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Julia Knapp

Professor Smyrl

ENGL-123-5009

7, May 2021

Misogyny in Shortcomings

Tomine's “Shortcomings” story is about a character, Ben Tanaka, who shows toxic

masculinity energy toward women and hate for Asian people. Behind the scenes, Ben has self-

hate issues of being an Asian man. In “Shortcoming”, Tomine touches on subjects like issues of

toxic masculinity, self-hate, and anti-feminism. Tomine talks about topics of feminism and race.

In each chapter, the scenes that I have chosen show how Ben projects his self-hate on Asian

people and dislikes of women that he is interacting with non platonically.

In Chapter 1, Ben Tanaka and Miko Hayashi are talking about Miko’s new job in the

Asian community movie industry. After seeing Miko’s new movie, Miko is excited about her job

and tells Ben about the Asian movie festival that she had been working on. However, Ben shows

no interest and enthusiasm towards Miko’s success in her new job. He seems irritated about

Miko’s success and harshly criticizes the movie that Miko helped create. Then Ben changes the

conversation from Miko’s new job success to his movie theater job. Ben talks about how his

theater job is better than Miko’s job. Ben views his job on a higher scale while criticizing Miko’s

job by stating “That’s right...a REAL movie theater where none of those movies are good enough

to play at” (Tomine, 12). Tomine shows an example of Ben expecting his toxic masculinity in his

relationship. He interrupts Miko to talk about his job. While talking about his job, Ben degrades

and makes rude comments about Miko’s job to try to destroy Miko’s self-esteem. He also shows

signs of being insecure about having a less impactful and successful job than Miko. Tomine also
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points out that Ben has a problem with movies that starred and are produced by Asian people.

Ben seems to have a problem with seeing Asian culture being positively represented which is sad

because he is an Asian man.

In Chapter 2, Ben talks on the phone with his friend, Alice Kim, about Autumn Phelps

who he met at his theater job. He had been interested in Autumn while being in a relationship

with Miko. In a previous scene, Ben went to Autumn's house. At her house, Autumn shows Ben

her polaroid pictures of her pee in the toilet. She takes these photos every day. Now back to the

scene, Ben complains about Autumn’s pictures and musical performance to Alice by stating “So

she’ll writhe around on stage with a bunch of naked creeps, and she’ll take photos of her piss

every day, but kissing me ...apparently that’s too disgusting for her'' (Tomine, 50). Here, Tomine

emphasizes the issues of Ben’s judgemental attitude toward women who freely express sexuality.

Ben feels threatened by Autumn for taking pictures of her pee in the toilet and having music

performances with naked people. He hates when women that he is interested in do not fall into

his set of rules. Clearly, Ben thinks that he should have control over women that he is sexually

and romantically interested in. Ben has many outdated sexist beliefs about women and men.

In Chapter 2, Ben and Sasha Lenz (Ben and Sasha hooked up before) talk about Sasha’s

girlfriend coming back into Sasha's life. Sasha explains that Caitilin is coming back into her life.

Sasha feels guilty about the whole situation. Ben does not take this news well. Ben tells Sasha

“Huh...it just seems kind of deceptive. I mean, you made it pretty clear that you two had broken

up, I wouldn’t have pursued anything if...” (Tomine, 71). It is ironic that Ben is not okay with

Sasha going back to her girlfriend but he is alright with him cheating on Miko. He does not take

responsibility for cheating on Miko and is overly critical of women. Ben does not think men
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should be held accountable for abusing and cheating on people but when it comes to women, it is

a whole different story. This is an example of Ben showing his toxic masculinity.

The last scene I chose is from Chapter 3. In this scene, Ben is arguing with Miko. He saw

Miko with an White man which upset him. Ben criticized the man, his race, his job, and how he

met Miko. Ben accuses Miko of cheating on him and not being honest in their relationship by

complaining to Miko “I guess I didn’t know that “taking some time off” meant that you could lie

to me and f+ck around behind my back!” (Tomine, 99). In other words, Ben is showing how he

is a misogynistic hypocrite. He hooks up and flirts with the women behind Miko's back but when

Miko is talking to another man behind his back, Ben puts all of the blame on her. Ben also

gaslights Miko for seeing another man while hiding his infidelity secrets behind closed doors.

Ben does not point to Miko that he has been seeing and sleeping with a couple of women while

on a break with her.

The 4 scenes that I chose show different examples of how misogyny and sexism play out

through the eyes of the main character, Ben. From reading Shortcomings, we see that Ben is a

misogynistic and insecure Asian man. He does not have a problem with being faithful while

being in a serious relationship with Miko but when women are unfaithful to him, Ben puts the

blame on them. Ben also feels the need to control every woman with whom he is in a

relationship. He has misogynistic views on women who express their sexuality. Ben projects his

insecurities on women he forms a connection within “Shortcomings''. Beneath it all, Ben is

insecure and full of self-hate. He struggles with his masculinity because of the stereotypes that

society places on Asian men.

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Work Cited

Tomine, Adrian. Shortcomings. Faber And Faber, 2016.

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Essay Letter
Dear Professor Smyrl,

My favorite part about writing my essay was learning more about toxic masculinity
through reading about it in the Shortcomings. It helped me write my essay and
understand toxic masculinity better. The most difficult part about writing my essay was
finding good quotes for my scenes and writing an explanation for each quote. It was
difficult for me because I am not good at explaining how quotes in my essay go with the
topic in my essay. The feedback that I got in the rough draft essay that I used in my
essay is correcting my MLA formatting and writing more about my feminist analysis
output in my final paragraph.

From Julia Knapp