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A father’s discipline of his “sissy” son I believe that feminism has given me solace. I was a so-called “feminine” little boy. Kids my age called me a girl and teased and played tricks on me. Unlike my brother, who was a year older and liked to play outside with his friends, I liked to play at home alone, which worried my parents. Maybe because of my girlyness, my father was very strict with me. He often said that I worried him, as I was delicate and cried a lot, and he would beat me even for minor infractions. When I cried because it hurt, he would get even angrier, and this terrified me. To my father, who became a head-of-household with a family to support in his early twenties, it was an unconditional principle that a man had to be strong. He had felt the crushing pressure of being responsible for a family, and said that we had to be strong sons and strong fathers, but his way of parenting his sons was too harsh for me. My grandmother (his mother) was also a great source of distress to me. We had an older sister, and our grandmother always took care of my brother and me first—in every way, from food to clothes—saying that it was fine because my sister was a daughter. Because she was a girl and the oldest child, my sister had to concede many things to her little brothers, and she was responsible for the housework from a young age. This made me sad for her, and angry at my grandmother. My grandmother lived with us and took care of us while our parents worked, and so I had a lot of affection for her, but because she harassed my sister like this, I also hated her. To my young self, the gap between her two types of treatment seemed too wide. Why did she like only my older brother? Why did she harass my sister? Why? Questions that I couldn’t answer piled up, and I wanted to understand my grandmother. In middle school, I started to have the vague thought that I might find the answers to those questions if I studied women’s studies. And I was right: the moment I became acquainted with women’s studies, I began to see clearly what this world that was so hard for me to live in was. Understanding feminism lessens the pain of a difficult life I think the reason that feminism was so comforting to me was that the patriarchy’s oppression and disciplinary process for creating a “normal” man had been so difficult for me to deal with. ▲ The patriarchy’s education ©Ilda (Illustrator: Jeong-eun) Being around my grandmother and father was stifling, and school was no refuge. I didn’t like the violence of other boys my age, and an educational system that didn’t recognized difference was hard to endure. Unable to fit in and unable to escape, I made it through high school with difficulty. After that I came to university, where I studied sociology and women’s studies and found solace. Hearing other people’s experiences with the same discomfort, suffering, and dissatisfaction that I had felt made me feel like the difficulties I had had were understood and made up for. I now had a language to understand and analyze myself and society. The dilemma I faced while taking part in women’s movements While studying sociology in school, I had become interested in social movements, and especially interested in women’s movements. While at university in Seoul, I became involved in two organizations—the University Feminists Network (UFN), which had as its core members people who made a feminist magazine, and an anti-sexual violence organization at my university. My feminist activities in university provided me with safe spaces. In feminist groups, I didn’t feel tense because of a fear of violence, like I had to in my everyday life; they were the only places I could relax comfortably. However, while I felt more comfortable in some respects, I had to face new anxiety at the same time. It was as if my happiness and anxiety were proportional—as I became happier, I also became more anxious. I was anxious and scared that I would be excluded or eliminated from the groups because I was a man. I became possessed by the wish not to seem like a man. This was an attempt to disavow the power that I had a man, which I didn’t want but had no choice but to possess, and also to share the sense of kinship within feminist groups that expresses itself as camaraderie or sisterhood. I wanted others to perceive me as a neutral or asexual being, and tried to blend in, unnoticed, in any situation. This was my choice, made so that I could stay with them for a long time. Though I had joined the feminist groups to participate in their social movements, being part of them was the first time I had an “in-group,” so the sense of belonging and emotional connectedness was very important to me. However, dealing with the strain of an asexual, inconspicuous existence in which I was not a man or an individual was very hard. I always had to stand on the border line, sometimes needing to be a man and sometimes needing not to be, sometimes needing to reveal my existence and sometimes needing not to. This was a problem both of identity and also of the effectiveness of our activities. A man talking about “no bras” and “menstruation” I purposely claimed the identity of a “male feminist” as I took part in the movements. There seemed to be a greater benefit in that than in just calling myself “a feminist.” As a biological male, there were some points on which my participation in feminist activities had more persuasive power to others. I felt that in order to participate in the movements that I could and wanted to, I should make good use of my biological maleness, and I really played up my feminist identity. But ever since I was little, I had hated the fact that I was male, and so I really hated saying and doing the types of things that clearly stated “I am a man.” Emphasizing my maleness made me feel a deep sense of disjunction and shame. I ended up trapped between the movements and my sense of self, and faced a dilemma. This dilemma was also related to the effectiveness of the movements. Being involved based not on my own experiences of inconvenience and discrimination but on what I read and heard from others was making me more and more aware of my limitations in some areas, and I experienced the problems with prejudice and stereotypes that accompany being a biological male talking about women’s bodies and sexuality. When I was part of the UFN, I participated in movements to remove the stigma from menstruation and female masturbation, and campaigning against bras. As a man, though, my advocating against bras and talking about menstruation and masturbation sometimes caused more harm than good to the movements. People who weren’t interested in feminism showed a tendency to focus on the surface issue of why a biological male was talking about an anti-bra movement, instead of learning about the political implications and goals of the movement. When I would try to argue with this mindset and debate about it, the original point that our group wanted to make kept getting tarnished. Finally, a split appeared between the parts of the movement in which I could take participate and those in which it was difficult to participate. In an attempt to get rid of that split, I grew my hair long and wore a skirt so that I no longer had the appearance of a man. I spent time with female friends who looked like men in order to make other people question my gender. But this was all a temporary solution. In the end, I was stuck feeling like I was a man and yet couldn’t be a man, at the same time. The position of a male feminist, considered to be limited to the part of ally or aide, was difficult for me. Male activists and feminists who take part in women’s movements are a diverse group, but I have experienced a lot of prejudice like being considered a mere biologically-male “supporter” of feminism or even someone who only goes so far as to agree with feminism. Every time I faced that, I had to prove my commitment to the movement. I usually wear a skirt Feminism is the most important value in my life and the path to the ideal. Also, I believe that the women’s movement is the surest and most important way to realize the grandiose and lofty dream of a better world. I couldn’t change the patriarchal beliefs of my grandmother and father, but feminism helped me to understand them. It also gave me comfort. In this way, feminism expanded my world. I usually prefer to wear a skirt. And I explain why I do to countless people, replying to their questions by asking, “Why can’t a man wear a skirt?” I believe that in order to change something, it is necessary to have a process that makes people aware of problems and will allow them to actually see what change would look like. I think that if we want to break down gender-role stereotypes about clothes, we have to actually show people a man wearing a skirt, not just ask them to imagine it, so that they can realize that that stereotype is wrong. When I was going through difficulties because of wanting to participate in women’s movements though I was a man and unsure of what to do, I decided to go to graduate school and study women’s studies. After entering the Applied Women’s Studies program at Sungkonghoe University, I stopped worrying about whether I would be able to do anything and started considering what I had to do. Now, I’m writing my thesis, which documents my and others’ university activism. My thesis started out of a thirst for memories. Before memories of the feminist activities and troubles of each person who lived intensely in her or his own time and place are forgotten, I wanted them to be documented so that they could become memories, but because I dislike the idea of being another person’s subject, I’m personally creating the record. I think that this essay is itself a struggle for recognition and writing it is a personal victory over hardship. “Loneliness” is a keyword that the men and women who attended university and were feminist activists in the late 2000s have in common. Most of them also share memories of activities that received little attention. Most of the friends I worked with are no longer part of the movements, so it is unlikely that they will give meaning to our activities. That’s why I decided to do the work of providing its meaning. My wish is for our memories to become records and be a force for new movements among people involved in feminist activities within universities. I also hope that it is a document that rewards the hard work of all the twenty-something feminists who have struggled just to survive. I want to give encouragement to those men and women who deserve to have their value recognized, even just for still surviving. I will continue to be a male feminist and be involved in feminist movements. I will do feminist research and ceaselessly document women’s movements. I think that is a feminist activity that I can do for my whole life. And that is how I will be a part of feminism forever. [Translated by Marilyn Hook] *Original article: http://www.ildaro.com/6296 Published March 14, 2013 | 일다https://www.il 야마토릴게임 daro.com elf and so