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A politician in South Korea is being criticised for making dangerous and unsubstantiated comments after linking a rise in male suicides to the increasingly “dominant” role of women in society.
In a report, Seoul City councillor Kim Ki-duck argued women’s increased participation in the workforce over the years had made it harder for men to get jobs and to find women who wanted to marry them.
He said the country had recently “begun to change into a female-dominant society” and that this might "partly be responsible for an increase in male suicide attempts”.
South Korea has one of the highest suicide rates among the world’s rich countries but also has one of the worst records on gender equality.
Councillor Kim’s comments have been criticised as the latest in a series of out-of-touch remarks made by male politicians.
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Couldn’t possibly be the soul crushing society we’ve created, or their absolutely insane academic regimen
It is true that women generally want a partner who makes the same or more than them, while men generally find income/career status less important in mate selection. That is a scientific fact before you politicize it. And it’s also a fact that as more women receive higher education and fair pay, the pool of men who make the same or more than the average woman will shrink pretty dramatically.
So it is true to say that as women become empowered and more able to care for themselves without the help of a man, the majority of lower-income and males with a lower socioeconomic status will have a much harder time finding a mate. This mostly affects men negatively at a younger age when their earnings are lowest and they sit closest to the bottom of that hierarchy. Conversely, the negative impacts hit women later on when the end of their child-bearing years approaches and they realize that putting a family on hold to focus on their career may have been a more permanent decision than they’d intended now that they’ve moved up the economic ladder and the small proportion of men at or above their level are either already taken or happy to play the field non-monogamously.
It hits both genders just as hard and it’s an issue we need to solve. Our evolutionary psychology and mate selection processes just haven’t caught up with modern society. And since males are more prone to isolation and suicide, we see the affects against them more readily. But the affects to women will become more apparent in the next few decades.
I know this is politically charged territory, but it’s pretty well established from a sociological and evolutionary psychology perspective.
Edit: Changed “lower-status males” to “males with a lower socioeconomic status” since that seems to be a trigger-word for some folks.
This is supercharged in Korea because it’s a very traditional society. Not only are women not able to find compatible men, but they also have to give up the careers they built in order to stay home and raise kids.
I don’t know about Korea specifically, but it’s pretty common in SE Asia to have live in nanny’s from poor countries to child rear when both parents are power career players. It’s this not the case in Korea?
It’s hard to talk about this without people getting upset but I think you were pretty genuine in trying to talk about it.
lower-status males
That’s a lot of extra words to say you, knowingly or otherwise, buy in to incel rhetoric…
I’m linking to peer-reviewed scientific studies over here. If you want to dispute what I’m saying, avoid the genetic fallacy and engage with the substance.
By “lower-status”, I meant lower socioeconomic status. Less education and less income. The two things women primarily judge potential mates on.
I agree with you, though its all a symptom of the larger class war and the market capitalist owners need for mooaaaaaaar that required almost everyone to work to support a household. Same reason they limited abortion for poor women here in the US, the need for more desperate workers.
The sad reality is the truths you lay out are just not palatable to the current culture, despite being true. They also will not even begin to improve until the larger global class
waroccupation is addressed and the greed of the owners is put into check by force.Even that is a losing battle, but at least it has meaningful support. If you’re going to fight a just but losing battle, fight the one that informs all others that won’t get rotten fruit unfairly pelted at you in the public square.
If you’re going to fight a just but losing battle, fight the one that informs all others that won’t get rotten fruit unfairly pelted at you in the public square.
Love this line. I’ve been eating a lot of fruit here on Lemmy. Going to have to put some thought into this one.
I did as well when I started pontificating on the current gender conflict, only to be rebuked not on the facts or the data, but on the feels with ad hominems directed at me.
But the thing is, in addition to dictating all poors must work in the wake of the loss of their jim crow pseudo-slave workforce, the market capitalists want us divided in every conceivable way so we never look up at them basking in the dragon hoards we never stop growing for them with our bodies.
They use the media they own and the curriculum they inform through captured governments to stoke racial/political/sex/cultural divides. It is in their interests to keep us ignorant, largely devoid of critical thinking, and hostile towards one another.
Neither men nor women are setting these terms on the basis of their inherent drives, their drives are being manipulated to serve the market by a few thousand sociopath families with aligned interests based in unquenchable avarice. All of us without considerable net worth are less than human to the market capitalist owners.
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I’d like to remind everyone who’s coming here for the men vs women fight that not so long ago only men worked and they were still able to afford everything for their family. Now both work and can’t afford the same as men alone did then. We should be fighting such that either man or woman work alone and can still afford a home, not fight between us.
Men vs women, left vs right politics, black vs white, Christian vs Islamic,… we’re too blind with these petty fights among ourselves to see that we are all alike and there’s a different third party that is playing us like a fiddle.
Korea has a huge problem with toxic masculinity and shame culture, it’s started to come to a head as more Korean women grow up using tiktok and Twitter which gives them a more global perspective and makes them less likely to accept bullshit.
The rule for women has been ‘we don’t care what happens to you as long as no one finds out about it, and if they do its your fault’ which is tied strongly to their very competitive culture. One ‘stain’ on your record snd you’re ruined. Tiktok is spreading a more western expectation in Korean women and some Korean men which angers the traditionalist element and results in headlines like this.
Could it be the stress of hyper competition to get the best grades in school in order to enter the best universities?
Could it be the korean social pressure that is always reiterating and reinforcing that those older and/or above you should never be questioned?
Could it be that salaries just aren’t enough anymore to pay for their own needs, plus their parents’ (since most retirement pensions don’t even cover the basic cost of living), as is expected from korean society?
Nah, it’s the wimmin dominating society and making this gesture 🤏
Moonie has a very good 2 part video that does explain a lot about South Korea
It couldn’t possibly be that their entire country is basically oriented around one massive Corp that has infamously bad working conditions / office politics.
Well it wouldn’t exactly be the women’s fault but it is true that women are in general higher educated than men and what is also true is that in general women want a man whose higher educated than them. This is going to be a major issue in the future though in the case of south korea they’re absolutely screwed anyway due to aging population and ever decreasing birth rates.
If you commit suicide just because your boss got no pp, you kinda deserve it. The much more obvious reason would be broadly gestures around tho
He ain’t wrong in principle but he is too boomer to understand really why here
