having lived in japan and had many lesbian relationships in japan, i think it’s no worse than the US in the early-mid 2010s. It’s not at the gen z “gender is a myth” stage but it’s way better than people think it is because there’s the whole “don’t talk about private stuff publicly” aspect of the culture has been rendered slightly moot by the internet.
The issue is mainly recognizing you are queer and due to the internet it’s come a long way from where it was and moved faster than the US. it’s ot some super foreign concept like it used to be.
i went to plenty of live houses where you could see clear lesbian couples etc. dating apps have filled in some of the problems of discovery but you still have to realize it.
Cool.
I was last there in 2010 and was still sorting myself out, so I went to nichoume once and said “This is too much stimuli and I was just looked at like a monster for saying I’m pansexual. I need to drink more on my way home” because that was peak alcoholism for me.
Friend who’s bi told me “yeah, don’t tell people that.”
Bi (etc) being seen as “straight, eventually” or something. Erasure, yay. Hope that’s improved.
(Turns out I’m just a lesbian, but that was a long road to travel…)
OLD LADY RANT:
Gen Z is going a bit wild, imo. Necessary to buck the trends, but still a bit… unruly? It’s how progress I made, generally: extremism takes hold for a while in the far left, then it pulls back to sanity.
Hippies, punks, beatniks… the 90s and early 2000s were stagnant, so the word “valid” losing all meaning and adjectives treated like clubs to join is welcome madness for me to facepalm at, as An Old.
“Kids these days…”
That did we have from the collapse of the Soviet Union through 2004 for crazy?
It was all sensible and slow, as I saw it. It did go a bit nihilistic around 2002-04, but that was on the ex-punk hipster set. Noise music and wild hedonism. That’s not progress. That’s disco and cocaine.
Basic rights and acceptance of people regardless of gender or orientation will seem centrist in comparison to “any gender or orientation can use as many labels as they want at the same time”.
Twitter profile I saw once had “asexual aromantic nonbinary lesbian”. Word salad.
