I spoke to a member of the SK diaspora in the imperial core. They were surprised I knew about this, as they had never heard of it. I told them I liked to keep up to date about social issues abroad as well as at home.

Take what I say with a grain of salt, I don’t read or speak Korean nor do I understand the intricacies of their culture.

It’s interesting to go through some of the specific things that people in the 4B movement did. There’s some stuff there which is a bit contentious, overwhelmingly though critical support. I recall something about a journalist trying to interview during a protest and the comments by the women protesting were very sharp. As well, the counter protest by the men-focused groups… yeah it’s interesting the boldness of what the translated stuff was that some of the men said, can’t see some of that being said with some of the same straightforwardness in my part of the world. Not to say things are completely better here, I think this might be one of those cultural differences which my ignorance makes hard to appreciate. Their demands about conscription was one of the obvious ones.

One consequence I think was the debate of changing a Ministry of Women or something like that which was focused on issues women faced to like, a Ministry of Women, and Gender or something like that. It was really both-siding the issue. Like, sure, men abusing and causing all sorts of problems for women (and themselves, with regards to suicide, look up comparisons of OECD countries rates of suicide and then take a look at the difference between genders) is an issue yes and needs to be dealt with. Equating their problems with women not only diminishes the struggle of women, other femme presenting peoples, and perhaps other marginalized groups, but as far as I can tell it makes it so the problems being faced by men never really get addressed. Seriously, every time I think of the issue in my country, I think, guaranteeing women provisions (absolute ability of control over their body, representation, pay, etc.) is like a known way to improve things. It’s literally what these folks are asking for.

Other options are possible, like uh, getting rid of men or something, having humans reduce their population through not having kids to an extreme, or my preferred choice of getting men to be more femme in aggregate. I can’t think really that the reactionary men have a tenable end goal in mind. It’s gotta be complete subjugation of women right, like, I can’t think of another logical consequence of the kinds of things espoused or the measures taken or the hatred I have observed expressed towards women.

Does anyone else have an explanation? Did I get some stuff wrong or maybe only mentioned parts of a thing rather than the whole? I’m still learning so I would very much appreciate any comments or criticism.