Emergent Genders

In <i>Emergent Genders</i> 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 <i>josō</i> and <i>dansō</i> 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.