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Queens & Boundaries: The FDS Take on the 4B Revolution
30 Plays1 year ago
Rose and Diana tackle the 4B Movement where "Boys, Beauty, Boundaries, and Beyond" are getting a major overhaul. Get ready for some sharp-tongued truth bombs as we dive into the movement that's got women worldwide setting higher standards and saying "bye" to low-value men and outdated beauty ideals.
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Transcript
Introduction of New Host and 4B Movement
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome back to the Female Dating Strategy, the meanest female-only dating podcast on the internet.
00:00:04
Speaker
I'm your new host, Diana.
00:00:06
Speaker
And I'm Rose.
00:00:08
Speaker
And today, Diana, what are we discussing?
Why is the 4B Movement Notorious?
00:00:11
Speaker
We are going to talk about the notorious 4B movement.
00:00:16
Speaker
Notorious.
00:00:16
Speaker
I love that.
00:00:18
Speaker
Why is it so notorious?
00:00:20
Speaker
Well, anytime women start to make sense, men immediately get all riled up about it and make it notorious.
00:00:26
Speaker
So, you know, anytime we start making too much sense, it automatically becomes notorious.
00:00:32
Speaker
Touche, touche.
00:00:34
Speaker
This is so true.
00:00:35
Speaker
And the 4B movement, I don't know about you, but I only started to hear about it online, I would say, when I joined Reddit back in 2020 during the COVID lockdown.
00:00:44
Speaker
That's when I started to hear, I heard little peeks of it because a lot of the female-only subreddits that got banned, like pink-pilled,
00:00:53
Speaker
black pilled.
00:00:54
Speaker
There were a whole bunch that existed back then that were very active, that were much more aligned with radical feminism.
00:01:00
Speaker
And of course, they all got brigaded and then subsequently banned.
4B Movement's Origins and Global Impact Limitations
00:01:04
Speaker
So they preceded FDS in that sense.
00:01:06
Speaker
But that was the first time I started to hear whispers of what 4B was.
00:01:11
Speaker
And if I may, could I just provide a brief overview of what that is before we go into it?
00:01:16
Speaker
Of course.
00:01:17
Speaker
Okay.
00:01:18
Speaker
One thing we did want to offer our listeners was a disclaimer.
00:01:21
Speaker
Could you go over our disclaimer for today, Diana?
00:01:23
Speaker
Yes.
00:01:24
Speaker
Well, you know, we understand that this particular movement has such a vast global impact.
00:01:29
Speaker
And while we want to make sure that we do it justice and that we try to cover as much ground on how it's impacted the world.
00:01:37
Speaker
it's not actually possible for us to go into detail about every single continent.
00:01:41
Speaker
So we just want listeners to be mindful of the fact that we are going to try our best to do due diligence and to give you as much information and insight as we can possibly do without, you know, going on tangents a little too much or, you know, or even just leaving you with the impression that we're just trying to skip through incredibly important discussions about minority groups, because we want to make sure that, you know, this is a...
00:02:05
Speaker
movement that really started out of Asia, out of Korea specifically.
00:02:08
Speaker
And it came out of issues that were affecting the Korean peninsula for a really long
Korean Women's Role in the 4B Movement
00:02:13
Speaker
time.
00:02:13
Speaker
This is the culmination of a lot of efforts of women online to galvanize and organize themselves in ways that we have yet to see other women around the world galvanize themselves in that way to do that.
00:02:23
Speaker
So we just want to make sure that we give them due credit, but also we want people to understand that it's not possible for us to go into so much detail about every single minority group.
00:02:33
Speaker
And so we're going to do our best to make sure that, you know, when you leave this episode, you're leaving with somewhat of a, you know, a broader understanding of what this movement is and why it's so impactful and why it's changing the game, really.
00:02:46
Speaker
Wonderfully said.
00:02:47
Speaker
And that's the point is that, you know, there's so much nuance to this discussion.
00:02:50
Speaker
And of course, you know, one hour podcast can only...
00:02:53
Speaker
convey so much information, also without just being simply didactic and dry as hell, which is something we want
Encouraging Global Listener Participation
00:03:00
Speaker
to avoid.
00:03:00
Speaker
And in fact, you know, something we'd really welcome from our listeners and our feedback is where are you letting us know how things are coming from, from where you're from?
00:03:09
Speaker
So for example, last week, Diana and I were wondering,
00:03:12
Speaker
Do we have any listeners from South America?
00:03:13
Speaker
Do we have any listeners from Mexico?
00:03:16
Speaker
What about Eastern Europe?
00:03:18
Speaker
How about Sub-Saharan Africa?
00:03:20
Speaker
We simply don't know what's going
Overview of 4B Movement and Influential Literature
00:03:22
Speaker
on on the ground all over the world.
00:03:23
Speaker
How could we?
00:03:24
Speaker
But I think the more we are talking amongst one another, as we are seeing with this 4B movement's impact,
00:03:30
Speaker
the more we are becoming aligned and starting to act as a collective, as a gender collective.
00:03:35
Speaker
And that I think is the direction we have to go in to have a brighter future.
00:03:39
Speaker
So with all that being said, I'm just going to give a brief overview of what I know about 4B, and then we're going to go into it.
00:03:45
Speaker
Are you ready, Diana?
00:03:47
Speaker
Sounds good.
00:03:48
Speaker
Let's go.
00:03:49
Speaker
So from what I understand, and again, this is coming out of South Korea.
00:03:54
Speaker
I live in the Midwest of the United States.
00:03:57
Speaker
So there's only so much information that I have.
00:03:59
Speaker
And if I'm incorrect about something or if I'm incomplete, I really would invite our listeners to correct me and let me know what's what.
00:04:06
Speaker
But from my understanding, what really kicked this off was a 2016 novel by Cho Nam Joo's.
00:04:14
Speaker
I also want to apologize for any of my mispronunciations, but I do think it's important that we try to pronounce words in their own native language and that we not just completely leave other languages off of the table just because the speaker is worried about mispronouncing.
00:04:30
Speaker
So this novel was called Kim Ji Young, born 1982.
00:04:34
Speaker
And it's basically a never-ending compendium of just an every woman's daily experience
00:04:43
Speaker
of all the sexism, all of the inequality, and all of the misogyny in South Korea.
Principles and Structural Issues of the 4B Movement
00:04:48
Speaker
And this book led to an avalanche of online chatter and discourse amongst South Korean feminists.
00:04:57
Speaker
It also started to intersect.
00:04:58
Speaker
It was at that time that Me Too was really starting to kick off in the West.
00:05:02
Speaker
And it also was, there were also various sub-movements kicking off in South Korea.
00:05:07
Speaker
One that included an escape the corset campaign, where they were pushing back against these unattainable standards of beauty and gendered presentation.
00:05:16
Speaker
The 4B is based off of the four Bs in South Korea.
00:05:21
Speaker
Bihon, which is no to heterosexual marriage.
00:05:25
Speaker
Bichulsan,
00:05:26
Speaker
which is no to childbirth, billyonnais, no to dating, and bisexu, no to heterosexual sexual relationships.
00:05:36
Speaker
And this has come about after, you know, millennia of South Korean women have gone through, I mean, if you even look at some of the modern wars they've gone through, the Korean War,
00:05:47
Speaker
World War II and Japan's exploitation of them, and especially now with digital crime, underskirt photographs, et cetera, stalking, all of this has led to an absolutely insupportable situation for South Korean women.
00:06:02
Speaker
And if you look at some of the data out of the World Economic Forum's 2022 Global Gender Gap Index, South Korea is ranked at 99 out of 146 countries for gender equality.
00:06:16
Speaker
Furthermore, a January 2023 article in the South Korean newspaper, the CISA Times, reported that 65% of women in the country do not want children, 42% do not want to get married, and that is due to over 80% of those women citing domestic violence as the key reason for why they do not want to get married.
00:06:38
Speaker
And so this
Broader Impact and Strategies of the 4B Movement
00:06:39
Speaker
is a long overdue movement coming from our Asian sisters, who I think have really led the way in thinking about sort of tactical strikes and different sorts of strategies that are needed in order to force a global sea change or even just a regional one on the dating market.
00:07:00
Speaker
That's about my summation of 4B, Diana.
00:07:02
Speaker
So let's get into it.
00:07:04
Speaker
Awesome.
00:07:04
Speaker
Thank you so much.
00:07:05
Speaker
That was actually great.
00:07:06
Speaker
And yes, it does cover so much ground.
00:07:09
Speaker
You know, I grew up with many Korean people, and I've, you know, worked in Korea.
00:07:14
Speaker
And so I have a somewhat cursory sort of understanding of just how life is out there.
00:07:20
Speaker
I mean, if I could share like a personal sort of story, it's not my personal story, but it's a story that a friend of mine told me.
00:07:26
Speaker
So one of my friends was a teacher.
00:07:28
Speaker
It's very common for Americans to go and teach English in Korea.
00:07:32
Speaker
It's like one of the countries besides, you know, Japan and China, where there just tend to be a lot of American expats.
00:07:37
Speaker
And so she was one of those teachers, you know, who...
00:07:40
Speaker
taught in a Korean hagwon.
00:07:42
Speaker
So a hagwon is essentially a cram school.
00:07:45
Speaker
It's like after they go to school and they check out for the day, then they go to another cram school and they continue to study.
00:07:52
Speaker
So she was a teacher in the hagwon.
00:07:55
Speaker
And she told me a really jarring story of how she was on her way to one of her lessons and she stopped by a classroom.
00:08:03
Speaker
And there was a male teacher there with a whole bunch of male students.
00:08:07
Speaker
And they were watching upskirt videos in the classroom.
00:08:10
Speaker
And it was like extremely shocking, obviously, for her because, you know, this would never fly in the States.
00:08:16
Speaker
And, you know, she was like in two minds about like having to report it, obviously.
00:08:20
Speaker
But in the end, she ended up reporting it to the homeroom teacher or not the homeroom teacher, you know, the head of the hagwon or whatever.
Korean Women's Workplace and Cultural Challenges
00:08:26
Speaker
And nothing was done.
00:08:27
Speaker
The man wasn't fired.
00:08:29
Speaker
They kind of just like brushed it aside because they thought if she was just like a foreigner causing trouble.
00:08:33
Speaker
But like, you know, around the time I went there was like before COVID.
00:08:37
Speaker
So, you know, you could already kind of see like the fledgling, you know, the beginnings of like 4B.
00:08:42
Speaker
At the same time, it was kind of considered a fringe movement.
00:08:45
Speaker
Like people, you know, felt the inequality deeply.
00:08:48
Speaker
And especially women had a lot to say about it.
00:08:51
Speaker
Like I spoke to a lot of Korean women who kind of acknowledged, you know, their own hardship.
00:08:55
Speaker
But at that time, it was still somewhat of like a hush hush online fringe kind of movement.
00:09:00
Speaker
But the pain that they were feeling was extremely real.
00:09:03
Speaker
You know, they were worried about going to public bathrooms because of Molka and Molka is essentially the public camera crime like, you know, where
00:09:10
Speaker
men put cameras into public bathrooms as a way to like video women who are going and using the restrooms.
00:09:15
Speaker
And, you know, we're at a stage now where we have to have these discussions all over again about restrooms, right?
00:09:21
Speaker
Like we could probably do a whole episode just on like, you know, sex-based rights, but like a lot of them are talking about the violation and just like the way that the sexes were organized in Korea and how difficult it was to have sincere sort of connections with men because of the way that society was structured.
00:09:38
Speaker
And like,
00:09:39
Speaker
Korea is a very hierarchy-based culture.
00:09:43
Speaker
They have a lot of respect for their elders.
00:09:45
Speaker
You address people with honorifics.
00:09:46
Speaker
You speak to people a certain way depending on their age and gender and rank too.
00:09:51
Speaker
So they already have this inbuilt system where it's very difficult to stand up to authority.
00:09:57
Speaker
And the women who work in these workforces,
00:10:00
Speaker
They are subjected to a lot of harassment when they're working, which they can't turn away.
00:10:05
Speaker
And a lot of them turn to marriage and husbands as a way to have a male figure around so that their bosses don't exact labor from them and don't force them to do things they don't want to do.
00:10:16
Speaker
I remember a friend of mine said once, like, you know,
00:10:19
Speaker
They have this tradition called huishik, and it's very similar in Japan as well.
00:10:22
Speaker
Huishik is essentially like after you're done working, you go out for drinks with your boss and you can't turn it down because if you turn it down, it's seen as like disrespectful and like you're not serious about your career.
00:10:32
Speaker
So she would go for these huishiks, even though she didn't really drink, but you can't turn down a drink from your boss.
00:10:37
Speaker
So she would have to drink more than she wanted.
00:10:39
Speaker
And she was like, sometimes it's so strict, like depending on what kind of company you work for, you can't like say that you hate pork.
00:10:44
Speaker
You can't turn down pork if that's what your boss orders.
00:10:48
Speaker
So you have to eat things and do things you don't want to do.
00:10:51
Speaker
And it's considered like worth your time because you want to succeed at your job in advance in your position.
00:10:57
Speaker
And often women are prevented from holding positions of power because of, you know, the idea that they'll get married and have children and they're just going to leave the workforce anyway.
Fragmentation of Feminist Movements in Korea
00:11:05
Speaker
So why bother investing in them?
00:11:07
Speaker
So you could kind of see that this was like, you know, the milk boiling in the pot, and it was about five seconds away from boiling all the way over.
00:11:13
Speaker
And so it was like teetering at that point for like a really long time.
00:11:17
Speaker
And so there's all these like structural sort of inequities in Korea that make it very difficult for women to have a public voice.
00:11:25
Speaker
And feminism in Korea is like very much at the stage of like, it's a bad, dirty word.
00:11:29
Speaker
I remember that there was a K-pop idol who was reading Kim Jong-born 1982.
00:11:34
Speaker
I don't remember exactly which K-pop idol it was, but she had like a picture of it on her Instagram or something.
00:11:40
Speaker
It went viral and everybody like latched onto it.
00:11:43
Speaker
And she was bullied in the media for reading that, for just reading it.
00:11:47
Speaker
Which is crazy because the band BTS, their leader, Rap Monster, he was reading the book as well.
00:11:53
Speaker
And people were praising him and being like, oh, he's such a feminist.
00:11:55
Speaker
He's such a good guy.
00:11:58
Speaker
It was so frustrating that like there was this male idol who was reading this book and everyone is praising him for reading this book.
00:12:04
Speaker
But at the same time, his contemporary was being like essentially bullied by the netizens for reading this book.
00:12:11
Speaker
So like the online culture of the place is also extremely hostile.
00:12:15
Speaker
I mean, there's definitely a lot I can add about just, you know, life in Korea and, you know, insights from the people I grew up with and just my own personal sort of experiences there as well.
00:12:26
Speaker
But I mean, just to, you know, condense like a broader point, shit was pretty bad there like five years ago.
00:12:32
Speaker
You know what I mean?
00:12:33
Speaker
And I mean, it's probably been bad for a while because Japan's occupation of Korea was
00:12:39
Speaker
And the subsequent, you know, U.S. military occupation of Korea, because they're technically in like a weird proxy war with Russia, you know, between the Koreas, resulted in, you know, the women being extremely exploited.
00:12:49
Speaker
And I see this as like a long time coming, essentially, for the Korean women for just standing up and saying, hey, we've had enough.
00:12:58
Speaker
We've had enough of being shit on by everyone.
00:13:00
Speaker
And this is our way of reclaiming our power.
00:13:02
Speaker
And instead of participating in these systems that keep them oppressed, they're standing up and saying, we've had enough and no more.
00:13:09
Speaker
You do not get to do this to us.
00:13:11
Speaker
And so, you know, kudos, kudos to those Korean women.
00:13:13
Speaker
Kudos, all the flowers.
00:13:15
Speaker
That's what I was going to say, Diana.
00:13:16
Speaker
And thank you.
00:13:17
Speaker
Honestly, I really appreciate hearing these personal anecdotes because I think a lot of times online, a lot of these women have to be as
00:13:24
Speaker
circumspect and cautious as possible.
00:13:26
Speaker
And so a lot of personal details are never shared because they don't want to be doxed.
00:13:31
Speaker
And I think that's a correct assumption on their part.
00:13:34
Speaker
But so that means a lot of the personal shades of stories gets
00:13:39
Speaker
And so hearing this story of yours, I mean, it's just infuriating.
00:13:43
Speaker
It is just maddening that this violation of women, you know, upskirts or going to the bathroom is just entertainment for a school teacher and the school boys.
00:13:52
Speaker
That is just casually a diversion for them, a pastime.
Political Environment and Gender Issues in Korea
00:13:57
Speaker
seeing women and exploiting them and at their most vulnerable, finding pleasure and finding joy in violating them in that manner.
00:14:06
Speaker
And so when I hear about this, I just want to say to the South Korean sisters, thank you so much.
00:14:11
Speaker
I cannot thank you enough for how you have pinpointed and strategized in a way that is kneecapping these men and your society.
00:14:20
Speaker
It is such an inspiration.
00:14:21
Speaker
I am so impressed with
00:14:23
Speaker
And I'm just going to keep listening to you and doing our part here in the Northern Hemisphere, because when I see what's already happening in the short amount of time from this 4B movement, how can you not help but be impressed?
00:14:36
Speaker
I mean, I think, didn't I just read that?
00:14:37
Speaker
Who is the current prime minister of South Korea?
00:14:41
Speaker
Wasn't he threatening to erase or disband the Department of Equality?
00:14:48
Speaker
But if I'm not mistaken, he was elected, one of his platform's promises was that he would put women back where they belong.
00:14:56
Speaker
And of course, South Korean men overwhelmingly elected him because if this isn't the promise that they want to see paid good, I don't know what is.
00:15:05
Speaker
Yeah, his name is President Yoon Suk-yeol.
00:15:07
Speaker
He's the president.
00:15:08
Speaker
And he decided to abolish the Ministry of Gender Equality.
00:15:12
Speaker
Okay, the Ministry of Gender Equality.
00:15:14
Speaker
I mean, if this isn't some Orwellian shit, I don't know what is.
00:15:17
Speaker
But again, I still remember being struck like, oh, this is his platform that he's running on?
00:15:21
Speaker
And it's what gets him elected?
00:15:23
Speaker
I mean, if that doesn't go to show you the extreme...
00:15:26
Speaker
rancor that these men have towards women, that they actually want to abolish the one ministry dedicated to them, which they've had for what, maybe a couple decades?
00:15:34
Speaker
It's just mind-blowing.
00:15:35
Speaker
I just want to add another point about why Yoon Sok-yol was so popular.
00:15:40
Speaker
One of the reasons I think also why, like as I mentioned earlier, Korea happens to be a very hierarchy-oriented culture.
00:15:48
Speaker
And like the way that we have like Nepo babies, they have these people called chebols.
00:15:53
Speaker
And they're essentially like the kids of large conglomerates and corporations.
00:15:57
Speaker
So almost everyone else has to like, you know, eat dirt and essentially work their way up from somewhere.
00:16:03
Speaker
But these guys just have life handed out to them.
00:16:05
Speaker
And so there was like this division essentially between the classes of like,
00:16:09
Speaker
People who get to move through the system with ease and people who have to work extremely hard at it.
00:16:13
Speaker
And part of the reason why he spoke to the Korean male population specifically was because a lot of Korean men believed at their hearts that women had it easier because of the military service.
00:16:26
Speaker
So Korea conscribes its men into, I think it depends which part of the military you're in, but like a 21 month-ish military service.
00:16:34
Speaker
And, you know, that takes away their ability to earn money and provide for their families and all this other stuff.
00:16:39
Speaker
So they
Korean Men's Societal Roles and Expectations
00:16:40
Speaker
already feel like they're at a disadvantage because, you know, they have to like,
00:16:44
Speaker
essentially quit school or, you know, get out in the prime of their careers to go and do this military service, because there's always this threat of invasion from North Korea.
00:16:51
Speaker
And so he kind of spoke to them in a way that alleviate, like as all despots and dictators do, he kind of spoke to them in a way that made them comfortable and kind of coddled their fears and was like, you know,
00:17:04
Speaker
you provide such an essential service to our country by essentially being willing to die for us in the military.
00:17:09
Speaker
The women don't do that.
00:17:11
Speaker
They don't conscribe.
00:17:11
Speaker
So when we're doing our part of serving in the military, why don't these bitches just shut the fuck up and give us our kids?
00:17:18
Speaker
Essentially, that was what his argument boiled down to is that women don't really have to struggle.
00:17:23
Speaker
So why aren't they just accepting their position and the fact that they need to get married and have babies?
00:17:27
Speaker
Like, why are they making this so hard?
00:17:29
Speaker
We all have to do things we don't want to do.
00:17:31
Speaker
So, you know, that was the way his argument was presented.
00:17:34
Speaker
And as you can possibly imagine, the Korean men really took it and ran with it.
00:17:39
Speaker
So, you know, his appeal doesn't just come from the fact that he's peddling the basist ideas of misogyny.
00:17:45
Speaker
It's the fact that there are real structural issues in Korea.
00:17:48
Speaker
with the way that its economy is being run and the way that its colonization and the post-military industrial complex, the U.S. military industrial complex has affected the nation.
00:17:58
Speaker
And so the division of labor and the division of gender there is just in a position where it's just not sustainable.
00:18:05
Speaker
And also everyone there has to work extremely hard.
00:18:08
Speaker
They are extremely overworked people as a population.
00:18:12
Speaker
They spend all their lives in school.
00:18:14
Speaker
And then after school, they spend all this time in hagwons.
00:18:17
Speaker
And then they have to make sure they have extremely good grades.
00:18:20
Speaker
And that's what sets them up for like a good life.
00:18:22
Speaker
And like, it depends on whether they go to like a really good university, but like their entire life is dictated by these very few choices they make when they're extremely young.
00:18:30
Speaker
And so I think a lot of them have this impression that like, hey, I do all this work.
00:18:35
Speaker
I served in the military.
00:18:36
Speaker
Like, why am I not being handed my life on a platter?
00:18:39
Speaker
Because for a very long time, that was the norm.
Media Influence on Relationship Perceptions
00:18:42
Speaker
Well, and women are the scapegoat.
00:18:44
Speaker
Women are the scapegoat and women are the reward.
00:18:46
Speaker
Exactly.
00:18:47
Speaker
And so they see their position in society as, hey, I'm doing something I really don't want to do with the promise that I'm going to be rewarded with a wife and a child and at least a way for me to take out my frustrations from capitalism, essentially, because
00:19:01
Speaker
after they come back from the military, they still have to work like dogs.
00:19:04
Speaker
You know what I mean?
00:19:05
Speaker
So they want this buffer, this place where they can vent their frustrations.
00:19:09
Speaker
And if women choose to not participate, then that's gone.
00:19:12
Speaker
Well, and I think that's another one of the stats that most struck me was that 80% of women were avoiding marriage because of domestic violence.
00:19:21
Speaker
So what are the rates of domestic violence?
00:19:23
Speaker
Do we even know?
00:19:24
Speaker
If anything, if it's 80% is what's acknowledged, I would dare to say that it's got to be upwards of
00:19:29
Speaker
90% where women are just considered, you know, the punching bag for the frustrations of these men who will never reach the heights that they hope to attain.
00:19:37
Speaker
And especially when we think about between K-pop and K-movies, K-film, the glamorized, sanitized version of South Korea that we see, you know, is this like world of glamor and ease and luxury and abundance.
00:19:52
Speaker
But like you say, if that's what's being presented to its people and yet they have to work like a dog,
00:19:58
Speaker
That disconnect has to be something that is so psychologically disturbing for so many, particularly if you've been raised as a male in this hierarchy and have been told that these are the wages that you receive if you play the game right.
00:20:11
Speaker
And women are simply saying, we're no longer playing this game.
00:20:15
Speaker
Yep.
00:20:16
Speaker
The other aspect of it is also, you know, with this Hallyu wave, like the Korean wave of content that's now become like a global sort of phenomena.
00:20:24
Speaker
The broader issue is that, first of all, let's take K-dramas, okay, just as an isolated example.
00:20:29
Speaker
K-dramas are by and large written for Korean women by Korean women.
00:20:34
Speaker
Maybe the decision makers at the producers level are men, but for the most part, a good significant population of those K-drama writers are women.
00:20:41
Speaker
It tends to be the Korean movies that are more male dominated, the feature films, as we call them.
00:20:45
Speaker
And so that's why the feature films have such a tonal shift from what you usually see in dramas.
00:20:49
Speaker
I feel like dramas have like a variety.
00:20:51
Speaker
You've got love stories, you've got family dramas, you sometimes have crime.
00:20:54
Speaker
But the film scene is a little bit more, you know, what you'd call like indie sort of cinema that goes to like con and shit, you know, it's like, it's meant to be art house.
00:21:03
Speaker
It's not really meant to be like candy floss that's consumed by the masses.
00:21:07
Speaker
And so for a very long time, you know, I mean, Korean dramas and Korean music was always really popular in Asia.
00:21:14
Speaker
Let me just stress that it's America that caught on to it super late.
00:21:18
Speaker
And the reason why Americans caught on to it at all was because of their diaspora, you know, like the Korean people and like the Asian diaspora that brought it along with them.
00:21:26
Speaker
So by the time Korean music and dramas blew up in the States, which was like maybe shortly before COVID and, you know, maybe like I'd say the mid 2010s, it already had like a significant impact in Asia specifically, especially Southeast and East Asia.
00:21:41
Speaker
I don't even think really South Asia cottoned onto it so much.
00:21:44
Speaker
Like at the time when I was watching K-dramas, which was like in the early 2000s, I was one of maybe, maybe a hundred people in my country that were watching it, you know?
00:21:53
Speaker
That's only because I had Korean friends and roommates who exposed me to it.
00:21:56
Speaker
So very specific context.
00:21:59
Speaker
But the movies, you know, when you watch the Korean drama specifically, it's quite telling that the romantic ones, they're very specifically focused on selling you an ideal of masculinity that does not exist.
00:22:10
Speaker
And even Korean women acknowledge that.
00:22:11
Speaker
Even Korean men acknowledge that.
00:22:13
Speaker
They find it to be a very unrealistic fantasy.
00:22:16
Speaker
You know, you have like 10 episodes where people are being very chased and holding hands and like kissing and stuff.
00:22:21
Speaker
But the reality of actually dating Korean men, and this is why I really want to stress to like all the Koreaboos out there who watch, you know, Korean dramas and think you're going to go to Korea and find like an oppa and just have like a great life.
00:22:33
Speaker
That's not going to be your life.
00:22:34
Speaker
Okay.
00:22:35
Speaker
There's some serious structural problems in that country, like any other country.
00:22:39
Speaker
And the men are just as capable of being misogynistic.
00:22:42
Speaker
And if you don't take my word for it, ask Korean women yourself.
00:22:45
Speaker
But they sell an idealized fiction because the vast majority of the early K-drama watchers were stay-at-home moms, essentially, people who weren't in the workforce.
00:22:56
Speaker
So their whole thing was about trying to appeal to that population.
00:22:59
Speaker
And that's why I think it has such a huge female fan base is it caters to a fantasy that's not really real.
00:23:05
Speaker
But then when you actually deconstruct some of the more problematic elements of these dramas, you see that they have a lot of really problematic things like, you know, the woman pretending to be drunk so that the guy like will kiss her when she's drunk because she can't actually be sexually open and like herself, kissing herself.
00:23:22
Speaker
Or, you know, the guy like manhandling her and like dragging.
00:23:25
Speaker
This is like such a trope in Korean dramas where he just like drags her across the street and like holds her hand and doesn't let go and just like drags her around like she's a ragdoll.
00:23:31
Speaker
And people treated it like it's like super romantic.
00:23:33
Speaker
And it's just, it's really not, you know?
00:23:35
Speaker
The only thing that they really do hint at at all is like the class divide because it's always like some chivalry guy.
00:23:40
Speaker
It's like some guy who's like extremely wealthy and comes from generational wealth and like some extremely poor woman who's not going to be allowed to date him or marry him because his mom is like totally against it and how she like wins over his heart and he fights for their relationship.
00:23:53
Speaker
But again, this is all fiction.
00:23:54
Speaker
It's all fantasy.
00:23:56
Speaker
And Korean women have warned other people about the fact that this is fiction and the reality of being a Korean woman, a reality of being a Korean girlfriend or Korean wife is not that.
Challenges in China and Japan
00:24:06
Speaker
I appreciate so much this overview, Diana, because it's so true.
00:24:10
Speaker
Like the U.S. is absolutely like last of all the globe.
00:24:13
Speaker
and coming to appreciate the cultural capital from South Korea.
00:24:18
Speaker
But one thing I want to note too, is it's not just South Korean women that are telling us this.
00:24:22
Speaker
Online, I've been seeing more and more, whether it's Stitches or TikTok or YouTube individuals, they are coming forward, especially the younger women, younger Black women who have wanted to go to South Korea for educational exchange or other blonde, white American women who go to teach English for a couple of years.
00:24:44
Speaker
And they all come back with these stories of just how horrifying the daily newspaper is as far as reports of murder and violence against women.
00:24:53
Speaker
And also about the gap in inequality and respect and how women are treated and the hypocrisy of how American women are treated there, especially ones who go with these like heart shaped eyes and
00:25:07
Speaker
and the fantasy of the K-drama hero being their future husband.
00:25:11
Speaker
And so if we're not listening, it's on us to not have been listening because they have been shouting it from the rooftops.
00:25:19
Speaker
increasingly over the last couple of years.
00:25:21
Speaker
And again, I really want to point out how social media has really allowed this discourse to flourish because I think simply North American feminists weren't listening.
00:25:30
Speaker
And even to this day, they still don't listen to many other women, especially if you're a black woman, if you're an indigenous woman, if you're anyone who doesn't look the same as they do, they're less inclined to listen to you.
00:25:40
Speaker
And this is an ongoing problem that radical feminists, I think, are learning to grapple with.
00:25:46
Speaker
But
00:25:47
Speaker
All I can say is I've been so excited to see 4B trickling down into North American feminist circles.
00:25:57
Speaker
I know you tend to travel and live around various countries and regions, Diana.
00:26:01
Speaker
What have you been seeing in the news or in social media in women's circles?
00:26:06
Speaker
So as far as the Asian impact is concerned, I think that 4B did trickle down to China and I mean, to a certain extent, Japan as well.
00:26:14
Speaker
Japan has like a huge incel problem.
00:26:16
Speaker
They call them hikikomoris, but they're essentially incels.
00:26:19
Speaker
And they're basically men who are like, you know, what was the episode?
00:26:21
Speaker
The neat hikikomoris.
Government Suppression of Feminist Movements
00:26:22
Speaker
episode, the never employed, educated people, the train wrecks who like mooch off of their parents, like there's a total brand for that in Japan.
00:26:30
Speaker
They're called Hikikomoris.
00:26:32
Speaker
And they're just these guys who don't work and like haven't been to school and they don't even leave their house.
00:26:36
Speaker
They're like shut-ins essentially, you know?
00:26:38
Speaker
And, you know, Japanese women have also been talking about the kind of burden of like having to, like how to navigate their careers because if they get married or they choose to have kids and stuff, it's a complete derailment of their
00:26:51
Speaker
professional ambitions.
00:26:53
Speaker
And again, even in Japan, they have a very similar problem to Korea in that there's not a lot of women who are represented in politics or in business or in any place really where there's massive power.
00:27:03
Speaker
Japan is also an incredibly expensive place to have a family.
00:27:06
Speaker
And the government's
00:27:08
Speaker
Band-Aid solutions for trying to encourage people to procreate has not been effective because you can't just have economic incentives to try to get people to play ball, essentially.
00:27:17
Speaker
To take on the burden.
00:27:19
Speaker
Yeah.
00:27:19
Speaker
And as well, China tacked on two more things to the 4B movement.
00:27:24
Speaker
I think it was one was like, don't wear makeup and participate in the beauty industry, which I thought was a pretty good one.
00:27:30
Speaker
And another one, let me see if I can find it.
00:27:32
Speaker
Just give me a second.
00:27:33
Speaker
While you're looking that up, one thing I'm thinking about is how...
00:27:36
Speaker
You know, with the rise of cost of living and sort of the uncertainty of markets, women and financial freedom, women and money, it is the one guarantee for women in order to be able to free themselves from violence or from a degenerate husband.
00:27:54
Speaker
And I think that in particular is why many of these governments aren't interested in helping equalize the job markets, because they know that if they can give men the prize, the conciliation prize of a woman who's dependent on them, the men are never going to turn their eyes to the true evil behind the empire, which is the government, right, which is very happy to leave
00:28:15
Speaker
the majority of its population lagging behind in a time of never before seen abundance.
00:28:21
Speaker
And there was a quote I had read just yesterday.
00:28:23
Speaker
It was talking about women and money.
00:28:26
Speaker
And she's like, I don't know why he's so opposed to me working.
00:28:29
Speaker
And somebody had said, if he can't feed you, he can't starve you.
00:28:34
Speaker
Yep.
00:28:34
Speaker
So I have the other two.
00:28:36
Speaker
So they have a movement called 6B4T, and it has all the four that the South Korean 4B movement has, but it also has not buying sexist products and supporting fellow single women practicing the movement.
00:28:48
Speaker
And the 4T refers to rejecting strict beauty standards, hypersexual depictions of women in Japanese otaku culture, which is like the
00:28:56
Speaker
anime, manga kind of culture, religion and idol culture.
00:29:00
Speaker
So they're basically eschewing idol culture, which again, South Korea and even Japan have a huge investment in K-pop and idols in general because it's a huge driver to their economy now.
00:29:13
Speaker
And it's a huge driver of tourism, which is a major factor of their, it's a major player now in their economy.
00:29:20
Speaker
A lot of women are going to Korea with romantic stars in their eyes, essentially.
00:29:25
Speaker
And it's a direct result of this K-pop industry.
00:29:29
Speaker
So they're basically saying that we reject idol culture, especially for women.
00:29:32
Speaker
The female idol culture is extremely misogynistic.
00:29:35
Speaker
It's basically to cater to these extremely creepy men.
00:29:38
Speaker
But the thing with China was that the women who were doing this in secret, you know, online were being hunted down by the government, essentially, because the Chinese government does not play like that.
00:29:48
Speaker
They are extremely anti-feminism.
00:29:51
Speaker
Of course they are.
00:29:52
Speaker
I mean, unlike Korea, which is still a democracy, they have total power to squash and silence women and throw them in prison.
00:30:00
Speaker
So China and Iran are very similar in that their government has basically straight up started a digital war against its women.
00:30:08
Speaker
Shout out to Chinese and Iranian women because we're all struggling with these issues, but to be directly demonized by your government and being able to be sent to prison for having any kind of feminist ideal, those are the real heroes because they're doing it at great personal risk to their lives.
00:30:24
Speaker
It's not just a matter of holding a personal belief.
00:30:27
Speaker
It's a matter of living that ideal and the government is more than willing to silence them.
00:30:31
Speaker
and throw them in prison for having
Comparison of 4B Movement and FDS
00:30:33
Speaker
those beliefs.
00:30:33
Speaker
So there are still parts of the world where being a feminist or being an open feminist is like, you know, it sets legal precedent for politicians to send you to prison.
00:30:44
Speaker
You know, what scares me is that I don't think we're that far off from it at any moment here in the West.
00:30:50
Speaker
I mean, we were discussing this before we started the program.
00:30:53
Speaker
But one thing we were talking about was this increase of
00:30:57
Speaker
discourse, especially in the U.S., around abortion, around reproductive freedoms, even around no-fault divorce.
00:31:06
Speaker
These are different areas in which our governments, people elected by the people, are working to roll back all of the gains, any of the few gains that women have achieved here in the United States.
00:31:21
Speaker
And keep in mind, a lot of this is going to be based around
00:31:25
Speaker
Finance and making sure women are as limited as possible, as constricted as possible in having financial freedom, because that is the fulcrum upon which everybody moves.
00:31:36
Speaker
So again, as you say to our women sisters in Iran and China, we salute you.
00:31:42
Speaker
I always wonder if do they even have access to these kinds of podcasts?
00:31:46
Speaker
I can't imagine they do.
00:31:47
Speaker
So at this point, what can we pivot to as far as what kind of lessons we take from it and how we can apply it to female dating strategy?
00:31:59
Speaker
This part is, I guess, a little bit harder.
00:32:01
Speaker
Well, you know, we should, you know, set the record straight for B is a separatist movement.
00:32:07
Speaker
And so that's one of the ways it's kind of different from FDS because FDS is specifically a strategy to help women find healthy partnerships.
00:32:16
Speaker
So, you know, our approach is completely different in that we are
00:32:19
Speaker
maybe not encouraging of women settling for garbage, but we do have this thing at our very heart, which is that we want women to be strategic about finding a partner, right?
00:32:32
Speaker
Whereas 4B is very clear in its mission statement, which is that completely separate from men.
00:32:39
Speaker
So to me, that comes down to personal choice.
00:32:42
Speaker
right?
00:32:42
Speaker
Not to play into choice feminism specifically, but I mean, you know, if you are a woman who feels like you are happy with your life and you are content with the finances you're making, you live in a free and liberal society.
Cultural Contexts Shaping Feminist Movements
00:32:55
Speaker
I mean, you know, I'm jealous of you.
00:32:56
Speaker
I'd like to join that.
00:32:56
Speaker
But if you're in a position where you're earning money, you have a set life, you have good friends, and you don't feel like there's anything missing and you feel like this is something that appeals to you, then by all means, you know, if you want to embody these values, I mean, I feel like I've done this just by accident.
00:33:10
Speaker
You know what I mean?
00:33:11
Speaker
It wasn't even really a conscious thing.
00:33:12
Speaker
It's just like it made sense to me because obviously I would separate if I feel like the existing population isn't suitable for my needs.
00:33:19
Speaker
Right.
00:33:19
Speaker
But we are going with a slightly more optimistic tone in that we presume that there are a few people that are actually worth the time.
00:33:27
Speaker
And so our approach is by definition a little bit different because we're trying to basically set you up with the best framework for navigating an already very tricky dating environment.
00:33:39
Speaker
So we're going in with the assumption that there are some people who are out there that are worth it.
00:33:44
Speaker
And this is the strategy to find those people.
00:33:48
Speaker
Now we can't guarantee or, you know, place a number down on exactly how many decent people there are out there, because obviously we don't know, but I would argue and probably assume that it is a very small number.
00:33:59
Speaker
So if you feel like it's worth it for you, then that's what you should be doing.
00:34:03
Speaker
But, you know, I mean, I'm not here to really lecture women.
00:34:08
Speaker
on what they feel is an acceptable way of living their life.
00:34:12
Speaker
I completely understand where these women are coming from, you know, especially as far as like rejecting idol culture, rejecting beauty standards, because they come from cultures that are extremely, in some ways, superficial when it comes to what a woman's role is in society.
00:34:27
Speaker
And I think that they're navigating a new historical period in their countries where they're trying to navigate what is their role as women in their own society.
00:34:34
Speaker
So we can't wholesale take all of their ideas and apply it to our own because we're talking about two completely different contexts and two cultures with completely different histories in terms of women's rights.
00:34:46
Speaker
So I wouldn't advise an American woman who grew up with the traditional American waves of feminism
00:34:51
Speaker
to look at South Korea and be like, I need to adopt this wholesale because their movement has really come from a historical
Uniting Global Feminist Movements
00:34:57
Speaker
context.
00:34:57
Speaker
You know, it's come from a rejection of these historical norms that have been set on them that they don't agree with.
00:35:04
Speaker
And so if you have to find your version of 4B, whatever that is, if you feel like it's the right choice to eschew relationships with men, not date them.
00:35:13
Speaker
I mean, you know, FDS is pretty clear about like, we don't really believe that men and women can really be friends.
00:35:17
Speaker
Maybe allies, you know, in a strange way, like maybe you have mutually aligned goals, but not friends in the sense that you can wholly trust them.
00:35:25
Speaker
And this is where I think there's almost a clear through line, or if you want to say a spectrum, I feel like FDS is at the, if we want to look at like somewhat integrated to a non-integrated perspective on how a woman can live her life, I think we have to go with FDS is the safest way to approach dating and heterosexual relationships if you want to pursue that.
00:35:47
Speaker
Do not allow any of your standards to go lower than that.
00:35:51
Speaker
If you do want to engage, these are the parameters by which we're trying to engage.
00:35:55
Speaker
From there, you can sort of slide on down to the non-integrated side that 4B represents.
00:36:01
Speaker
And this is something that I've been seeing a lot of.
00:36:03
Speaker
Again, I love to go onto YouTube.
00:36:05
Speaker
I don't know about you, Diana.
00:36:06
Speaker
I'm not on like Instagram or TikTok or whatnot, but a lot of TikTok stitches are put on YouTube feminist channels and then they discuss this with their listeners.
00:36:17
Speaker
And I'm just seeing countless stitches of women talking about Forby here in the West and a lot of men responding with vitriol and with derision and American women will never make this happen.
00:36:29
Speaker
Well, of course, because like you say, there's a specific historical context for it.
00:36:33
Speaker
But I think the fact that there is finally a blueprint that women can reference that shows you have more options than just
00:36:44
Speaker
marriage, or boyfriend.
00:36:46
Speaker
These are not your only options in the world.
00:36:48
Speaker
And as a matter of fact, I would argue that FDS is also, like you say, we're talking about what you can do if you want to find and pursue that sort of relationship.
00:36:56
Speaker
That like you say, already, no to heterosexual relationships.
00:37:01
Speaker
I mean, we don't believe in friendships with men.
00:37:03
Speaker
We don't feel that women and men can be friends.
00:37:05
Speaker
We always support women finding other women as friends.
00:37:09
Speaker
Childbirth and marriage, these are things that we always talk about as only after extensive vetting and the most extreme circumspection with picking out your partner.
00:37:19
Speaker
To even marry them is one stage, to have children with them is another.
00:37:23
Speaker
And so again, I feel like these are steps that are being laid out for us to really see and understand the impact they have on society as opposed to just going along with what's been modeled for us and sort of just swallowing the Kool-Aid.
00:37:38
Speaker
Yep.
00:37:39
Speaker
Again, you know, you can't compare Korea with the US because the US is kind of similar to China and India in that it's a vast and huge country with people who have very differing
00:37:50
Speaker
ideas and outlooks
Intersectionality and Solidarity in Feminism
00:37:51
Speaker
on life.
00:37:51
Speaker
They don't have the same kind of cultural standard or the homogeneity that Korea has.
00:37:56
Speaker
Korea had a generation of people who made a sacrifice in order to leave the kind of life they had in the 90s, which was more like a third world country in Asia, to now being a global superpower.
00:38:09
Speaker
And that took a whole generation's sacrifice to do it.
00:38:11
Speaker
So those women are willing to put the legwork in.
00:38:14
Speaker
And that is something we should applaud them for.
00:38:16
Speaker
But it's also achievable because they're a smaller country.
00:38:19
Speaker
It's kind of like a union, right?
00:38:21
Speaker
You have a smaller union, you can bargain because your country relies on this small union in order to produce the next generation's workers.
00:38:27
Speaker
But the US, Canada and India don't have that option.
00:38:30
Speaker
They have a very divided class, they have a very divided caste, if you consider caste to be a category in America because of race.
00:38:37
Speaker
And, you know, they have all of these other demographics that kind of prevent people from allying against like to all come together to fight for a singular ideal.
00:38:47
Speaker
It was easier when society was simpler like 50, 60 years ago, but we are not in those times anymore.
00:38:52
Speaker
And I mean, if anything, the two party system in the U.S. has kind of shown that because people don't want to have these two choices, but they've been forced to make a decision between two choices.
00:39:01
Speaker
And so it's not easy to measure American feminism to Korean feminism because they just have a completely different trajectory.
00:39:08
Speaker
And I think that the fact that the men are basically raging against 4B is a sign that they're doing something right because men only get super riled up and all sensitive when they feel like there's something to lose.
00:39:20
Speaker
And I feel like they can sense that this is dangerous territory because if suddenly all American women, the Republican women, the Democratic women, the undecideds, if they all got together and decided to follow the 4B movement, that would spell the end of an era in America for American men.
00:39:35
Speaker
Oh, God, from your lips.
00:39:37
Speaker
And they're well aware of that.
00:39:38
Speaker
They know that.
00:39:40
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:39:41
Speaker
They are more acutely aware of that than even we women, right?
00:39:44
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:45
Speaker
And I mean, it was Andrea Dworkin, right, who said that, you know, the thing is that right wing men and left wing men are no different.
00:39:52
Speaker
Right wing men believe that women are private property and left wing men believe that women are public property.
00:39:58
Speaker
Either way, they both believe that women are property.
00:40:00
Speaker
Andrea Dworkin, may you be resting in peace, eternal slumber.
00:40:06
Speaker
Yes, absolutely.
00:40:07
Speaker
And I think this is why I am latching onto it with such vigor, Diana, is that regardless of whether the historical circumstances, the social context, the caste system, it's still such a powerful ideal.
00:40:21
Speaker
And let us not discount the power of ideas.
00:40:25
Speaker
in galvanizing movements.
00:40:27
Speaker
This was something that we talked about how, for example, even in Black Lives Matter movement, a movement begun by a Black woman, I think Tamara Dorana Burke, right?
00:40:37
Speaker
And how quickly they were hidden and alighted from the actual movement.
00:40:41
Speaker
Because Lord knows most American people don't want to hear from a Black woman, although they tend to be the ones who save us again and again.
00:40:48
Speaker
And it's the fact that
00:40:49
Speaker
This especially historically has been such a subjugated minority within this country because I think similar to Korean women, they're sort of stuck between this caste system and also the idea of sacrificing for the good of their people, right?
00:41:05
Speaker
And bringing the next generation, not allowing themselves to be further subordinated by the ruling class and eschewing
00:41:13
Speaker
childbirth and marriage, but it's between a rock and a hard place for them.
00:41:18
Speaker
And so again, like you say, and for indigenous women, especially, I mean, there are so many subdivisions amongst the populations that it further keeps us fragmented, right?
00:41:29
Speaker
It keeps us siloed, it keeps us atomized, so that we're not able to sort of form a collective movement.
00:41:35
Speaker
Yes.
00:41:36
Speaker
And I mean, to be specific, attempts to form a collective movement have happened before.
00:41:41
Speaker
But I think that, you know, there's two parts of it, especially when you're a woman of color.
00:41:44
Speaker
I don't want to speak for all women of color, but I certainly think that this is relevant to my group, is that, first of all, we feel a certain sense of loyalty to our men, misplaced sense of loyalty, if you ask me.
00:41:55
Speaker
But it's that historically, if you come from a colonized nation, or, you know, you come from a country where your people have suffered extreme violence at the hands of white people,
00:42:04
Speaker
As a woman, you're less likely to trust them, but you're also less likely to trust the women because traditionally white women have held their privilege like a weapon to wield against other women.
00:42:15
Speaker
And so it's been very difficult to form solidarity with them because often when we do form solidarity with them, they become the face of the movement.
00:42:23
Speaker
And so their problems become
00:42:26
Speaker
the majority's problems and their issues become the majority's issues.
00:42:29
Speaker
And so everything becomes about trying to rescue white womanhood and rescue white women specifically from their problems.
00:42:36
Speaker
And so all these other minority problems are kind of swept under the rug and then they continue.
00:42:41
Speaker
So I don't blame a lot of other minority women for being like, the only way we're going to have these problems addressed in our communities, the violence that our men inflict on us is if we go separate and we do it ourselves.
00:42:52
Speaker
But I think that there is power in numbers, you know, and I think that, again, you know, when you're walking down a street, you are more likely to fear men from your own background than you are to fear any other woman on the street.
00:43:03
Speaker
And that itself is telling you instinctually that there is some value in trusting other women.
00:43:07
Speaker
Yes, I think that we probably should.
00:43:10
Speaker
I mean, just as I would advise women to vet the men in their lives that they choose to date, they should vet the women in their lives that they choose to befriend as well.
00:43:16
Speaker
And this goes back to like our other podcast that we're talking about, female friendships.
00:43:21
Speaker
I was just going to say throwback throwback to last week's podcast.
00:43:25
Speaker
Exactly.
00:43:25
Speaker
So, you know, it goes back to you don't have to get along with every woman on earth.
00:43:30
Speaker
You know what I mean?
00:43:31
Speaker
I mean, I know that we joke about I support women's rights and I support women's wrongs.
00:43:35
Speaker
But if a woman is wronging you.
00:43:40
Speaker
I have never heard that before.
00:43:42
Speaker
Oh my God, I want to make a t-shirt.
00:43:44
Speaker
That's amazing.
00:43:45
Speaker
I say that all the time.
00:43:46
Speaker
I say I support women's rights and I support their wrongs as well, you know?
00:43:50
Speaker
You know, I feel like this is the feminist version of equal rights, equal lefts.
00:43:54
Speaker
Yeah.
00:43:55
Speaker
Where men will say, well, women want to be equal.
00:43:57
Speaker
That means we can beat you up.
00:43:58
Speaker
But no, that's not what it means.
00:43:59
Speaker
But this is like feminist answer to that.
00:44:03
Speaker
Yeah, that's what I say.
00:44:05
Speaker
I support women's rights and I support their wrongs too.
00:44:08
Speaker
But I totally understand that you don't want to support a woman who is wronging you.
00:44:13
Speaker
And that's where you have to have discernment.
00:44:16
Speaker
And that's where we have to bring in nuance.
00:44:18
Speaker
Because the truth is that there is a breach of trust between
00:44:22
Speaker
people who come from a colonizer tradition who have historically ruled over and had dominion over the global south or you know people in their own lands like Canada the U.S. you know even to the UK to a certain extent because I mean what the English have done to their neighbors to like Ireland and Wales and Scotland you know they tested them out as guinea pigs and then moved on to the rest of the world so we have a lot of distrust of people who don't come from our backgrounds in general but
00:44:45
Speaker
When I started interacting with other Asian women who didn't come from cultures
Role of Women in Societal Change
00:44:49
Speaker
like my own, I found that even though their men were different in their misogyny, we had very similar problems.
00:44:56
Speaker
And that's the crux of it.
00:44:58
Speaker
That is the crux of it, is it not?
00:44:59
Speaker
Globally, whatever your global ethnicity, your religion, your class, your caste, we are more aligned as women than we will ever be with our male counterparts.
00:45:13
Speaker
Yep.
00:45:13
Speaker
And we have the capacity to hear each other out now.
00:45:15
Speaker
There was a time in society when before the internet, you had no way of knowing what the struggles were of women who are outside your hometown, let alone another country, you know?
00:45:25
Speaker
And now we know what everyone is going through.
00:45:27
Speaker
We know what Iranian women are going through.
00:45:29
Speaker
We know what Chinese and Korean women are going through.
00:45:32
Speaker
We know what American women are going through.
00:45:34
Speaker
We have a window into other people's lives in a way that we've never had.
00:45:38
Speaker
And we should be responsible with that privilege.
00:45:41
Speaker
you know, and we need to be constructive and we need to think about how exactly am I helping this person?
00:45:47
Speaker
I think a lot of us think, okay, I have a stronger voice.
00:45:49
Speaker
It's my job to like come out and speak out on the behalf of other people.
00:45:53
Speaker
But we have to kind of, you know, be careful about when we take on that savior role.
00:45:57
Speaker
Because I think that at our hearts, women feel this need to protect other people.
00:46:01
Speaker
If anything, we're the real protectors and providers.
00:46:04
Speaker
And so we feel like we want to speak for the people who are, you know, downtrodden, but we have to be extremely careful about putting on that savior's hat.
00:46:11
Speaker
When we're coming at it from a position of allyship and solidarity, we have to understand the context in which people are struggling and just lend them support in the way that they want.
00:46:21
Speaker
That's really the important key here is it's not the way you want it.
00:46:25
Speaker
You know, you don't know the entire total history of any real region.
00:46:29
Speaker
The best you can do is listen and offer support.
00:46:32
Speaker
We have to approach it from a position of being friends.
00:46:35
Speaker
The real driver of what's going to change things around is
00:46:38
Speaker
is if we form these friendships with other women.
00:46:41
Speaker
Romance is actually not going to save us.
00:46:43
Speaker
What is going to save us at our very hearts is friendship with other women.
00:46:47
Speaker
Preach, Diana, preach.
00:46:49
Speaker
This has been my motto for my entire life.
00:46:53
Speaker
And there's been a lot of heartbreak from a lot of the friendships that I've had, because as we know, our training historically has led us to be pitted against one another.
00:47:01
Speaker
To view friendship or life on this earth as a woman is a zero-sum game.
00:47:05
Speaker
There is a winner and there is a loser.
00:47:07
Speaker
And that is actually what I think is at the heart of inhibiting us moving forward and collectivizing as a gender, is understanding that there is a lot of history there.
00:47:16
Speaker
There is a lot of oppression and exploitation at heart.
00:47:19
Speaker
But that doesn't mean we can't change the needle and move forward on a different path, on a better path.
00:47:25
Speaker
I get really hopeful and really excited when I hear the conversations happening in this day and age, conversations that weren't even happening three years ago,
00:47:33
Speaker
or five years ago.
00:47:35
Speaker
So these windows that we're being granted is ultimate privilege.
00:47:38
Speaker
I mean, can you imagine even 100 years ago, hearing from women in South Korea, if you are in the UK, or in New York, it simply wouldn't happen.
00:47:47
Speaker
And here we are having it transmitted in real time.
00:47:50
Speaker
As you say, learning how to listen and learning how to ally in the most meaningful way to those who are asking for help in ways that are specific to them, that is the way that we move forward.
00:48:00
Speaker
That is the way in which we lay the foundations for friendships,
00:48:04
Speaker
that will lead to global changes.
00:48:06
Speaker
And I think at the heart of it, that's what we want, is it not?
00:48:08
Speaker
We want to see the globe move in a healthier direction, in a direction that's more woman-oriented.
00:48:14
Speaker
And I think FDS, we're doing our part.
00:48:17
Speaker
Yep.
00:48:18
Speaker
And I think, you know, we want the exact same thing from our partners as
Compassion, Understanding, and Agency in Feminism
00:48:21
Speaker
well, right?
00:48:21
Speaker
I think we need to start leading by example, because the truth is we want partners who listen to us, who acknowledge that as men, they probably could never understand the kinds of struggles we endure as women.
00:48:32
Speaker
They could just never possibly know.
00:48:34
Speaker
Coming at it from that position of being like, I can't possibly know, but I will attempt to understand is far better than saying, I presume to know better.
00:48:42
Speaker
And I will advise you on how you should conduct yourself.
00:48:45
Speaker
We would be equally annoyed if like the men in our lives who we choose to date would be like, why can't you just be more like this or more assertive?
00:48:53
Speaker
We'd get annoyed because we're like, well, you know, we can't be you.
00:48:56
Speaker
We can't do what you do.
00:48:58
Speaker
And you need to understand, you need to have a realistic understanding of how the world operates.
00:49:03
Speaker
Right.
00:49:03
Speaker
And so just assume that you don't know anything and approach it from a position of listening and understanding and learning and be there for people and remind them.
00:49:13
Speaker
You know, I have a lot of friends who have been through a lot of really abusive relationships because they come from very misogynistic, very patriarchal cultures that also kind of encourage them to stay trapped in these kinds of relationships.
00:49:25
Speaker
And, you know, I could be irritable with them and say, just dump the guy.
00:49:29
Speaker
He's stupid.
00:49:30
Speaker
You know what I mean?
00:49:31
Speaker
But they're not going to listen to me because anybody who's been in that position will know that they can know something intellectually and feel very differently emotionally.
00:49:40
Speaker
And it's much harder to leave someone when you've made an emotional commitment to them or connection with them.
00:49:46
Speaker
And so my approach with my friends who've been in this position has always been to remind them of how special they are.
00:49:52
Speaker
how important and how visionary and how kind and how gracious they are and that they are deserving of better.
00:49:58
Speaker
And that's what FDS leaves people with is the first time I've seen any kind of dating strategy or approach that encourages women to recognize that they are significant.
00:50:09
Speaker
important that they have a right to have the kind of life that they want, that they're special, and that they actually deserve the good treatment that they think that they do.
00:50:18
Speaker
That it's not just a fantasy.
00:50:20
Speaker
It's not just a fairy tale.
00:50:22
Speaker
You deserve to have better.
00:50:23
Speaker
And so we need to approach that when we're understanding people who are coming from cultures that are way more misogynistic than we are, that the solutions that we have in our country sometimes just can't be relevant to them because they just don't have the same legal recourse or the same kind of resources.
00:50:38
Speaker
You know, so you have to breathe life into them and tell them, hey, your country may not allow you to divorce easily or get these kinds of resources or do this kind of thing.
00:50:48
Speaker
But here's what you can do.
00:50:49
Speaker
This is why I think you're important and significant.
00:50:51
Speaker
This is why I think that you are a good person.
00:50:52
Speaker
You deserve better.
00:50:53
Speaker
And they may still not change, right?
00:50:55
Speaker
We can only do the best that we can and people still might not listen to us.
00:50:58
Speaker
But I think when you approach this with the level of sensitivity that it deserves and the compassion it deserves, we are going to move more minds and hearts with it instead of just going out of our way to be extremely aggressively, you know, shoving our opinions and our feelings down somebody else's throat.
00:51:14
Speaker
So yeah, that's what I would say.
00:51:16
Speaker
That's so beautifully said.
00:51:17
Speaker
I really feel that compassion is the name of the game.
00:51:20
Speaker
And as you say, if we can change minds and hearts, that is how you move mountains.
00:51:25
Speaker
And so again, never think that the work that we're doing here is forgettable or not noteworthy.
00:51:33
Speaker
This is life-changing life.
00:51:35
Speaker
world-shaking kind of work we can do.
00:51:37
Speaker
And it starts with us.
Conclusion and Future Discussions
00:51:38
Speaker
And with that, Diana, I feel like that's been our general overview of 4B.
00:51:42
Speaker
There's certainly much more that can be said and that I'm sure will be said in the future.
00:51:47
Speaker
But I think for our listeners at this point, what we'd ask is, what have you been seeing in your own region?
00:51:52
Speaker
What have you been hearing from distant shores?
00:51:54
Speaker
And how has that been altering your path forward in this fractured landscape of feminism and world politics?
00:52:02
Speaker
Yep.
00:52:02
Speaker
We want to hear from everyone and we want to hear about your experiences.
00:52:06
Speaker
And, you know, we want to have broader discussions about this because we're in a position where we can have these discussions.
00:52:11
Speaker
And we are one of the few podcasts, I think, that actually openly talk about these issues that are affecting the world.
00:52:17
Speaker
And so...
00:52:18
Speaker
Yes, please do leave us feedback.
00:52:20
Speaker
With that, I think we're going to wrap it up for this week's podcast.
00:52:23
Speaker
Please join us next week for another scintillating topic where Diane and I delve into the nuances and the hopes of strategies that will empower and enable us to create better futures for all.
00:52:37
Speaker
Yep.
00:52:37
Speaker
And I hope all the ladies who are listening to this podcast have a wonderful week.
00:52:42
Speaker
And to all the scrotes, die mad.
00:52:44
Speaker
Women be liberated.