of gender.

Men are really really trapped in ways that they don't even realize. They don't understand why they have to do certain things, or they actually feel physical repulsion thinking about a woman's sanitary napkin. It almost seems like... I think that to a lot of men, to deal with women's rights or issues is extra work or something. Or it’s like a special favor for women. And when it's presented to them as, “We’re women and we’ve got this project going on, and would you like to volunteer and join us so that you could also help women?” they should be interested, and they should do stuff, but I think they also chicken out because, A, it seems like a lot of work and, B, it’s like “I don't want people to think that I'm a... feminist...something.”

As members of society, we need to take responsibility and ally together to make the world a better place. This is why gender itself is fascinating, but also how is like a prison in some ways. And, so, what can we do to try to empower everybody so that they have a voice?

What are the benefits of women being in more power? What happens when women are really allowed to raise children, and to have the time to be managers and bosses and presidents and so on? Look at Hillary Clinton, look at her daughter Chelsea, who is a politician basically. Look at all of these people who wouldn't have seen that kind of possibility of a woman president of the United States had not they had people like that who came before them. And what are the benefits to men of that? Well, there a lot of men as you can see in the United States who are terrified of women, of someone like Hillary Clinton winning the presidency. But it is a fact that a majority of people in the United States believed that a woman could win, because they voted for her. Because they saw the benefits, not only just because she was highly qualified, but also because of the fact that she'd lived her life as a woman. See, there's a difference.

It's not essentializing that Hillary is a woman, it's that she's lived her life as a woman, and therefore she has seen, and she knows what it's like to be marginalized and disempowered. And to be able to empathize with people, and to be able to unite with that. That is something that is so important about the experience, not only of womanhood, but of being someone that has been marginalized.

And so when women can take that...and women care about their children, about their sons, about their sons going off to war, they're the ones who have grounded society for so long. And for them to be the ones who are also marginalized is unfathomable, it's very strange to me. But, that is a reality. And so doing whatever can be done to bring women back into positions of power, to create this kind of equality, is not just a kind of bringing up women to the level of men, it's that there are certain things with people who have lived their lives as women and in other marginal positions can contribute.

When it's something that is only in the domain of women, maybe it's not as effective. So I think you need to find ways of inviting men that include men, and show that this is also about men, and this is for men and that men also benefit when women get to be leaders, when women get to be in places of power. Also that sort of equality allows men to chill out, stop being so nervous about themselves and stop trying to beat each other up, and fight wars. It does so much else for peace, it does so much for the environment, it does so much for social frameworks of women also being able to express themselves so much more fluidly.

So, the benefits of having women who are stronger, who are together that are proud to be women, proud to be themselves, can speak out are just uncountable. You could go on and on and on… And the benefits for men as well. About having strong female counterparts, who are not there to support them but who are there to complement and be a part of the bigger picture, as opposed to being the little follower flowers all around to decorate everything. Having women in society who have a real presence matters. It makes a big difference. And then the issue of men who are being held into this stupid script of masculinity, also matters. So when men realize that's part of the delicious part of being involved in gender movements, whether it's for equality, whether it's for queer visibility and action and so forth, they need to see what happens. And without seeing what happens, it's very hard to sell people these ideas. You need to show that there is a little bit of a promise land that can come out of that.

And I'm not just talking about women leaders, I'm talking about heterosexual relationships between men and women, when women are allowed to lead, and it's expected that they could. Things get really nice. Society makes a lot more sense.