By Jason Lim
An San, a member of the Korean women's archery team, won three gold medals in the Tokyo Summer Games. You would think that would earn her unconditional acclaim from all Koreans, especially since she achieved them in Japan.
Apparently, however, her short haircut, attendance at a women-only university, and specific expressions used in her past social media posts drew suspicions of her as a potential feminist, attracting online attacks from presumably young Korean men.
These suspicions quickly devolved from there into a surreal fight between those supporting An and petitioning the Korean Archery Association not to force An to apologize for being a feminist and those who were accusing An of being a feminist and demanding that she apologize or renounce her gold medals.
If you are wondering when being a feminist became something that you had to apologize for, then welcome to the club. However, for some men in South Korea, the term carries radical anti-men connotations that rub particularly young Korean men the wrong way. And it seems that lots of seemingly innocuous things rub young Korean men the wrong way, bordering on the ridiculous.
What's especially mysterious is the overreaction that some young Korean men seem to have against the pinch motion formed by the index finger and the thumb. Yes, this motion is the same one made all-too-familiar by Apple for magnifying images on a screen or by cheesy tourists pinching a famous landmark (i.e., the Eiffel Tower) in between their fingers in their photos. The motion supposedly mocks the statistically small size of Korean men's penises.
Some Korean young men's overreaction to the pinch symbol leads me to the most incomprehensible part of the anti-An San saga in Korea during the Summer Games: the utter fragility of the young, Korean male ego. Actually, it's more than fragility. It borders on a collective, persecution complex, which is defined as, the "irrational and obsessive feeling or fear that one is the object of collective hostility or ill-treatment on the part of others," according to Wikipedia.
I actually gained an insight into the menu of unfairness that this population seems to feel against today's Korean society by coming across a social media post by a younger Korean man, presumably. It reads as the following (my translation):
Why am I being blamed when I didn't do anything wrong?
The posts against An San were done by Southeast Asians, but everybody is now blaming Korean men.
Men in their 40s and 50s sexually harassed women, but now I am the one who's forced to be celibate.
My generation can't get married, let alone have kids, yet we are accused of forcing women to raise children by themselves.
I am still a college student, but I have to go up against the women's quota system when looking for a job because there's supposedly more working men in society than women.
I studied via online lectures and got into a Seoul-based college fair and square, but now the government is mandating non-Seoul firms to hire grads from local colleges only.
I have to think twice about everything I say, lest I am accused of sexual harassment or being a radical male chauvinist, but feminists can say whatever they want and it's accepted as promoting gender equality.
At the same time, I am the one who has to make the first sacrifice, conscription for two years, and fulfill all duties that only fall on men, but still, I have my rights taken away from me.
Basically, it's a long list of "woe is me." It uses the basic argument of, why is the world against me when I haven't done anything wrong? It's an argument that a toddler might employ, not something that you would expect from a college student. The self-blindness against the obvious sense of entitlement is glaring, especially in a society where the gender wage gap is the highest among the OECD countries ― at 35% ― and the pandemic has had a disproportionate impact on women's family lives, employment and personal health by all measures.
The rhetoric that's coming from some young Korean men worriedly reminds me of the INCEL groups in America. INCEL stands for "involuntarily celibate," and represents a group of young men who have rallied around a violent, misogynistic ideology centered on the injustice of women not having sex with them. It's already proven to be deadly, with perpetrators claiming victims from California to Canada.
INCEL is about more than sex, however. As Jia Tolentino writes in the New Yorker, "Incels aren't really looking for sex; they're looking for absolute male supremacy. Sex, defined to them as dominion over female bodies, is just their preferred sort of proof." Similarly, young Korean men aren't protesting against feminism per se. The word (and women) has just become a convenient strawman against the ongoing shift in structural and cultural power dynamics that is empowering women to gain more agency over their lives and in their choice of sexual partners. This reality isn't a problem for Korean women. It's a problem that happens when young Korean men inherit a traditional sense of male entitlement but the society they live in no longer automatically enables them to attain those entitlements.
Jason Lim (jasonlim@msn.com) is a Washington, D.C.-based expert on innovation, leadership and organizational culture.
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Apparently, however, her short haircut, attendance at a women-only university, and specific expressions used in her past social media posts drew suspicions of her as a potential feminist, attracting online attacks from presumably young Korean men.
These suspicions quickly devolved from there into a surreal fight between those supporting An and petitioning the Korean Archery Association not to force An to apologize for being a feminist and those who were accusing An of being a feminist and demanding that she apologize or renounce her gold medals.
If you are wondering when being a feminist became something that you had to apologize for, then welcome to the club. However, for some men in South Korea, the term carries radical anti-men connotations that rub particularly young Korean men the wrong way. And it seems that lots of seemingly innocuous things rub young Korean men the wrong way, bordering on the ridiculous.
What's especially mysterious is the overreaction that some young Korean men seem to have against the pinch motion formed by the index finger and the thumb. Yes, this motion is the same one made all-too-familiar by Apple for magnifying images on a screen or by cheesy tourists pinching a famous landmark (i.e., the Eiffel Tower) in between their fingers in their photos. The motion supposedly mocks the statistically small size of Korean men's penises.
Some Korean young men's overreaction to the pinch symbol leads me to the most incomprehensible part of the anti-An San saga in Korea during the Summer Games: the utter fragility of the young, Korean male ego. Actually, it's more than fragility. It borders on a collective, persecution complex, which is defined as, the "irrational and obsessive feeling or fear that one is the object of collective hostility or ill-treatment on the part of others," according to Wikipedia.
I actually gained an insight into the menu of unfairness that this population seems to feel against today's Korean society by coming across a social media post by a younger Korean man, presumably. It reads as the following (my translation):
Why am I being blamed when I didn't do anything wrong?
The posts against An San were done by Southeast Asians, but everybody is now blaming Korean men.
Men in their 40s and 50s sexually harassed women, but now I am the one who's forced to be celibate.
My generation can't get married, let alone have kids, yet we are accused of forcing women to raise children by themselves.
I am still a college student, but I have to go up against the women's quota system when looking for a job because there's supposedly more working men in society than women.
I studied via online lectures and got into a Seoul-based college fair and square, but now the government is mandating non-Seoul firms to hire grads from local colleges only.
I have to think twice about everything I say, lest I am accused of sexual harassment or being a radical male chauvinist, but feminists can say whatever they want and it's accepted as promoting gender equality.
At the same time, I am the one who has to make the first sacrifice, conscription for two years, and fulfill all duties that only fall on men, but still, I have my rights taken away from me.
Basically, it's a long list of "woe is me." It uses the basic argument of, why is the world against me when I haven't done anything wrong? It's an argument that a toddler might employ, not something that you would expect from a college student. The self-blindness against the obvious sense of entitlement is glaring, especially in a society where the gender wage gap is the highest among the OECD countries ― at 35% ― and the pandemic has had a disproportionate impact on women's family lives, employment and personal health by all measures.
The rhetoric that's coming from some young Korean men worriedly reminds me of the INCEL groups in America. INCEL stands for "involuntarily celibate," and represents a group of young men who have rallied around a violent, misogynistic ideology centered on the injustice of women not having sex with them. It's already proven to be deadly, with perpetrators claiming victims from California to Canada.
INCEL is about more than sex, however. As Jia Tolentino writes in the New Yorker, "Incels aren't really looking for sex; they're looking for absolute male supremacy. Sex, defined to them as dominion over female bodies, is just their preferred sort of proof." Similarly, young Korean men aren't protesting against feminism per se. The word (and women) has just become a convenient strawman against the ongoing shift in structural and cultural power dynamics that is empowering women to gain more agency over their lives and in their choice of sexual partners. This reality isn't a problem for Korean women. It's a problem that happens when young Korean men inherit a traditional sense of male entitlement but the society they live in no longer automatically enables them to attain those entitlements.
Jason Lim (jasonlim@msn.com) is a Washington, D.C.-based expert on innovation, leadership and organizational culture.
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