Controversy on gay men′s misogyny
Unfortunately, Megalia existed only for six months as a web site. 'Megal' has become a word synonymous with the American-originated term ‘feminazi’. Megalia was a very radical organization, in that it focused on confronting society, and had both the tendencies and contexts of radical feminism as a vast culturally awakening movement; including ideas of separatism, women-centering, an analysis of gender politics, and both personal and social resistance against cultural misogyny. At that time, Megalia included many men who belonged to the sexual minority movement, such as gay men, and men of the liberal movement. They regarded Megalia as a new 'play culture' or 'pleasant rebellion'.
When women began criticizing gay men, Megalia divided. Lesbians and bisexual women in Megalia began to point out women-hating culture within the queer movement, especially in the languages used by men in the gay communities, such as ‘cunt-bitches’, ‘convex bitches’, ‘back vagina’, and ‘empty womb moms’. Many women were shocked when they discovered the words and realized their meanings because they thought gay men suffered the same patriarchal oppression as women and had supported gay men′s rights. During the debate, some women called these women-hating gay men 'asshole lovers' pointing out the duality of gay men′s culture. The ′asshole lovers′ was a word which was used by heterosexual homophobic men in the past, but has never been criticized by the gay community. But when some women began to use these words during the debate, the gay movement's fierce criticism against these women came pouring out. The Megalia website operator banned the word without discussion, and many Megalian women were upset because they thought there should be no limits to criticizing misogyny. Women who wanted to keep criticizing gay men′s misogynistic culture created a separate website called Womad, and the Megalia website eventually closed.
The Iban City, the largest online gay community in Korea, conducted a survey on whether men wanted to marry women. 12% of men answered that they were already married to a woman, 29.7% answered that they planned to marry a woman someday, 25.1% answered that they were not sure, and 2.3% of men answered that they were divorced. Only 30.8% of gay men said they were not going to marry women. Confucian patriarchy in Korean society involves far more female exploitation than the patriarchy of Western societies. In Korea, marriage means that the wife joins the family of the husband and the wife is expected to raise children, do domestic work alone without aid, and in addition, assigns her responsibility for domestic work for the family of her husband. Many women are encouraged to quit their jobs once they have children, and the ′glass ceiling′ problem is also very serious among working women. In fact, Korea ranks among the lowest country in the OECD for its wage gap. Gay men who want to marry women said they wanted to reproduce while enjoying the benefits of a heterosexual marriage as a man. In the online gay community, gay men say, "I want to have a son who looks like me, so I need to have sex with a woman." Recently there was a debate on gay men′s fraud marriages and feminists who criticized this particular form of female exploitation were derided as homophobic and told to participate in campaigns to promote gay marriage in Korea.
Queer movement and sexual liberalism
In Korea the queer movement and sexual liberalism are expressed by the same speakers. In particular, there is a large intersection of people who promote sex work ideology and queer politics. Matsu, a gay activist member of the group ′Real Perverts′, says that gay male sex work has functions of mutual recognition and acknowledgment of gay identity in the community. He gives lectures on politics of gay sex work in the LGBT Forum and Queer-related lectures. Sex work is discussed as being significant to queer human rights issues. In October 2016, this was shown at the ′Women's Sexual Minority Speech′ held by Queer Women's Network. Here, one of the speakers, Siyeun Lyu, who introduced himself as a transgender lesbian sex worker and criticized the anti-prostitution movement, saying the movement promotes punishment and stigmatization of sex workers. Nayoung, an activist of the Network of Global Activism, is a well-known queer feminist who publicly says that “sex workers can become an autonomous agent who produce pleasure in their sex work and at the same time they can also fight against the violence and exploitation that damages their work. Sex workers sell their services, not their selves”.
The culture of seeing female children as sexual objects is very pervasive in Korea and permeates pop culture. Many female singers dress in school uniforms perform sexual dance, and there is a phenomenon called ′Lolita Style′ that entails dresses, make-ups and gestures associated with little girls. Korean radical feminists created a blog and a facebook page called Lolita Busters to criticize this culture. However, Hee-jung Son, a feminist lecturer who is becoming famous and appearing on TV shows, said last year in an article titled "The Age of Rebellion and Sex War" that we should recognize children as sexual beings rather than simply criticizing the Lolita phenomenon. She introduced the concept of ′intergenerational eroticism′ quoting Gayle Rubin. Womad feminists criticized this article, but Son did not withdraw her claim. Sexual objectifying and exploitation of children are serious social problems in Korea. The age of consent is 13. For comparison, the legal age of employment is 15. The movement to raise the age of consent to 16 is coming from women and a youth movement, but many feminist scholars oppose it. They say that sexual violence cannot be determined uniformly by age and that various factors such as gender and social power should be taken into consideration, and the teenager's right to self-determination can be violated by statutory rape law. In a feminist scholar's column published in Women′s Newspaper in June of 2017, the writer argued that teenage girls are using conservative ideology of sexual protection and choosing to act as victims. She gave an example of a runaway teenage girl who had been receiving financial support from an male adult male and involved in sexual activities with him and later reported him as a sexual offender when he demanded that she get an abortion. These scholars say that sexuality of children is not something to be protected.
Silencing women under the name of queer rights
Concepts and terms imported from the Western queer movement are being overused in Korea. The word "cis" began to be used a couple of years ago. The term is a shortening of the word ‘cisgender’, which was created in opposition to the term ‘transgender’. Many women have criticized this term by correctly understanding that it implies women identify with the oppressive construct of femininity. Recently, women have been criticized into silence when speaking about women's bodily issues, such as menstruation and abortion, at feminist gatherings. In 2017, Ewha Women’s University and Sookmyung Women's University′s feminist students tried to hold a seminar titled ‘Men′s Invasion of Women's Spaces'. There were cases at those schools in which men sneaked into a female-only library and set up hidden cameras in the bathroom, or men in women′s dress went into a dormitory room and attacked a female student. Students wanted to talk about these incidents, but they were severely criticized for not allowing biologically male people to come to the seminar. The seminar, in which victims were going to speak about their experiences in a safe environment, was eventually cancelled because they were criticized for excluding certain queer people based on biology.
Queer changes in the lesbian community
The word ‘lesbian feminist’ has gradually been replaced by the word ‘queer feminist’ in Korea. In 2016, the three presenters on the “Lesbian, Connections and Challenges” session at the eighth LGBTI Human Rights Forum commonly expressed feelings of guilt when using the word ‘lesbian’ on the name of organizations. An activist from ‘Lezpa’, a lesbian-specified radio channel, said that “although Lezpa is a local lesbian radio channel, we see the spectrum of our listeners as queer in general and we intend to broaden our listener range into women/sexual minority groups.” Another activist from the women’s group of ‘Solidarity for LGBT Human Rights of Korea’ added claiming that “currently many people of sexual identities other than lesbian-cisgender are being excluded from female sexual minority communities.” She said that her group will continue to interact with communities to ensure that diverse minority women, such as bisexuals and transgender people, are actively involved. Even the Korean Lesbian Counselling Center, one of the two organizations that still adhere to using the word ‘lesbian’ in the group name, say that “lesbian identity is too rigid and other sexual minority women’s issues are not being talked about enough.” According to an activist who recently worked at the Center, she was criticized that she was using the word lesbian instead of the word "women of sexual minority" at the meeting.
The disappearance of the word lesbian came with the disappearance of the critique of gender politics among lesbian feminists. Until the late ‘90s and early 2000s, lesbian organizations were critical of the butch/femme culture. This was because gender roles, which are diametrically divided as masculine/feminine, was considered patriarchal and anti-feminist. But now, activists who call themselves queer feminists often use the word ‘butch’ without facing any criticism, and even define the word ‘butch’ in relation to women. They do not criticize the drag culture and proudly promote projects which celebrate the gender dichotomy, such as a butch photo collection. In the soon to be released Queer Feminist Magazine V. 3, the special theme of the issue is "Violation of Gender". It includes an article titled “Genderqueer is the Future of Butches”. In this way, the politics of the lesbian identity disappeared, and lesbianism was treated just as a sexual orientation, not only among lesbian communities but also among lesbian feminists (self-proclaimed queer feminists).
The possibility of the radical feminist movement
Even in this situation, the activities of feminists who maintain radical feminist perspectives, which focus on societal problems pertaining to misogyny, persist. The criticism of Lolita culture and cross-dresser's practices of women-hating were carried out mainly on SNS. These women gathered data on problematic cultural phenomenon and produced texts criticizing it. They call this current phenomenon third-wave feminism, which focuses on sexual liberalism, or ‘ska (mix-it-up) feminism’ and argue that these feminists treat women’s oppression as secondary issues, claiming third-wave feminists should join the resistance against oppression of minorities as well as criticize the misogyny in the gay and transgender communities. These radical feminists say there should be no taboo topic when criticizing women’s oppression. They oppose prostitution, sexualization of children, and misogynistic beauty practices and they are trying to create space where women can share their experiences and opinions safely in the form of feminist camps and seminars, both online and offline.
