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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   29602 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 2, 2023

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Is South Korea all that feminist? Their current president was elected on a platform that included a promise to abolish the Ministry of Gender Equality, and his most committed supporters are vociferously anti-feminist. Hard to imagine such a man getting elected in, say, Sweden.

Are American political and social institutions really that liberal if Trump became president?

Agreed it is nonsense to consider Korea an exceptionally feminist society, at least for the developed world, and they genuinely do have a very large anti-feminist movement that played a big role in the last election. It should be said though the Ministry of Gender Equality wore a lot of people's patience thin for non-ideological reasons, like their attempts to ban videogames, or reduce prostitution by issuing checks to anyone who promised not to visit a prostitute.

The thing with SK is that the people you are talking about are a combination of the longstanding grievance about the men only mandatory military service and a reaction to a radical form of feminism holding significant power. Online communities like Megalia have had huge impact on the local incarnation of the movement and made it look (and sometimes be) insane.

Imagine if mainstream feminism was led by a women version of 4chan, goreposting, TND and all.

Not to say that the feminists don't have any good points, but rather that this is a very divided society when it comes to sex issues. The Korean Overton window is much more widely open than the Swedish one on this. Hardcore misandrists and misogynists are nontrivial political forces there.

If you have a Ministry of Gender Equality in the first place...

I see Sweden has had such a Minister since the 1950s, so South Korea isn't competing with them. Even so, South Korea shouldn't be characterized as a country with traditional gender roles.

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