No, it's not Mahmoud Ahmadinejad back with a round of his rhetorically tortured statements about which countries do and do not have gay people. It is saddening, perhaps, that for a large swath of the Japanese community, the belief that "there are no gays" isn't just some redneck-y contrivance.
A lot of people believe it.
Or, at least that's the way that Philip Kendall reports it in RocketNews24.com:
“There are no gays in Japan.” “Being gay is more like a hobby; eventually men get it out of their system and settle down with a woman.” “But what if a girl is really, really hot? Surely a gay guy would like her then!?” No, these are not secondary quotes from My Navi News’ article; these are 100% genuine quotes from Japanese people I have worked with over the years. Admittedly, attitudes towards homosexuality are a little different in the city, but each one of these jaw-dropping one-liners has stuck with me to this day. Just to set the record straight -no pun intended- there are plenty of gay and lesbian people in Japan; both foreign and Japanese. And most (though not all) do not “get it out of their system” and marry a member of the opposite sex. The last one I’m not even going to answer. Like many other countries, civil partnerships or same-sex marriages do not exist in Japan, and there are few gay and lesbian people who feel that they can be honest about their sexuality. Rather than being aggressive or anti-gay, however, there is an air of ignorance surrounding homosexuality in Japan. Perhaps thanks to long-held beliefs that it is better not to make waves in public and to stick with the crowd, few gays and lesbians feel able to speak openly about their sexuality, which is perhaps part of the reason that so few Japanese have ever (knowingly) met a homosexual, leading to drunken coworkers making bizarre comments like “there are no gays in Japan.”
But I agree that we are far, far too along the human continuum to make excuses for countries because they don't conform to American ways of thinking. I mean, sure, maybe if we were a bunch of what would surely be men in the 1970s, sitting around in club chairs drinking Chivas and acting like we knew what the fuck we were talking about, we might see everything from an American-o-centric worldview.
But times have most certainly changed. And for a major industrial nation to have such a Panglossian and homophobic worldview (which is exactly what that is) is entirely unacceptable.
But I'd still fuck a Japanese guy any day of the week. They are some of the most beautiful men (and women) in the world.
© 2012, Victor Hoff. All rights reserved. Menofcolor.blogs.com
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