I noticed that when this sub discusses the future of male loneliness/sexlessness, they use Japan as a worst-case example for the West’s future. Well, I’d like to propose using South Korea as a worst-case example for the future of western gender relations.

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In a nutshell, South Korea has a tremendous Feminists vs Men’s Rights Activists problem. It started with the South Korean feminist community soaring in toxicity as its influence grew the last few decades. Take a fringe “Kill all men” type American feminist, then dial them up by 500%. That’s your average South Korean feminist: not even a fringe one, but an average one. Combine that misandry problem with how South Korea has seen the universal western phenomenon of women outdoing women in education, while Korean men are required to serve in the military in their youths. As you can predict, this situation brewed lots of rage amongst South Korean men.

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The gender war really burst out when an emote body-shaming men for having small dicks became popular among some radical feminist groups in 2019. This little body-shaming move had drastic consequences, and resulted directly in the explosion of a massive Men’s Rights Movement that has been described as the “anti-Metoo” in terms of scale. This MRA movement had unspeakable cultural influence. Showing open support for Feminism soon became tremendously stigmatized because of it. Doing so as a Korean idol is so taboo, that that it’s no different from a career-killing move, and often becomes life-threatening. Think about it this way. People like James Gunn and Dave Chapelle get supposedly “canceled” in America, then go right back to making multi-millions. They certainly don’t risk large-scale harassment, death threats, or the ends of their careers. Being feminist isn’t even the cancel culture equivalent of bigoted/creepy statements, it’s like the cancel culture equivalent of having murdered someone! But even that doesn’t remotely capture the scale of the movement’s influence.

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In 2017, (before the explosion of Men’s Rights Activism) South Korean president Moon Jae-in campaigned on a promise of becoming a “feminist president,” promoting gender equality policies. Despite Moon Jae-in’s administration overseeing one of the world’s best responses to the pandemic, and the Korean economy roaring while most of the developed world struggled, anti-feminism became the deciding factor in what western outlets call ’South Korea’s Incel Election Of 2022.’ Both the liberal Democratic Party and conservative People’s Power Party have been accused of misogyny. While the Liberal party had a number of high-profile sexual harassment scandals under its belt, the Conservative party made abolishing the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family a central pledge of candidate Yoon Seok-yeol’s campaign against Lee Jae-myung. The ministry largely provides family-based services, education, and social welfare for children and spends around 0.2% of the nation's annual budget - less than 3% of which goes towards the promotion of equality for women. But conservative candidate Yoon knew this move would be popular among the key demographic of young men.

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Yoon appealed to the sharp conservative turn of young men caused by the anti-feminist movement. In fact, a poll from Gallup Korea showed that young men (Twenties) were far more conservative than younger women (Twenties) and older men (Fifties) to the point where president Moon’s approval rate was 18%, 42%, and 48% respectively among the demographics. In their 2019 book Men in Their 20s, journalist Cheon Gwan-yul and data scientist Jeong Han-wool found that the young generation’s misogyny was marked by over-the-top hostility against feminism: 58.6% of South Korean men in their 20s said they strongly opposed feminism, with 25.9% rating the intensity of their opposition as 12 on a scale from 0 to 12.

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You see, since the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997 destroyed South Korea’s previous model of lifetime employment, Korean youth have spent their entire lives preparing for and taking a series of ruthlessly competitive examinations — for prestigious high schools, then colleges, then large corporations. Instead of poverty and oppression, their main struggle is to achieve economic security in a society that is often brutal to those who lose out. In this new environment, young women have fared better than before. As with most of the west, women are enrolling in college at higher rates than men. Compliment all that with the grievous fact that men have mandatory military service. So unlike older men, who held to a patriarchal worldview defined by rigid gender roles, young men reject the sense of masculine duty that typically accompanies old-school sexism. Rather, they see themselves as victims of feminism and define themselves politically by this sense of victimisation.

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Although the liberal candidate likewise appealed to antifeminism, the conservative candidate’s stronger efforts in doing so were the DECIDING FACTOR in his election. In fact, conservative candidate Yoon’s campaign nearly fell apart in December when Harvard-educated pundit and leader of the People’s Power Party Lee Jun-seok dropped all his support for candidate Yoon. Lee Jun-seok is perhaps the most prominent Men’s Rights Figure in South Korea, and he stopped supporting Yoon when he tried reaching out to feminists to appeal to young women. But when Yoon backtracked on his actions, Lee Jun-seok came back to support him, and singlehandedly helped him regain his lead over the liberal candidate.

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Here’s what we can gain by using South Korea as a case-study for toxic gender wars.

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1. The danger of feminist misandry. Keep in mind that most of the sources I used above were western takes. The South Korean subreddit responded to one of the articles I linked, and most of them challenged the narrative that feminists were the victims amid all this, and they further gave their own perspective on the toxicity of the feminist movement.

There’s clearly more nuance to the situation than the western take of ”Leh Incels Are Ruling South Korea.” Whereas western feminists at the very least try to claim that misandrists don’t represent all of them, the South Korean feminist community (which is largely ”gender critical“ too) has adopted misandry into their core beliefs. And to think, the movement’s toxicity would’ve slipped under the radar if they hadn’t popularized the male body-shaming emote, and kicked off a domino effect that led to the influence of the Men’s Rights Movement.

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1. This gender war could be a long-term outcome of the current trends of western dating culture. Often, this sub’s users will discuss the phenomenon of women being empowered and college educated while men increasingly become hopeless, lonely, and poor. Redpillers think the phenomenon will culminate in a major antifeminst reaction, while blue-pillers think it won’t go anywhere and it’s just a revenge fantasy. This instance definitely proves the former. As I mentioned above, modern anti-feminism is no longer based on patriarchal attitudes of gender roles, but on male frustration and victomhood upon seeing that women, unlike men, seem largely unaffected by the phenomenons of loneliness, sexlessness, death of the middle class, etc.

It’s no different from how an impoverished southerner might see immigrants and think “they’re taking our jobs!” Men are seeing women have the time of their lives with large friend circles, occupying most of academia, and taking over traditionally male spaces like nerd culture, all while the loneliness epidemic affects men primarily, men lose their masculine role models, and men are becoming far less educated than women, more likely to drop out of college, be homeless, etc. Don’t expect empathy for feminists amid all this, they’ll either say “loneliness affects women too” or “you fragile males wanna be victims so badly.” It’s no wonder reactionary politicians have been trying hard to recruit men from doomer communities, neet communities, gaming communities, etc. You can argue whether or not there’s gonna be a “beta uprising,” but I think the South Korea situation demonstrates the future of the western Lost Boy crisis.