It’s Just that We’re Used to Anxiety

Living as a Young Woman in South Korea (18) Pervasive Misogyny

By Na-neul

Published : Novemver 13, 2016

Translated by Marilyn Hook

※ Editor’s note: To begin a new feminist discourse in 2016, Ilda is running a series on “Living as a Young Woman in South Korea.” The series receives support from the Korea Foundation for Women’s “Funding for Gender-Equal Society.”

 After reporting street harassment to the police...

On backstreets, there are always
men with rude attitudes.

It was August 2016 at 10:02 p.m. My average mood turned into an uncomfortable and annoyed one as I left the convenience store. I was angry that the male clerk who rang me up had used the respectful form of speech with a male customer of around his own age, and then suddenly switched to the informal form for me.  I hated him, with his rude expression and his “Oh, I rang it up wrong, Give it back. I’ll fix it. Want a receipt?”

When I left the store and resumed walking down the street, I told my friend what had happened. At that moment, unfortunately, two drunk, snickering men were passing by. My friend heard not just what I said but also what one of the men said as they passed.

“Those bitches... are fucking pretty.”

My friend heard him and, angry, began to curse. I didn’t understand why, and stared at her in surprise. It seemed that the man heard her too, because he suddenly shouted, “I said that that dress was fucking pretty. What’s so bad about that!” I heard him clearly this time, and immediately realized that he had harassed us, even if I didn’t know the details. Then the other man tried to calm his friend down, saying, “Hey, hey, you’re going to get reported if you keep this up. Stop it.” But the first man angrily screamed, “If she wants to report me, let her! Did I attack them or something? I just said the dress was pretty! Fuck!”

Anger flared up in me, but actually, even this is a pretty normal occurrence for me. The man in the convenience store, this drunk and cursing man – they’re just the average men that people my everyday life. On backstreets, there are always men with rude attitudes. Really, because they’re everywhere, I’m used to them and half-resigned to them. This is because I’ve tried glaring or cursing at them, but they act as if they have done nothing wrong and harass and threaten me more.

And these days, I can’t find the courage to respond, because I worry that they will do something horrible like put my picture on the Internet, pour acid on me, or murder me,. Even if I do find the courage, it takes an astounding amount of energy and emotional effort to explain things and persuade someone who has been so rude to me. The deep sense of resignation that I’ve accumulated from these experiences tells me it is best to ignore these jerks.

What happened on the street was normal for me, but apparently not for my friend. She wanted to report the men who had said such things to us, as if it were nothing and without malice, just because they were drunk. We had stopped walking in order to call the police. The men, who were watching us, seemed to realize this. I had been watching them, afraid of just such a thing, and hastily looked away, but I already knew it was too late. The man who had been rude to us was coming towards us again. At the sound of footsteps approaching, I instinctively grabbed the arm of my friend, who was on the phone, and started moving away quickly. My heart started to pound.

When I next realized what was happening, we were running. And the man was chasing us. We were running desperately for our lives. I was already running as fast as I could, scared of being caught. I thought I might actually die. My friend’s and my hands, still holding on to each other, were slick with sweat. It didn’t seem real. It seemed like it couldn’t be real. Terrified and irrational, I was panicked and unsure what to do. The words “What should I do?!” were flashing repeatedly through my head, and we ran to a nearby corner store.

I’m not sure how we got all the way to the store. We passed the owner, who was at the register, and hid between the rows of goods. When I lifted my head slightly at the sound of the door that we had passed through opening again, I could see that the man had come into the store. It became a game of hide-and-seek, with us only able to hear him move between the aisles. We had to go in the opposite direction that he did, and absolutely could not make a mistake. I wanted to concentrate, but I couldn’t seem to get a hold of myself. I wasn’t sure why. The store was close to where we had started, but my heart felt like it was about to burst, as if we’d run thousands of meters.

We circled the aisles four or five times to avoid him. Afraid that his head would suddenly pop around a corner, a thousand thoughts ran through my head. “Even if the police come, what if they can’t catch him and he tries to get revenge on us? How am I going to get home safely from now on? Are the police even coming? What if we die here?” And so on. I felt extreme terror in the face of this life-or-death situation. I wanted to cry.

The man left shortly before the police came. After hearing our story, the police said that the man could indeed be prosecuted for calling us “fucking bitches”... while also advising us that the whole thing wasn’t really something to get so upset about. I still wonder if I really saw that criticism in the eyes of the police officers, who seemed to be wondering why we had bothered to report such a thing.

The press conference denouncing the decision to define the Gangnam Station murder
as a random murder.

Women talk about how to walk home

I can’t understand this society, where men can speak rudely to passing women, can threaten women, can exploit their social position as men at any time, and, if in a bad mood, shout at women. I can’t stand it that when the police officers that I’ve called for help hear the words “a drunk man,” anything that follows gets a “yeah, that happens” response. When street harassment happens, people say it’s unavoidable because of men’s biological instincts, and especially because the perpetrator was drunk, all I can do is understand him, suppress my anger, and not worry about the similar incidents that will happen in the future. I have to remain calm. I have no place to complain about the anxiety that has grown because of their reckless intrusions into my space. Because this is a “common,” “trivial” problem that I’m just “overly-sensitive” about.

The police escorted us home and told us there was a good chance that the man would only have to pay a small fine for his crime. As we were already wavering about whether to file a complaint, this made us decide not to, as we felt sure that he would simply pay it and move on instead of truly repenting. We were also scared of the unlikely possibility that he would hold a grudge against us and try to get revenge. While we were considering and worrying about how to deal with the matter, the police kept saying it wasn’t a big deal and that we shouldn’t get so upset about it. They didn’t seem to understand my feelings. That when we were running for the store, I had truly believed I might die. Or what made us decide not to file a complaint.

After the matter was settled and I came home, my whole body ached, perhaps because of the tension. And worry started to overwhelm me. I couldn’t see what had happened as an “everyday trivial incident,” like the police said, and instead felt that my future had been thrown in doubt. I worried: if I can’t live here, where will I live? How can I get a new place right away? Where will I get the money to move?  Unless money fell from the sky, I would have to live here, and so I would have to risk my life just to go about my business. Because of the fear of sexual assault, I would have to rethink the trip to India that my friend was dying to take. I could tell that the anxiety I had long since gotten used to was spreading to my friend. The police officer’s advice not to get too upset kept flashing through my head. Was this really just my friend’s and my discomfort? Were we weird, and thus unable to forget a not-unusual incident and foolishly struck with fear?

When I told my coworkers about what had happened, they all told me how they resolve the problem of getting home at night. Not a single woman who heard my story said that my anxiety was overblown or told me not to be scared. Because we women might face danger at anytime, we are always anxious. It’s just that we are used to the feeling because the threat is so common.

These everyday experiences make me criticize my past self, and put restraints on my future self. When an incident that is bad enough to scare me happens, I regret being in that place at that time. I wonder endlessly about whether I would have been fine if I just hadn’t ____. And then I censor my future self, because I don’t want to feel that fear again.

The men who invaded our space without our permission, evaluated us and harassed us – they probably snickered about the incident and then never thought of it again, while my friend and I didn’t go to our homes [which were in the area of the incident] for a week. We felt foolish and reprimanded ourselves for reporting them to the police but not filing a complaint. During that time, they were probably passed out flat on their backs.

We decided not to wear again the clothes that we were wearing that night. We also decided not to carry those bags again. Another of my anxieties as a woman has increased. Now, every time I walk down a dark street, I look over my shoulder every 30 seconds and repeat, “Please let me get home safely” in my head. These small anxieties have piled up so much that I now have a panic disorder.

Comments on an article reporting on the demonstration against misogyny that 

took place after the Gangnam Station murder.

The panic disorder that started after the Gangnam Station misogynistic murder

The first time that I suffered from a panic attack was a few days after the Gangnam Station misogynistic murder. Knowing that I was still alive simply because I hadn’t been in that place at that time, I could no longer stand by. I went out into the streets, joined the memorial rally, and participated in the march. Throughout, I suffered constant street harassment. Middle-aged men screamed at us during the march, and other, drunk men cursed us as they stumbled past. Some aggressive older men came up and shouted, “Stop this silliness and go home!”, while other men followed the marchers around, taking photos of the participants.

While participating in the rally, I was shown in press reports and my picture was posted to Ilbe and other male-centric Internet forums. The pictures received comments like, “Those bitches need to be raped to come to their senses,” and “I want to see them looking terrified.” I wasn’t prepared for this horrible reality. 

Many things happened. It was when we were preparing to hold a press conference protesting the police’s announcement that the murder wasn’t a hate crime. We were investigating the number of misogynistic murders that had been called random murders instead, and the number was staggering. Even just looking for recent cases brought dozens of results. I started to feel that, as a woman, my still being alive was a miracle. The fact that I wasn’t a victim or a survivor did not bring me comfort. Instead, it made me feel worse. As the cases began to blur with the forum comments, my chest became tight and my heart pounded. But I had to keep on living my life despite the anxiety that pressed down on me. I had to go to work, had to interact with people. Slowly, the feelings that I wasn’t dealing with and my precariously-maintained everyday life began to crumble.

In the end, I had a panic attack. My chest had been tight all day, as it had been since the murder, so I lay down on my bed to try to feel better. I managed to sleep, but not deeply, and I woke up only a few hours later, feeling weird. I was having a harder time breathing than usual. I was trying to breathe deeply and went into the bathroom to try to clear my head. But as soon as I closed the bathroom door, I felt trapped. The walls seemed to be closing in, and my head spun. With tears streaming down my face, I screamed and ran out of the bathroom.

I couldn’t go home for three weeks. I just couldn’t bear to sleep alone. Whenever I lay down on a bed, the feeling I had at that time returned, and I couldn’t breathe. I asked anyone I could think of – friends, people from school – to let me stay for a night at their place, and lived the life of a wanderer. When I couldn’t find another place to sleep and started to head home on the subway, I found myself bursting into tears. I couldn’t control my emotions. I wanted to quit everything and disappear.

It’s uncomfortable. I don’t know when I will again be overcome by an anxiety that feels like dying. Even as I write this, remembering that time makes it hard to breathe. The doctor said I would have to be on medication for over a year. I was upset. It felt like the thing that needed medication, needed treatment is, in the end, a society that too often murders women.

Anxiety is my discomforting companion... but I won’t give up

After writing the first draft of this article, I read over it carefully. It seems like writing this has not untangled my knotted feelings. Also, it seems like I used expressions like “I thought I was going to die” about the everyday street harassment that women face. I can see that I’m still not free of the panic disorder that caused me to feel anxiety so extreme that I thought I was dying.

I am still fighting against countless versions of myself. The version that asks what’s so bad that I have a panic disorder and blames me for being locked in a “victim mentality,” the version that asks why I didn’t fight harder and get an answer (from the government) about misogynistic murders, the one that comforts me by saying that I tried my best, the one that is relieved that I have lived through another day, the one who is disgusted that I feel that relief... it feels like I hate myself, criticize myself, and pity myself one hundred times a day.

Above, I used the word “courage.” Actually, I really hate it when people put the burden and guilt on an anxious woman by telling her to be brave and independent, because I know that you can’t stop being anxious just by wanting to. It’s not actually a problem of courage. Our lives, which reveal supposedly “trivial” incidents to be violence and oppression, are already struggles and forms of resistance, and meaningful in themselves.

Anxiety is a familiar but uncomfortable companion in my life. I’ve decided to embrace it, as it is part of my precious life. I am desperately anxious and feel like I’m going to die, but I’ve chosen to recognize and accept this. By this, I also mean that I will not give up, but will go on fighting until the end.

*Original article: http://www.ildaro.com/sub_read.html?uid=7659&section=sc1