Episode 1 - Bamboo Forest of KMLA

Moral licensing brings more serious consequences by rendering people inactive and refuse to change in the scope of societal level. In this vicious cycle, no progress can occur in the society and only resist to change remains. We can roughly argue that the victory of Donald Trump in 2016 presidential election represents the Americans’ general will against further progress. But still, I believe there’s a chance left for us. As Gladwell cited at the last of his podcast, the difference between the case of Gillard and that of Tomson is that Gillard could express “her” voice towards prevailing male powers. The point is “chances of speech”. Developments of communication technologies such as SNS enabled us to articulate our own voice out in live, anywhere. We should note that genuine changes and progresses occur when public themselves realize the urgency of issues keenly. Continued reminder in the network will keep alerting people unconsciously about the profundity of crisis, which will hold people back from any single self-justification or compensation naturally.

Before I entered this school, I hadn’t really thought about the issue on feminism seriously. Since I’d been just hearing the concept of feminism so vaguely, I couldn’t even have decided the clear stance on such issues, and, of course, was totally indifferent on those issues. The days had past, and I entered the school. Currently, there’s a student-only page in Facebook. It's called the "Bamboo Forest". Students can report their own thoughts and private feelings to the page and the administrator posts it on the page anonymously. And I was astonished by the posts when I noticed how the feminism prevails among the students of KMLA. Students were very sensitive even to the matters which I considered as a very trivial issue. For example, currently, there is a cross-stitch of flower on the girl's uniform. And one day, I saw a piece of "thesis" raising a question on the legitimacy of the cross-stitch posted on the page. That person claimed that the "flower" has a connotation of "beauty", "fragility", so a stitch of which limits the property of female and determines the gender role. In the first place, I was dumbfounded. I could one say the "flower stitch" on the uniform is unfair? In my perspective, it was so frivolous matter that such question hadn't even seemed to rose in my mind before I read the post. And astonishingly, I could find myself getting used to those thoughts as I kept being exposed to the feminists posts on the page and hearing their voice. The astonishment turned into familiarity, and now I'm rather surprised whenever I hear sexist remarks. As such, consistent alert on SNS can change someone's values and even their actions. We still have a hope. We must invigorate the mutual communication and let the valuable thoughts be spread through the society broadly.