Julia Longbottom, who is the British ambassador to Japan, recently posted a tweet in Japanese, which Bing translates thus: "Like many people in Japan, I want a society where anyone can live freely regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity. Political initiative is also essential to get there."
Hashtags: #LGBT +#UnityinDiversity#DontBeSilent
[https://twitter.com/JuliaLongbottom/status/1400659988549410817]
Japanese feminists are taking issue with the last line about the necessity for political “initiative” (or “leadership”) because it can be seen as political pressure on Japan to pass a controversial bill which is under consideration at the moment. The problem part of the bill is that it states that discrimination based on gender identity will not be tolerated, but doesn’t offer a clear definition of what constitutes “gender identity” or “discrimination.” (We've seen how that works out- women end up getting accused of discriminating against transwomen). The debate in Japan is clouded because in Japanese, the words for “sex” and “gender” are more interchangeable than they are in English, which in turn is another reason feminists want to see more clarification in the bill. There are also proponents of slipping in Q, as in LGBTQ. This is a problem because some of the "Qs" are advocating for lower age of consent laws in Japan.
It seems to be unlikely that the bill, which the TRAs hoped to slip through (Denton playbook style) before the Olympics, will pass this time but there will surely be further attempts.
The ambassador’s tweet got positive press coverage from a couple of mainstream, wokish news sources. Japanese feminists are hoping the ambassador will refrain from applying any more political pressure to adopt policies similar to those causing problems in Western countries.