#prev#something something the way western terfs talk about sk feminism feels very. noble savage to me#THIS THO#it does feel very noble savage and I was trying to put that to words earlier#very “oh the [noble savage] Koreans couldn't being Doing A Transphobia - you are applying western logic onto a eastern movement 🤓☝️”#as if there are no Korean queer people or trans people#as if Korea isnt “”developed“” enough to have intersectional feminism or to know transphobia is bad#like pleeeeeeease#It's the orientalism again of course
old post & tags but i just was talking about this with someone & then this post came up in my notes again, & i wanted to highlight these because this is so true.
its very orientalist & reminiscent of the "noble savage" and so much western radical feminism engages in this. they love the idea that South Korean feminists are all into 4B and female separatism, and more broadly all feminists from the Global South, because then they can fetishize the real and imagined suffering of women in these countries.
i think there's this need for the symbol of The Eternally Suffering Silent Black/Brown/Asian Woman, who of course agrees with everything white radical feminists from Euro-colonial countries believe. it very much is the "noble savage" idea. like how during America's "First Feminist War," there was so much emphasis on how Muslim countries were in the "dark ages" and "practically medieval."
so feminists from these countries are perceived as like, primitive feminists, pure of the petty bourgeois corruption of western feminists (aka intersectionality & being pro-sex). they are the Ur-feminists from the radfem Garden of Eden, and thus also fundamentally two-dimensional. we have to ignore the existence of trans people in these countries, act as if the same feminist discussions and conflicts that happen in Western feminism aren't happening in feminism in the Global South. we have to play up how violent, savage, animalistic the men of their countries are, have to deny these women's husbands and brothers and sons and friends humanity and complexity. and we also have to pretend they exist somewhere out of time, untouched by modern degradation.
that's why i find it amusing how a lot of people acted like the 4B movement was something that came purely out of the unique situation of Korean women, when in fact the movement traces its roots to translations of Western radical feminist texts. we literally already did the whole female separatism thing and it didn't work out. but if the 4B movement is imagined as this mass movement of Eternally Suffering Silent Asian Women reacting to the unique savagery of Asian men (white males are bad but Black/brown/Asian men are worse, less control over that innate male violence), then it lends female separatism more legitimacy. that South Korean feminists have a lot more diversity of perspectives, that South Korean feminism also discusses intersectionality and trans inclusion and seeking solidarity with men and all of those petty bourgeois distractions, ruins that fantasy.
this isn't to say, of course, that admiring and supporting feminists or any activists in the Global South inherently does this, or that transfeminists are immune from engaging in this same behavior. but i've noticed it a lot from radical feminists, and it felt very on display in this situation.
