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Changing Hawaii
AS one of the newsroom's most ardent feminists, I'm often goaded by male colleagues to write about sexist happenings all over the world. It's not that they're all that incensed by the inequality, bless their hearts. They just like to see me get mad. Nursing baby
isn’t lewd behaviorFor example, last Thursday, one of my male co-workers asked if I'd seen the Associated Press story about Fusae Ota, who was recently elected Japan's first woman governor.
As Osaka's highest-ranking politician, she is supposed to present an award at a big-deal sumo tournament in March. But wrestling officials won't let her step into the ring since, they say, women are "impure" and would sully the ancient games.
"Isn't that insulting?" my cohort prodded, hoping I'd erupt like Kilauea.
To his disappointment, I shrugged it off. "Nothing surprising about that," I replied. "It's a man's world."
That's an understatement, especially in Japan. When men are in charge, they get to make the rules. So in high-paying, prestigious sports like sumo, they've decided that only guys can participate.
Now they are confronted with the election of a woman governor. She has broken down the shoji doors and is saying, "Excuse me, gentlemen, but the times they are a-changing." As we say in America, deal with it.
Things are also a-changing in Hawaii, but you wouldn't know it by the need for certain legislation in this state. Sometimes Honolulu looks a lot like Tokyo when it comes to the way women and what they do are viewed.
Take the subject of breast-feeding. It has been shown to have many health benefits and to facilitate a special bonding between mother and child.
Mom often has to venture out in public with baby. Mom never knows when baby will get hungry. Not every nursing mother can or wants to duck into the nearest restroom, closet or car to satisfy her infant's shrieks of hunger.
So sometimes she drapes a blanket or diaper over her shoulder, unbuttons her blouse and lets her baby partake of much-needed milk while sitting at a restaurant table or standing in line at a government office.
No big deal, right? This is not a sexual act. If you're uncomfortable witnessing it, don't look.
BUT did you know the state House Labor and Public Employment Committee has approved a bill that would give a mother the right to breast-feed her baby in a public establishment? That's the good news.
The bad news is a law like this is necessary because nursing moms have been forced off city buses and from government offices, waiting rooms and retail establishments when people have complained about the sight of them nursing.
I'm not surprised or incensed by this either.
If men could get impregnanted, give birth and breast-feed, this legislation (and lots of other laws) would be moot. They'd rip open their shirts and nurse wherever and whenever they darn well please, and not be forced to stay at home and hide because what they're doing is perceived to be lewd.
Clarification: A nude dancer jiggling and shimmying is displaying lewd behavior. A breast-feeding mother is nourishing her kid.
Until we get more females into public office and decision-making positions of commerce, both in this country and abroad, we're going to have to keep passing laws to let women be women -- in a man's world.
Diane Yukihiro Chang's column runs Monday and Friday.
She can be reached by phone at 525-8607, via e-mail at
dchang@starbulletin.com, or by fax at 523-7863.