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PaperclipPerfector  16d ago (text post)   24741 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 29, 2024

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WTF is going on in Korea?

Meta: I haven't posted in the CWT in a minute, Life gets in the way. This post is going to be mostly copy pasted content from elsewhere. I will attempt to consolidate some of it here. It's probably going to be a very sparse list compared to all the relevant pieces of context, but I attempt to shed some light and discuss nevertheless.

TLDR: The "Gender War" is a significant aspect of the Korean culture wars. And it seems to be more pronounced in Korea than any other society. I really want to know why. I think this bears studying given gender relations are deteriorating globally, and if Japan is 10 years ahead in neetdom, South Korea is definitely 10 years ahead in whateverthefuck dom this is. Their infamously low birthrate is also an elephant in the room, whilst we have this discussion.

Exhibit A

This culture war survey:

Page 12, We can see that Koreans most of all nationalities think there is significant tension between men and women. Koreans tend to top the charts for other questions as well, so it might just be the case that the Korean social fabric is especially frayed, or Koreans are just especially neurotic or self-critical.

However, it does seem that the social fabric is fraying like no other on multiple fronts in Korea:

Exhibit B

Just simple web searching. If something is in the air, people are probably talking about it. Or inversely, if people are taking about it, it stinks.

It does seem that the Gender War is becoming more "interesting". Not especially so in Korea however. But try the search term "reddit war $COUNTRY", and lo and behold, you actually get posts about it when you try with COUNTY='Korea'.

Some examples from the first page: https://old.reddit.com/r/Hangukin/comments/1708gpj/can_people_explain_to_me_wtf_is_going_on_with_the/, https://old.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/18cnto9/whats_going_on_with_the_gender_conflict_and_it/, https://old.reddit.com/r/korea/comments/18qlyqe/why_does_the_battle_of_sexes_seem_more_pronounced/, https://old.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/19bvpjq/whats_the_deal_with_feminism_and_antifeminism_in/, https://old.reddit.com/r/SingaporeRaw/comments/192yymo/do_you_think_singapore_will_face_a_south_korean/

Exhibit C

"The incel election" Enough said? I don't think there is much other evidence required that this is a significant CW front in Korea.

Youtube video - Gacha Drama and the Korean Gender War (You can disagree with thesis, I'm just linking to show its a thing people are picking up on)

Study - The Gender War and the Rise of Anti-family Sentiments in South Korea (You can disagree with thesis...)

Exhibited D

This is totally comprised of anecdotes, but I buy it.

Some comments from the reddit posts above: Common theme, Korean feminism dials the man-hate up to 11.

Answer: radical feminists are really, really, radical in Korea.

Interesting that you hear about how "young men are turning to right" all the time, but at least based on these, outside of SK the men are fairly stable, yes moving to the right but the graph is not very steep. On the other hand the women seem to be moving to the left at a much steeper incline, but nobody ever talks about this

Women's social media is a different breed of animal. Lab created.

Korea take feminism to ANOTHER level bro...

Being a westerner in Tokyo I've dated three Korean raised women and all three were absolutely, balls to the wall, rabid, men hating psychos who regularly voiced violent fantasies of what they'd like to do to Korean men.

All three were utterly confused when I'd tell them the kind of stuff they were saying wasn't acceptable in any way and would respond with "but you're a westerner, I thought you supported feminism".

Like no, woman, your idea of 'feminism' shouldn't be angrily ranting about cutting off dicks and sodomizing men. You can say three people isn't a large enough sample size to judge something by but I also think it's enough to be suspicious of whatever the hell they're branding feminism as over there.

So what gives? Why did the gender war hit Korea like a truck?

Korea is already on its way to extinction, so at least this won't be a problem for that long, but still, I am really left scratching my head. Are there any historical examples of this ?

One running theory other than the normie, "It's because they work really long hours hurr durr" (which does have a massive nugget of truth to it), is that Korea is especially unfathomably status obsessed. All that exam cramming, all that plastic surgery, it's all indicative.

I point out the above because most countries the gender war is more along the lines of "incel men" vs "feminists". Men are usually the active camp complaining about not getting anything from women, women complain about not getting anything from society, men take the aggressive stance. However, in Korea women are on the offensive as well, this seems unique to me.

I always feel that everytime I read about East Asian social problems, it’s extremely focused on highly educated upper middle class striving part of the population. But then what about the remaining 80%+ of the population? What do Koreans who don’t do well at school think? The ones whose parents just run a shop or works for the municipality or something? People who never thought about buying a flat in a good area anyway? Surely there is also a real massive drop in the fertility rates of such people as well and it’s not because they are off studying or working 80 hours a week?

Semi-unrelated, I remember reading several years ago that one of the causes of Japan's low birthrate, or just more of a general problem, was everyone moving into the big cities, emptying out the rural countrysides. Maybe something similar is happening in Korea, and the non-urban areas are depopulating?

Right. The Atlantic magazine article linked talks to a bunch of upper-middle class English-speaking Koreans, many of whom studied in the US (something very few Koreans ever do unless they come from rich families). The birthrate collapse can’t be blamed on them really, cities have been IQ shredders for affluent strivers for a thousand years, possibly forever.

Factors Playing Into Korea's Gender War

Korea is susceptible to outside influence for a few reasons.

  1. Korea was a nation that occupied and had much of its culture destroyed during WWII and suffered enormous losses and destruction during the Korean war.
  2. Korea saw rapid economic development, transforming from one of the poorest nations to one of the richest nations in a few decades.
  3. Korea is a relatively small country, with most business and culture highly concentrated in the capital city of Seoul. Nearly 50% of the population live in or near Seoul.
  4. Korea has rapidly adopted the internet. Almost 98% of Koreans own a smartphone today, the highest in the world. Korea was quick to adopt the internet when it was able to and it has become a major part of daily Korean lives.

There are some other factors to consider that tie into the Korean culture war:

  1. There are huge expectations from Korean society. From a young age, Korean children are bombarded with expectations about education, dating, looks, physique, social status, success, etc. There is a reason Korea has one of the highest suicide rates in the world. Korean women have one of the highest rates of plastic surgery in the world. For example, a lot of Korean women (and even men) have their jaw bone cut and removed to restructure their face.
  2. Korean web culture and gaming/webcomic culture is a huge part of Korean lives. There is a reason the first professional mass-scale competitive esports, Starcraft, arose out of Korea of all places. So a lot of users are susceptible to changes/things in those spaces.
  3. Many Koreans are struggling economically, a point which is covered in depth in @rokmonster's response.
  4. Mandatory military service for Korean men. All men have to serve 1.5 years in the military (used to be 2 years until very recently). The compensation for military service is very little, so Korean men feel like they are penalized when trying to enter the workforce. Factor in the increased amount of women entering the workforce and men are starting to feel like they are falling behind.
  5. Factor these together and you end up with many Koreans that go to video games, webtoons, etc as a means to escape their highly stressful lives. So anything that can be seen as an attack on video games/webtoons/ etc. is going to be highly impactful. Factor in the shared culture and Korean's time/access to the internet and this leads to more explosive results and drama that bleed into Korean culture and life.

Here is an interesting comment I found on reddit with some stats:

Have you heard about Japan's herbivore men? That a large statistic of men aren't having sex or dating? Korea is worse. From demo 19-39 of age, roughly 75% of respondents see dating as a fear or dangerous. Reasons include: possibility of inflicted violence, gender discrimination, gender related crimes like falsely accused of SA (men) or becoming a victim of illegal recording (women), record low interest in marriage etc.

On a question "Is Korea is more favorable towards men or women?" Each sex accused each other of having the advantage and both believe they are the overwhelming victim. Historically, legitimate sexism against women did exist prevalently. But today, it's really a grey area for most developed countries where gender-specific issues do exist but it's the most equal the 2 sexes have ever been. Compare gender equality 50 / 100 / 250 / 500 / 1000+ years ago where women were second class citizens.

75% of young people are afraid of dating. That's a huge number. Korea had its own version of #metoo across many politicians, celebrities, etc, with some cases even ending in suicide (for both victim/accused). People are too stressed studying and working, they don't have the time to date. No doubt Korean internet/social media is having similar effects warping people's perspectives the same way it is doing to people in the west, and you also end up with Koreans that have warped views of the genders.

It's also interesting that both genders view themselves as the victim and that the other gender has unfair advantages. There likely is an element of truth to their claims, and this is a classic case of the grass being greener on the other side.

Megalia's Legacy And Influence On How Feminism is Viewed In Korea

This isn't the first time Korea's gender war caused huge controversies in the country. Megalia was a highly controversial feminist website that had a large influence on shaping Korean views on feminism during 2015 and 2016. According to Wikipedia, 50% of women in Korea considered themselves feminists and 25% of them attributed Megalia as the reason for it. That's 12.5% of women being influenced by a singular group, and supposedly Megalia was extremely full of misandry, with statements wanting to kill all men, calling men bugs, if they had a boy they would abort, celebrating actual stories of men being murdered, and other standard anti-men statements take up to the next level of extreme.

Just some examples of things members in the community did:

  1. A teacher encouraging a male student in middle school to commit suicide.
  2. Poisoning men with antifreeze.
  3. Kindergarten teacher indicating she wanted to have sexual relations with a male child.
  4. A more comprehensive list in Korean: https://namu.wiki/w/%EB%A9%94%EA%B0%88%EB%A6%AC%EC%95%84/%EC%82%AC%EA%B1%B4%20%EC%82%AC%EA%B3%A0

To try to keep things fair, here are some points in support/defense of Megalia:

  1. Statement of Megalia was satire to highlight how men talk about/treat women in Korea. They were taking what men said and just changing the genders around.
  2. Megalia brought to attention issue of hidden cameras in women's bathrooms.
  3. They raised awareness of violence against women, organizing around tragic events such as the murder of a women from a man who claimed he did so because the hated all women.
  4. Megalia shut down sites such Soranet, which distributed illegal pornographic material.

Here are some related drama that happened around that time related to Megalia that the west got some exposure to:

https://old.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/4tk21u/id_like_to_share_a_disaster_happening_in_korea/ https://old.reddit.com/r/news/comments/4xummg/korean_actress_kim_jayeon_fired_by_gaming_company/ https://web.archive.org/web/20201225070116/https://np.reddit.com/r/manga/comments/4u5jbb/last_3_days_for_korean_manhwawebtoon_community/

To spare the details, there was a lot of controversy in Korea's internet, kdrama, gaming, webtoon spaces all tied to Megalia and feminism.

People made all kinds of attempts to tie Megalia and its influence to other related scandals. For example, in 2016 there was a huge political scandal involving then president Park Geun-hye being influenced/controlled by a shamanism cult. 2 million people ended up protesting and she later got impeached and arrested for the scandal. People online attempted to tie this to a conspiracy of hidden cabal of rich women in Korea using the media and politicians to support the ideas that came out of Megalia. Supposedly the Justice Party, the third biggest political party in outright declared public support of Megalia and members of Megalia infiltrated Korean news media, the Huffington post, politics to push their agenda. The source of this data is suspect so I would take this information with a grain of salt, but the point is that Megalia had such a huge impact on Korean internet discourse.

This is all past drama, but it had a huge net negative impact on Korean men's view of feminism. Even Korean women's support for Feminism began to drop due to all the controversy around it. More sensible feminists in Korea make sure to distance themselves from Megalia, but it seems to have left a permanent negative connotation of feminism in the eyes of Korean culture. If you look at recent trends, feminism has decreased outright support in Korea, such as the number of women in their 20s considering themselves feminist dropping to 31.3% in 2023.

Recent Korean Gender War Drama

I'm going to talk a bit more about the video brought up in the OP: Gacha Drama and the Korean Gender War

It's quite an informative video, although it misses some crucial context which is the information I covered above. It does seem like he covered the topic a bit in his follow-up video, but I don't have the time to watch it right now.

To summarize the video, there was controversy in a Korean gacha mobile game because a promised swimsuit skin (cosmetic purchase for a video game character) for the female character was a wetsuit, while the corresponding swimsuit skin for a male character was just a regular swimming trunk with his abs exposed. Gamers got angry and thought this was driven by feminist ideology and that their precious games were forced to be censored (remember how important games are to Korean culture?). They found a female artist on the project who had extremely feminist views (retweeting tweets from Megalia, except it was 5 years ago), blamed her for this, and pressured the company to fire her. However, it turns out this was completely false, the actual artist of the swimsuit skin was a male, and the main decision maker to give the female character the wetsuit was also a male. So to outsiders, it just looked like a group of gacha gaming incel men bullied a company into firing someone for political reasons even though said person's political views had no bearing on the decision the game company made.

Here is a decent writeup of another recent gender war controversy in Korea: https://old.reddit.com/r/korea/comments/18dz3je/least_biased_perspective_on_recent_megalia_hand/

Take a look at the hand sign in Megalia's logo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megalia#Reaction_to_Gangnam_Station_femicide

While the official stance on the meaning of the hand sign is that it represents an equal sign, in reality, it was used as a way to insult men's penis size. It's basically a dog whistle much akin to the ok sign being a white supremacist symbol. Unlike the ok sign, which was a hoax perpetrated by 4chan, the Megalia hand sign was used by actual members of Megalia to insult men.

An online shitstorm happened about 2 weeks ago when an animation studio Ppuri (뿌리) was under fire because netizens discovered the infamous hand pinch sign in the promo video of Maplestory's Angelic Buster Remaster. At first netizens thought it may have been just a coincidence but upon digging into this studio's previous contract works for various gaming companies, more and more hand pinch signs were being discovered to no end (games: Maplestory, Dungeon Fighter, Blue Archive, Epic 7, Eternal Return etc). In many cases hidden within a single frame of a trailer.

Gallery of these hand signs found recently from just this studio.

However this hand sign controversy first appeared a few years ago with GS25's camping poster and a few other companies. The biggest difference between the incidents from before and the most recent one is that one of Ppuri's lead animator (Datso) was dumb enough to tweet that she worked on the Maplestory project. Revealing her past tweets and retweets linked to feminism and general misandry. Her tweet "I've never quit feminism, I'll keep doing it" has become a meme because of her phrase "은근쓸쩍 스리쓸쩍." Which I think is a really funny phrase but I have no idea how to translate it to English. Sneakily cunningly? So if you've seen the gallery and knowing this particular lead animator's political views, I think it's safe to say that it's no coincidence. It's also inconclusive to say that this animator is a Megalia user. Nevertheless the backlash has been significant.

Personally, I think this hand sign thing is blown a bit out of proportion, maybe some of these are intentional but I also think from certain angles and resting positions that pinching hand gesture can just come out naturally. Regardless, it's become a tainted symbol and something animators/game developers have to be conscious of in Korea now. Outsiders looking into the current Korean gender drama just see a ridiculous controversy, but they don't have the contextual understanding of how tainted feminism and anything associated with it has become in the eyes of the general Korean public.

I also don't think their concerns are completely unfounded even if you ignore the context. If you've been following gaming, you'll know about all the controversies related to gender/beauty that have riled recent produced names, especially from Western developers. There were controversies regarding body types, characters made to look ugly (such as in Pokemon Go), progressive storylines/ideas being pushed via Sweet Baby Inc. the list goes on and on. These trends can be argued to stem from a Feminist perspective. Stellar Blade is a recently released title from Korea that opted to not play into those tropes and instead allows a main character to be a conventionally sexually attractive female, but even that game now has a controversy around censorship. For Koreans looking at these developments on the West, it's not far a stretch for them to want to protect entertainment being produced in their own country from meeting such a fate.

Ultimately what comes to the West is highly filtered and the only reason these stories even come here is because Korean games/webtoons/tv shows/drama/kpop has a fan following. Actual gender/political war issues are less likely to make their way to the West because the number of people who would care about such things is significantly smaller.

Someone told me once that Korea is a very trend-following society, perhaps more than any other country on Earth. Something comes along, it gets trendy, and then the entire nation gets crazy into it, for good or ill. Like, Kpop wasn't always a thing, it just exploded in the 2000s. They also have these weird food trends that seem to come and go like lightning (right now "salt bread" is a thing, with huge lines at popular bakeries. i have no idea why.)

This isn't a new phenomenon, and it also applies to religion. Buddhism spread to Korea in like 300 AD, and they immediately got super into it and it became the state religion in 372 and then was launched to other east Asian countries through Korea. Same with Taoism, and with Christianity in the 19th century, it just hits like a tidal wave. And, apparently, the same thing with Feminism and gender wars.

I would guess that it's just part of being a small, homogenous, tightly-knit country. Since they have their own language, they're a bit isolated from the larger Chinese and English speaking worlds. Culture just spreads and evolve really rapidly there. I guess it's sort of like how evolution happens fastest in small isolated populations, and much slower in larger populations.

Salt bread would presumably be the direct translation of what in Japan is called 塩パン. It's pretty good, buttery salty goodness. But I wouldn't stand in line.

It's not that small. If South Korea got teleported to Europe, it would be the 7th largest country by population. It is small by area and has a very high population density, though I'm not sure if urban population wouldn't be a bigger factor in ease of fashion spreading. And South Korea is surprisingly far from the top on that metric.

Its different though. Europe is all connected by the Eurozone, geography, and so many of them all speaking English. South Korea is effectively an island, walled off by the no-man's-land of North Korea, and no common language with any neighbor except really strange English

I'd say the decisive factor was the armistice in 1953, and the Americans not leaving. The war was never terminated in a clear manner, and was instead transformed into the mess that persists to this day, with the DMZ and so on. Had the North Koreans been capable enough to successfully and swiftly reunify the country through force, as it happened in Vietnam, Korea today would be a more or less normally functioning, average Asian nation, as Vietnam is. This'd be preferable to the current situation. One consequence of American military presence was the widening exposure of the populace to American cultural concepts, such as radical feminism. Also, there wouldn't be any Sarah Jeongs in the US.

Another factor was the assassination of President Park Chung Hee in 1979, which the Americans probably had some role in by either abetting it or supporting it. If there was one South Korean leader after 1953 who had both the willingness and ability to turn the country into a more or less normally functioning Asian nation without the current social dystopia of implemented cyberpunk, it was definitely him. If given 5 or 10 more years, it might have worked. But it was not to be, and he was replaced by a stooge of Washington.

How do you know that a Korea ruled by the North would be a non-basketcase country, as opposed to just being actual-North-Korea-but-bigger?

I don't know. But that's what I consider plausible by looking at the one relevant historical parallel, Vietnam.

As with anything sociological, an examination of the Korean situation is incomplete without an economic background.

  1. Wages have historically been low in Korea.
  2. Korea is a cutthroat meritocracy.
  3. Men (or their parents) are still mostly valued as "providers".
  4. Housing prices in Seoul, the only city worth living in, have almost tripled since 2018.
  5. This generation of women is the first generation to be fully entering the workforce.
  6. Buying a house is a precondition to marrying under Korean social norms.
  7. Koreans, in comparison to Westerners, don't like to violate social norms.

What 1 (low wages) + 2 (cutthroat meritocracy) imply is that Korean men have to work hard to get promoted to management if they want to support their family. This has historically taken the form of 60-hour work weeks (8 hours plus "voluntary" company dinners, Monday to Saturday). As women enter the workforce, the culture of company dinners has been pared back, and now it is 8 hours plus unpaid evenings if one wants to have a chance at being promoted to manager. (Women don't on average put in those hours, since 60% of them plan on leaving the workforce when they are married and have kids.)

Adding 3 (the social role of men as providers) means that their value is measured by the thickness of their wallets, and their wallets are on average not very thick, because 1 (wages are low) and their wallets are getting thinner, and less valued, because 5 (because women are entering the workforce).

Now owning a home is a precondition to marriage (and childbirth) in Korea, and this means that it is mostly the upper middle class which can afford to have kids. So you get a whole generation of women who were raised by their mothers in houses where their fathers were working 60-hour weeks to be that upper middle class. They grew up in material luxury, but their fathers would home drunk late at night after these company dinners and pass out immediately. They see their mothers working thanklessly in their home, barely time for a conversation with their fathers, and want none of it. Thus the mythology is born. "Korean men suck."

These women in the upper middle class have gone onto college, where they major in the humanities and are exposed to the imported concepts of third-wave feminism. Men are the oppressors, women are victims, and life sucks because of patriarchy. Life does suck. They try going into the workforce and see that wages are low and the culture sucks. Must be the patriarchy holding them back. (To emphasize the point, men in their cohort who enter the workforce had their mandatory military service counted as work experience and so enter at a higher pay level.)

Growing up in the upper-middle class with material opulence, these Korean women have high expectations for their quality of life, and instead of finding a marriagable high-status husband, their age-matched prospects are only poor men who are struggling to get ahead in the rat race. Then when they are looking for a husband, none of the available young bachelors have any money or free time. Nobody is buying that house! If they are schooled in third-wave feminism, the message is clear: "Korean men suck."

These feminist women go into jobs like journalism, where they write tons of articles about how terrible the men are, with no consideration for the economic constraints that got the entire society into this position. They hit age 30 (or 35) and are forced to marry by social forces (and that ticking biological clock). If they are marriageable, they end up settling for a man who they are not happy with, read HuffPost, and inhabit "mom cafes" online where they post screeds about how terrible men are. If they have poor personalities, they write screeds even more vociferously about their bosses and the men who rejected them. Somewhere, they read that foreign men are feminists and get the idea that foreigners will support them. (And boy the stories I have of what happens when they actually meet foreign men!)

(Women who were aware that their fathers were making sacrifices for them see the feminists going off the deep end and no longer feel comfortable calling themselves feminists.)

Young Korean men, on the other hand, see their fathers working 996, and instintively understand that their fathers are working as a sacrifice to provide material wealth for the family. They see that the women of their cohort (especially the self-proclaimed feminists) do not appreciate these sacrifices, and especially don't appreciate the sacrifice they made in lifetime to keep the country safe from the North Koreans. The women appear thankless and shrill. The men put their heads down and try to work harder to get ahead. If they are responsible, they save every last penny to buy that house when they get married.

The left-wing Moon administration rejiggers the housing market to try to lower housing prices, and ends up adding fuel to the fire and doubling housing prices in three years. The left/feminist wing also hushes up several cases of sexual assault by the left-wing mayor of Seoul, who commits suicide when the allegations become public. The right-wing candidate vows to abolish the "Ministry for Women and Family" (English translation: "Ministry for Gender Equality"), which is seen as a think-tank and jobs program for these radical feminists. In response mostly to housing prices but partly to the MfWaF who hate them and the hypocricy of the leftists covering up sexual assault, men in the next election vote for the right-wing candidate.

Korean journalists - especially ones who know enough English to write for foreign journals like CNN and the NYT - are largely drawn from those upper-class women who went through college in the humanities and were radicalized on third-wave feminism. The election of a right-wing government is portrayed by these Korean journalists (who never studied economics and don't want to talk about the rapey left-wing mayor) as a sign that Korean men hate women. (The actual surveys show that they hate "feminists".) Western media comes to believe that Korean men are sexists engaged in a gender war, as everything available in English is filtered through the lens of Korean feminists.

Edit: And as my Korean friend points out, Korean journalists frequently cite foreign (CNN, NYT, etc) articles about Korean gender wars to assert that these things are real, without thinking about the filter effect and the fact that the foreign journalists' friends are all upper-class English-speaking Koreans (i.e. filtered for feminists).

I think the question becomes why has the gender war not turned hot in Japan, which has similar economic factors?

That's a good question, but I don't know anything about Japan.

Also, I somewhat dispute that the gender war has "turned hot" in Korea. I think this "gender war" mostly journos trying to make a big issue about gender, for the reasons outlined in the second half of my grandparent comment. Surveys in 2021 showed that in every demographic surveyed, "inequality between men and women" was considered less of a problem in 2021 than in 2016. Also, if you are not terminally online you won't notice any gender war. (But Korean society does tend to be terminally online, so most people are aware of some feminist/anti-feminist drama. )

I can't name sources in a hurry, and this might be a faulty explanation, but I think a partial reason of this is due to Korea turning super-neo-Confucian during the Joseon dynasty/period. This is most evident after the Qing conquest of the Ming, which the Koreans responded to by considering Qing China as not having political legitimacy*, and doubling down on their interpretations of neo-Confucianism; but strands of this are evident even earlier, when Korean scholars rejected Ming-dynasty innovations (e.g. the Lu-Wang school) in favour of elaborating on older models, most prominently from Zhu Xi. Even today you can see a much, much more obviously hierarchical system regarding personal relations present in Korea than in Japan or China, even counting pre-PRC China (edit: at least contemporaneously).

China, on the other hand, did have such reevaluations, and the Manchu conquest prompted significant soul-searching, resulting in things like the kaozheng school of thought. Japan's kangaku, likewise, did not hunker down in the same way Korea did.

I could easily see how a more hyper-Confucian society that's had a crash course in modern liberal democracy and capitalist markets would create sex-based resentment, especially if you introduce a dose of feminism into it.

*For further reading you could go look at how many Koreans at the time considered themselves to be sojonghwa and the real inheritors of Chinese political culture and civilisation, now that actual China was overrun by "barbarians". This was to the extent that, IIRC, Joseon Korea refused to use Qing dynasty regnal years as part of its calendar, and continued counting as if the last Ming emperor (?) was still in power. Also note that this was not entirely unique to Korea; there were politicians and thinkers in Japan and Vietnam who shared this opinion.

Some element of this after the "loss of China" in the 17th century likely contributes to Korean culture today. I've been told by native Koreans about how the older generations still sometimes say outright that "since the fall of the Ming there has been no worthy Chinese (persons)"; and there's always some loony Korean nationalist scholar, never taken very seriously, insisting on how this or that aspect of Sinosphere civilisation (from festivals to Chinese characters, so on and so forth) actually originates from Korea.

and there's always some loony Korean nationalist scholar, never taken very seriously, insisting on how this or that aspect of Sinosphere civilisation (from festivals to Chinese characters, so on and so forth) actually originates from Korea.

Oh, that's where this comes from! I've seen Chinese people complaining about this, but I never understood why it was a thing that the Koreans did, and it always struck me as bizarre.

I'll stress that that part is my own conjecture, and doubtless modern nationalism and fear/mistrust of the PRC plays into this phenomenon as well. But it seems unlikely to me that the historical background didn't contribute to this. And that the Chinese usually overhype whatever minor Korean nutter has to say for their own purposes as well, to the extent that the average Chinese is probably more misinformed about the actual state of understanding in Korea (where Koreans rightfully mostly relegate such hyper-nationalism as mostly batshit insane).

Then there are things that are just kinda...dumb, like the Chinese getting irate at the Korean dragon boat festival getting recognised internationally (honestly who gives a shit? It's like Italians getting upset about modern British celebrating a derivative of a Roman festival). That stupid thing about kimchi and paocai thing still confuses me to this day (not the background facts, but the sheer idiocy of it, as well as the initial irresponsibility of the Chinese press).

I'll file this away as an unconfirmable theory, then. :-)

If you mean that Koreans have nutters who claim Chinese things — and other things too, for that matter — are actually Korean, no, that's real. The Chinese do grossly exaggerate the extent of belief, of course.

The festivals thing I was thinking of was related to Lunar New Year. I'm going off this by memory, so couldn't find a source in time.

The Chinese character thing was something found originally here, where some Korean novelist and former(?)-professor expounds on the idea that actually proto-Koreans created Chinese civilisation before migrating to Korea (by equating proto-Koreans simultaneously with the Shang and the Dongyi). (Apparently the same person was also featured in a video here earlier this year where he more explicitly claims that Chinese characters are Korean. That video has been private'd, but some vengeful Chinese netizen has re-uploaded it)

(I also somehow found this looney tunes Korean guy claiming that English is descended from Korean?)

Again, these things aren't taken seriously by the (vast?) majority of Koreans, but they do exist (as do more mainstream but still silly nationalistic punchups). This is also not to elide that you see loony shit from the Chinese (and Japanese, and every ethnicity really) as well -- sometimes even from the state organs!

My conjecture is that some part of this historical revisionism has to do not only with modern nationalism and geopolitcal rivalry, but also a longer-rooted hostility that has fomented since the Qing conquest.

Don't worry, I know the nutters are real. It's just that I'm going to have to try hard to not get carried away with this cool new explanation that you provided. :-)

I'm coming here from the QC thread, and I must agree that this is an absolutely fantastic post. I was wondering why the gender divide was so huge in Korea, and this answered it quite nicely.

How did you get this info? Are you Korean yourself? Do you have friends that live there? Or is this all from reading articles/online discussion boards?

Is the primary complaint of women in Korea really that the men don’t have enough money, then? That hasn’t been widely reported.

I'm sure you could find more, but even just a brief perusal gives me examples of this from the Atlantic in an otherwise unsympathetic piece. I feel like it's pretty well known even with only a relatively passing interest in Korea.

Two examples inside that article are that of an engagement getting broken off because a downturn in a business owned to-be-groom's parents spooked the to-be-bride and her family, and a late-50s university lecturer finding out that he wouldn't meet the salary demands outlined by Korean women now.

Yes, it doesn't add up, although the general narrative of the comment is fairly convincing. Simple anthropology tells us that roughly an equal number of boys and girls are born into upper middle class South Korean families. They have the same advantages in life. For every single woman with high expectations, there's a well-paid single man of similar social status.

Except the UMC-raised men don't have the same financial status now as the UMC women did when they were growing up; they're earlier in their careers and thus lower on the finance/status ladder than the women's fathers were. Contemporary young UMC men also seeing their wages diluted by women's entry into the labor market and rising housing costs. The latter are actually double whammy, as higher rents hurts UMC men's ability to save for a home/family, and higher home prices means that their diluted savings don't go as far when it comes time to get married and buy a place.

Except the UMC-raised men don't have the same financial status now as the UMC women did when they were growing up; they're earlier in their careers and thus lower on the finance/status ladder than the women's fathers were.

It seems like a person would have to be awfully stupid not to notice this about their own life?

The latter are actually double whammy, as higher rents hurts UMC men's ability to save for a home/family, and higher home prices means that their diluted savings don't go as far when it comes time to get married and buy a place.

Hence why in America women generally contribute to housing costs. I'm not sure about the statistics, but Americans mostly seem to buy houses when already engaged/married/ready to have a baby. Do they not in Korea? If not, why not?

It seems like a person would have to be awfully stupid not to notice this about their own life?

People often are, particularly about personal preferences.

Do they not in Korea? If not, why not?

I can't say about Korea, but in China there's a whole Thing about buying houses, and who pays, and who owns it in the marriage, and who gets it in the divorce. It's like someone took America, realized that we're all sappy romantic meme-infected morons, and solved for the equilibrium. Which turns out to be a ruthless financial battle of the sexes.

If Korea has gone further down the Neo-Confucian gender-role rabbit-hole than China, combined with the same Western personal freedom as long as you don't marry, no wonder it's such a nightmare.

Especially with the male oversupply (see: one-child policy and preference for sons), at least up till quite recently, owning a residence is considered the minimum requirement for getting a decent match in China, at least in the urban areas. It gets to the point where multiple generations might be investing in a property for a son so he can get ahead (admittedly not just in romance; also stuff like residency status and rights, but I am very far from an expert on this)

More anecdotally, I know of Chinese women who openly discuss/brag about what sort of make of car/house/whatever accessory they require before giving a man the light of day.

Not sure how the owning a house thing is doing with the property market still in freefall.

To me, this sounds a lot more plausible than “#MeToo did it.” The articles looked political first and theoretical a distant second.

What’re you basing this on? What gives you this impression?

Without doxxing myself, all I can say is that I am immersed in Korean life. My source is mostly synthesis of what people have told me over the years while talking to me candidly and first-hand observation while experiencing the rat race. In my workplace, I saw men putting their children to bed on Kakao Facechat. In my extracurricular activities, I met a few mid-30s journalist women who were writing for foreign-language outlets. I saw friends get married, be disappointed, and turn bitter, and know many who cannot afford to get married.

So you should treat the above as original research, almost anecdotal. I was trying to convey the economic and social forces which push men and women into discontent with each other (well, mostly a subset of women into discontent with men), but also the filtering effect of what gets to English-language media, and the citogenesis effect of the English-language media on Koreans' understanding of their own culture (which I think is despicable).

Thanks. I got the impression it was something like that.

To emphasize the point, men in their cohort who enter the workforce had their mandatory military service counted as work experience and so enter at a higher pay level.

Well, there's a rather self-evident political option to remedy this.

Buying a house is a precondition to marrying under Korean social norms.

Is there any society where owning a house/apartment is not generally considered necessary before marriage?

In America you’re totally allowed to rent, and if you have a plausible story and one set of parents is willing you can live with them- my parents lived with dad’s family at first.

And there are plenty of societies(eg Albania) where owning your own home before marriage would be seen as highly unusual or possibly suspect. They’re not societies most people want to live in, but neither is Korea.

It's not just the ownership that matters, it's that renting is frouned upon, housing loans are not cheaply available (30% down payment is common, IIRC), housing is treated as an investment, the closing price for typical condos is now 20x~30x the median annual salary. I only know one 20-30 year old who purchased a condo in the last 5 years without parental assistance (and the one guy sold his startup to a conglomerate for millions.)

My wife and I were married for nearly a decade before we bought a house. In the US.

I'd guess that marriage and owning a house are generally somewhat correlated here, but I know a plenty of married couples with kids who rent.

Is there any society where owning a house/apartment is not generally considered necessary before marriage?

Just across the yellow sea there is a quite similar culture that didn't have this expectation; in China the (male's) parents would typically buy a house when their child gets married - and subsequently move in with the newly married couple. Hence the preference for sons, since you'll get your adult child to take care of you in old age, whereas the parents of the woman just get a dowry.

The preference for sons in China goes deeper, as in older tradition the sons of a family perform the sacrificial rites due for ancestor worship. But it is true that the pragmatic aspect of this was of significant concern as well, enough for (no longer extant) jokes to exist about families being "robbed" by having many daughters but no sons.

Then again, go back that far and often enough the newlyweds would just live in the (husband's) family compound...

Is there any society where owning a house/apartment is not generally considered necessary before marriage?

Plenty of married couples rent? That's without going into the "living like a pack of sardines at your parents' place, possibly with your sibling(s) and their spouse(s)" arrangement that was pretty common in my parent's generation, even in Europe, and is likely still common in poorer parts of the world.

Plenty of married couples rent?

I'm sure they do, generally as long as they're still childless. Once they're not, I'm not sure most people see that as a viable option.

Tell me you're American without telling me you're American.

That's only managerial class and above Americans. Plenty of Americans have kids while renting, even in smallish apartments.

I'm in fact not American.

And boy the stories I have of what happens when they actually meet foreign men!

You can't write this and then not give us anything!

Haha. You fell for the bait! Ok, some anecdotes that come to mind now. Might add more later:

  1. Careerist girl in her early 30s spent years watching South Park. Gets really good at English (in a South Park drawl!), but remains single for years. Discovers the Man of Her Dreams on Tinder. Spends two months raving about how perfect he is, how Tinder is different in Korea. Then learns he was also dating three other Tinder girls.

  2. Staunch feminist sits next to foreign guy on the subway. Guy completely ignores her. She tries to get his attention, he keeps ignoring her. She gets up and starts berating him for "manspreading," threatens to take his picture and put it on Twitter. Incident resolves when he threatens to take her picture and send it to the police for harrassment.

  3. Tall (= tough dating prospects) artistic (=open-minded) girl falls in love with a foreign guy. Everything seems to be going well, except he's not very patient about her lack of English fluency. He takes her home to meet his family ... and it turns out they all live on a trailerpark. Relationship survives until he goes on a date with another girl. When she does meet a guy who is patient with her, that's one of the points she brags to her friends about.

  4. Staunch feminist in her early 30s meets foreign guy. Everything is going well, except that he walks out of a movie when it gets to a particularly girl-power scene. She has a two-week identity crisis over meeting someone so "anti-woman".

  5. Early 20s reader of The Ethical Slut finally finds the rich foreign gentleman she's been trying to snag. Comes back raving about how the first date was amazing, he must have spent $500 between dinner and the hotel, she's finally found the man of her dreams. A week later he has to go on an international business trip, and stops answering his phone. Oddly, his phone is ringing like it's still in Korea ...

Early 20s reader of The Ethical Slut finally finds the rich foreign gentleman she's been trying to snag. Comes back raving about how the first date was amazing, he must have spent $500 between dinner and the hotel, she's finally found the man of her dreams. A week later he has to go on an international business trip, and stops answering his phone. Oddly, his phone is ringing like it's still in Korea ...

To be fair, this behavior is genuinely puzzling.

Why? That’s not much money for a high earner and seducing a very desirable woman for a night and then moving onto the next one definitely beats almost any other alternative spending option in terms of satisfying the male psyche

Fair enough. When I first read it, I didn't notice that the story also entails boning.

Staunch feminist in her early 30s meets foreign guy. Everything is going well, except that he walks out of a movie when it gets to a particularly girl-power scene. She has a two-week identity crisis over meeting someone so "anti-woman".

Please talk more about this one. What did the identity crisis entail? Was she astonished that someone could be so "anti-woman" or was it more self reflecting on how her own actions made her look to him? Or something else?

Staunch feminist sits next to foreign guy on the subway. Guy completely ignores her. She tries to get his attention, he keeps ignoring her. She gets up and starts berating him for "manspreading," threatens to take his picture and put it on Twitter. Incident resolves when he threatens to take her picture and send it to the police for harrassment.

It’s like a darker, grittier version of this scene… [trigger warning: anime]

You can't write this and then not give us anything!

Check the quotes in the original comment, I suggest.

Sure I've read those, but I'm curious to hear more.

It's just the same old shit. They get their "information" about the West from clickbait trash sites, and conclude that Western men are different, when, in fact, men are just men everywhere, and women are just women everywhere. Also, women want fried ice.

Fried ice what?

That's the point. Fried ice does not and can not exist. It's an old Arab proverb, supposedly.

If we can fry ice cream…

That was about how much they hate Korean men; how are western men "different" to the degree that they don't deserve their dicks cut off? I don't read clickbait articles targeted at Korean women.

Apparently Korean women assume that they are feminist allies, and aren't icky betas, I suppose.

My Korean wife seems 100% unaware of this but in her defense she spends most of her online time-wasting reading about domestic drama on a Korean coupon-clipping forum and a Korean credit card churning forum.

Is a Korean coupon clipping forum literally a place where Koreans talk about coupon clipping (and also apparently domestic drama???)???

It's literally a coupon clipping/deal-searching forum but there seem to be a lot of unrelated dramatic threads. I don't speak korean so I have no idea.

https://www.missycoupons.com/

Apparently such time-wasting is also the norm among Chinese wives.

Okay, but how bad is it really?

Looking at the Unherd article, for example. Their thesis: #MeToo caused radical misogyny and conservative backlash. Their evidence: one survey showing young men were unusually hostile to the current president. A second survey, published in 2019, saying they really disliked feminism. And then a smattering of demographic and dating stats which don’t really measure opinion so much as try to justify it.

If that’s the quality of evidence, I’m not sure it can be distinguished from garden-variety fearmongering. Hey, our students don’t really like Biden. Does that mean the Democrats are at a crossroads of anti[femin/egalitarian/Semit]ism?

On the other hand, SK apparently elected their antifeminist. That speaks a little louder. Has he actually acted on his alleged platform? Because this sort of narrative is what I’d expect to see from a smear campaign.

Okay, but how bad is it really?

Surely bad enough to result in probably the lowest fertility rate anywhere in written history. So yes, pretty bad, I think.

Korea doesn’t have the lowest fertility rate anywhere in the world right now, though, does it? I think Hong Kong and Macau at least are lower, and maybe Taiwan as well. And while SK is lower than the PRC, it’s not massively lower. Really east Asia just has really low fertility to the point where Japan is an outlier high TFR nation.

Hong Kong is lower by a little, but the others are higher. Macau actually has a TFR of above 1...!

Exactly- SK has regionally-normal fertility, Japan and probably North Korea are high TFR outliers for the region.

Maybe... Japan is doing something right especially given the cards they've been dealt with.

Correlation isn’t causation. I’d be willing to bet that their birth rates predate whatever this is.

I'm very skeptical of the idea that South Korea's birth rate is a product of gender war. It just seems like a miserable place to live, where children are drafted into the rat race as soon as possible, forced into 4 A.M. tuition classes for exams they're going to write a decade later, coming home at 10 PM, then doing it all over again, until you eventually graduate, get a job and can inflict the same rat race on a new kid who has the misfortune to emerge from a South Korean womb. An endless labyrinth of status games that makes the experience of parenthood and childhood uniquely awful, even by the infamously taxing standards of East Asia.

It may be that the miserable nature of the South Korean lifestyle makes dating logistically difficult, and as a consequence men and women develop mutual hostilities simply because they have fewer opportunities to come into intimate contact with each other. But I'm just speculating.

One point of commonality between Korea and the West is that these stories of "gender polarization" are really just about sharp radicalization of women, and the author's need to coach that observation in both-sidesism for political correctness. There's a graph that circulates on Twitter frequently about how Western youth are supposedly polarizing sharply away from each other, with women becoming more left-wing and men becoming more right-wing, and if you actually look at the graph it just shows men becoming mildly more conservative, a change that is barely perceptible, while women are stampeding to the left.

There's a graph that circulates on Twitter frequently about how Western youth are supposedly polarizing sharply away from each other, with women becoming more left-wing and men becoming more right-wing, and if you actually look at the graph it just shows men becoming mildly more conservative, a change that is barely perceptible, while women are stampeding to the left.

South Korea is an exemption though, as far as I can tell.

My suspicion is that Korea is just a sucky place due to their lifestyle and that places which are sucky for fixable-seeming reasons(Koreans could just not do the things that make them miserable if they could figure out the coordination problem) are drawn to radical and generally bad ideas. You used to see it a lot with communism; tsarist Russia was genuinely worse off than its neighbors even if everyone expected it to catch up eventually. I'd hazard a guess that Korea has built-in antibodies to communism for obvious neighbor-related reasons and that it has no such antibodies to feminism, allowing it to run wild into radical man-hating.

In other words, Korean gender wars are a side-effect of the same factors driving down the birth rate. And I've pointed out before that people don't have kids if they expect it to be a miserable experience all around which for Koreans is a very reasonable and grounded expectation. I like to compare to rednecks in America who absolutely love being parents and have a replacement fertility. My tribe's TFR advantage isn't because of our better family values, it's because we expect to actually like it(well, kind of- I'm talking about the broader red tribe here and not about tradcaths specifically, that TFR is probably due to conservative family values).

and that it has no such antibodies to feminism [other than that mandatory military service thing], allowing it to run wild into radical man-hating.

Yes, that's called "being a fully mechanized nation". Most Western powers ran into this somewhere around the 1900s, and women were first granted rights above and beyond men (as in, "rights without corresponding responsibilities") in those nations around that time- you see that with the right to vote most prominently [without the corresponding duty to be drafted into a war they voted themselves into, something we see in Ukraine today], but prohibition and minimum-age requirements for brides are their doing as well.

I think the pedofascist was/is trivially correct when he made the point that these policies, from the start, are properly viewed as radical man-hating; tearing down the places they'll go after work and putting ever-increasing caps on the quality of women they can afford with no suitable substitute are not exactly pro-man things (worth noting 1984 begins with a description of "the only woman a middle-class income affords the average man is an ugly, infertile, prostitute", and then Winston finds a secretly-transgender [from a biological standpoint] woman who he has wild sex with before the Gender Police torture them to ego death; I believe Orwell predicted modern gender politics to a tee). In that light, first-wave feminists must have been motivated by the same hatred/anger that motivates third-wave feminists (and the white-knights for each wave similarly motivated), and it's always the legitimately transgender individuals that are used as tokens by said women only to later suffer from it (in this case, "the 1% of women who actually are competitive with the men want the right to pursue those opportunities"- something that would fit under the trans umbrella as 1900-1950s society would have understood it; today, the genders are reversed, where men are demanding the opportunities and privileges of women).

[Further effort post: the concept of transgenderism is coherent from a strictly biological standpoint, and our instinctive grouping of all non-straight-as-in-established-man-on-youngest-possible-woman sexuality into "biology should not predict this behavior therefore the people that do these things are malfunctioning" is also coherent, but the people who are transgender under this definition are not the people most people would claim it is today!]

But if the complete obviation of the biological male gender role was such an impending disaster, what let us avoid those consequences for so long? Well, the post-war WW2 boom pushed the economic balance in the West far enough towards men that it was the women who couldn't meaningfully co-ordinate to soak up so much wealth, but that was over by 1980 and the problem our great-grandparents failed to solve has returned to haunt us once again.

Korea, then, is experiencing this for the first time, in full force, being that they have only just made it to full mechanization (they weren't in a position to benefit from post-WW2 booms especially thanks to that civil war)... and being a US-occupied nation means they have to deal with the US' cultural outlook/propaganda, which is currently tilted in the gynosupremacist direction. It's probably worth considering how the Japanese managed to avoid this problem, but I think that was because they mechanized in that boom time and managed to lock in a "the genders aren't actually at war with each other" mindset (and their rule-following did the rest) [but they still haven't dodged the problem, because all the good gender relations propaganda in the world can't actually solve a problem of 996/economics].

The Koreans, by contrast, didn't make it in time- but they also happen to be blazing a trail (being a smaller nation) whose trajectory men (and women) in the wider West would be wise to observe, regardless of whether it fixes the problem or conclusively demonstrates it's not fixable.

And I've pointed out before that people don't have kids if they expect it to be a miserable experience all around which for Koreans is a very reasonable and grounded expectation.

I think it is true for Americans as well; states that have successfully kept angry/neurotic women from destroying the rights of parents to allow their children to enjoy life as much appear to have higher TFRs, even though their average income would take even more of a hit by having kids. Sadly I can't find a by-state breakdown of TFR for 1920 to prove that, so my evidence for that ends at the car seat thing.

without the corresponding duty to be drafted into a war they voted themselves into, something we see in Ukraine today

It sounds like a very American thing, to assume that all wars are something you vote yourself into.

I don't think Americans think that about most wars we get involved with, either. There's rarely a chance to vote against them.

It may be that the miserable nature of the South Korean lifestyle makes dating logistically difficult, and as a consequence men and women develop mutual hostilities simply because they have fewer opportunities to come into intimate contact with each other. But I'm just speculating.

This is also my suspicion about what's going on in the West. Not to the same degree or because of the same factors, but because social atomization drives people apart. This leads to fewer connections with other people, fewer relationships with opposite-gender people (platonic and romantic), fewer intimate connections with people you share a background with, alongside more internet doomscrolling, more online dating, more echo chambers. The main way men and women are coming into contact with each other is through online dating apps. And even the people who have success there (according to whatever their definition of that is), both men and women, regard it as a necessary evil.

It's no wonder men and women hate each other: they know each other only through the adversarial, hierarchical, soul-destroying apps.

And even the people who have success there (according to whatever their definition of that is), both men and women, regard it as a necessary evil.

It's no wonder men and women hate each other: they know each other only through the adversarial, hierarchical, soul-destroying apps.

I may be an extreme outlier in this but I’ve met, hooked up with, and dated a lot of women (and eventually married one) from dating apps and both me and the women I met for the most part regarded the experience as fun and rewarding. I’m close friends with a couple of my former partners and we’re all happy about it. It was not appreciably worse than meeting women in person. This was mostly in the Bay Area so maybe it’s an unrepresentative market for how good online dating is/bad in person dating is. I’d be happy to keep hooking up with bumble chicks if I hadn’t met my wife.

Every single time I use Online Dating in the past five years, the dates never happen. We match, we talk, I ask her out, she says yes, she bails, I ask her out again, she says yes, she bails again, I get the hint and stop talking to her. This is AFTER I lose weight and move to a major metro area.

This whole thing is getting crazy enough that it is even leaking into NPR on my commute and I've heard several stories about it from major news outlets. They of course are spinning it as the eventual chickens coming home to roost from having men that do zero child rearing and housework and also having the women work outside the home too (which is what they wanted!). But regardless of how they got there, they have a solid point. No one is going to willingly sign up for a life of wage slavery + all domestic tasks, that is fucking crazy town. You or I wouldn't do that!!! It is no wonder women are mad and opting out. It is the only rational option.

No, being a housewife is the only rational option.

They of course are spinning it as the eventual chickens coming home to roost from having men that do zero child rearing and housework and also having the women work outside the home too (which is what they wanted!).

Yes, it's what they wanted, but without social dislocation and other unintended consequences (heh). That is, I'm sure what feminist women generally assumed back in 1970 or so was that men will be OK with picking up the slack when their wives and girlfriends start abandoning their restrictive gender norms i.e. men will be willing to make dinner, look after the kids, go on parental leave etc. and women will like it.

It is no wonder women are mad and opting out. It is the only rational option.

Yet few if any are pushing for a return to the majority of women being stay at home moms without careers.

Majority of people don't have careers, and never had. Being a grocery clerk, factory worker, some low paid service sector employee or lowest rung bureaucrat or manager or something else for 30 years isn't a career. It's a job.

And from the other side of the mirror- living around many people who think that the majority of women should be housewives without careers- almost all of them don't push for women to do all domestic tasks and think husbands should at least contribute even if for practical reasons most housework and childcare is going to be done by women.

Well no of course not. Women are people too and that sucks as a life.

and that sucks as a life.

Objection, arguing facts not in evidence. Plenty of women still live such a life an find it extremely rewarding and fulfilling.

Well then it sucks to be the kind of person that would enjoy life as a breeding machine + house servant. Maybe some people love it, but that is pretty close to being dosed with alcohol as a fetus so you'll enjoy being a Delta in a Huxley book.

  • -23

I think being a parent is cool too, but if you're expected to do all the house work, childcare and also work a job outside the home that is a terrible deal.

So are stay-at-home mothers mentally deficient breeding machines and house servants, like you just said they were one post prior, or did you decide during the intervening three hours that it's actually okay since they don't have to also work outside the home?

Also, can you explain what sort of virtue is conferred by... say... a job schlepping boxes at Amazon, such that it distinguishes real human women from mere broodmare house slaves? What is it you think makes schlepping so much more righteous than maintaining one's own family home? Do you think boxes are more important? Do you think Amazon appreciates it more? Please, by all means, enlighten us.

Let me see if I can talk around all the words you're putting in my mouth...

When you give women the option not to be a stay at home mom...most take it. When they have the option to have fewer children, most take it. Hence the reduction in family formation and lack of children. Revealed preferences.

Also, talk about a straw man. Yeeeaaaash.

Funny that you posted this just yesterday, "If you want I can make up an arbitrary position, ascribe it to you, give you hell for not defending it, and then conspicuously stop responding when you point out that you've literally never said such a thing."

You are channeling Hlynka!

  • -12

Me:

So are stay-at-home mothers mentally deficient breeding machines and house servants, like you just said they were one post prior,

You, one post prior:

Well then it sucks to be the kind of person that would enjoy life as a breeding machine + house servant. Maybe some people love it, but that is pretty close to being dosed with alcohol as a fetus so you'll enjoy being a Delta in a Huxley book.

I seriously can't believe you even tried to play the "putting words in my mouth" card. Like you realize everyone can see all these posts, right?

When you give women the option not to be a stay at home mom...most take it. When they have the option to have fewer children, most take it. Hence the reduction in family formation and lack of children. Revealed preferences.

That's nice, but I didn't ask you about any of that, did I? No, I asked you what it is about a menial routine job like most people have that elevates a mother from a subhuman object of your personal contempt to, presumably, a real human being.

Running a household used to be a complex operation requiring the deployment of a lot of different technical and personal skills as well as management and long-term planning. If modern labor-saving machinery and industrial techniques have obsoleted this role and made people unhappier, perhaps that might have implications for the obsoleting of further social roles and jobs via technology.

Good point! It is going to be interesting as every single human role is done better by machines. We'll be 100% obsolete. I am fine with that as I am pretty good at living a life of indolence and base enjoyment, I've never defined myself by my work. This will not be the case for many and I'm sure a lot of people will be made very upset.

This is an interesting, arguably uncharitable take on motherhood. I think being a mom is the highest calling there is, right up there with being a dad. If one's perspective is that parenting is selfish or whatever, you know bringing a child into a life of pain, etc. at least that argument I understand. What I don't sympathize with is this idea that having kids and raising them (which yes includes cooking, washing, cleaning, folding, ironing, lather rinse repeat) is robotic mindless drudgery. I guess if your goal is sucking the marrow out of life for yourself that's probably true, but I never found that so appealing.

True enough, if only one person (the woman, and alone, without her own mother or anyone else) is doing everything in the home, that's a weird, unfair dynamic. I mean get up off the goddam couch and clean the tub, hey. That may be rather your point --not the idea of domesticity, but the inordinate burden on women to do it all and all alone.

I don't know to what degree tgis is true among modern Koreans. I'd offer anecdotes but those wouldn't shed much light I expect.

I think being a parent is cool too, but if you're expected to do all the house work, childcare and also work a job outside the home that is a terrible deal. That seems to be the expectation in Korea, so again, it is no surprise that a smart women won't sign up for that!

I think you agree that is a bad deal. If you look at the stats even here in the states women do a lot more of the childcare and housework even if they are working the same hours as men. That isn't to say I don't think men get a raw deal in a lot of ways regarding harder more physical jobs, forced military participation, etc...etc...but to claim that women were happy to be house slaves before someone learned them wrong is also disingenuous.

Is it the expectation In Korea? Certainly for hardcore traditionalists, though hardcore traditionalists wouldn't want the wife working at all. I am not convinced the current parenting age generation is so inclined, though it makes for a rich discussion to believe so.

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Ah yes, people with different preferences that aren't aligned with your politics are all malfunctioning mutants. Of course.

So you want to be a breeding house servant? Is that the kind of life you would chose for yourself? If you think it is a good one why aren't you living it? If you would like to I would be happy to employ you for child rearing in exchange food and a place to sleep! If you could also work 40 hours a week to be able to pay for my house that would be great too!

This is all mixed in with the recent population decline panic, which is another silly thing as human labor is going to be 100% obsolete inside of the next 2 decades.

Also my Huxley joke is actually hilarious and I'm upset you didn't chuckle at it. The motte is honestly far to serious most of the time. Lighten up people!

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If you could also work 40 hours a week to be able to pay for my house that would be great too!

I would remind you that none of your interlocutors AFAICS are advocating that women work full-time jobs as well as do all the domestic work. They are suggesting that women be stay-at-home mums.

The motte is honestly far to serious most of the time. Lighten up people!

It's serious because jokes and sarcasm have a tendency to escalate into yelling matches. This is actually to some extent written into the rules.

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Women wanting "liberation" is a modern phenomenon, so unless the 96% of women in 1895 that were opposed to suffrage along with their ancestors for thousands of years were Huxley's Deltas it feels like you're projecting modern culture and mores onto the past.

So you want to be a house servant? Is that what I am hearing here? We don't live in the past, we live in a world of birth control and equal rights. The revealed preference is a lot less barefoot in the kitchen pregnant style living. You don't have to take my word for it. Why do you think birth rates are dropping like a stone?

Is woman wanting "liberation" a modern phenomenon or did they always want more control over their lives? If you made the mistake of educating one I mean. Mary Wollstonecraft was 1792 and she wasn't the first.

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we live in a world of birth control and equal rights.

For now. The only nations to survive will be ones that give up on the failed experiment of granting women equal rights

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