Gender Wars: The Deterioration - written by 20114 Yoon Ji Won

Gender Wars: The Deterioration

written by 20114 Yoon Ji Won

More than two-dozen women from all over the world started to reveal their stories of having been sexually harassed in 2017. They have done it on SNS platforms, using the hashtag MeToo. So far, over half a million women have tweeted #Me_Too, which gives people the sense of severeness of this problem. The hashtag not only expresses that they were sexually assaulted, but it also shows support to other women.

At first, some brave women including Lady Gaga, Katie Stevens, Eliza Banks and more started the line. These women gave the chance and confidence for other women to also talk about their sexual assault or sexual harassment experience. As a result, the MeToo movement gives people hope, and for survivors that hope is powerful. Now, the world has witnessed and is still witnessing the domino effect of powerful men becoming vulnerable.

Most of all, the most important goal of the MeToo movement is to improve the gender discrimination society and to reconsider and fix out the crisis. To a certain extent, it is kind of happening nowadays. However there are also some negative effects that happened after the launch of the MeToo movement.

Me Too was made in order to equalize the social status of males and females. However the results are not proving that. Companies in Korea reported that they are decreasing the number of female employees in order to prevent gender discrimination in the workplace.

A frequent global scene is the quarrel between men and women about their different thoughts. Korea Institute for Gender Equality Promotion and Education reported after monitoring 1600 posts of 8 online communities that there were 161 severe gender assaulting posts which includes denouncing the MeToo movement. These conflicts wouldn’t happen as frequently or explosively, if people could give sufficient reasons for their opinion and were more tolerant and accepting of other people’s opinions. The main solution to these arguments would be for people to have an open mind when it comes to discussing these experiences.

However the quarrels happening today are one-sided views with abasement and attacks about each other. People use bad words in order to criticize others and are so busy to pick on them. Watching the aggressive comments and posts of the MeToo supporters, some critics comment that this isn't the real MeToo movement having its original intention nowadays. They believe today’s MeToo is only the deteriorated form of the original MeToo movement.

Then, what are some things that we can do to stop this deterioration? First, we should try to use kindness and try to talk sincerely even in the SNS world. Instead of backstabbing, ridiculing, and gossiping with others, we need better behavior for listening and accepting other's points of views.

Secondly, we should fix our stereotypes in language. Even in English literature, we can frequently see “male” as the default of “human”. For example, in “By others faults wise men correct their own”, “He is lifeless that is faultless”, “No man can call again yesterday” male is the generic form of human, and is used as norm. In addition he or she, men and women, naturally mentioning male prior to female, are much commonly heard than she or he, her and him, women and men. Typically the lingual status of a male is higher than female.

To prevent Me Too in the future, it will be everyone’s mission to solve gender discrimination in the society. We should cut down gender discriminated sayings, and be paying attention to the situation and report gender discrimination. All of us should be aware to this crisis and try our best to make gender equality. The only method to amend this society is to change ourselves, who make up this society.

Last but not least, we need to be aware of the real purpose of the Me Too movement. The creator of the Me Too, Tarana Burke proposed specific goals for the #MeToo movement. Her specified goals were processing all untested rape kits in the US, protecting children at school more carefully, updating sexual harassment policies, and improving the gender discrimination environment (in workplaces, places of worship, and schools.) She has stated that everyone in the community, including both genders must take action in order to make the #MeToo movement successful.