Radical feminists push fight for equality too far

Source: Chosun Ilbo

As the wise Hammurabi once said, “An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.”

Why can’t women do the same thing? This simple and just rule, “eye for an eye,” can be applied to any situation and seems like a fair answer to conflicts that we face these days. It’s because no matter how efficient and righteous it may seem, the good old philosophy can’t result in peace in the end.

Recently, the gender issue of the infamous “molka” — spy cameras — was raised amongst Korean citizens. As peaceful as it may seem, Korea has in fact endured a series of murder and sexual abuse cases that have targeted women. For instance, there was “Gangnam public toilet murder case” where an innocent woman was killed for the sake of the man’s hatred towards women.

I personally go to Gangnam pretty often because it’s where my tuition, shopping center, and entertainment are situated, and I still can’t believe such a thing happened in an area where I basically live during breaks.

Apart from watching the news on television, personal experiences and thoughts like “what if” made me realize that we, as a society, have to come together and solve this problem. From that same concept, a group of women, radical feminists who have a much stronger passion for this issue, have formed websites to share frustration and anger.

On these radical feminist websites, the members upload their own “mirroring” cases to share their thoughts and spread ideas. “Mirroring” is a new definition for the tactic of reflecting whatever seems to be misogynistic and reusing it against men.

Though it seems extreme, I think “mirroring” can be justified, since most crimes are targeted towards women and even the statistical data shows that 84 percent of the “molka” victims are women.

Even though I’m living in India right now, whenever I face male superiority or times where I feel insecure about myself just because I’m a woman, it reminds me of similar problems in Korea. So actually a lot of times, I think of giving a payback to locals who catcall me or sexually harass me when I am at the bazaar.

However, despite the fact that “mirroring” was helping feminism to gain attention in society and moving the idea of feminism forward, it also created a problem when extreme feminists crossed the line and mirrored crimes that were against women. One day, a picture of a nude male model was posted on the “Womad” website. It was a response to the massive “molka” that was happening in the Korean society. Thankfully the woman who posted it was arrested in a matter of three days, yet this was only the start.

Some radical feminists harassed young boys by expressing their desire to have sex with them to mirror the Lolita complex or suggesting they would like to get an abortion just because the baby was a boy. There were people who proudly posted about crimes such as the rape of a young boy and the murder of a man who was pushed into a dam.

How is it that the online abusers are allowed to get away with these kinds of posts? Even though it’s hard to believe, because many are anonymous and written online, it’s nearly impossible to identify who culprits.

However, if their crimes were suspected, the community came together and found a way to get out of it. For example, the case of rape stated above was resolved with the help of Womad members who fundraised money to hire a lawyer for the suspect and sent the petition to the Australian police for her release.  

I couldn’t believe that people would commit such insane crimes just for their idealism. The whole situation started to look more like a psychopathic terrorist story than a story of feminists seeking justice.

After realizing how much of damage radical feminism was causing my society, I began to wonder if I agree with any aspect of the radical feminism.

I obviously don’t think it’s right for me to live with this feeling of discomfort when there are some people that scarcely go through this problem just because they are male. But that’s why I don’t agree with radical feminism because they are misusing the “mirroring” method and only resulting in the increase of more victims of gender inequality. Despite the misogynic reality that we face, it’s immoral to commit crimes in the name of feminism.

Actually, since feminism is for gender equality, its name shouldn’t be used to justify any kind of a crime. If the goal that we are looking for as a society is gender equality, the process of reaching there shouldn’t be gender segregation.

Additionally, radical feminists are the ones who are leading the society to the false definition of feminism, dragging everyone’s attention with their extreme actions, and covering amazing works that feminism is doing for the community.

I realized this when I had a conversation about feminism with my dad over summer break. He supports gender equality, but I could feel that he had something against feminism. He certainly didn’t understand about feminism and had misconceptions about it, thinking that it ruins society by degrading men and placing women on a superior level to men.

Even though I wasn’t happy about what he was saying about feminism, I surely understood the problem of miscommunication between the young and old generations. While the young generation is trying to communicate our feminist ideas, the radical feminists shouldn’t be worsening the problem that is already been created.

As the wise but peaceful Gandhi said, “An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind.” 

Let’s not make the whole society blind while making our vision clearer about the gender issue.

Edited by Aviva Philip