Given the nature of the latest Maria-Sama ga Miteru episode (specifically, episode four, wherein wacky hijinks ensue not in gardens, but in a gym and a restroom), I thought I might take the opportunity to talk about gender in Marimite.

Actually, I thought I would make a few notes about gender in Marimite, as that would really make for several papers, rather than one blog post.  The theory of gender that I am most familiar with is Eve Sedgwick’s, and I also have not re-read it in several years, so this post may take her construct concepts and leave out (not on purpose) her actual content.

You may be wondering how I can talk about gender in Marimite at all, when most episodes go by without a single male showing up.  At least, the straw figure Polemachus I sometimes use the general “you” in place of should be at this point.  The short answer is that “gender” and “sex” are not really related.  ”Sex” refers here to whether a person is male or female, while “gender” uses words such as “man,” “woman,” “transsexual,” so on — gender is identity while sex is biology.  Now, I’m pretty sure gender and sexual preference are independent, at least in this one theory.  So “gay” and “bisexual” aren’t gender identities, so far as I understand things.

The reason this is important is that Marimite, and as I understand it the whole field of yuri, makes use of the split between sex and gender, allowing a wide variety of genders to show up amid a single sex.  Sedgwick imagined a kind of scale, with man on one and and woman on the other — and that no one actually rests at either end of the scale.  We are perpetually trapped between the two poles.  It’s actually difficult to define what one of the poles is.  What is “pure” woman?  That depends on one’s culture, I suppose, and I do my best (which is not the same as “succeed at”) to avoid cultural pigeonholing of genders.

As an outsider with a bit of license and a lot of room for error, I can more closely approximate Japan’s poles.  Typically the “yamato nadesico” is cited as “pure woman,” or at least the closest an actual person can come to it.  In Marimite, Sachiko fills that role pretty well, to the point where the plot sometimes revolves around her discomfort in it.

Is it predictable to say Sei lies at the other end, at “pure man?”  She’s sexually predatory, aggressive, and the one (still present) character vocally attracted to women.  Interestingly, though, she never seemed attracted to Sachiko — though I know Sei x Youko is a favorite pairing of the fanbase, and Youko is pretty close to the end of the “woman” side of the scale.  However, Youko has a little masculinity of her own, though it’s never out-of-place like Sei’s:  she wears trendy business suits and takes vocal control of conversations, whereas I don’t think Sachiko has worn anything so masculine and (more importantly) rarely uses vocalized force to comandeer a conversation, preferring instead to use body language — possibly in reference to the concept of silence as woman’s language (I can’t remember if that idea comes from criticism of sexism claiming women should be silent, or reclaiming of that idea by feminists later on).  One could argue that Sei still has feminine attributes (possibly ipso facto, as, using our scale, no one can rest solely on one end of it), and perhaps the show is creating a kind of relationship standard where one person completes the other by filling in all the bits between the two.

Which is problematical when one considers Sachiko x Yumi.  Not that I’ve proven anything here, but assuming the Platonic “make whole” idea is correct, they don’t do so.  Yumi is near the middle, appropriate enough for a POV character.  She tilts toward feminine, but hasn’t mastered the kind of “behind-the-scenes” maneuvering that the most feminine characters, like Youko, Sachiko, and Eriko thrive on — and that’s a traditionally feminine trait.  On the other hand, Yumi isn’t very good at expressing her own desires, as Sei is.  How long did it take her to get to an amusement park with Sachiko?

What does all this mean for the show?  Aside from the “two parts to a whole” thing, which is pure speculation, maybe not a lot.  I can tell you directly why I thought of this:  the entire end of Yoshino’s hunt for a little sister ends in the context of a kendo match, where Rei is shown as aggressive and winning a fight — masculine stuff, especially when it’s the thought of another that gives her the “strength” to win — but Yoshino flounders around, essentially failing to out-woman Eriko (according to those traditional standards).  She can’t bring herself to be masculine enough to confront Eriko, but instead lies, tries to trick her, and ultimately — one could say because of her spot in between both poles — finds who I suspect could be her little sister after all.  Sei was a third year when she picked Shimako, right (seriously, I could be wrong about this)?  Yoshino might do the same.  It would highlight a kind of circularity, in that Yoshino would be picking someone who is like her big sister’s big sister.  Nana doesn’t just look like Eriko (that’s what they said about her, anyway), she chooses to pull up her sweater to demonstrate which school she’s in, rather than just telling Yoshino.  Remember that Eriko is supposed to be “weird,” and that would certainly qualify.