ChatteParfaitt
Posts: 6562
Joined: 3/22/2011
From: The t'aint of the Midwest -- Indiana
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quote:
Chatte –
You said that you don’t have to prove you’re a woman. As it applies to you, I trust that this is true for you. As to other women, however, I don’t think I would necessarily agree with this. I live in a country where the women are something akin to Stepford Wives – in the street. Behind closed doors, they are tough as nails. But here, in this culture, to be a woman is to be feminine. It is like the USA only exponentially. The hair, nails, cutesy wootsy skirts, the long flowing hair, the lace, the heels… the women here who don’t conform – and they are few and far between – are women of steel who deal with heavy discrimination at every turn. They are not seen as “normal” women. They are going against huge cultural pressure. It’s rather like the 1950’s USA in my mind. There is little room to NOT be a feminine woman. (We could debate about whether “normal women” are the only kind of women, but again, I think that may be another thread. I don’t want to lose myself in too many tangents )
Personally, I am not seen as a woman here at all. I don’t fit the stereotype in the least. It is in fact one of my deepest losses – I don’t have the opportunity to express my femininity / womanhood here because how I define that is so completely different, so foreign, that it just doesn’t mesh. I’m like the 3 headed dog guarding the River Styx. Nobody really wants to come near me in that way. When I lived in So. America, my definition of womanness tended to be much closer to that of the dominant culture, and therefore I had no need to prove it.
I do see your point. I just see it in a different context.
*EDITED TO CLARIFY - it's not that I can't EXPRESS my femininity / womanhood - it's actually that it is not ACKNOWLEDGED. Without that give and take, without the yin to my yang, I experience a deep loss of feminine energy. It is not possible to "prove" I am a woman because I am in fact NOT their definition of woman. Therefore, I live in a non-sexual / non-gender limbo while I am here. (Of course when I leave this country and travel to other places, it is a wholly different experience. But there is yet another one of my tangents.)
I have to say, until you mentioned this peculiarity in the Korean culture, I'd forgotten how uber sexually they dress. A few years back I used to work at a large university with a heavy international population. I noticed right away that Korean students, both male and female, were like the human version of the peacock. Korean females wear skirts and high heels, have their hair styled in the latest fashion, and dress to display their sexuality. It was so obvious that this was how I learned to tell a Korean face from a Chinese one. The Korean was styled and sexually hip, the Chinese dressed like they were still in China.
Now, I admit I have never been to Korean, so I do not have your experience of being completely immersed in the culture. I was merely an observer trying to get a handle on my students. I never did figure out this particular cultural anomaly. I did, however, find it very interesting.
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RE: Forced fem, humiliation, and anti-gay - 
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) and since the 1990s we have seen some loosening of the bounds of male expression of their gender - metrosexual, etc. What's more, openness of sexual preference is now fairly safe and accepted. I do believe that many males do not feel desired or sexy or sexual, and that many do have feelings of femininity bubbling up. Where those feelings come from I think varies - everything from homosexual curiosity misplaced (i.e., feeling that they need to be in a "female place" to have a bisexual experience), to people who have been in full-on denial of being transgendered. 
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