htown1980: So when you say "their whole society has a completely different stance when it comes to gender issues" you mean "the average person's stance is completely different but I don't know how things really are in Japan"
Well, I know too little to speak confidently of how the situation is there and I'm no Japanophile but I know enough (and not just through mangas, video games and Japanese cinema but also through insightful talks with friends who have a perfect understanding of the Japanese society and culture) to be certain that the whole society is different and that there's no chance that the gender roles are the same as in the west. Heck, social and cultural differences are already remarkable when comparing Eastern Europe to Western Europe (and even within Eastern Europe I'm aware of some extreme differences), it's safe to assume that a society considered as exotic as Japan is even more different and this is bound to include gender roles.
htown1980: And when you say "one that our beloved activists will never be able to change" you mean "you believe its constantly changing but not because of people who produce their works in English and who don't target their articles to Japanese people."
Okay, let's fix this: I *know* that there's been remarkable progress in gender roles over the last decades in Japan caused mainly by internal social change, not western cultural and social influence. Life expectancies have gone up and the birth rate has dropped resulting in a large emergence of career-oriented women.
And obviously Sarkeesian and RPS aren't targeting Japan with their activism (at least for now) but they (well, at least Sarkeesian) use Japanese products to point out "misogyny" in video games as if they were representative of the whole industry. Plus, what's the point of using examples from a region that they aren't even targeting? That's really the absurdity I wanted to point out.
htown1980: Japanese video games, manga, anime, etc, is no indication of what the actual attitudes of the average person are like. Not even close.
Of course the content of many of their cultural products is no direct indication of the social situation there, however, it does somewhat reflect their society's mentality. Plus the fact that many of their works which could never achieve mainstream success in the west are more popular than any Hollywood blockbuster there says a lot about social and cultural differences, doesn't it.