Why Tomorrow Girls Troop members work anonymously
At Tomorrow Girls Troop, we intentionally keep our members anonymous as a strategy. There are two reasons for this choice.
Firstly, we hope that people focus on the social issues that we address rather than our members’ appearance, gender, title, education, or nationality.
The Guerrilla Girls, a group of feminist artists that formed in New York City in 1985, also wear masks and work anonymously. They describe the reason for the group’s anonymity: “We wanted the focus to be on the issues, not on our personalities or our own work.” In their talks, they encourage others to stay anonymous as well when working on feminist issues.
In Japan, so many people have spoken out on feminist issues only for the media to often emphasize and at times ridicule the activists’ appearance, fashion, age, title, etc. This obscures the actual issues that they have raised. This emphasis on the activists’ characteristics rather than the issue seems more likely when it is women or other minorities, such as people in the LGBTQ+ community, speaking out, or when men speak out in support of minorities.
Although Tomorrow Girls Troop is different from Guerrilla Girls—generationally, in country of origin, and in gender makeup, as we are not women-only—we trusted them and decided to work anonymously. After all, the Guerrilla Girls had been confronting feminist issues for 30 years.
Secondly, we wanted to be considerate towards those who were unable to work under their real name due to family issues such as domestic violence. Since the beginning of Tomorrow Girls Troop, we have always had such members.
We consider being able to work using one’s real name to be a privilege. It signifies that one may not be threatened, disowned by their parents, fired from jobs, harassed, or followed by stalkers or domestic violence abusers, or, even if such things occurred, one may have people around them that will help them or have a safe space they can escape to. Women and gender minorities are more vulnerable to such situations. We decided to create an anonymous group so that those in such unstable situations can also work together.