My Korean girlfriends have been talking about how the #Metoo movement has been having an effect on Korea. They told me about several actors who have been revealed as predators and are now paying for their sins. Also some academics who have been accused by former female students are in trouble now. And a few doctors, too. Even a secretary told on her politician boss who had raped her. I know that isn't even the tip of the iceburg. There are many women, probably every woman in Korea who has gone through hell of one man's making or another. Not that all men are bad, but the culture is the same in many countries, even my own, that men have power and women don't, that some of those men abuse that power to hurt and control women. I have too many female friends who have told me about being raped by bosses or boyfriends, that have had to do unwanted sexual things to keep a job, that have been harassed walking down the street by strangers and aggressively verbally attacked or menaced for resisting their advances. And many men think this is all in good fun or that they have a right to do this. They are wrong.



This movement has been a long time coming. I worked a few summers in a factory with my dad making cans. I worked as a double seamer operator and my dad was a mechanic. I remember seeing my father and a bunch of men in one if the offices during their break time. On the way home that night I asked him what they were doing. He said that they were talking about the proposed chemical castration of rapists. All men value their penises and their stamina so they were all thinking it was too severe a punishment. Then my dad made it personal. He asked some of the men how they would feel if it happened to their wives, daughters, mothers or sisters, identifying them by name. They started suggesting physical castration, he told me. I was never as proud of my father as I was at that moment. A lot of men would not have publicly expressed such an opinion in front of his coworkers that went against the status quo. My dad did, and got a lot of other men to agree with him. 



This has been my experience. Since grade one elementary school, boys have been told they can do anything and thye in turn have been busy telling the girls they cannot do anything. It started with language. They said, "It's fireMAN, policeMAN, not fire girl or police girl!" They said that girls should cook and clean and care for men. Well, if they can do anything, maybe they ought to get busy cooking and cleaning. Not even my female teacher told them to be quiet. In grade six, when I was having trouble with math, my teacher told me that it was okay, my husband would do it for me. I guess he was trying to be comforting but all it did was enrage me and I lost total respect for the man. 

And too many women buy into this crap. One of my friends blames the mothers for a lot of this thinking. She tells her son everyday not to touch a woman without her permission. She said too many mothers tell their son that they are wonderful, that they are the best and that their wives should treat them like kings. Not my mother. Every boyfriend who entered the house got lectures on how to treat her daughters. We were "precious cargo" when they drove and she exactly told them to "keep your pecker in your pants". Some of my friends expressed embarassment for me but I told them it made life easier for me if they feared my tiny mother, which they did. I didn't have to tell them not to pull stupid stunts in the car or to keep their hands off me so we could work on a real relationship and not get disrespected. Because that is what it is, disrespect. Being treated as a piece of meat. Not allowed to fufill my dreams because someone has the power to stop me if I don't do as they demand. That no means yes. So many stupid and prejudiced things. Once in Top hagwon I had a student stand up and tell me I couldn't teach him anything because I was only a woman. When he walked out a couple of male students apologized. I had one teacher during summer retraining, treat me like that at Kyodae, trying to find a mistake to criticize. The women in that class were angry at him most of the time. I gathered he tried to make them all look foolish in front of his male superiority. Every time he tried to "correct" my English or teaching I treated him patiently like a little child and explained things carefully and simply so he could understand. The women in the class loved it. I hope he learned from it, but probably not. I hope that the movement continues in Korea so it is safe and fair for women everywhere.