Daddy Issues #3: Infantilization Nation
vulnerability in the patriarchal hellscape
This is the third installment in a four part series I’ll be releasing this month called “Daddy Issues.” I’m thinking of it as a micro-memoir/deep dive into the origins of my interest in D/s play. I’m getting into stuff here I’ve never talked about elsewhere, so this series will be pay-walled. If you are a patreon member, you can also access it on patreon.
If you’re not a paid supporter, there are alternative ways to access paid content! You can use your one free article unlock on any of the posts in this series. You can also get into the referral game and earn free months of a paid membership. More on that here. But hey… in these strange times, why not shoot an independent creator a couple bucks every month?
However you support, I am so grateful you’re here.
I had an essay ready to go this week about inner child work. But since this is the first post I’m writing post-election, my attention is elsewhere. As I’ve been grappling with the rancid vibes overwhelmingly chosen by so many all over the world, rather than be focused on healing and integrating our past selves, I keep coming back to the present, asking myself how women are expected to be adults in a world that seemingly wants us in gendered servitude or dead, bleeding out in a parking lot from preventable causes.
This morning I was scrolling through TikTok and came across a video of the current protests in South Korea. The female students of Dongduk University have come out in droves to protest plans to make the college coeducational. As I’m sure many of you know, South Korean women have received a lot of attention on the world stage for their 4B movement, or the 4 no’s — no to sex, dating, procreation, and marriage. The 4B movement, in addition to being a logical reaction to living under an oppressive patriarchal society, has been spurred on by misogyny-driven violence1, digital sex crimes like nonconsensual filming and deep fake pornography, and South Korea’s demanding beauty standards. Some media has framed this movement as fringe, but to this outsider the recent demonstrations at Dongduk Women’s University in Seoul demonstrate that while most women may not be 4B, they still long for a space all their own in the face of an unsympathetic government who want the sexes to mingle,2 while doing nothing to address the real issue: male entitlement and isolation.
"Our emergency committee will not stop the boycott of classes and sit-down protests until we achieve the following three goals," said the emergency [student] committee during a press conference on Tuesday. "We demand that the school formally end the school's discussions of changing [Dongduk Women's University] into a coeducational institution, implement the direct election of the university president and announce further plans for male undergraduate international students."
The emergency committee, comprised of the university's student council and feminist student club Siren, will conduct relevant discussions and protests. The committee is organizing a boycott of classes starting Tuesday while sharing class materials online to help students not attending classes.
The committee had scheduled a meeting with university officials on Monday, but could not meet with representatives until Tuesday morning.
With students attempting to force their way into the president's office on Monday, police were dispatched to the university, with comments from the police sparking controversy online.
A video shared on YouTube shows a police officer trying to calm students down by saying, "You will later become teachers, have children and parent them," with students shouting that they would not.
According to Seoul Jongam Police Precinct, the police said this because students tried to break into the office while pounding the door with a fire extinguisher. (Source)
Fuck yeah, girls. Get their asses.
Hundreds of alumni showed their support for the students by laying their school uniform jackets in front of the university’s main building, with their diplomas taped to the ground.
This all is happening in my neighborhood right now, since Mr. Dune and I made the decision to come back to Japan during the election (and for my close friend’s wedding). Spending my days floating around a culture that’s not my own, I’m still stricken by the gendered violence and discrimination that plagues my friends here. In Japan, every smartphone sold cannot have the photo sound effect turned off due to the prevalence of upskirt photography. Japanese TikTok is full of videos about Butsukariya, a growing problem where men shoulder-check women at top speed in crowded areas. Groping on trains is such a prevalent issue that all the main commuter lines offer a women-only train car. To be fair, they do seem to be addressing these issues in minor ways, and a collectivist society will always have advantages over an individualistic one. But the prevailing feeling in me at the end of the day after getting assailed by news alerts from the U.S. and seeing women harassed in the street here every so often is, ‘can we fucking live?!?’