@starbreaker Ugh... I'm not sure I have an answer. My fiancée and I spent a lot of time discussing how we wanted to handle the holiday in our situation, which was the only realistic solution to an otherwise gender-designated holiday that we both still desperately wanted to celebrate.

Traditionally, girls give in February and boys in March. We divided the holiday along traditional cultural roles where the husband works outside home and the wife inside.

Japanese lesbians lead complicated lives.

@ayachan I bet you had long talks about this and other things. I guess there aren't many cultures whose traditions are truly LGBT-friendly.

@starbreaker

@ayachan
The confounding factor seems to be historic property laws, around who could own what
A lot of instances of people butching it up was just to have property and such

Where as there are entrenched cultural traditions of queerness all over. But also, the trend is that masculine presenting same sex attracted ppl generally have an easier time

And it circles back to greater societal patterns, trends, etc

@ayachan @starbreaker
Buuut, a lot of cultures had a thriving queer culture, its just pretty universal that systems are in place that could keep them from taking too much power - like the queer monastic tradition

@starbreaker If you hit up Google (or your search engine of choice), you can track down some good articles about this. There's one in particular I was looking for, but I can't seem to find it. ^-^;;

Do look into it sometime, Matthew. The situation for homosexuals in Japan is far more complicated and culturally unique than it is in the West.

One positive aspect is that there is no villification of homosexuals in our cutlure. ^_^ That's one good thing going for us.

@ayachan

@starbreaker
Off the top of my head, most cultural repression against queer identity in most cultures in that area didn't really exist until western capitalism and cultural institutions were imported in

@CursedConfetti @starbreaker This is not the case for Japanese culture, which has always valued harmony and has always had pressures about men and women becoming husband and wife. The accepted cultural norm--which exists to this day--is for homosexual people to get married to someone of the opposite sex and have relations on the side with those of the same sex.

This is problematic for many, many reasons...but it has nothing to do with Western intervention, as it goes back centuries.

@ayachan
I get that

Mainly what I mean is that the same concepts don't necessarily have direct equivalents, at least how pervasive same sex attraction - antagonistic type sentiments are

But yeah religious and cultural trends that put focus on family often go along similar patterns through history

At no point am I claiming anything definitive, just as a trend
@starbreaker

@CursedConfetti @starbreaker Well, as I said to Matthew originally, Japan has no history of villifying homosexuals and to this day, there is no villification of then, which is wonderful.

Western religions and cultural trends are infamous for such bigotry, which also goes back centuries. :/ Really, I am glad Japan—unlike Korea—has deflected these heinous values that Christians tried to export there as early as the 1600s.

@ayachan I found one long and detailed article, but it focuses entirely on male homosexuality.

https://www.tofugu.com/japan/gay-samurai/

@starbreaker Try searching for lesbians if you want the other side of the coin.

@ayachan I have been. Most of the results are porn, so I need to further refine my search. It doesn't help that primary sources seemed to focus on MM relationships rather than FF, though I saw mention of love poems between Heian-era women.

@starbreaker Try adding “Yuri” to your search. Something like the following:

Yuri Article Lesbians in Japan

@ayachan Found this. http://www.yuricon.com/oldessays/women-loving-women-in-modern-japan/

@starbreaker That's a good one!! ^_^ It's not the one I thought of, but it works.