TW: this article contains mentions of sexual harrassment, sexual assault and violence
In almost all sectors of society around the world, the segregation of the sexes has been used quite often as a deliberately brutal, socio-political tool to enforce women’s supposed ‘inferiority’ and strict place outside of the public sphere, relegating them to domestic zones, exclusively amongst one another. It is a practice that has transcended times and spaces, occupying a role in almost every culture’s history; yet the last 100 years, for most of the world, have seen vast progress in terms of men and women working and partaking in society alongside one another.
Yet women’s exclusion from many spaces persists to this day internationally.
One current example is in Iran, with the resurgence of fundamentalist Islamist conservatism, which has created a separation between female and male spaces in parks, schools, bakeries, buses, beaches, mosques – just to name a few of the places where male and female mixing is forbidden. In plenty of countries, women have contested and fought successfully against segregated spaces, against being excluded from workplaces, educational places, transportation and even actual land.
Segregation when forced upon a group denies them their humanity. It renders them sub-human; in the case of women, they are deemed ‘non-man’ and thus denied access to spaces for men as the ‘other’.
But sex segregation has also emerged in many places as a NEED, for example around the world there are many women only train carriages, public toilets and bathrooms, parking spaces, changing rooms and showers, schools, universities, health clinics and centres, or refuges for domestic abuse (to name a few places), due to ever-present male violence, intimidation and harassment.
These examples exist as an unfortunate but necessary ‘solution’. The outcome has not been the eradication of male violence unto women, instead these exclusively female spaces allow women to experience a degree of normalcy and the opportunity to escape from male violence, even if it is temporary and limited.
Thus, in both situations, whether it has been forced onto us or has been adopted ‘voluntarily’ by women in response to omnipresent male violence, the creation and existence of sex segregation shamelessly reminds us of the presence of male violence in so many fields and spaces.
(Though separatism and segregation are different, I have chosen to preface the article with a discussion of the different aims and types of sex segregation and which ways women completely distancing themselves from men can be beneficial and how both separatism and segregation have emerged as necessity against patriarchy)
However, for South Korean radical feminists, voluntary sex separatism takes on an entirely different meaning and impact. Female separatism attempts to empower women by completely withdrawing from systems (expectations, standards and practices, rather than physical spaces) that continue to disproportionately serve men over women. The 4B Movement (refusing to partake in the ‘Four No’s’ (bi-) rejecting hetero-sex, dating, marriage and child-rearing) has been described as both an ideological stance and an actual lifestyle to partake in, involving distancing yourself from men generally, including the men within your life.
Feminist separatism differs from female segregation in that it is a “separation of various sorts or modes from men and from institutions, relationships, roles and activities that are male-defined, male-dominated, and operating for the benefit of males and the maintenance of male privilege – this separation being initiated or maintained, at will, by women” – as described by Marilyn Frye (read more here).
It is intended to be reclamatory and revolutionary.
Some feminists have critiqued this movement, and female separatism generally, as overly extreme and radical, but to really understand the incentive behind the movement, it is primarily important to contextualise the experiences of many South Korean women within the unique environment of the country’s patriarchy.
Having a very poor historical record on gender equality, the country’s gender wage gap continues to be the worst across developed countries, with women on average earning 31% less than men. This is also upheld by a widespread misogynistic workplace culture, which is frequently reported as incredibly rife with sexual harassment, therefore putting women in a particularly difficult position when it comes to careers.
The country ranked last on The Economist’s Glass Ceiling Index, (which ranks countries on 10 indicators, such as paid maternity leave and representation in senior jobs) for the 8th year in a row, signalling their lack of gender equality particularly in the workplace despite being incredibly developed in many other ways.
Many South Korean women have said that at a governmental level, politicians have been slow to bring about much real change to women’s lives. When more women take up high level roles in politics, as can be seen with some Scandinavian nations, it is more likely that legislation is passed to promote greater gender equality, such as paternal pay and leave; as Korean women are underrepresented majorly in politics, there is a clear reluctance for change.
This stagnancy is supported further by many young men’s views of gender difference: the majority (78.9%) of men in their 20’s feel as though they are discriminated against because of their gender, in the emergence of a neo-anti-feminist wave sweeping the globe. This sentiment has been both supported by and has led to the rise of anti-feminist groups, who question the need for feminism, mocking and intimidating women at feminist marches and protests and arranging their own anti-feminist demonstrations.
Despite being very economically developed, the country’s social development has been slow with regard to women’s issues, as it remains plagued by many gendered crimes: femicide, dating violence, revenge porn and secret spy-cam sex crimes are alarmingly common. In 2018, in the capital of Seoul, huge protests took place against the overwhelming danger that exists against women across every part of society (the home, the workplace, in public, in private bathrooms), perpetuated predominantly by men – who the justice system often lets off lightly or chooses to entirely turn a blind eye to. From these 2018 protests, there has been greater resistance against subjugation in all forms as more protests emerged and built on these vital earlier demonstrations.
The image below shows a woman at the 2018 protests holding up a sign that says ‘MY LIFE IS NOT YOUR “PORN”’, with a camera symbol crossed out. This photo marks the rage of thousands of women who have been violated and traumatised by secret spy-cams in toilets and changing rooms, etc., with incidents reported jumping from around 1,000 to 6,000 within under 10 years (between 2010 and 2018).
It is also telling of a wider story against the objectification and subjugation of women in all forms in South Korea. Pornography and the culture it has bred have turned every part of every woman and every part of every woman’s life and every potential/imaginary woman’s life into pornography for male gratification. It has turned almost every scenario and every situation, that which is mundane, violent, traumatic, natural, all which happens within womens’ lives and to women, into pornography for men.
As in many countries around the world, South Korean families have traditionally favoured having boys. Having sons was seen as preferable, being perceived as carrying on the family line and name, looking after parents in old age and being a provider; whereas women, upon marriage, were considered to no longer be a part of their family, but rather became a part of their new family which they marry into.
This view held much weight particularly until the 1990s, in which there were 116.5 boys born for every 100 girls, brought about through selective abortions, in which many parents would abort a child if it was revealed they were female. Though legislation reduced this to a point where there are now more South Korean women than men, the legacy still remains and the cultural underlining which values male children more than female children persists in new ways.
One new way is the emergence of incredibly rigid beauty standards, which have shot the country to success in the global beauty industry (with the Korean market valued at $15.7 billion in 2021), which goes hand in hand with heavy pressure on women within Korea to wear makeup, undergo cosmetic surgeries, adopt a ‘10-step skincare routine’ and spend so much, emotionally, financially and time-wise, on achieving an unrealistic beauty standard.
The overt rejection of this narrow standard has taken place through the ‘Escape the Corset’ movement, which emerged in 2019; it involves women completely rejecting this social pressure – at protests, many women have shaved their hair off as both a symbolic and tangible denouncement of this subordination. They reject the use of makeup, particular clothing, hairstyles and the wider pressure on them to conform, implementing this in their day-to-day lives.
On social media, Korean women have posted videos destroying their makeup: escaping the ‘corset’, where the ‘corset’ represents a modern symbol of entrapment for women, in painfully striving for unattainable, arbitrarily decided beauty standards, that restrict us and harm us, just as corsets (among other ridiculous standards of beauty) did to Victorian women.
Since 2019, the movement has gained more momentum and popularity. Precise numbers are unknown, however there is certainly widespread participation in rejecting the 4 No’s.
In one survey, 60% of women in their 20’s have stated they plan to never marry. Marriage relentlessly remains a structure in which women are expected to be subservient to the needs of the husband, where women’s overwhelming work within the home goes unrecognised and unappreciated. Plenty of Korean women report an inability to find a husband who does not believe that “his penis would fall off if he steps into the kitchen”; this protest against marriage goes hand in hand with a refusal against childbearing. This effect is very clear: the country has the lowest fertility rate in the world at only 0.78 babies per woman.
As such, it is clear that the 4B movement is taking Korea by storm. Such low population rates and a near refusal of women to continue to put up with male incompetence and violence, proposes serious problems for the workforce, economy, society and will force the issue to the forefront of South Korean politics. Women reject the mirror pointed towards them since birth, compelling men to now hold the mirror up at themselves and their own behaviours instead.
Whilst reading about the 4B movement and other female separatism movements, I was reminded of the quote by Naomi Wolf in her book ‘The Beauty Myth’:
“A consequence of female self-love is that the woman grows convinced of social worth. Her love for her body will be unqualified, which is the basis of female identification. If a woman loves her own body, she doesn’t grudge what other women do with theirs; if she loves femaleness, she champions its rights… The force of female desire would be so great that society would truly have to reckon with what women want, in bed and in the world.”
Certainly, as Wolf says, female self-love, sorority and a genuine understanding of our social worth has rocked the world before and produced waves of change. It is up to us to therefore keep it going.
Though we also acknowledge that attempting to live beyond the confines of male fantasies is in itself a male fantasy, the brave, total detachment and separation of South Korean women from the main systems which benefit men, entirely defying the standards set for them by men, provides such vital inspiration for radical women around the world, presenting a revolutionary solution (female separatism) from detaching from male fantasies, male subjugation and male violence.
The movement entirely rejects the premise that we ought to work ‘with’ men to achieve gender equality. Liberal feminist ideology has made us believe in empowering and uplifting the voices of male feminists and that feminism is also about fighting for men’s rights – when in actuality, feminism is intended for the liberation of women!
An equal to this movement has not emerged in the West, certainly not at such a strong level, (especially with the tight grasp Liberal feminism has on us), yet there remain many examples of women communally deciding to reject the institutions, norms and standards which benefit men. More and more women in the West are going child-free. They are refusing to be forced into the confine of marriage the same way their mothers, grandmothers and all the women before them were, in relationships which do not serve them, in marriages in which they are forced to now adopt a double-burden. More and more women are rejecting pressures of shaving and of makeup and of beauty standards.
Yet this is only a minority.
When the majority of women decide to entirely refuse to conform to bullshit compulsory standards of beauty, heteronormativity and marriage defined by men, these systems must naturally lose their power.
Let us take inspiration here in the West, from our South Korean sisters, to find that same courage. Men have proven time and time again they are not going to be the ones to ‘liberate us’. So what are women waiting for? The time to fight back is now. The time to disturb, resist, separate and agitate against all forms of oppression is now.
Second image source: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/south-korea-spycam-porn-women-protest-voyeurism-invasion-of-privacy-a8477611.html
all things feminist 