>Were Japanese feminists & leftists alive & kicking (rather than
>stagnant & bereft of imagination as they are)
The Zizek Lenin conference had, I think, 16 presenters. Of them, two were women - Charity Scribner read her own paper, and a woman whose name I forget read Alain Badiou's paper because he wasn't able to come. In my own presentation, I mentioned the thin female presence. When several of us went to lunch after the final session, a woman who'd been in the audience thanked me for pointing that out, adding that it's the rule at all European academic conferences, and nobody ever mentions it. This sparked a little conversation about gender relations in general. One German woman rued the passivity of her sisters - but a Swiss woman studying in Paris said they're far more assertive than French women, whose only strategy for asserting themselves is the erotic/seductive.
As odd as it is for someone who likes to bash the U.S. to admit, it seems gender relations here are a bit more advanced than in the Old World.
Doug