It’s a statement so absurd that it makes you do a double take. It’s easily disprovable with statistics from all the most widely accepted studies in academia. It defies common sense for anyone with even an inkling of an unbiased view of society.
Yet, this is what 50% of South Korean men in their 20s and 30s believe (compared to just 7.7% of Korean women).
And nearly 70% of them believe that “feminism derogates men” (compared to 30% of Korean women).
These are just some of the alarming numbers cited in a new study titled Male Victimhood Ideology Among Korean Men by Dr. Joeun Kim of the KDI School of Public Policy and Management.
Medium writer Ossiana Tepfenhart has given Western readers a glimpse into South Korea’s “incel problem” in the following piece before:
Korea’s Shocking Incel Problem Is So Much Worse Than You Think
Is South Korea an outlier, though, or is the country’s gender divide symptomatic of a global phenomenon?
Feminist studies coming out of South Korea paint an almost dystopian picture of manosphere ideology. More specifically, according to Dr. Kim, it’s called male victimhood ideology.
What is it?
The following quote from Dr. Kim’s study clarifies how it’s distinct from sexism how we normally understand it:
What makes this study new or significant?
I found these sentences from the study interesting:
It’s true. There really aren’t that many studies looking into the root cause of all these gender wars we see online these days. Laura Bates did a deep dive into the manosphere…
…but her book about it wasn’t exactly a psychological or sociological study that sought to identify operationalizable variables. While Bates’s content about manosphere attitudes was a critical report into pressing issues, it can only be seen as an incomplete qualitative study at best.
Kim’s research identifies a perceived decline in socioeconomic status and privilege to be the correlative factor to male victimhood ideology.
In other words, young men see that they don’t have it as easy as their fathers had it when it comes to making money, they see that society is trying to help women more than previous generations, and they conflate the two things.
This study tells us exactly what the biggest factor contributing to young men falling down the manosphere rabbit hole might be: our economy sucks, and we’re desperately looking for something to blame.
What about the rest of the world?
When I asked Dr. Kim if these study results could be extrapolated on a global scale, she told me that she has data from Spain and the US, and is currently in the process of analyzing that data.
We will soon be able to get a better idea of whether or not these findings can help us paint a picture of what’s going on internationally.
Another potential phenomenon contributing to male victimhood ideology?
There’s a trend I’ve noticed in feminist and feminist-friendly spaces where men’s grievances are sometimes met with hostile comparisons to women’s, shutting down men’s voices and invalidating their experiences. In one feminist-adjacent group chat that I’m in, there was a discussion on a psychology study about sexual regret that found that men are more likely to regret missing out on sexual opportunities, while women are more likely to regret partaking in unfulfilling sexual activity.
A woman proceeded to characterize the men’s experiences as insignificant in light of the gravity of women’s regret in such situations, effectively ending the discussion before all voices were heard. This and other instances of overlooking men’s grievances can often be seen as justifiable; marginalized groups experience far more harm overall, and most people wouldn’t blink an eye if more discussion and attention were earmarked for more consequential topics.
The opposite also happens when men attempt to redirect discussion about women to make it about men, as if they’re trying to point out that women don’t have it so bad. In the same group chat I mentioned above, there was a man who, in response to a discussion about how women feel unsafe walking alone at night due to the threat of sexual assault, tried to equate it to his own fear of potentially being sexually assaulted by gay men. Online discussions on Reddit about female genital mutilation invariably have men trying to chime in about male circumcision as well. Of course, both these examples will invariably result in justified hostility in light of how the men’s cases don’t exactly hold a candle to the women’s.
The men who turn a blind eye toward women’s issues by trying to overwrite them with their own seemingly comparable issues are clearly misguided or acting in bad faith. However, the phenomenon of men’s experiences being blanketly invalidated presents another problem that acts as a roadblock in our endeavor for the genders to understand and develop more compassion for each other.
When men speak about the male loneliness epidemic, their grievances are sometimes shut down with very real and harrowing statistics of women being killed by men. “Men fear getting rejected and women fear getting killed” has become a common sentiment that almost implies that men have no right to complain. While it is important to acknowledge the gravity and seriousness of women being victimized by men, the pain experienced by men (at the hands of the same patriarchy that victimizes women) is not insignificant.
That pain is significant enough for men to find it difficult to start listening to women’s pains. It goes without saying that women also find it difficult to start listening to men’s pains. I believe these difficulties simultaneously contribute to male victimhood ideology.
Acknowledging this phenomenon will probably enable us to start listening to the other side a little better.
Was I wrong?
Dr. Joeun Kim’s study has made me come to the conclusion that, in trying to bridge the gap between men and women, it’s a losing strategy to try to convince men who subscribe to male victimhood ideology that they aren’t actually as victimized by society as they think.
If someone feels wronged, I know that opposing facts and statistics are unlikely to have a significant effect on their emotions and attitudes.
We’ve seen this in America’s MAGA movement. Despite the fact that citizens have been facing economic and political turmoil due to oligarchal forces eviscerating the middle class, marginalized groups such as Mexican immigrants became an easy scapegoat. Citizens who fell victim to online astroturfing and Fox “News” propaganda now feel that immigrants are to blame, and little can be done to allay their resentment toward minorities.
Under what conditions can men who subscribe to male victimhood ideology be converted to more empowering attitudes? If we look at past examples of American politicians rallying support from constituents on the other side of the aisle, there is a strategy that seems to work: focus on the issues without relying on mainstream labels.
Senator Bernie Sanders went on Joe Rogan’s podcast and Fox News interviews — both full of conservative constituents — during his campaign in the DNC presidential primaries for the 2020 election cycle. Despite being even further left than the old guard Democrats that those constituents constantly accuse of being communists, Sanders was successful in convincing significant swathes of viewers and listeners to agree with his platform. Although he failed to get on the presidential ticket due to the DNC being instrumental in the preservation of our oligarchy (while Sanders was seen as one of the biggest threats to that very oligarchy), he was able to galvanize citizens whenever the airwaves actually allowed for his message to reach their ears.
He did this by talking about the state of healthcare in America, the corruption of our system where our representatives are bought by Super PACs, our economic hardships, and even dared to say the word “oligarchy” during a televised debate on CNN (which was promptly censored with a video edit to cut that part out, of course). He talked about the issues without prioritizing labels such as “Democrat” or “Republican.” You’d never catch him accusing anyone of being a DINO or RINO.
What if we engage with antifeminists without using politicized labels like “feminism?” What if we instead directly addressed the decline in socioeconomic status relative to our parents? Like Sanders was able to garner support from some lifelong Republicans during his campaigns, will we be able to make antifeminists see reason if we address the root cause of their male victimhood ideology?
Anyone familiar with my writing and my book knows that I constantly advocate for feminism while identifying patriarchy as a source of many problems we experience in dating. Has this been a losing strategy all along? While my readers who are already left-leaning openly agree with my views, has my open advocacy only further alienated the incels that I endeavor to empower with an actionable path toward love?
My hope was that there would be men who resonate with my tough love approach of telling incels to stop being self-pitying losers — that directly informing them that their antifeminist views contributed to their loneliness and suffering — would inspire change in anyone with an inkling of an internal locus of control.
Was this hope misguided? Perhaps.
What will I do about it? I should base my actions on accurate information, so I’ll wait until Dr. Kim analyzes her data from Spain and the US to see if her findings are consistent internationally.
Do you also feel a decline in socioeconomic status and privilege compared to your parents’ generation? Who is really to blame for your struggles?
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This post was previously published on Write a Catalyst on Medium.
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