Young South Korean Men Revolt Against Feminism in South Korea

SilentPony

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Its funny because I have a cousin who taught English in South Korea, small little town outside of Seoul. And he's just like a dude. He's not overly political, not overly buff or out of shape, he made eagle scout and likes to camp but also like plays DnD and likes going to the arcade and yadda yadda. Just like...a dude.
And in South Korea the other teachers teased him, good naturedly I'm sure, but teased pretty regularly for over 2 years, that he was a very mannish man and rugged. He didn't wear foundation, he didn't have eyeliner on, he carried a backpack, not a designer bag, he just like washed his nails, didn't get them serviced at a salon. Because that was the fashion for men. They were, what we in the states would consider, very effeminate, but the South Koreans just considered clean and idol like. And this was...2013-15, so a time ago, but not a long time ago.
its just funny there's some sort of social movement against feminism and whatnot, when about a decade ago my cousin's big takeaway from South Korea was how effeminate the men could be.
 

BrawlMan

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its just funny there's some sort of social movement against feminism and whatnot, when about a decade ago my cousin's big takeaway from South Korea was how effeminate the men could be.
Looks like we got another case of Asians wanting be more "Western" or white. Just another story about a group of assholes being insecure of their race and culture.
 

Gergar12

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Interesting story from a while back.

Edit: Read the whole thread.

Other than on skimpy female outfits in video games, I am basically a third-wave feminist. But the problem with the fourth wave is this.

Most of this deals with America

-It's too online, they need boots on the ground/canvassers, and people in corporations & governments to back them

-Too linked to the progressive movement which is currently floundering in the West

-Too much in-fighting(TERFs vs LGBTQ feminists vs sex-positive feminism, etc.)

In fact, I would argue if the civil rights movement happen today, it would either not succeed or rake longer. The internet is great for fundraising, bad for activism.
 
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Silvanus

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The modern political one, Bernie Sanders, the squad, and etc.
So, a few Democratic politicians in the US, then. That's funny, because "the progressive movement" sounded a hell of a lot more broad than that.

The truth is that "progressive" doesn't refer to one "movement". It's a broad descriptor for a thousand different political ideas, loosely on one side of a spectrum. There is no one "movement".
 
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Gergar12

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So, a few Democratic politicians in the US, then. That's funny, because "the progressive movement" sounded a hell of a lot more broad than that.

The truth is that "progressive" doesn't refer to one "movement". It's a broad descriptor for a thousand different political ideas, loosely on one side of a spectrum. There is no one "movement".
From my perspective, the women's march which was the apex of fourth-wave feminism which started around 2012 by Larua Bates was tied to progressive political leaders, and then it failed because of accusations of anti-Semitism of many key leaders. The problem is that without leadership, and mass decentralized movements can be cut apart, co-opted, and weaken. They should have either fought back better or accepted Jewish women into their leadership more broadly. They did neither.



This brings me back to the progressive movement, had they simply done what third-wave feminism did which was accept the help of corporations, and companies they could have made it into a broader movement, but they didn't, and it got picked apart by the establishment media like CNN.

Edit: to counter people who will attempt to correct me I mean all progressive political leaders not just lefty dems in congress.

Edit2:


Experts who follow protest movements said the group’s own successes — putting more women on the front line of American politics, inspiring a new wave of progressive groups, encouraging an unprecedented number of women to run for office — have rendered the Women’s March increasingly irrelevant. Others blame the failures on an organization that has struggled to find its purpose amid national controversies, financial mismanagement, accusations of anti-Semitism and a reputation for being unwilling to play nice with others.
 

Fallen Soldier

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Heh. I hadn't considered that it is not political but instead political-economic.

Anyway, war is bad!
*voluntarily engages in several*
Such a tragedy 😩
He loves to twists things around into some dumb narrative he has. Since when is war not political? Especially over resources? Also with the climate crisis, we might have wars over basic resources like water.
 

Silvanus

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From my perspective, the women's march which was the apex of fourth-wave feminism which started around 2012 by Larua Bates was tied to progressive political leaders, and then it failed because of accusations of anti-Semitism of many key leaders. The problem is that without leadership, and mass decentralized movements can be cut apart, co-opted, and weaken. They should have either fought back better or accepted Jewish women into their leadership more broadly. They did neither.



This brings me back to the progressive movement, had they simply done what third-wave feminism did which was accept the help of corporations, and companies they could have made it into a broader movement, but they didn't, and it got picked apart by the establishment media like CNN.
This is... there's a lot to unpack here.

Firstly, the 2017 women's march was not connected to any particular "wave". It was primarily a reaction to the Donald Trump campaign, and was primarily an American phenomenon. It was also so widely attended, and by so many different demographics, that it can hardly be said to represent any specific "movement" aside from women's rights in general and anti-Trump campaigners.

It certainly had nothing specifically tying it to the "fourth wave". And it had nothing really tying it to Laura Bates, either, who is a British writer, while the march was most notably attended in the USA.

Secondly, the third-wave does not owe its success to accepting the help of corporations. Corporations did not blaze a trail, they did not put their money where their mouth is. They did not even substantially change internal policies to address the concerns that feminists brought up. All they did-- all they continue to do regarding progressive politics-- is arrive on the scene really late in the day and make mealy-mouthed, empty statements of support.
 
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Seanchaidh

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2016 may seem like a very long time ago, but it wasn't actually 2012
 

Gergar12

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This is... there's a lot to unpack here.

Firstly, the 2012 women's march was not connected to any particular "wave". It was primarily a reaction to the Donald Trump campaign, and was primarily an American phenomenon. It was also so widely attended, and by so many different demographics, that it can hardly be said to represent any specific "movement" aside from women's rights in general and anti-Trump campaigners.

It certainly had nothing specifically tying it to the "fourth wave". And it had nothing really tying it to Laura Bates, either, who is a British writer, while the march was most notably attended in the USA.

Secondly, the third-wave does not owe its success to accepting the help of corporations. Corporations did not blaze a trail, they did not put their money where their mouth is. They did not even substantially change internal policies to address the concerns that feminists brought up. All they did-- all they continue to do regarding progressive politics-- is arrive on the scene really late in the day and make mealy-mouthed, empty statements of support.
The third wave wanted more women in companies, wanted an equal rights amendment, and affirmative action which all need corporate America's approval. They weren't able to close the wage gap, but got more women in the workplace, and were close to getting ERA. It got more women in government as well, but they weren't all democrats.

Also, I am pretty sure there were marches across the planet due to the women's march. They may have been smaller than the US ones, but it was a pretty big thing in the western world, and in Latin America.

It's the same thing with the teacher's union, it should be bipartisan, but it became mostly dem-dominated. I agree with the exclusion of anti-abortion people in the women's march, but they should have included liberal Jewish women as well.

Also, my point was that Laura Bates started the fourth wave of feminism, and then the women's march in 2017 happened where 4th wave feminism was at its apex in power.


 

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All they did-- all they continue to do regarding progressive politics-- is arrive on the scene really late in the day and make mealy-mouthed, empty statements of support.
They just follow whatever shiny thing the neolibs have glommed onto in their continued attempts to pretend to be functional human beings.
 

Terminal Blue

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The third wave wanted more women in companies, wanted an equal rights amendment, and affirmative action which all need corporate America's approval.
Waves do not represent unified interest blocs, they represent the environment within activist circles at particular times. The most obvious example is that the second wave was deeply, deeply divided between reformist and radical feminists who had fundamentally different goals. The idea that there was any consensus within the second wave about what they wanted or were working towards is something that has been applied retrospectively.

The third wave is even more nebulous because it isn't even really a coherent movement. With the second wave, you could at least point to this sudden surge of interest in feminism in the US and the UK in the 1970s. The third wave is generally identified with the new approaches to feminism that grew up in the aftermath of the sex wars of the 1980s, and the increasing popularity of minority feminist theory, like black feminism, queer theory or the new sociology of masculinity. The third wave wasn't a movement, but a reaction to the second wave and it's emphasis on universal sisterhood and solidarity, it's that point where people started to accept that being a woman (or a man) is more complicated than the second wave models could account for, and that there are hierarchies within the sexes and even within feminism itself that feminist theory and activism needed to address.

I think the mistake here, and it's a common one, is to equate the "third wave" with what was culturally going on at the time, because the third wave also marked the point at which feminist ideas were being incorporated into dominant culture and institutions. But you've got the power dynamics wrong here. Corporate America didn't "approve" of more women in companies, affirmative action and so forth. They wanted these things, because these measures all have sound economic justifications and/or were less troubling to corporate America than the alternatives. Activists are the ones who compromised and approved, because they weren't the ones with real power in that situation.
 
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TheMysteriousGX

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-Too much in-fighting(TERFs vs LGBTQ feminists vs sex-positive feminism, etc.)
TERFs aren't 4th wave feminists. TERFS aren't 3rd wave feminists. TERFs are a subset of second wave feminists. Hope that helps explain the "infighting"

There aren't successive "waves" these days.
 
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TheMysteriousGX

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Kind of back on topic, but considering the whole "thousand/tens of thousands of women getting exploited via spy cam" thing, the Nth room "literally hundreds of women and kids getting blackmailed and raped, footage sold to tens of thousands via crypto currency" thing, setting your men's rights protest at the same site as protests against those to complain about problems *not caused by feminism* is...I mean, what the fuck?

Like, military conscription? Sure, either make it equal or, better, get rid of it entirely. But what about the rest? Bar women from jobs to reduce competition, because somehow women don't also need money to live? Stop girls from going to school? How supervillain are we going here?
 
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Terminal Blue

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TERFs aren't 4th wave feminists. TERFS aren't 3rd wave feminists. TERFs are a subset of second wave feminists. Hope that helps explain the "infighting"
If you want to see this play out in practice, look at how Sheila Jeffreys and Judith Butler have ended up on opposite sides of the trans debate.

Jeffreys is only 8 years older than Butler, but their worldviews are utterly irreconcilable. That's because something happened between the 1980s and the 1990s that fundamentally shifted the landscape.

Jeffreys sees "women" as a self-evident biological category who are universally oppressed by men predominantly through violence and coercion. Butler sees women as an arbitrary grouping of very different individuals who exist as a discreet category in part because their relationship to power is less naturalized than that of men.

There aren't successive "waves" these days.
Also this.

Feminist theory hasn't really undergone any great shift or revolution since the mid-90s. There's unlikely to be any great difference between what a 40 year old feminist believes and what a 20 year old feminist believes. There are certain trends, and certain things which have intensified over that time (a lot of discussions of things like race and trans issues were really in their infancy in the 90s whereas today they're much more developed) but I find attempts to identify any "waves" after the 3rd to be increasingly trivial.
 
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