Summary: <p>We discuss the state, looking at it from the perspective of foreign residents, of the LBTQIA+ community in Japan, along with our own experiences with those inside and outside the community. Some discussion of sexuality and sexual history.</p> <p><strong>Content Note</strong></p> <p>Discussion of childhood sexual assault</p> <p><strong>Transcript</strong></p> <p>K: So, lately I’ve been thinking about the differences and, for me, of being part of the LGBTQIA+ community in the United States versus in the Japan – in “the” Japan, in Japan, not the Japan.</p> <p>C: Well, there’s only one of them.</p> <p>K: Yeah, but it’s made up of 200 islands.</p> <p>C: Yeah?</p> <p>K: Yeah. Japan is made up of 200 islands.</p> <p>C: I didn’t know it was so many.</p> <p>K: Yeah, there’s- okay, now I’m not sure. Oh man, we don’t google stuff on this show so good ahead and – we’re coming out the gate with go ahead fact check me and hit us up on social media, tell us if I’m wrong, I don’t know, but in my reality Japan is made up of 200 islands.</p> <p>C: The people might like something to do.</p> <p>K: (laughs) </p> <p>C: I know there are a lot of islands.</p> <p>K: Yeah, and I know, you know, our peeps – everybody who is part of the Musick fam, and I consider everyone who listens part of the Musick fam, they do like to send us tweets about things I’ve gotten wrong or things, more often in my reality, you’ve gotten wrong.</p> <p>C: So feel free to send us tweets about things we’ve gotten right, too.</p> <p>K: Yeah, no, we love the positive reinforcement on Twitter, but I’m really super happy with our twitter life. They’re super supportive. Which, check out this, circling back around</p> <p>C: Okay.</p> <p>K: I feel like we have a large following that are part of the LGBTQIA+ community at large. Globally.</p> <p>C: Yeah, I feel like we do.</p> <p>K: So for me the difference – for me, being part of the community was a political act in the United States more so than it’s a political act here in Japan. And I think that has to do with the time of year that it happened. So, in the United States, all of- I didn’t really march, before we decided to move. I think I had stopped marching. I think since you and I got married, I stopped marching, but I used to go- prior to our marriage, I used to go every year to gay pride and live it up in San Francisco. And here in Japan, I don’t do any of that stuff for two reasons: one, the Japanese summer is brutal and I’m sick for 62 days from the beginning of July to the end of August, and I’m just crawling through the days trying to survive because of my lupus and HCP. And because I just don’t feel – and this might be because of the language or what have you, but I just don’t feel like there is an LGBTQIA+ struggle here in Japan. It doesn’t feel like they’re fighting for rights.</p> <p>C: No, it’s definitely because of the language.</p> <p>K: Okay.</p> <p>C: I’ve had coworkers – I had a gay coworker who definitely was part of the struggle for rights. It just takes a different form in Japan. Like, the San Francisco pride parade thing of making a lot of noise – while they happen here, are more about community celebration than political advancement. And I think that’s true now for the pride parades in the U.S. is that often they’re just for community celebration and not aimed at advancing political agendas.</p> <p>K: And that’s where you’re wrong. So, both pride parades in United States and here in Japan are marches for rights. And so they are marches. Like, there’s a parade and celebration connected to the march. And so some people march, and some people just do the parade. And in the United States, they combined the march with the parade, but the march sis a public statement and is very, very political. </p> <p>C: I knew it was a public statement of “look how many people we are. Look at how much support we have.”</p> <p>K: But it’s </p>
