A Feminist Standpoint and the Possibility of Subversion: The Korean women’s rally against illegal spy-cam case

• In Event: 4367 - Section on Asia and Asian America Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: 3. Gender, Marriage, and Family

Abstract

During the past three years, Korea has been through a radical change in feminist geographical features. In Korea, which is a deeply patriarchy society (Cho 1998; Kim 1995; Paik 2009; Wha 2005), Korean women have outburst their voices regarding their everyday threat as women. The recent case that provoked a series of women’s rallies (estimated cumulative 200,000 women gathered) was illicit spy cam issue under the slogan “My Life is Not Your Porn.” Prevalence of illicit spy cam in public bathroom or accommodation facilities, frequent news regarding dating violence, and motiveless crime towards women, Korean women get threatened in everyday activity.
A discrepancy between negligent bureaucratic state and individual women with improved awareness of feminism perspective and individual political efficacy has widened the field where women can actively participate in, mobilize themselves for, speak up for the feminist issue. Passive measure to gender issue by the state, everyday threatening of objectification brought women into consciousness raising and revealed possibilities of subversive power. In this paper, by following the massive protest mentioned above, I will try to apply a feminist standpoint theory and find its political implication to change the patriarchy society. Women’s distinctive experience and epistemology display material conditions around them enable them to formulate distinctive feminist epistemology and ontology. By understanding this feminist standpoint, it allows Korean women to reveal patriarchal social structures, and gains their momentum to impact the state to “move beyond the present (Hartsock, 1983: 285)” Women with their experience of objectification exist as a material reality. This embodied experience is fundamental ground among women’s unity and its politicization.

Author

• Minyoung An, University of Arizona