Michelle H. S. Ho, an Assistant Professor of feminist and queer cultural studies at the National University of Singapore, delves into emergent gender identities thriving in Tokyo's pink economies. She discusses how cross-dressing cafes in Akihabara challenge traditional gender norms and foster innovative self-expressions. By examining the interplay between gender, capitalism, and popular culture, Ho offers fresh insights into the fluidity of identities, while rethinking queer theory's applicability beyond Western contexts. Her work underscores the vibrant survival strategies of transgender and non-binary individuals in unique spaces.
41:28
forum Ask episode
web_stories AI Snips
view_agenda Chapters
menu_book Books
auto_awesome Transcript
info_circle Episode notes
question_answer ANECDOTE
Discovering Cross-Dressing Cafes
Michelle H. S. Ho found a short YouTube clip about male-to-female cross-dressing cafes and decided to explore it herself.
She traveled to Tokyo twice and turned one conference paper into a full dissertation project on this topic.
question_answer ANECDOTE
Challenges of Late-Night Ethnography
Michelle became a regular customer at the cafes Paradise and Garcon for ethnographic research.
Staying up late until 5 a.m. to observe nightlife culture was physically challenging for her.
insights INSIGHT
Concept of Emergent Genders
Emergent genders are innovative gender practices born from fracturing and reimagining older forms within Japan.
These genders flourish especially as traditional heteronormative productivity models break down in Japan's economic precarity.
Get the Snipd Podcast app to discover more snips from this episode
Michelle H. S. Ho traces the genders manifesting alongside Japanese popular culture in Akihabara. Ho shows how their owners, employees, and customers creatively innovate what she calls emergent genders, new practices, categories, and ways of being stemming from the simultaneous fracturing, contestations, and reimaginations of older forms of gender and sexual variance in Japan. Such emergent genders initiate new markets for alternative categories of expression and subjectivity to thrive in a popular cultural hub like Akihabara. By rethinking identitarian models of gender and sexuality, reconfiguring the significance of capitalism for trans studies and queer theory, and decentering theoretical frameworks incubated in a predominantly United States academic context, Ho offers new ways of examining how trans and gender nonconforming individuals may survive and flourish under capitalism.
In Emergent Genders: Living Otherwise in Tokyo's Pink Economies(Duke UP, 2025), Michelle H. S. Ho traces the genders manifesting alongside Japanese popular culture in Akihabara, an area in Tokyo renowned for the fandom and consumption of anime, manga, and games. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in josō and dansō cafe-and-bars, establishments where male-to-female and female-to-male crossdressing is prevalent, Ho shows how their owners, employees, and customers creatively innovate what she calls emergent genders—new practices, categories, and ways of being stemming from the simultaneous fracturing, contestations, and (re)imaginations of older forms of gender and sexual variance in Japan. Such emergent genders initiate new markets for alternative categories of expression and subjectivity to thrive in a popular cultural hub like Akihabara instead of Tokyo’s gay and lesbian neighborhood of Shinjuku Ni-chōme. By rethinking identitarian models of gender and sexuality, reconfiguring the significance of capitalism for trans studies and queer theory, and decentering theoretical frameworks incubated in a predominantly United States academic context, Ho offers new ways of examining how trans and gender nonconforming individuals may survive and flourish under capitalism.
New Books in Sociology