The new political cry in South Korea: ‘Out with man haters’

They have proven up at any time when ladies rallied towards sexual violence and gender biases in South Korea. Dozens of younger males, largely wearing black, taunted the protesters, squealing and chanting, “Thud! Thud!” to mimic the noise they mentioned the “ugly feminist pigs” made after they walked.
“Out with man haters!” they shouted. “Feminism is a mental illness!”

On the streets, such rallies can be straightforward to dismiss as the intense rhetoric of a fringe group. But the anti-feminist sentiments are being amplified on-line, discovering an unlimited viewers that’s more and more imposing its agenda on South Korean society and politics.
These male activists have focused something that smacks of feminism, forcing a college to cancel a lecture by a girl they accused of spreading misandry. They have threatened companies with boycotts, prompting firms to drag commercials with the picture of pinching fingers they mentioned ridiculed the dimensions of male genitalia. And they’ve taken purpose on the authorities for selling a feminist agenda, eliciting guarantees from rival presidential candidates to reform the nation’s 20-year-old Ministry of Gender Equality and Family.
“We don’t hate women, and we don’t oppose elevating their rights,” mentioned Bae In-kyu, 31, the pinnacle of Man on Solidarity, one of many nation’s most lively anti-feminist teams. “But feminists are a social evil.”
It is difficult to inform what number of younger males help the type of extraordinarily provocative​ and sometimes theatrical​ activism championed by teams like Man on Solidarity. Bae confirmed up at a latest feminist rally​​ dressed because the Joker from “Batman” comics and toting a toy water gun. He adopted feminine protesters round, pretending to, as he put it, “kill flies.”

Women’s rights advocates worry that the rise of anti-feminism would possibly stymie, and even roll again, the hard-won progress South Korea has made in increasing ladies’s rights.
Lee Hyo-lin, 29, mentioned that “feminist” has turn out to be such a unclean phrase that ladies who put on their hair quick or carry a novel by a feminist author threat ostracism. When she was a member of a Ok-pop group, she mentioned that male colleagues routinely commented on her physique, jeering that she “gave up being a woman” when she gained weight.
“The #MeToo problem is part of being a woman in South Korea,” she mentioned. “Now we want to speak out, but they want us to shut up. It’s so frustrating.”