Is a Woman’s Body a Weapon?

Feminism Under a Skirt: Sexuality and Power

By Hong Seunghee

Published March 3, 2017

Translated by Shyun J. Ahn

“Feminism Under a Skirt,” a narrative of sexuality, will be published in a series. Hong Seunghee, the author of this series, is a writer, artist, and performer. - Editor

Performing aegyo [cuteness] is my power? 

There is a phrase that makes me cringe every time I hear it: “A man rules the world, and a woman rules that man.”  This phrase is meant to say that a woman who controls a man from behind the curtain is the most powerful figure. This also means that a man’s power comes from his own strength, while a woman’s power comes from how attractive she is to a man. There is also this joke that is in fact a serious statement: “For a woman, being pretty is equivalent to passing a law exam.” While men must strive to be successful and recognized in society, women may easily earn these through their natural resources—their bodies.

Under such a framework, a woman is portrayed not as someone who is socially disadvantaged, but as someone who possesses innate power. “Feminism? How are women discriminated against? Living as a woman is the easiest!” some men say. What is in the psyche of these men is a bizarre righteousness which lets them disdain women for “easily getting things with their bodies, while I am putting in so much effort.”

I had also thought my sexuality was a form of power. To survive, I had been adapting to a woman’s role since I was very little. My first role as a woman was that of the youngest daughter who performed aegyo [cuteness]. As the youngest daughter of two, I was the cutie pie who appeased my father. Whenever he was upset, I changed the topic with a cute accent or sang a song with childish pronunciation. He hurled objects or cursed even harsher if I stood up against his power on equal terms and politely said, “Dad, don’t curse at me” or challenged him by saying, “Dad! Why are you doing this to me? Am I fair game to you?” Compared to that, it was handier and more effective to perform aegyo and thereby express that “I’m not someone you’d want to fight. I’m just a weakling who needs your protection.”

To protect my mother and sister from more violence from his anger, I desperately read my father’s emotion and performed aegyo. The effectiveness of it, which let me assuage my father’s anger as a little child, made me feel I had a special power. My weapon was aegyo and fragile femininity that needed protection from others.

Sometimes, aegyo didn’t work. Acting cute appeared to be powerful, but it was in fact an impotent weapon. When faced with brute violence, there was nothing I could do except run away. I hated my powerless self. I wondered if my father would have treated me like this if I were a son, if I were a boy. I once clenched my fist and told myself, “I will marry a strong man in the future.” It may sound childish and funny now, but I was serious about it back then. And, in order to achieve that goal, I had to look pretty. Seeing the way that pretty women were treated in TV dramas and entertainment shows further deepened my determination. Being attractive to men seemed to be a woman’s ability and her power.

A woman must be sexy but virginal

Long black hair, pale skin, big pupils, and red and
moist lips. ⓒSource: an image created by using
an application called Pitu

During my middle school years, a woman’s sexuality functioned as power. My friend and I whispered things like, “She got ‘the big backing,’” or “She’s probably not the person to mess with. We should watch out.” “The big backing” literally meant that a big guy had her back. Nobody could bother her, as she “gave” her body to strong high school boys and received protection in return. Many students called the girl a “used rag” behind her back, but no one could be rude to her face. A woman’s power, therefore, was not about her physical strength but whether she had a strong boyfriend or how close she was to a friend who had a strong boyfriend. Already at that age, a woman’s power was related to her sexuality, while a man’s was related to his own physical strength.

In my middle school years, boys my age dated girls to satisfy their sexual curiosity. To boys like them, women were simply objects to “score with” (although even grown men often have the same attitude). My first sexual experience—or rather, my first rape—at age fourteen, taught me this fact vividly, and afterwards I found all men creepy and despicable. Whenever someone reached out to me, I was suspicious: “Does he want to sleep with me?” But my suspicions were always right.

Romantic fantasies I had had, like those in romantic comics, washed away. Instead, I became interested in power. I felt I needed power that would stop people from mistreating me; I needed a strong man who could protect me from rumors such as “She slept with so-and-so; she was banged by so-and-so!” I looked for another “boyfriend” who would protect me from rape by my ex-boyfriend and sexual harassment from men I did not know. It was like how some victims of domestic violence in movies flee to search for another patriarch who may protect them.

Around that time, I became acquainted with a boy who was one of the so-called “cool kids,” and we started to go out after knowing each other for a short time. All we did was meet occasionally to hold hands and stroll. One day, he called me in haste: “Hey, did you sleep with that upperclassman?” He asked this as if he was angry at me or was deceived by me. He ordered me to give him the other boy’s phone number, as if he was going to kick his ass for taking the virginity of the girl he liked. After that, I stopped talking to the upperclassman. And I learned the lesson that I should be virginal if I wanted to keep my power as “someone’s girlfriend.”

As I had expected, after I started to go out with the boy, no boys at my school came on to me.  So, I could attend school without any trouble. Even after that, I was attracted to men who were powerful and were respected in the male community—his power was my power. I used to describe my ideal type as follows: “I don’t care about his appearance. I like men who are older, masculine, and show leadership!”

When I was in my last year of middle school, one teacher brought up “life of a woman,” saying that we students must know how the world revolves. “A woman’s life is confined to a gourd. But if she just meets a good man, her life blooms like a flower.” There was nothing new about this statement. I had heard the same thing from my mother, my extended family, and the media, and I had indirectly experienced it myself. My friends and I had long since realized how women were circulated in this world, and what types of norms we—people who were born female—had to conform to in order to live “well” or survive.

My teacher continued with the advice: “So, you should meet many men. Don’t just study, but try to meet boys instead. That’s the only way you get to know what types of men are good. But don’t give your body easily. People say an experienced man knows whether it’s a woman’s first time when he penetrates her on the first night.” It felt like the teacher was threatening me to stay clear of sex before getting married.

I had already “lost my virginity,” so was I sunk? I don’t recall what face my friends made when they heard the teacher’s advice. I agonized alone. What shall I do? I’ve already lost my virginity… The power based on sexuality was conditional. One had to be sexy yet virginal. When I had sex with a boyfriend whom I met at age nineteen, I lied and told him that it was my first time. Perhaps I told that lie because I feared that I would not be loved or that he would be disappointed in me.

I’m jealous, because all you have to do is to meet a rich man

If my sexuality as a teenager was related to physical power, my sexuality as an adult was related to socioeconomic power.

When I was eighteen, I had a part-time job at a Japanese restaurant. Unlike fast-food restaurants that paid less than 3,000 won per hour, I was getting paid 7,000 won. As a part of my job, I had to serve in a revealing yukata and sit next to customers to prepare raw fish on their plates. I had to endure sexual comments and stares, but I was earning a good amount in tips. I knew that the most profitable type of labor for an otherwise-resourceless woman was to reveal her sexuality. Being watched not as a human being but as a female felt nasty. I quit the job not too long after starting, but if I had been desperate for money, I might have endured the humiliation and continued to work.

However, is a woman’s body really a form of “power”? Power and crooked power are not the same. Just as a pig does not have power because humans like pork, women do not have power simply because men like women. When I repudiate my position as “your woman” or “your favorite thing” and reveal my real self as a “human like you,” power is swiftly withdrawn from me. A commodity and an object do not have real power. The only power they have is crooked power.

Yet many men envied me (or the power from my sexuality). When I was involved in student activism, a man I was meeting for the first time said to me, “I’m jealous, because you can simply get married to a rich man in the future even if you don’t make money from social activism.” When I was in my early twenties, a male acquaintance around my age told me this: “I’m jealous of women. If I were a woman like you, I would put on makeup and wear skirts to find a rich boyfriend and get pocket money from him.” In my twenties, a friend who used to do performance art activism with me also said, “It’s easy to succeed as a woman if she is determined. It’s easy to attract attention because women have sexual value.”

However, “women” they are jealous of are limited to women who do not have disabilities, who are not overweight, and who are not old. Just like any other organisms on Earth, young and beautiful women also age. Occasionally, I imagined myself at an old age—an old woman who fails to draw attention from anyone. A loss of womanhood struck me as a horror that could even shake up the entire life I had lived as a woman. In this society, where women are circulated like commodities, they become a valueless being at some point. And the horror was real. My mother feared getting more wrinkles, watching a makeup advertisement that warned her about how unconcealed wrinkles may cause something ominous. On TV, there was a story broadcast about a man who abandoned his old wife (who was once young and beautiful) to date a young and pretty woman.

Women who are wearing corsets

Of course, there are situations where being a woman does entail power. To the extent that it does not bother a patriarch, a woman’s sexuality is indeed power. You simply need to keep these conditions:

You must take care of your appearance to keep yourself up, while not caring too much about a man’s appearance. Even when a man criticizes your appearance, you must take it as a joke instead of becoming furious, because that would indicate that you lack a sense of humor. When a man vents anger at you, you must not return it on an equal footing. Instead, you must have the wisdom to explain to him in a gentle and adorable manner that you are a “person who needs protection, not violence.” You must be vigilant enough to be street-smart, but you must not be a gold-digger. You must have the economic stability and generosity to spend your own money, yet you must not go after a rich man.

You must give an electronic cigarette to your boyfriend who smokes, but not smoke with him because you must protect your uterus. It is good to talk coherently, but he will be turned off if you talk too much or express your opinion too often. Even if you are prickly and crude, you must be charming as a woman in an unexpected way, like by being good at cooking or remembering his parents’ birthdays and giving them a call.

You must become a femme fatale in bed, but only to your man. You must moan instead of lying there like a stone, but you must not be more knowledgeable than your man about sex and orgasms or try to teach him about them. You must actively express yourself by saying, “It was really nice tonight” after his ejaculation. However, you must not say anything that will trample his pride, like that it was too bad that you did not have an orgasm this time.

You must have an “objective” sense of justice and criticize women who chase men for their money and appearance. However, making fun of your man in front of your same-sex friends is the same as making fun of yourself, so you should not be exposed to narrow-minded ideologies like feminism, which encourages sympathy and alliances among women. It is okay for you to be a humanist, who is enraged by and acts against an unfair social system and discrimination against people, but you must not be a feminist, who labels men as aggressors and does not have feminine charm at all.

A woman lighting a cigarette ⓒHong Seunghee 

In a patriarchal society, a woman’s sexuality is not power but is closer to an imperative for socioeconomic survival. Therefore, misogyny does not exist only among men but also among women themselves. I—who had strived to fit into femininity and become anxious when I did not—had also internalized misogyny. But who may cast a stone at those women who are wearing corsets? They are merely trying to survive.

The sturdiest corset for me was long black hair. I had insisted on wearing my hair long and black for seven years, but I finally dyed it purple, the color I like, and pierced my eyebrow. I also got the tattoos I wanted on my wrist, on the back of my neck, on my arm, and on my ankle. I no longer wear a bra, either. In the past, I could not even imagine doing these things, because I was afraid I would not come off as an innocent woman.

It is okay not to have long black hair, even skin, big eyes, and moist red lips. It is okay not to become someone else’s object of desire or have someone else’s recognition. I can now enjoy thinking about my future as an old woman. Everyone, at any time, needs liberation, not power. Now, I can take breathe deeply.

*Original article: 
http://ildaro.com/sub_read.html?uid=7788&section=sc86&section2=