From "A World Without Men/The women of South Korea’s 4B movement aren’t fighting the patriarchy — they’re leaving it behind entirely" (NY Magazine).
In December [2016], as Korea’s fertility rate hovered at 1.2 births per woman (it has since slid to 0.78, the lowest in the world), the Korean government launched an online “National Birth Map” that showed the number of women of reproductive age in each municipality, illustrating just what it expected of its female citizens....
Women were outraged by the map, observing that the government appeared to consider them “livestock”... Several... digital feminists responded with a boycott to the reproductive labor expected by the state and decided that the surest way to avoid pregnancy was to avoid men altogether. It was through these online communities that 4B emerged as a slogan, and ultimately a movement....
Like any social movement, 4B has its own internal rifts and divisions: Can 4B women be friends with men? With women who still want to date men? Does lesbianism privatize relationships, destroy feminist solidarity, and resexualize women, or is it a necessary foundation for a world without men?
A quote from one women: “I don’t need to try being a lesbian, because in political lesbianism, I can just be a person, like a normal person — a human being. I can be in a safe place.... Always, when I use the word ‘safe place,’ it means the place for women.”
Political lesbianism.
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68 comments:
Everybody wants to marry a Thai woman, nobody wants to marry a Thai man. - expat Thai woman
"Political Lesbianism"
Emulating Karine Jean Pierre and Lori Lightfoot is no way to go through life sweeties.
So do they wear their pussyhats sideways?
If you have coerce people into having kids you’re doing it wrong.
I'm not sure this will end well for the Koreans. What in the hell is wrong with the world these days. I'm an atheist, but I'm pretty sure we (collectively speaking) made a terrible mistake when we decided we were too clever and modern to believe in God.
A National Birth Map is a very bad idea, no matter how much I distrust NYM to honestly characterize it. I don't blame the women for inventing Political Lesbianism as a reaction. It's a great term. I much prefer it to some wimpy pleading for a matriarchy.
It's NEAT to see societies commit suicide! Takes my mind off of our own suicide
The Korean women should come the the US and interview the Shakers, to get some insight.
Well, that's fucked up.
Coming to America.
Those women live in a world created and maintained by the men they hate.
South Korea should ship those women to North Korea to see what oppression truly looks like.
The rich east Asian societies (like South Korea and Japan) sound very lonely. From the way they're portrayed, the men are expected to spend their entire lives at work, and married women are home by themselves all the time. They're so segregated that the sexes are awkward around each other and don't learn how to appreciate each other.
Fish, bicycles
John Henry
Nature is full of failed evolutionary experiments.
The 4Bs are the last of their kind. View them before they die off.
Breeders inherit the Earth.
Transgenderism is a social trend aligned with misogyny, misandry, transhumanism, and the wicked solution and NY Magazine wants to bray the handmade tale.
It's not the patriarchy. It's the Matriarchy to blame for sex, conception, "our Posterity", etc. Despite the twilight faith, the ethical religion, the liberal ideology, and the progress of Antisci, it's Her choice.
That said, to fuck or not to fuck is his and her first choice. Civil unions for all consenting adults. Political congruence ("=") is a bigoted solution.
I don't know if Korean men really are that bad, but Korean women sure seem to have a lot of hate. Of course, I'm overgeneralizing, but so are the 4B women.
The author of that article should have asked some follow-up questions.
"A subgroup of an online community called “WITH” (which stands for “Women in the Hell,” Hell being a nickname for Korea)..."
North Korea is right there. How can Korea be Hell?
"Taekyung, 24, is getting her master’s degree in German literature at Ewha University, an all-women’s university with a robust campus feminism movement and a respected gender-studies department."
It's difficult to imagine a respected gender-studies department. Respected by whom and for what?
"On a beautiful fall day, she proudly walked me around the campus, which dates from the 1880s, showing me the campus gift shop and the area where students socialize and sometimes take naps."
She is proud of the gift shop and where students take naps? The author must be poking fun. I attended a state school in flyover country, and we have the Jesse Owens monument, a stadium that seats 100,000 fans, and 50 dozen other things to brag about. Even our community colleges have STEM labs and media centers.
WGTOW.
Wait until they meet the North Korean patriarchy. Because if/when they defeated the South Korean patriarchy, they’ll get the North’s version.
Did someone recently translate Lysistrata into Korean? ;-)
Everything old is new again.
How did all these women become so fragile? Why don't they want to become adults who can deal with other people, warts and all, and just maybe make a difference in the world?
I'm skeptical. The writer is magnifying the significance of a tiny disgruntled and depressed group of women.
It is unclear how widespread or popular the 4B movement is given its fluid online and offline nature and its evolution over the years, beginning sometime around 2015 or 2016 when a simple “no-marriage” lifestyle grew to include a boycott of men and reproductive labor more broadly. One article estimated 50,000 adherents; others have put the movement’s numbers at under 5,000.
South Korea's population is over 50 million.
The low birthrate is a problem, but it's a problem all over the developed world. The examples of men behaving badly (revenge porn, incel violence, and the like) can also be found everywhere. The "National Birth Map" these women complain about could be seen as directed just as much at men as at women.
"the only path by which a Korean woman today can live autonomously"
And as we all know, living autonomously is paradise on earth, the very telos of humanity.
Except that autonomous women also like Big Brother to take care of them.
I guess in Korea jelly doesn’t come in jars.
...when we decided we were too clever and modern to believe in God.
South Korea is a very Christian society.
Those women live in a world created and maintained by the men they hate.
That's their point: men built a society that disproportionately reserves social and professional opportunities to men. And it doesn't do much good for men to brag, "we're the ones who built all these buildings and businesses," when women can retort, "yes, because you forced us to stay home."
The NYT currently has an article about the plight of women in Afghanistan. Pretty grim there....I don't suppose North Korea or Afghanistan will be troubled by falling birth rates. Go figure....A woman's reproductive system is innately oppressive. It's just not designed for fun or easy living. I guess motherhood has its rewards, but not so much in western societies. There are better career options. In truly oppressive societies like N. Korea and Afghanistan, motherhood is the only available option and women embrace it.
"Except that autonomous women also like Big Brother to take care of them."
Modern women, even those who are married, have for all intents and purposes married the state.
Government is the real "Mr. Big". It is essentially the idealized and longed-for partner women find at the top floor of the "husband store" of joke fame. There isn't anyone better once they finally figure out that 'he isn't perfect'.
There is a divorce coming, and it will shake their worlds.
"Yet spoke of life most free from slavery
With eyes that showed no trace of misery
A phrase in connection first with she I heard
That love is just a four letter word"
The primary job of a woman is to have kids. We need 2 kids per woman to maintain society. So, what's the problem with getting women to have kids? If some women can't or don't want to have kids, well the other women will have to pick up the slack.
Maybe that's the way to go. Korea should write off the 4B's and focus benefits on the women who have 1 kid and get them to have 2 or 3 kids.
A lot of Korean beauties. I"ve heard Chinese and other Asian women express envy. Not sure how much of that is due to wide spread plastic surgery. Korean men, even in USA, tend to be macho.
N Shift Grin, ladies!
In the spirit of #NoJudgment #NoLabels and psychiatric dysphoria, are these women volcels or incels?
"I don’t have a command from the Lord about people who have never been married, but I’ll give you my opinion as someone you can trust because of the Lord’s mercy. So I think this advice is good because of the present crisis: Stay as you are. If you are married, don’t get a divorce. If you are divorced, don’t try to find a spouse. But if you do marry, you haven’t sinned; and if someone who hasn’t been married gets married, they haven’t sinned. But married people will have a hard time, and I’m trying to spare you that. This is what I’m saying, brothers and sisters: The time has drawn short. From now on, those who have wives should be like people who don’t have them. Those who are sad should be like people who aren’t crying. Those who are happy should be like people who aren’t happy. Those who buy something should be like people who don’t have possessions. Those who use the world should be like people who aren’t preoccupied with it, because this world in its present form is passing away."
I've watched a couple of Korean TV series, one season each, about 20 hourlong episodes each, terrific writing (even if the subtitles are often clunky and stilted) and acting, and, for what it's worth, they depict really powerful women doing just fine in the patriarchy.
For a second there I was sure one of the 4b's was going to be "Biatch".
Do these women patronize only women-owned businesses?
Are their mechanics, plumbers, and electricians women, also?
Sounds exactly like what one would expect from people governed by their emotions.
Ironically right at the cultural moment when K-dramas, which are heavily, if not exclusively, heterosexual-romance-focused, are sweeping the world in triumph. Largely because the woke nonsense from Hollywood and other western producers is flopping so badly.
In the last year we've only watched two western shows that were worthy of our time, The Crown, and House of the Dragon. In that time we've watched *sixteen* K-dramas. Huge amounts of Korean TV content on Netflix in the US, and almost all that isn't there is on a service called Viki. The kdrama we just finished is called Goblin, and I think it is the best we've seen yet.
Those women live in a world created and maintained by the men they hate.
That's their point: men built a society that disproportionately reserves social and professional opportunities to men.
This isn't a movement about achieving equality with men, it's about condemning and rejecting men: they are not trying to change the men whom they view as their oppressors.
Like women all over the developed world, these women see the government as their provider and protector instead of men, indeed they see the government as a protector for them from men.
"Korean? I'm not familiar with Korean."
"Dealer's choice. Whatever releases the most tension."
"Why don't they want to become adults who can deal with other people, warts and all, "
I think between compulsive gaming and manga (porn) the warts have grown awfully big numerous.
But generally I agree.
Women complain.
News at 11...
doesn't do much good for men to brag, "we're the ones who built all these buildings and businesses," when women can retort, "yes, because you forced us to stay home."
No, it does not, on both points.
Men, women, and "our Posterity" are from Earth. Men and women are equal in rights and complementary in Nature/nature. Reconcile.
Rough and clumsy stats.
30% of Koreans are Christian, and that percentage has been growing for a century. Most are either Catholics or Evangelicals, groups favoring family life.
The raw fertility rate amongst Korean Christians is about 2.3, above replacement rate. By age 40, only 10 percent of Korean Christian women have not had a child, which is at the low end of natural infertility rates amongst most mammals.
Christians therefore account for about 0.7 of the national raw fertility rate of 0.8. Put another way, out of 1000 Korean women there will be 8 babies over their fertile years. The 300 Christian will produce 7 of them. The 700 non-Christians will produce only 1.
This is Korea's version of "The girls who never grew up."
“He knows just where to touch you, honey, and how you like to be kissed
He’ll put both his arms around you
You can feel the tender touch of the beast”
Put another way, out of 1000 Korean women there will be 8 babies over their fertile years. The 300 Christian will produce 7 of them. The 700 non-Christians will produce only 1.
What's in a religion (i.e. moral, ethical, legal)? Is advice delivered by God any less fit than mortal gods, goddesses, and experts?
Bart, unless I am the one clumsy with stats, I believe you are missing two zeros:
Put another way, out of 1000 Korean women there will be 800 babies over their fertile years. The 300 Christian will produce 700 of them. The 700 non-Christians will produce only 100.
Everyone in the youngest generation, including these Korean ladies, needs to understand the demographic regime which they are creating with their choices on whether to have children just as everyone needs to understand the political regime they live in. But people don't understand the concept and the reality of "demographic regime" because until recently they couldn't make choices about children. There weren't any demographers and regular people never thought about their demographic regime. The situation didn't improve when demographers appeared because demographers have always represented the demographic regime sectionally, as a snapshot of choices made at the moment, e.g. Total Fertility Rate, rather than longitudinally as the consequences of those choices, e.g., collapse of the welfare state. All demographers know that a demographic regime with few children is a society which is well-off with free-spending adults when those adults are young which then becomes an impoverished society with few children to support social spending when those same adults are old.
Peter Laslett, who wrote The World We have Lost, brought forward these ideas in the Sventies and Eighties. He challenged the Eugenics Society from within over their support for planned parenthood but also and more importantly he challenged it over not explaining to people that their choices, their planned parenthood, constructed a specific demographic regime which parents were not aware of and not taking into account in their planning.
There was a Eugenics Society symposium on this issue in 1979 [Changing Patterns of Conception and Fertility] and Laslett gave the keynote Galton Lecture at this symposium. But as far as policy goes he was defeated by the supporters of planned parenthood. By this I mean, it was decided to continue to emphasize "choice" and to disregard consequences of choice in "the narrative" society tells about choice so far the Eugenics Society was able to frame it.
In fact, Laslett's Galton Lecture "The Centrality of Demographic Experience" was so heretical in terms of calling for recognition of demographic regimes and in other ways as well that it was not ever published in the eugenic controlled journals or ever referred to again despite having being the Galton Lecture, the keynote speech of the Society at its annual meeting.
The ony place you can find this Laslett's Galton Lecture is in Changing Patterns of Conception and Fertility, available at Goodreads or OpenLibrary or you can get the book from a library. Laslett's lecture represents a missed chance to understand the consequences of the demographic regime the boomers were constructing and to change it before it was too late as it is now. But planned parenthood experts and their eugenic sponsor chose otherwise on behalf of all parents. So the parents weren't really making informed choices and planning because vital knowledge was deliberately with held.
Many millions gone.
Bart Hall (Kansas, USA) said...
30% of Koreans are Christian, and that percentage has been growing for a century..
The raw fertility rate amongst Korean Christians is about 2.3..
Thanx for the answer Bart, i was getting ready to ask a Serious Question about this but you beat men to it
That's Kinda the thing though..
There are about 50 million Koreans in the Republic
some (5,000? 50,000? 500,000? 5 million???) are voluntary celibates. How many believe in GOD?
(any GOD? or any Buddha, or ANY religion??)
Old and slow said...
I'm an atheist.. we made a terrible mistake when we decided we were too clever and modern to believe in God.
How did that carpenter put? When he was talking to his fisherman friends? Oh, yeah! i remember!
The Meek, Shall Inherit the Earth.. Because the rest of you were too clever and modern
Gilbar asked "How many believe in GOD? (any GOD? or any Buddha, or ANY religion??)"
About 20 percent of Koreans are Buddhists. You can make a strong point that Buddhists don't believe in God(s). They were, after all, a reaction against the militant polytheism of Hindus. The Buddha and Confucius were each born around 550 BCE, and tended to develop non-theist philosophies.
At that same time, the Hebrews were in captive exile, the Persians arrived in Asia Minor (ending 2500 years of native Egyptian rule), The Chinese were in the peak of the Zhou dynastyy (and invevnted cast iron), early Romans were struggling with Etruscans, Greece was dominant in the Mediterranean (and issued the world's first coins), the Maya were building huge temples for human sacrifice and Proto-Germanic (of which we speak a descendant) first emerged as the final variant of the Indo-European language group.
Life goes on.
South Korea is a strange, strange country viewed through Western eyes.
You watch the interaction and behavior of the men over there, and you're simultaneously struck by their effeminacy (what you interpret as a Westerner; they don't see what they're doing as at all effeminate) and their misogyny. They behave as though they're entitled, and treat women like crap.
Korean women often comment on the difference between dating Westerners and Korean men; one young lady told me she'd have never left her American boyfriend (because he treated her so much better than she was used to) but for the fact that her family threatened to ostracize her and cut off her tuition money and inheritance if she didn't leave him. They also paid her a significant chunk of money to incentivize her. She told me that she would never go back to putting up with the abuse, because it was eye-opening for her to have someone actually treat her like another human being instead of a potential household appliance.
The other weird thing to Western eyes is just how role-oriented the Korean culture is. It's bizarrely rigid in that respect; put a Korean into a position or promote him to a rank, and it's a near-instant shift in attitude and behavior. Likewise, if you're in that position or rank and do not conform to the unwritten rules of that? You're done for.
We did an exercise over there, once. One of our Majors was tasked as a liaison officer, and sent to work in a Korean headquarters. Now, this was a guy who'd been prior enlisted before getting an ROTC commission, and one of his enlisted tours was in Korea. He'd done a year there, and some temporary duty there as an officer after his commissioning. He wound up driving most of the way to the ROK Army Headquarters he was assigned to because the brand-new driver he'd been assigned was terrified by Korean traffic, which in that area was extremely crazy, even for Korea. Think "Mr. Toad's Wild Ride" crazy. Imagine taking the worst traffic insanity you've ever seen and then cubing it a few times. I've been in traffic in Rome, and that was staid and sane compared to the Korea of that era...
Anyway, when he drove up to the ROK HQ, he's welcomed. Or, rather, his driver was, because he was on the passenger side. When the actual Major got out of the driver's seat, most of the welcoming party basically turned their backs on him and ignored him. He was essentially "persona non grata'd" back to us the next day, having lost all "face" in front of the Koreans because he was observed driving his own vehicle. Huge, huge loss of face, and that led to him essentially being barred from further service in Korea. Apparently, the Koreans keep careful track of American officers they work with, and his record basically got a huge red "X" on it with them.
(cont.)
The role thing is incredibly hard to wrap your head around. I met guys through friends of mine who married Korean women that were working fairly high up in the various chaebols, and I was astounded to learn that they'd been high-ranking student protestors in the endemic riots. This did not square with their easy entrance into the establishment or their promotion within it, but as I was told, "Yeah, when you're a student, you protest... When you're a graduate, you find a good job..."
I had a KATUSA working for me that had a brother who'd been pretty high up in the student associations behind all the riots. The chronology of it all confused me, because that brother was older and should have already done his national service, but he'd had some sort of deferment. Anyway, when he got drafted? He went from being one of the guys making and throwing Molotov cocktails to the guy busting heads of the people doing that. He did it with such enthusiasm that he got brought up on charges of police brutality because he'd nearly killed one of the student protestors from his old university...
When my guy was relating this to me, explaining why he needed leave to go home and be with his mom, my jaw was on the floor. When I got done sputtering, I had to ask him "WTF? Just... WTF?", and that's when I was told "When you student, you riot... When you riot police, you break student heads..."
In my observation, this is also somewhat true in a lot of Western cultures, but I've never seen anything to the extent that the Koreans take things. It's like they've got these little internal scripts they learn from birth, and when they find themselves in that situation, then that's how they behave. It's also why the Korean prison guards had such a horrid reputation when they were working for the Japanese; that was how they were supposed to behave, so they did. All a huge role-playing game, really.
I have heard it from Korean women that there's a huge difference between how their men behaved as "boyfriend" and "husband". It was like they changed their skins, or something, one said. And, they didn't like the change, at all. Ironically, I don't think they were self-observant enough to realize that they did the same sort of thing in a lot of parallel situations.
Overall, I think a lot of Korean women are just tired of the bullshit. That, and the media keeps putting these unrealistic ideas about what life should be like, and what men are like. If you ever watch contemporary Korean drama and so forth, you'll see all these portrayals of Korean men and women that just don't match reality as I experienced it over there. I can see where the cognitive dissonance would creep in.
There has always been a segment of every population that just says, "get me outta here". People used to go to monasteries, convents, or other places that allow distance between them and the things that bug them. Nothing about this Korean phenomenon feels unprecedented.
At some point you either have babies at replacement rate or your civilization dies. I've been doing business in Korea for 15 years and lived there for three. It's a beautiful, modern country and if the Koreans don't care enough to keep it for themselves, another group will be more than happy to take over for them.
if the Koreans don't care enough to keep it for themselves, another group will be more than happy to take over for them.
Critical Replacement Theory (CRT) posits that "our Posterity" is the third rail, a "burden", a forward-looking risk (e.g. fair weather cause).
Nothing about this Korean phenomenon feels unprecedented.
The affirmative action to normalize it has few and far between precedents.
Note that on-Korean men are not an option.
m
Here in the West we're way ahead of them. We've left men behind and in their place we've apparently installed incels and trans men. Nice. And not to be outdone, we've also worked hard to eliminate feminine women and replaced them with psychotic, body-pierced, hair shaved, screaming, multi-prounouned Karens. Or Trans women. You get to choose.
None of them are happy and none of them will replicate so their lines end with this short burst of insanity.
Real men have retracted their presence and time of life for their own use and their family's.
Real women are looking for them as I write this.
It's a tough culture for women,extremely demanding.One of my wife's carers who is South Korean is going back for a visit after the pandemic.
She is tall and slim but told us she needed to lose about 20 pounds before she returned otherwise she would be derided as fat.
None of her friends at home want children and all want to get out as the pressures are becoming intolerable.
I predict a perfect storm of desperate mail-order Korean brides when the bee-girls start to smell menopause in the air.
I also suspect this is Dear Leader Kim's cunning plan to narrow out the ever-increasing demographic gap between the moribund North and the vital South.
Without mentioning that this might be a reaction against 2000 years of Confucian culture of Korea, they are missing the point.
And they are missing the part about the large number of foreign wives in Korea, especially in rural areas because men can't find women willing to live on farms.
@ Tom T - South Korea is about 30% Christian. There was a lot of Protestant revival there in the 1980s, but that was quite a while ago.
I have been hearing about the awfulness of south Korean men for some time, but I don't know if it is true. The female South Korean medical students I have known have been quite friendly and comforatble with men - but I suppose that could be used as evidence on either side, couldn't it?
BiHon is the given name of Noob Saibot, the original Sub Zero now a revenant.
Is this the new left wing gender/existential sex fad necrophilia?
Trangerism and pedophilia are just SOOOOO yesterday!
We stand in solidarity for Diversity, Equity, Corpses, Outrage, MaPs, and Pedophiles (DECOMP)!
Not so quiet quitting.
Bichulsan is the refusal of childbirth
So, they think they're going to "change the culture" by completely cutting themselves off from the future of South Korea?
Ok, their choice
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