This is one of those stories that proves, well, I guess it proves humans can come up with the most amazing/infuriating ways to drive each other crazy.
This one comes from South Korea. If you think America has a thing about ‘traditional values’ and how politics can be tangled up with them, it’s not a monopoly. This is taken from a NY Times guest opinion piece by Hawon Jung. The title is:
The Little Symbol Triggering Men in South Korea’s Gender War
SEOUL — One day, she was an ordinary working woman in South Korea, married with a son and designing ads for one of the country’s largest convenience store chains. The next day, she was branded a man-hating feminist on web forums popular with men, a “cancer-like creature” among an “anti-social group” of “feminazis.”
The hostility centered on an ad the woman had designed for camping products. It depicted a tent, a forest, a campfire and a large hand about to grasp a sausage. With its thumb and index finger pursed, the hand image is much like the pinching-hand emoji, a symbol often suggesting something is small.
Many men were furious, convinced it ridiculed the size of their genitals.
They threatened to boycott the multibillion-dollar company, called GS25. The woman, whose identity has been withheld by the company for her safety, desperately tried to defuse the situation. “I do not support any ideology,” she said in an online statement in May. She denied that her design was a veiled “expression of hate for men.”
Nonetheless, GS25 disciplined her and publicly apologized.
Tell me if this sounds familiar: women are making gains against The Way Things Are Supposed to Be, and it’s not going well.
The animosity has intensified recently as Korean men grapple with a new wave of feminism that since about 2015 has achieved hard-won gains against a deeply entrenched patriarchy. The backlash, coupled with the ascension of a conservative political party angling to knock out its incumbent opponents, presents a serious danger to women’s rights and gender equality.
According to the essay, women in Korea are subject to all kinds of discrimination in the work place over the full gamut, from pay to respect. The conservative right-wing People Power Party is using the war between the sexes and ‘mens rights’ as a means to electoral power. Apparently the gains made in recent years by women are triggering hysterical pushback comparable to the way a percentage of Americans lost their shit when a black man ended up in the White House.
To make some allowances, to live in Korea is to live in a country that has had some terrible experiences over the centuries. They have an advanced economy that is nonetheless relatively small and vulnerable. They have an unpredictable madman living next door with nuclear weapons. That would stress anyone out — but there’s more.
There’s a particularly relevant issue that’s a factor in the gender conflict. They have a special word for it: gwarosa — death by overworking.
Among OECD countries, South Koreans work more hours per week on average than all but one other country, and almost 50% more than famously industrious Germany.
This has led to a huge spike in the number of people dying due to overwork, industrial accidents and sleep-deprived driving. While long considered a male problem, the number of women taking their own life due to overwork has also increased significantly in recent years.
emphasis added
From a certain angle of view, it’s not hard to understand that men in a sexist culture where working to death is accepted as ’just how it is’, see women making gains in the workplace (and elsewhere) as coming at their expense. What some see as correcting an injustice to others can look like undeserved special treatment — especially if demagogues exploit the issue for political gain.
There’s also a certain element of WTF? if ‘progress’ is measured by a rising overwork death toll among women.
Absent a miracle or some vast cultural/social shift, the conflict will continue.
Many South Korean women refuse to return to antiquated ideals of unquestioning, uncomplaining mothers and caregivers. Our feminist awakening has given us the language to redefine our lives and name the resentment we couldn’t describe before. “We can’t go back to the past now,” said Lee Hyo-rin, who began fighting spycam-porn crimes after discovering feminism in 2016. “We will ride it out — no matter how high the tide is and no matter what these pathetic sexists say.”
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“The enemy wasn't men, or women, or the old, or even the dead. It was just bleedin' stupid people, who came in all varieties. And no one had the right to be stupid.”