In response to Roboseyo: On dipshit spaces.

When Roboseyo first contacted me and let me know that he would be, in some sense, dealing with my role reversal post, what I expected to see was a response outlining his opinion on the matter at hand. What I saw when I went over to check it out, however, was more of an analysis of community, of spaces and of how people are interacting, and who has a right to (or should) say what where.

I have a lot of opinions about what goes on in the internet spaces the Western foreigners in Korea have carved out for themselves, and I think just about everyone knows that I rarely hold back on expressing those opinions. At times, those posts have been quite combative in tone and nature. And I don't really apologize for that. This blog is my space. I try to go out of my way not to speak for other people, but I don't tiptoe around the issue of speaking for myself. If I see something that pisses me off, whether I stumbled across it, had it deliberately dropped in my inbox or intentionally sought it out, if I feel I have enough of something to say about it to form a coherent post, I will.

Is that not what blogs are for?

Because of this, I've had accusations in the past of trying to control other people's blogs. But to me, disagreeing or having a problem with what someone has said is not trying to control their freedom of expression. It's an integral part of my freedom of expression. And I've always had respect for other bloggers' right to take me to task when they have an issue with something I've said. I may not agree with their methods or their opinions, and I may respond to that end, but I don't make a habit of telling them that they're not allowed to make posts on their own blogs disagreeing with me, because I don't personally feel that disagreeing with me and saying so out loud is an attempt to control me and my discourse.

I am a member of this community. As such, I participate. I have my say for myself and my opinion. I have my say for myself and what I think about other people's opinions. I've never claimed to be, or attempted to be, a moderator of this community. I speak for myself. And if there has ever been a time when things get a little too heated, and I feel the need to go ahead and discuss my interaction with another member of that community, and to analyze our personal contributions and behavior and perspectives, then I have done so. With those other people involved in the discussion, as equals, as two members of that community. As participants.

I found it interesting what Rob had to say about individual spaces, and gendered spaces in particular. The internet is a big, yet strangely small place at times. It's a part of the public sphere. If your forum or blog is not locked down to a specific list of people who are capable of viewing it, and when it is open for all of the world to see, then it automatically becomes a part of public discourse. Do I control what content (including comments) are allowed to be posted and visible on my blog? A hundred percent. And I will always assert my right to do so. However, do I control how other people respond on their blogs to what I post, in public, on my blog? No. I have the right to respond and disagree, but I don't have the right (or the ability) to control how they respond to something I decided was appropriate to put out on the internet for all of the world to see.

To me, it's a little bit tedious to attempt to create rules for or moderate public discourse, from a position of anything other than expressing your own opinion about the issue at hand. It was a weird experience to read an analysis of what kind of discussions are appropriate in which spaces filtered through my role reversal post. In essence, it felt almost as though I were being told to stay in my space. But I'm not quite sure what, if not my blogs, is my space. And to bring the issue of gendered spaces into it made the experience even weirder. I am female, so which space is my gendered space? Am I outside of my gendered space on Blogspot, because when I started blogging nearly all of the major bloggers on Blogspot (or Wordpress) were male? Is Rob stepping outside of his gendered space when he posts on Tumblr? Am I outside of my gendered space when I make commentary on ugly posts I've seen on Dave's ESL? Or am I just borrowing trouble by not simply avoiding "dipshit" conversations and allowing the dipshits to have their space?

Maybe it's a little easier for Rob to be of the opinion that people should just "stay out of" those spaces, because the posts addressing foreign men in Korea in terms of ugly stereotypes have been so few and far between. Maybe Rob doesn't realize that for female foreigners in Korea, that shit has not been confined to just the internet. That those internet spaces that we should just avoid if we disagree were inherently and deeply entwined with what it meant to go outside of your apartment and into any space where there was a high volume of foreign men gathered in one space. Maybe he doesn't realize that those spaces slapped me in the face routinely when I was just trying to go about my life out in public in Korea during that first year.

Or maybe he also feels that I should've considered those bars or meetups with friends of other male friends to be their gendered space, their "frat party", and I should've just realized that I wasn't welcomed there, that the foreign bars in Bupyeong were for male expats who wanted to bitch about women, and not me, and that those spaces should be respected as their spaces and shouldn't be interrupted, because those men have the right to be the way that they are, and to express their opinions about me to my face and I should've just accepted my fate graciously, not argued or spoken up, turned around and just gone home. To "my" space, where I belong.

Or maybe he's only talking about the internet. Maybe the big name forum for ESL teachers in Korea, which as far as I could see, didn't have any rules or regulations about how it was a space for men, should just be allowed to become a cesspit where women are shouted out for trying to seek any kind of information about their experience in Korea, and no one should say anything about it. And maybe, to bring it back to the blogs, I should've just realized when I first started blogging, that blogging in Korea was for men. I shouldn't have bothered taking the time I did to analyze and respond to a number of issues I saw there, because I should have realized that I was trying to "discuss books at a frat party". Or rather, be a female voice in a space already primarily claimed by men. It just wasn't my party. It wasn't my community. And instead of taking inspiration from bloggers like Going Places and Amanda Takes Off and sticking it out, I should've just packed up my bags and left, and the community would just feel sorry when they looked around and noticed I was gone.

But I doubt that. Very seriously.

Maybe Rob doesn't realize how many spaces women (or any other "minority") confront on a daily basis that have already been marked off as spaces delegated to "dipshits" who have the right to express their opinions about any and all other categories of people, and how exhausting it gets to try to stick to your own "safe" spaces without confronting those other spaces. Or better yet, to try to carve those spaces out of nothing, when men, or majority groups, have already claimed all of the space as theirs, by default. Maybe he doesn't realize just how much space those "dipshits" are already taking up, so for him it's a little easier to say, "Just avoid it. They have the right to be that way. Go find your own space, where it doesn't happen." But I, for one, reserve the right to invade "dipshit" spaces that are discussing me and my categories in offensive terms, whenever the fuck I see fit.

I also reserve the right to speak up when I see the space where I am a part of the majority start to slip. Because, to me, individualized dipshit spaces are not the ideal. Especially when I was the one who was there first. Do I run the risk of being shot down, when my opinion is no longer the majority? Yeah. Do I run the risk of unfavorable responses? Yep. I accept those risks. I always have. But I'm not going to just shut up about it and mind my own business. I don't expect anyone else will, either. But that's fine. They can express themselves, and I'll continue to do the same.

Taking a ride.

Taxi drivers in Seoul have become less than pleasant. They basically constantly grumble about where you are, where you want to go, where you want to get out. They'll pick you up in the middle of Gangnam at rush hour and then complain about traffic. As if they've never driven in Seoul before. God forbid they have to make a turn at any point -- you'll hear all about how you should have taken a taxi from a point that would have made it a straight shot, even if that's not even possible. As if it weren't their job, and they weren't being paid. It's horrible.

But out here in Incheon, they're mostly extremely pleasant. I rarely have any issues. Yesterday, on my way home from the mart with arms full of groceries, I did have one grumble when I said, simply, "여기요," when we got to where I wanted to stop. He muttered under his breath about how I had given him no warning and just suddenly blurted out that I wanted him to stop. We were about fifty yards from the destination I had originally told him, there was zero passing traffic to interfere with his stopping, and this is pretty much just how you take taxis. But nonetheless, he was put out that I had asked him to let me out at my destination. A horrible inconvenience for him, it must have been. I can't even imagine.

You eventually learn to just ignore it, or pretend you don't understand it. Keep smiling and say thank you and go along on your way. Grumpy old men being grumpy.

But this morning was quite different. I was running a bit late to work, due to I don't even know what (by "late", I mean late for the thirty minutes early I usually arrive), and had been standing waiting for a cab for a good few minutes when, just as a taxi appeared on the horizon, a young female university student clutching her books with wet hair and sleepy eyes took a good look at me and then stepped out in front of me and grabbed the cab first. I stared her down, as I usually do in these situations, because, given that we were the only two people standing there, it's not as if she wouldn't have known what the score was.

But then, as she started to climb in, I saw the taxi suddenly jerk forward. She stepped back, confused and then leaned her head inside. I saw the taxi driver turn around and say something, and her face changed to angry, and she attempted to climb in again. The car jerked forward again. She shouted and slammed the door. And he pulled up and stopped in front of me.

By this point, I was laughing. I climbed inside and thanked him emphatically. He was laughing too, and he explained how he had told the girl that it was bad manners to take the cab of the person in front of you, who had been waiting longer. He asked me if I was a teacher, complimented my (at this point extremely basic) Korean and then started to explain how his daughter was attending a local elementary school, and how he would like to send his daughter to my school. I explained that my school is a boys' school, so that might be a little difficult. He said we could probably make an exception. I laughed some more, and he asked, "아저씨는 재미 있지?" I'd have to agree. This conversation, this situation, was not what I was expecting on my morning commute.

He went on to explain how his daughter doesn't like him, and only clings to his wife, so he's a 왕따 in his own family. I told him being a teacher teaches you more than anything that kids can be difficult for no reason.

It completely brightened my day, and now I'm ready to get my classes done and get out of here for the long weekend. Even my lesson plans for today are fun, so it should be a good, quick day. Let's just not think about the open class next week....

Why white people date white people: Exposed!

My computer blew up this weekend and I'm typing this on my phone, so I'm gonna be keeping this real short and sweet.

Have you ever wondered why white people date other white people? What deeply rooted pathological neuroses might lead a white person into the arms of another white person? Have you ever felt the need to classify and exam a white person's desire for another white person based on cultural analysis?

No? Then could please shut the fuck up about interracial couples?

The level of goddamned tired I am of this new internet fucking 'journalistic' trend of explaining why race + gender is attracted to other race + other gender cannot even be conveyed using these things we call words. Just fuck off.

If you want to explain and explore yourself and your partner, by all means go right ahead. But I do not need your help, thank you very much. And the chances of you trying to explain an entire group's motivation for dating an entire other group (especially a group you do not even belong to) and not coming off like a complete prick are less than zero. So stop trying.

Interracial relationships are not pathological just because you decided same race relationships are the default. If you want to delve into cultural influences or media representations, by all means please do so. But try to stop short of explaining a phenomenon. Because all the caveats in the world will not stop you from inevitably throwing one group or another under the bus in the process.

The hazards of teaching teenage boys, part II.

So, I'm standing there and I'm thinking, this is it. I'm going to end up with a bruise on my face or a black eye or a fractured wrist, at the very least. There's no doubt about it, and there's no way out but through.

Eonjin and Gyuseok. They run in the same circle, but they're uneasy friends. Gyuseok is the looser of the two cannons, for sure. He's one of the students who constantly sleeps, and last year we had a little altercation, when I woke him up and told him to sit up and at least take a look at the book for a minute, while I explained the assignment to him. He pushed my hand away, and when he looked up at my face in reaction, I saw on his face a crossroads -- admit he was wrong and apologize for pushing my hand, or stick to his guns? He made his decision and cussed at/in front of me (we were unable to come to an agreement about which it was, with my opinion being that it ultimately didn't really matter) instead.

Following the aftermath of that situation, Gyuseok still sleeps. All the time. But every time I walk past and pat him on the back, he sits up and yanks the book away from whatever student is closest to him (he never has his own) and tries to focus his eyes and nods and follows along while I walk him through a question or two. As soon as I walk away, he shoves the book back at the other student and face plants back down on the desk. But I appreciate the effort.

Eonjin is one of those who's a bit of a man already. And I don't mean just in body. There are some students who look at you in the eyes with a clear kind of logic that's not incredibly common at their age. Eonjin is that kind.

The bell had rung and I was busy setting up for class, and half-heartedly shouting for them to get into their seats, when I heard the usual profanity-laced nonsensical shouting shift a bit in tone. My head snapped up. Gyuseok was in the hall shouting through the window at Eonjin, who was in my classroom. Eonjin was still smirking, but Gyuseok's face was nothing but serious. A few more tense words were exchanged, and Eonjin's face changed. He went tearing out off for the hall.

Every other fucker followed. Three full classrooms' worth of them.

I knew straight off if I tried to touch Gyuseok at all, he was going to end up touching me in a way that he shouldn't, and the situation was going to escalate to a place it didn't need to go. I shouted at the other students to grab Gyuseok and got a hold of Eonjin instead.

It was an odd experience. Eonjin was looking past my face, hurling insults at Gyuseok, but when I called his name, his eyes would snap back and focus in on mine. He would smile, a bit embarrassed and say, "Yes, Teacher. I'm sorry. It's okay. I'm sorry, Teacher." And then his eyes would snap back to Gyuseok and his entire demeanor would change.

It wasn't strange because I've never seen it before, but rather because I have, on drunken male friends when I was in much the same position. It was odd to fall back into that old position, but with my students on the other side.

I've broken up more than a few fights since I started working here, but the students have usually been either around my size, or significantly smaller, sometimes so small that I could have easily just picked them up and physically removed them from the situation.  Even my male friends who tend to occasionally drink too much, or the boys from my neighborhood back home, have always been around my size.

Standing between Eonjin and Gyuseok, I realized this wasn't going to be quite the same.

I glanced up and down the hall, and saw no one. The other students were doing a decent job of holding Gyuseok back, but had little to gain by pulling him fully away from the situation, thereby putting an end to the most exciting drama to occur all month. This was much more fun than sitting in class, where they should've been. I started slowly backing Eonjin into the classroom, but as Gyuseok realized his situation was getting away without resolution, he escalated his shouting and swears. Before I even knew what was happening, Eonjin had somehow slipped out of my hands like a fucking eel and, without so much as brushing against me, completely circumvented me to be standing face to face with Gyuseok.

Or he would have been, had not the tiniest female teacher in the school gotten there first. Eonjin almost slammed right into her.

In the confusion of the moment, both boys stepped back. The other teacher grabbed Gyuseok by the collar and told two other students to assist her in dragging him away. I got Eonjin by the shoulder and pulled him in the opposite direction.

And just like that, it was over. 

The biggest brother in the world.

I really don't know how to explain Yeongjin. His homeroom teacher says that he's "special", and he is, but I somehow don't get the sense that there's anything physically wrong with him. Yeongjin is just.... very, very slow. Bright. But slow. Eager, but slow.

He rarely has very much of an idea what's going on in class, although he does sit intently watching and smiling and calling out whatever word comes to mind, which he supposes might be the answer to something. But he's never bullied by the other kids. He's big for his age, already, in a tall and broad, muscular kind of way, probably because his main activity outside of school is Taekwondo (and he's quite good at it, from what I hear). And his "special" status has not seen him hesitating one iota from taking a dominant social position. The smarter boys can get a bit fed up with him from time to time and snap, but Yeongjin just pulls himself up to his full stature, sticks out his chest and asks them who they think they're talking to.

Point taken. They may grumble into their chests after that, but they know that technically Yeongjin is right and, at least at this point in life, muscle has got brains beat.

But he's incredibly gentle. Soonhyeon the Crier is now a third grader, along side Yeongjin, and today was a crying kind of day for Soonhyeon. I don't know what started it all, but the crying was so hysterical that it resulted in a nose bleed. Soonhyeon is smart, but very small, and therefore not nearly as immune to teasing as Yeongjin is, but Yeongjin somehow seems to know that there but for the grace of God -- he could easily be in Soonhyeon's shoes.

So it was Yeongjin who swatted the giggling students away and guided Soonhyeon down the hall to the bathroom.

Yeongjin, for all I can tell, has half a million little brothers. Anywhere I go in my neighborhood, if I stand in the same spot for longer than thirty minutes, I will see Yeongjin being trailed by little brothers. If Yeongjin and I are walking together, we will be greeted by dozens of little brothers. The only explanation Yeongjin has ever had for these kids is that they are little brothers. I realize now that they are probably boys from the dojang. If I run into him while he is with one or two, he will tell them quite strictly to greet me and then demand that they speak English. They will grab his hand and hide behind him when I lean over to talk to them, and he will laugh and push them around back to the front, until they smile. They like him a lot, and evidently trust him, as well.

Yeongjin is turning out to be the third grader who hangs around. Every morning, break time, lunch and afternoon, Yeongjin comes in. And he absolutely refuses to speak Korean. He never, ever has. Outside in the street or here at school, Yeongjin will stand there and struggle for five full minutes before he will say something in Korean. His English, obviously, is not great. So this is what he does: He stands in front of my desk and points.

"Chair. Book. Phone. Computer. Headphones. Stapler. Tea. Cup. Pen."

For the first few weeks, this was all that he would do. He would point and name things, over and over and over. I would nod and say, "That's right. Good job, Yeongjin." I would tell him the name for anything that he didn't know. And when he finished, he would just start over again. Right back at the beginning. When the bell rang, he would bow and leave.

Now, he's working up to making actual sentences. Today, he tried to tell me that his teacher had taken another student to the hospital: "Teacher. My teacher. Student. Car. Hospital." Every now and then he will tell me that he's hungry, or that the weather is cloudy, or that he's tired. But mostly he still makes lists: sports, foods, types of weather.

When his teacher comes in and asks him what he's doing, he just says, "Speaking English."

The thing is, I reckon this kid hasn't got a half bad idea. And I wouldn't be surprised if, by the end of the year, he really was speaking English. I have no idea why he wants to, but he sure is making an honest go of it. I, for one, would love to see him move up to A ban before the end of the year. The look on his classmates' faces would be priceless. I'll bet the farm he can do it, too.

Moo.

I'm having a very frustrating time with one of my co-teachers at the moment. It will probably not come as any surprise that it's one of the temporary teachers, but there you have it. She's the "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" co-teacher who has basically decided to just kneel down and take everything the students want to give her, with a smile, in hopes of being able to survive.

The problem is not that, although as I've mentioned before, her little chit-chats with the students in the middle of my lectures are not my favorite thing to encounter throughout the course of the day, it has to be said. But now that the principal has forced the co-teachers back into the classroom full time, she's decided to be extra proactive and act as a translator.

Again, I understand that if this were my first year, I would probably really appreciate that. However, as it stands, it's not productive. In fact, the students seem to be finding the transition to be very confusing. As am I, to be frank. Because not only is she making me defunct and pointless to listen to with her translations of everything I say into Korean, when the students are perfectly adjusted to having to listen to me in English only, but she's also random as fuck. She won't translate things in the exact same way that I've worded them in English, which leaves the students glancing back and forth between us, trying to figure out if they should answer the question their Korean teacher asked them in Korean, or if they should answer the question they think their foreign teacher probably asked them in English.

Obviously, they usually go with the safe option. Which leaves me scrambling to get them back on course to head in the direction I'm trying to go for.

It's incredibly frustrating. And unnecessary.

But today, she's developed an even better habit. She watched me closely during my first class of the day, and for the other two classes -- I shit you not -- allowed me to get exactly one sentence of what I had to say out, each time I went to speak, before interrupting me in Korean to say everything she knew I was about to say in Korean. Before I even had the chance to say it in English.

Really? Would you like me just to give you my lesson plans and materials and you can spend my forty-five minutes a week teaching the students how to answer simple questions in Korean? Because I'm struggling to see what other purpose you're allowing me to serve at this point, honestly.

I've already spoken to her a couple of times about the translation, and of course she argues that the students can't understand. That's fine. The students have been understanding for two years with no translation, but now that you're in the room, they can't understand. I got it. Except for the fact that they can't complete their assignments when they don't actually learn the English phrases they need to know to complete their assignments, because they are too busy answering the questions you are translating entirely into Korean and not paying any attention to the English portion of the class at all.

She agreed to allow the students to listen to me in English only at least for the portions where I am checking their comprehension and practicing the grammar patterns with them as a class.

Of course, the logical thing to start doing after having had this conversation is to just cut me out of my own lecture entirely.

She's not a bitchy lady, and I think she genuinely would like to help, but she doesn't have a fucking clue what she's doing and it's driving me up a wall. I'm not sure how many more times I'll have to sit down and gently explain these same basic concepts, or how much worse it could get in the meantime. For the last class today, I gave her two or three opportunities to translate like a normal fucking human being before I gave up and just continued talking, even when she tried to cut me off in Korean. Confused the living fuck out of the students, but after a few failed attempts to butt in on her part, she eventually gave up and waited for me to at least finish what I was saying. I also did something I normally prefer to use as a last resort in order to prove a point, which was to ask the students to tell me in Korean what the words and sentences meant. When they repeated them back quickly and perfectly, minus her translation, she seemed to relax a little about how they couldn't possibly be understanding a single thing that was going on, and let me get back to what I was doing.

It's frustrating. The interrupting cow nature of the whole thing is the absolute worst. I was in the middle of giving three clues about a city today, when she interrupted in the middle of the second sentence to tell the students that the city name started with the letter A. Which they already knew, because it was up on the screen. So why she thought the middle of my sentence was the best time to announce this thing, in Korean, I have no idea. But there she is, going off like a half-cocked gun. 

Say a prayer for me on this one. I've got two and a half more months with this co-teacher. And then let's hope she decides staying home and taking care of her kids wasn't such an awful idea after all.

The role reversal I never wanted to see happen.

Hello, my Blogspot darlings. I know I've not been very good. But, to be honest, these days it's just kind of one foot in front of the other. There hasn't been too much to say, or too much I've felt like it was even worth it to try to say, depending on the day.

But I've just about had it tonight. And I'm not going to link to anything, or cite any sources, because I'm tired of dealing with all of that. If you know where I'm getting it from, that's great, and if you don't, you'll just have to take my word for it.

When I came to Korea, it was hard to be a Western woman here. Every morning when you woke up and turned on your computer, you were bombarded with messages about how Western women could never measure up to Korean women, how they didn't put in the effort with their physical appearances, how their bodies were lax and sloppy in comparison, about how Korean women in fact preferred Western men,  because they were less demanding and abusive than Korean men, from whom they wished to escape. About how Western men also preferred Korean women, because they were also less demanding than their Western counterparts. About how Korean men, in turn, couldn't possibly be expected to prefer Western women, given all of the areas where Korean women had them so sufficiently outdone.

And the descriptions of what made a K-girl. The men who walked down the same streets where I saw Korean women of all ages, sizes and varieties dressed in all ranges of styles, and somehow managed to come to the conclusion that the one out of twenty between the ages of 18 and 28, with high heels and a mini skirt and perfectly applied makeup were the entire definition of Korean women. Or, rather, K-girls.

Western women in Korea slowly but surely began to rally together to try to deal with all of this. The blatant misogyny and, at times, racism of it all, and piece by piece started to deconstruct the behavior and break it down for what it was. The platform Tumblr, in particular, provided for bloggers made it easy for one person to link to a blog or forum post of a particularly nefarious nature, and pass it along, adding comments and creating in depth conversations out of thin air. A community was formed, and although there were disagreements, it was nice. It was nice not to feel like the sole female voice being dropped into an ocean of shouting men, for once, whether those men be on an internet forum, or forming a circle around you in a bar.

And we found men who agreed, and who shared our views of the situation, and who had no problems breaking from the old school boys' club mentality, and pointing out that they had been there all along, not saying those things, and being just as incensed by them, in fact. 

For about a year after the first wave of Korean dating blogs penned by women appeared, nothing happened. There was the occasional mention on Dave's ESL, either being cited as a source for people who had never heard of Western women dating Korean men before, or being linked to as a source of curiosity and humor, an oddity or a chance, as some men put it, to imagine the entire wide world in reverse. How novel. I, and a few other bloggers, eventually perked up and took notice. Something very interesting was happening. After a while, it eventually became common knowledge, in certain circles, that this was a thing that was going on.

When the second or third wave of Korean dating blogs started to pop up, my friends and I started to nervously make jokes. And they were jokes, but they were nervous, because we saw some turns that were being taken that made us feel just that -- nervous. This thing was catching fire, and fast. It seemed like there was a new dating blog -- no exaggeration -- every week. And the tone had changed, as well. It started to shift from, "Hey here we are, doing this thing that everyone is trying to insist doesn't happen," to, "Oh yeah, I do that, too. We all do that." And that was a great thing.

In a lot of ways, either because the dating dynamics in Korea with foreigners have actually changed, or because it was revealed openly on the internet, one way or another, it does feel these days as though the myth has been debunked, and the taboo has been broken. It's not like it was when I first came, when seeing a Western woman holding hands with a Korean man on the street was the equivalent of a unicorn sighting, and when that one guy who is late to the party starts in about how Korean men don't go for Western women, or the reverse, everyone seems to kind of take a deep breath in and exchange knowing looks. Whenever I am out in public with my boyfriend now, and we happen upon another group of foreigners, nobody can be bothered to even look twice. I certainly don't feel like the walking freak show I once did in the same situation before.

And that is fucking fantastic. I honestly had no reason to expect I would ever see the day.

But the nervousness came in when we started to see the tone shift a little further. Suddenly, there were little comments here and there every few months about white guys not being attractive, or about Korean girls being too interested in a man's money. And there was even this new phrase being bounced around from here to there -- K-boy.

Surely not, we thought. Surely not, after all of the conversations we've had, after all of the posts that have been made dissecting the blog posts and forum posts and casually rude comments we've had flung at us out in public. Surely we are more aware than that.

And I think for the most part that the women who were around for long enough to remember were (and are). But there are women here now who don't remember, who weren't here to see the way that it was. Or who were, but who somehow haven't noticed the correlation.

And it's not really just the occasional comment, anymore. It's starting to grow and morph into something more than an off-hand comment that could be taken in a certain way, if you really tried. More and more every day it seems to be becoming an issue of status and competition, of comparisons that never really needed to be made in the first place. Korean women. Western men. It's starting to feel a little like I'm slipping into a Bizarro World of the one I entered when I first arrived in Korea.

It's really starting to piss me off, frankly, and not only because I feel like my feminist club membership card might be demanded for inspection every time I go to say something about it. Because it's not okay to classify all Western men as gross and sloppy, or to pigeon hole Korean men, the category, into the ones that you personally find sexually viable, or to put down Korean women in an attempt to explain why you are the better option. And saying so doesn't make me jealous or petty or destructive toward other women, or our community as a whole. Does it?

Maybe it does. But that's not the way we felt toward the men who pointed it out when the exact same thing was happening in reverse. And I'm still trying to figure out how or why it's okay, just because we're women. Why we shouldn't hold ourselves and our community to higher standards than that, especially given the first-hand experience we've had being on the receiving end of it.

I just wish everyone would be careful. To remember where we came from, and to try to be as respectful toward others as we wished they would have been, when the shoe was on the other foot. No "community" is exempt from its questionable moments or members, but I did wish at the time that other men would have done more to speak up, when our female voices mattered very little.