Loved the chapter. Just want to chime in on the debate, and on One Piece in general
1. Oda is sexist.
He treats male and female characters differently. Shocking, I know.
2. Zoro is sexist.
In the same sense that he too differentiates between boy and girls. A poster alluded to Zoro questioning an opponent's "manliness" in attacking Robin in an earlier arc. But even without the words coming straight from his mouth, it is pretty evident from the way he treats male and female opponents.
3. Zoro is strengthist.
He treats opponents who are weak and strong differently. But this in no way negates his sexism. You can make an argument that Monet being weak is the overriding factor in the Monet battle, but her sex was clearly a component as well.
4. Miss Monday is ugly and does not count.
Or rather not "womanly". Either way, she is not treated as a "woman". If Miss Monday was this flirtatious girl with big breasts with kyun moments, but was equally physically strong via special powers, do you think Zoro would have crushed her face to show his strength? I don't think Oda would have gone with that. Is this hypocritical or sexist? See above. This is also why Monet had those "monster" panels. More on that later.
5. Oda is not that sexist.
He portrays Sanji's chivalry, while as a positive, as something that is beyond the norm. He also clearly meant Tashigi's accusation about Zoro thinking women are weak to be a misunderstanding. In other words, he's not "all women are stupid" sexist, but he is clearly distinguishing gender roles in his work. Oda's view on women is clearly closer to Zoro's than to Sanji's or Luffy's (though even Luffy clearly treats men and women differently, despite being "asexual")
6. There are no consequences for being sexist.
In a course on ethics, if "treat woman nicely" and "protect friends" are two competing values, hypothetical scenarios in which they conflict can be used to find out their relative importance. This is commonly used in Shonen Manga, including One Piece, where the protagonist has to show he values his friends over his body parts or life span (so cliche) or whatnot. In this discussion, people use this to question Zoro's sexism. "If he wasn't sexist, Robin wouldn't have gotten hurt" or "If he wasn't sexist, he wouldn't have wasted so much time here when his friends are in trouble". This leads to the logical conclusion of "Even if there's a 1% chance of saving friends, isn't that more important than some sexist chivalry?"
Fortunately for Oda, this is not real life. There are no consequences to any action in the Manga unless he wants there to be. Therefore, Robin will be just fine, and Zoro would not be just a second too late to save Nami or Usopp from death. Is this a cop-out? Yes. Oda gets to choose when he wants choices to matter. He gets to cop-out He gets to be a hypocrite.
7. Oda is a hypocrite.
What is a real life choice for Oda, on the other hand, is story-telling vs. logical consistency. Sometimes Oda has the monster trio go all "nakama" and take on more than they can chew to protect their friends, and other times Oda will have them put on a smug face and go "I'll leave it to you because I trust you". These are not just cliche, but contradictory cliche. Is it reasonable that the Straw Hats can measure up the situation with 100% certainty? How can Luffy be 100% sure he can leave this particular mini-boss to Nami in this particular situation and ignore her?
It's because Oda is favoring a smoother story-telling over logical consistency. He's favoring giving Sanji personality in the form of some untenable "I will die before I harm a women" philosophy over the obvious logical conclusion that there are scenarios in which this will lead to the death of Nami-swaannn and Robin-chwaann. Fortunately, only self-harm appears as the alternative over hurting woman. Cop-out? Yes.
8. One Piece is a conventional Shonen manga.
Some readers are saying "I expected more from Oda" or "This is Bleach-esque". But this is silly. The matter of fact is that Oda has consistently favored style and flow over detailed consistency in One Piece, resulting in a clear Shonen feel. If you want a Manga in which every actor is carefully time-lined and reviewed for logically coherent actions, then perhaps you should be reading "Hunter X Hunter", "Liar Game", or "Detective Conan". But in reality no one really nit-picks at this or that detail. People are also reasonably lenient towards Shonen cliche's with moral cop-outs such as the tried and true "Beat the bad guy, turn my back, but he tries to stab me forcing me to kill him" that's so over-used in the mainstream. It's this sexist thing that's riling people up and not any other inconsistency.
9. Japan is a different culture.
But that's besides the point. Plenty of Japanese Manga have protagonists cutting girls in half left and right, and plenty (though fewer) Japanese Manga explore gender roles with more nuance. Just as you wouldn't care if Matt Damon goes all sexist on you in his latest film, you probably wouldn't notice if this happened in a Japanese movie. The only thing possibly relevant here is where Oda, whether through his own personal views, that of his editor, or that of his audience is reluctant to have Zoro act in a non-chivalrous manner and how this affects his badass-ness.
10. Consistency is in the eyes of the beholder.
Zoro's views suddenly changed, Zoro's views never changed, his views might have changed in the past two years, his views were effected by the childhood tragedy, blah, blah. Some readers are really stretching to paint Oda as a perfect post-modern God, some are really mad that their previous view of Zoro has been challenged by canon, and some are trying desperately to reconcile the two. But really, does it matter that much what Zoro's prior view on cutting women has been till now? Is this some plot-breaking out-of-character blight on the holy book of One Piece? Maybe Oda did mislead you or maybe he did not, it's a matter of interpretation really. And is this really that vital to his badass-ness or conflicting with his background or motivations? I don't think so (see above), and if Oda thought so, he wouldn't have ended it ambiguously.
10. Oda is being coy.
In contemporary terms, he's trolling. By now you should have realized that this whole thing was unnecessary. He set up this whole debate up in the first place by having it brought up by Tashigi (with a chapter-break cliff hanger no less), he also sets up cliched extenuating circumstances (cop-outs) for Zoro by turning Monet (completely gratuitously) into a cannibalistic monster (so now it's OK to kill her). Then he puts up this straw-man about "willing to cut women at least a little". Then having done all the needed background work, he sets up the dramatic slice-in-half scene cementing Zoro as the One True Badass. But.. JUST KIDDING!
11. I for one, enjoyed the troll very much.
12. For those who disliked the troll, just be thankful the punch line was in the same chapter.
Just imagine the ****storm if he had revealed it next week. =)
P.S. Sure I personally would like One Piece to be "deeper" or "have more depth" or "be more consistent" or "less conventional", and in particular disliked the way he handled my favorite character since the beginning of the series (also the reason I stopped posting here, all the **** hate), but these things, along with exploring ethical questions or cultural norms are really beyond the scope of this work. If you can see past that, then you'll realize that many of the qualities that makes One Piece great is present in this chapter, which is why I liked it.
P.S.S. Back to lurking