'Sex Change Day' a Hit With Japanese High Schoolers

The very idea of broadening the human undemanding of the notion of gender from two to four (or more) cylinders so exercises the anti-gay and anti-trans American fringe that suggestions that instructors use more inclusive language in the classroom recently sparked spurious news stories that claimed words like "boy" and "girl" had been banned from schools.

And that's nothing compared to multiple tempests in toilet bowls around the nation, as schools and school districts have weighted the costs and benefits of allowing trans students access to the restrooms and locker rooms that match their identities, rather than their physiologies. (The hard-right wing likes to call any proposed legislation along those lines "bathroom bills," reducing complex issues of gender identity and individual rights to faux-safety concerns centered on "allowing men into women's restrooms.")

But in Japan -- which is still, in many ways, a patriarchal society with rigid gender roles -- a recent "sex change day" at Fuji Hokuryo High School succeeded at giving male and female students a tiny glimpse at how the other half lives: In trousers, or in skirts.

Pink News reported on Nov. 14 that the educational exercise met with little opposition or controversy, and was aimed at helping students look beyond gender stereotypes. (The topic of gender identity was not part of the day's focus.)

"Sex Change Day" took place on Nov. 11, and involved boys wearing girls' school uniforms, and vice versa. The school's principle noted that the primary complaint came from boys who discovered that skirts don't keep the legs as warm as trousers do. Girls, meantime, took to wearing trousers and ties for the day.

"As part of the day, students were taught about perception of gender, and how changing gender can influence those around them," the article reported.

The story was picked up by various other online news sources, including Kinja, which reported on Nov. 12 that, "This sort of event is not widespread in Japan -- which is why it got national news coverage.

"It was voluntary and 117 male and 182 female students took part," the article at Kinja continued. "Participating pupils swapped uniforms that fit their size and studied in class a usual, with the idea being what they took as givens weren't necessarily givens."

For American sensibilities and learning styles, a more accessible means of comprehending the same lesson might be to contemplate a line of dialogue from the recently-concluded HBO television drama "Boardwalk Empire." Set in the early 1930s, the show's final episodes featured an Irish immigrant mother of two, who, while explaining her perspective to a character based on Joe Kennedy, put it this way:

"Think of all the things you want in life," Kelly Macdonald, playing Margeret Thompson, wife of rum runner Enoch "Nucky" Thompson (Steve Buscemi) tells Kennedy (Matt Letscher), who is surprised at her business acumen. "Then imagine yourself in a dress."

For some of tomorrow's business leaders now growing up in Japan, that might not now take quite such a stretch of the imagination.