When I first read the article, I had an impression that the way people see Tiger woods is quite different from the way we do in Japan. In our country, people were excited with his legendary skill, especially his swing. I was an elementary school student and still strongly remember that we all imitated his way of swing at school. On TV, many comedians mimicked him. They didn’t talk about his race or blackness. It was out of our interest. However, in the article, he described how people in the States treated him, focusing on his race or blackness. In the class, we learned the concept of visibility. Visibility is a starting point where controls or regulations come from. However, in my opinion, visibility can’t cause regulations or control over them by itself. There are other factors regarding to receivers to create that dominance. Through this blog, I am going to examine this tricky concept of visibility deeply.

Visibility is necessary when we categorize something because once we can find differences, we become able to name or understand particular groups. In this sense, visibility is where control or regulations come from. However, visibility doesn’t necessarily lead to regulations. There needs to be other factors regarding to people who receive the visible differences. For example, in Japan, of course we can tell the difference of skin colour between Tiger Woods and other players. At this point, the difference is visible. But they don’t pay attention to it because for us Asians, neither white nor black, the skin colour doesn’t have a big meaning and is out of our interest. In this sense, as we don’t use it as a representer, it is not a signifier. Learning from this experience, it is obvious that other factors at receivers’ side are necessary in order that visibility functions as a starting point toward regulations. To take an easiest example, as is often said, white people needed to represent clearly the difference between black and white people to conquer them. Here, one question comes out. Visibility is the existing thing? Or does someone create it, in other words, do people make it visible intentionally? If so, visibility itself is totally arbitrary. After all, everything can be visible, can’t it?

In this blog, I tackle on the concept of visibility starting from the difference I feel between the two societies, reflecting my experiences. As I examine this concept, it becomes more and more tricky. However, in this trickiness, there are significant things which structure the whole society and from which we can get a hint to improve the world. I want to continue to study this issue more deeply.

In the class, we explored the website called Black Girls Dangerous, which I felt personally has full of interesting stuff. In particular, one of the articles, which is about the letter from a mother to her gender-creative son’s pre-kindergarten class, had a lot of implications worth considering. Today, I’m going to talk about how big influence the culture and society have on gender creation of kids. Reading this article recognises us the importance of experiences and situations at young age. Later, I want to mention the differences between what we call modern Western society and non-Western society, reflecting my own experiences.

In the letter, she says ‘We have told Ocho that he can be whichever gender he wants, and that if he doesn’t want to choose, he doesn’t have to.’ For me, a person who has been grown up in the society where parents rarely imagine their child is gender-creative nor admit that, this letter sounds surprising and shocking, in that she gives him (her) not only a choice between boy and girl but also a choice of non-decision. This may be a new trend, especially among modern western society.

In Japan, since they are very small, boys and girls have been treated quite differently. This has an enormous influence on kids’ gender recognition. I’ll give some interesting examples. First, in Japan, we add gender specific word to all kids’ first name; ‘kun’ to boys and ‘chan’ to girs (for example, I’m called ‘Aoi-chan’). And this is socially structured. For example, every kindergarten, elementary school and junior high school checks the attendance with this name every single morning. For example, I was called my name ‘Aoi-chan’ every morning by my teacher. Let me give you another example. In Japan, we have strict gender colour; blue for boys and red for girls. This is not that they prefer their colour, but half socially decided. For example, it’s usually mandatory that all elementary school boys use blue or black backpack and girls use red one for school. (However, it’s interesting that these days we can find yellow backpack.) This backpack, ‘randoseru’, is a symbol of elementary school children, which has a lot of cultural meanings. Furthermore, school uniform has also a function as a decisionist of kids’ gender. Since kindergarten, they have the school uniform, which is gender specific; pants for boys, skirts for girls. As these example shows, since they are very small, they are strongly recognized their biological sex so that they are assumed to behave as their sex and don’t even recognize they can be different. In this sense, they have far less chances to be opposite or trans gender, compared to the situation in modern society like one in the letter. The difference of the number of children with gender-creative issues between western countries and Japan is partly because of this.

 Therefore, I can now point out two things as my conclusion. First, experiences and situations at young age have a significant impact on their gender identity. Before developing their own idea about gender, they have been treated as their biological sex by the society. So, they take it for granted. In addition, there is a difference among cultures. Generally, in what we call modern western society, they are getting to be more generous to gender-creative people and the same thing can be said around issues of gender-creative kids. On the other hand, in other countries, the old-fashioned gender norm is still dominant and kids have relatively few chances to recognize their own gender identity and behave as an opposite or trans gender person. To look at kids’ gender issue has many significant implications, so I would like to continue to do further research on this topic.