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+--- Thread: Discussion Beauty Resistance is Gender Resistance (/showthread.php?tid=1885)
Beauty Resistance is Gender Resistance - Impress Polly - Jan 23 2026
When she was around, YesYourNigel would often call not for acceptance of different gender expressions (masculine, feminine, and the various compromises thereof), but for the abolition of femininity. This post is essentially me agreeing with that position and offering a bit of my thinking on why. (My thinking is obviously not entirely hers.)
Let's start off by pointing out trans-women are roughly three times as common as trans-men. In fact, what we today call the gender identity issue used to be almost entirely a male problem. It's only truly become otherwise in this century. And when girls and women do seek to disavow womanhood, they rarely go so far as to aspire to maleness. On the contrary, girls and young women living under the trans umbrella usually choose the more neutral gender identity called "non-binary". Why the disparity? Why do many boys and men wish to belong to the other sex while girls and women almost never do? Because Valerie Solanas was right, not an hysterical loon: deep down, we all know that men are inferior to women and the contours of transgenderism are simply one especially stark expression of this reality among countless others. There are a thousand different proofs of female superiority, but I'll take just a moment here to hook you up with just a few more of them, courtesy of Womad:
Quote:Some data on the parasites
I'll keep updating this post with more
Daughters increase longevity of fathers
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16634019/
Daughters spend more time caring for aging parents
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2014/08/20/daughters-spend-more-time-caring-for-aging-parents-than-sons/
Wives increase husband's lifespans while husbands decrease wive's lifespan (correlation is even greater when age gap increases)
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/05/100512062631.htm
Men with sisters are happier and more optimistic
https://www.tlc.com/life---relationships/study-says-having-a-sister-makes-you-more-optimistic-kinder-and-happier
Women with brothers earn less money
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/women-brother-gender-pay-gap-earn-less-study-research-cornell-university-a7959166.html
Women with brothers are forced to conform more strongly to gender expectations
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00148-021-00830-9
Mother's lives are reduced by giving birth to sons
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/having-sons-can-shorten-a-woman-life/
No shit: Women are happier without parasites and children
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/may/25/women-happier-without-children-or-a-spouse-happiness-expert
The Kinsey Reports found out (in 1948) that at least half of m*les have cheated on their female partners. 24 percent of these subhumans 80 years or older report cheating while only 6 percent of women say the same.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02693241
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2004/11/dr-kinseys-revolution/303649/
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/age-married-men-most-likely-044145609.html
In short, moids are far more emotionally dependent on us than we are on them. Physically we may not be the stronger sex, but emotionally we definitely are. The further away girls and women are from their male counterparts, the happier and healthier we tend to be. Moids get their health and happiness by attaching themselves to us and draining ours. They extend their lives by reducing ours. They are literally emotional parasites. This simple fact proves the misogyny inherent in leftists' frequent arguments in favor of narrowing the sex gap in life expectancy. A gap only narrowly favoring women suggests male privilege. The freer women are, the longer we live, the shorter men are going to tend to live because they can't mentally-emotionally make it without us. They lose it and die younger. A world in which girls and women were as well off as possible would be one with a wider life expectancy gap, not a smaller one.
The way I see it, male nature encompasses both dominance and submission while female nature trends in a more collaborative direction overall. It corresponds to these realities that men prefer starker expressions while women tend to prefer more neutral ones. It also reflects the different ways that our brains work. The female brain is more neurally interconnected than the male brain, so it follows that we would tend to view the elements of life as being more interconnected, more related to each other, while a man will see things more in isolation, in poles and separations.
Anyway, I bring up the sex difference in the way transgenderism finds expression because it's key to understanding what's happening at the moment. There have been a few studies of late (example), along with a mounting volume of circumstantial evidence in the culture (example) that queer identities have begun receding in commonality here in the U.S. in the last few years, but with a clear subgroup skew:
Quote:Specifically, there has been a decline of between 3 to 6 percent in the number of students identifying as non-binary in 2025, compared to 2023.
Additionally, the researchers found that there has been a "return to heterosexuality," even though students identifying as lesbian or gay have remained "stable" in recent years. That said, the number of students identifying as heterosexual still remains 7 percentage points below its level in 2020.
Those identifying as bisexual have varied the most, increasing from 10 to 17 percent of students between 2020 and 2023, and decreasing to 12 percent by 2025.
This brings me to the question of sexuality because when we're talking about "bi" people, that too is a very female-skewing group. In keeping with our theme of girls and women tending to favor more neutral expressions, this applies to sexual identities as well. Girls and women have been significantly more likely than their male counterparts to consider themselves "bi", while men have been more a bit more apt to identify as gay than women have been to call themselves lesbians. My point is that we're talking about the same demographic here in both cases: girls and young women are the ones who in the last 15 years or so became far more likely to call themselves bi than in the past and likewise have been the driving force in the uptick in gender-queer identification, led heavily by newfound "non-binary" self-classifications. Let me suggest to you that these are the same girls and women. Basically "non-binary" is a subset of the bi trend that is now receding in the culture. As bi identification declines, so too does non-binary ID. The two things go hand-in-hand because they are closely related and very, very heavily overlapping in truth to the point of being close to synonymous.
The study linked above suggests that the aforementioned receding began after the pandemic lifted and people started being able to access therapy again and whatnot and the public's mental health in general began to notch discernible, statistically-measurable improvements. In other words, there is evidence of an perhaps causative connection between poor mental health and bi and non-binary identification in that, as mental health improves, these sexual and gender IDs become less common. Causation isn't firmly established here, but the correlation has to be taken as significant for sure. It certainly would help validate feminist arguments that gender identity is a social contagion, not a naturally occurring phenomenon unrelated to mental health or illness. But this would suggest the bisexual identification to some considerable extent may also be part of the same social contagion, which would be new territory for the consideration of modern feminists.
I specify "modern feminists" above because there was a time when women's liberationists may have been less surprised. In the 1970s and '80s, political lesbians would sometime argue against social acceptance of bisexual lifestyles on the grounds that they compromised the integrity of female separatism in a way that would lead to the dilution of our class consciousness. We know which side won that debate in the end, but the dissenters have well-documented the subsequent ascendancy of queer theory in academia, with its attendant normalization of trans politics. In other words, ideologically speaking, this can be considered a beast of multiculturalism; of the individualist ethos sweeping the women's movement as various legal reforms and victories were won and a certain bourgeoisification was achieved.
None of this is to suggest that there's no such thing as a genuine bi woman or that all bisexuality is false or fabricated in every case, but it does kinda dovetail with the well-known reality that very few so-called bi women bother to date other women (especially more than once). It does kinda seem like the immense majority of them are basically mentally-emotionally deeply pained and struggling heterosexual women with some very broad identity issues going on. The bulk today seem to be young, recent "converts" who really just latched onto the marriage equality movement strongly enough that they wanted to be gay or wanted the attention and public sympathy that seemed to be there for gay people in and around the height of the marriage equality movement, something like that, and so essentially found a way appropriate a gay identity without actually being, you know, gay. Now that they're in a better place in terms of mental health and it's no longer cool to be gay, they're increasingly straight again. The same is true of "trans" folks, but the non-binary group in particular. Same principal demos. It's noteworthy that, by contrast, the number of lesbians and gay men "has remained stable", i.e. seems unaffected by changes in the public's general mental well-being. Perhaps because that is a naturally occurring phenomenon.
The crisis of female identity I'm discussing that swept much of the globe, from the United States to Pakistan and all manner of places in-between, had exceptions though, and no they weren't all heavily agrarian societies with comparatively minimal internet access. The case of South Korea has long struck me as especially significant in this connection. Where here in the U.S., and much of the Western world, the 2010s were significantly defined by a marriage equality movement, in South Korea the young women experiencing this same crisis responded by instead engaging in beauty resistance. It looked like this:
The first image above is a before-and-after picture of a young Korean woman meant to promote her transformation from decorative male appendage to autonomous human being that she posted to social media. The second depicts a Korean woman's destroyed beauty products, also posted to social media. This was, in other words, not meant to promote the value of personal choice per se, but rather as prescriptive. These radical women concluded that the problem wasn't within them, but with society; that femininity was the problem, not their natural lack of it. The women of Womad, who led the charge, describe the sort of gender expression they promote as "androgyny" and believe it is the natural social expression of the psychologically liberated woman. A solution for all of us rather than distinct solutions for each of us.
The next question is why. Why did this happen in South Korea and not elsewhere? What circumstances caused so many young women there to respond differently to the modern female identity crisis? To highlight some of the backdrop pointed out by Hyejung Park, Jihye Kuk, and Caroline Norma in their article on the "take off the corset" movement linked above:
Quote:...In April [2018], The Telegraph reported on a growing movement against “cultural violence against women” in South Korea, which rose up in response to the fact that women in the nation were undergoing more plastic surgery than anywhere else in the world. Emanuel Pastreich, head of the Asia Institute, told Julian Ryall:
“Korean society has become completely distorted by this rush to undergo surgery and, speaking personally, I believe it is very sad that it has shifted to the point that women are seen merely as sex objects that have to undergo the scalpel to be perfect.”
This movement had success in November 2017 when Seoul Metro, which runs trains and buses in the world’s most populous city, banned cosmetic surgery ads in its stations.
Beauty practices are enforced more strictly for South Korean women than perhaps any female population on earth. Women’s ability to flourish and live autonomously, in a political, economic, and social context, is kept in check through intense pressure to get plastic surgery, to diet after graduation in order to compete in the job market, and to spend money on skin treatments, hair styling, and body hair removal treatments. Even for underage Korean girls the regime is fundamentalist: it’s hard to find a girl not wearing makeup by sixth grade, and some middle school uniforms for girls come with inner pockets for lip gloss. Female students in secondary schools are told not wearing makeup is socially impolite.
Under this regime, the beauty and personal care industries are extremely profitable, and whole sectors of the economy are dominated by cosmetics, dieting, and fashion. One extreme plastic surgery procedure popularized by K-pop stars is called “V-line surgery,” and involves shaving the jawline to create a V-shaped face. The Verge reports, “Technically called ‘corrective jaw surgery,’ it’s a procedure that requires the jaw to be wired shut for six weeks and can result in permanent numbness or death.”
...
The campaign began when young Korean women — calling themselves “beauty resisters” — began posting before-and-after selfies showing the results of throwing off beauty practices and images of destroyed beauty, cosmetic, and dieting products online. Others women joined in, discontinuing regimes of beauty in their personal lives as a strategy of political liberation for women as a whole.
Men tend to prize superficiality in their partners even when their partners are male. Lesbian culture, to the extent that it exists autonomously from that of gay men, tends in the other direction, toward prizing naturalism more. It just goes to show how differently women often think when the parasites aren't in the equation.
The authors marvel at the Korean women's ability to resist such overwhelming cultural force, but it strikes me that the particular severity of the problem in South Korea is precisely why such a movement took root there and not elsewhere! Or at least one of the reasons. But anyway, the point is that queer politics seemed to be largely held at bay by the ascendancy of this movement. Women in South Korea are still broadly understood as a biological sex, not just a state of mind corresponding to male domination fantasies, and as much tells me that beauty culture lies at the very heart of the female identity crisis. The female identity crisis has taken root in response to the increasing severity of socially obligatory beauty regimens and demands for cosmetic surgeries in recent decades and can be most effectively combated by feminist movements of beauty resistance.
Concluding Note: I've broad-brushed somewhat in this commentary, leaving some subjects less central to the issue (such as butch lesbians and their relationship to gender ID) unaddressed. Sorry about that. Just wanted to get directly to the heart and soul of the female identity crisis here such as to clarify the basic solution.
RE: Beauty Resistance is Gender Resistance - Magpie - Jan 24 2026
Quote:Let's start off by pointing out trans-women are roughly three times as common as trans-men. In fact, what we today call the gender identity issue used to be almost entirely a male problem. It's only truly become otherwise in this century. And when girls and women do seek to disavow womanhood, they rarely go so far as to aspire to maleness.
You are correct that it used to be almost entirely a male concept, but your numbers for TIFs that choose to identify as men are off. They are about as common as both "transwomen" and "enbies" in the States (https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/publications/trans-adults-united-states/) and in the UK among young people they are more common than "transwomen" and while there are less than "enbies", the gap isn't nearly as big as you imply. (https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/culturalidentity/genderidentity/articles/genderidentityageandsexenglandandwalescensus2021/2023-01-25).
Quote:In short, moids are far more emotionally dependent on us than we are on them. Physically we may not be the stronger sex, but emotionally we definitely are. The further away girls and women are from their male counterparts, the happier and healthier we tend to be. Moids get their health and happiness by attaching themselves to us and draining ours. They extend their lives by reducing ours. They are literally emotional parasites. This simple fact proves the misogyny inherent in leftists' frequent arguments in favor of narrowing the sex gap in life expectancy. A gap only narrowly favoring women suggests male privilege. The freer women are, the longer we live, the shorter men are going to tend to live because they can't mentally-emotionally make it without us. They lose it and die younger. A world in which girls and women were as well off as possible would be one with a wider life expectancy gap, not a smaller one.
Incredibly confusing argument. You take something that actually does in a way prove a certain type of physical strength that women possess (longer life expectancy aka longevity) and you choose to make it about... emotions? We live longer on average because despite lacking brute strength we have plenty of other physical advantages like a healthier fat distribution and a lesser likelihood to develop a variety of deadly diseases. Female sex hormones get trashed a lot (even in feminist spaces, for some reason) but they do have a bunch of upsides.
Quote:It also reflects the different ways that our brains work. The female brain is more neurally interconnected than the male brain, so it follows that we would tend to view the elements of life as being more interconnected, more related to each other, while a man will see things more in isolation, in poles and separations.
None of this is actually how the brain works, and iirc I've already corrected you on this once before.
For one, just because a "sex difference" is found in brain architecture that doesn't automatically mean that this also matters in functioning. Women's brains are on average smaller than men's because we are on average smaller than them, and brain architecture would have to adjust to keep the function the same. So the important thing here is to look at whether the supposed sex difference remains or disappears after correcting for size. Unfortunately for your theory, the difference in connectivity between men and women is indeed explained by differences in brain size: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0149763421000804?via%3Dihub#sec0065 (the relevant part is under point 5.1). I'd also like to point out that they mention that a number of studies found either no differences or only minor ones.
Secondly, even if the higher connectivity was a true sex difference, that does not mean its functioning would translate as literally as you claim it does. Higher connectivity would not mean that you actually see things as more interconnected, that's a very big leap of logic which you do not support with any sort of evidence at all.
Quote:My point is that we're talking about the same demographic here in both cases: girls and young women are the ones who in the last 15 years or so became far more likely to call themselves bi than in the past and likewise have been the driving force in the uptick in gender-queer identification, led heavily by newfound "non-binary" self-classifications. Let me suggest to you that these are the same girls and women. Basically "non-binary" is a subset of the bi trend that is now receding in the culture. As bi identification declines, so too does non-binary ID. The two things go hand-in-hand because they are closely related and very, very heavily overlapping in truth to the point of being close to synonymous.
So first thing I want to say about your whole theory about bisexuality is that there is zero necessity to make it this complicated. Despite the general lack of acknowledgement from GC circles, the definition of bisexuality has been as watered down by trans ideology as the ones for gay men and lesbians. And it has been for a long time, by the way. The most common one detaches bisexuality from biological sex completely, meaning that any straight woman who has ever found a TIM attractive (whether before or after transition) is now technically a bi woman. The other option is that bisexuality is defined by stereotypes, but this is not a TRA exclusive issue.
That is not to say that I personally think that every bisexual TIP belongs in that category. We already knew that bisexuals were a big chunk of trans-identifying people. Or at least, anyone who actually looked at the statistics knew. Bisexuals are also more likely to be GNC than heterosexuals and pretty commonly struggle with accepting their sexual orientation, both of which can contribute to a desire to transition, as we already recognise it does for gay boys/men and lesbians. Not to mention that a history of sexual abuse is a big factor for TIFs specifically, and bisexual girls & women have a higher rate of that than both heterosexual and lesbian girls & women.
Anecdotally, there are also bi female detransitioners & desisters that have talked about the influence their sexuality had on their trans identification, so you don't even need to look at cold, unfeeling stats to see there is a different type of link going on.
Quote:The study linked above suggests that the aforementioned receding began after the pandemic lifted and people started being able to access therapy again and whatnot and the public's mental health in general began to notch discernible, statistically-measurable improvements. In other words, there is evidence of an perhaps causative connection between poor mental health and bi and non-binary identification in that, as mental health improves, these sexual and gender IDs become less common. Causation isn't firmly established here, but the correlation has to be taken as significant for sure.
You are correct that there is a correlation between sexual orientation and mental health. Bi women (and bi men, too) have higher rates of a variety of mental health issues (self-harm, suicidal ideation, substance abuse) than their heterosexual and homosexual counterparts. But why jump to conclusions and assume that the mental health is causing the sexual identity, instead of being open to the idea that when a group is met with a disproportionate amount harm (like the sexual abuse I've mentioned above) this can cause the mental health issues? Gay boys/men and lesbian girls/women also have worse mental health outcomes than heterosexuals, does that imply their sexuality is a consequence of it too, according to you?
Quote:It certainly would help validate feminist arguments that gender identity is a social contagion, not a naturally occurring phenomenon unrelated to mental health or illness. But this would suggest the bisexual identification to some considerable extent may also be part of the same social contagion, which would be new territory for the consideration of modern feminists.
Except that it's not exactly new territory at all. Everything you've said so far is standard assumptions of bisexuality in a GC coating. In fact, I'm writing all of this fully expecting to be the only one disagreeing with you.
Quote:None of this is to suggest that there's no such thing as a genuine bi woman or that all bisexuality is false or fabricated in every case, but it does kinda dovetail with the well-known reality that very few so-called bi women bother to date other women (especially more than once).
It's a well-known stereotype, not a well-known "reality". At least it isn't true in the EU: https://www.ilga-europe.org/files/uploads/2023/08/FRA-Intersections-Report-Bisexuals.pdf (the relevant table is on page 7). Interestingly enough, bisexual men also go against their stereotype according to the same report.
What skews the perception is that the orientation of a bi person (no matter the sex) is not seen as a thing that exists on its own, only in function of the person they are with. A bi woman dating another woman will be assumed to be a lesbian (hence the erroneous perception that bi women never date women) and a bi woman dating a man will be assumed to be a spicy straight.
Quote:The bulk today seem to be young, recent "converts" who really just latched onto the marriage equality movement strongly enough that they wanted to be gay or wanted the attention and public sympathy that seemed to be there for gay people in and around the height of the marriage equality movement, something like that, and so essentially found a way appropriate a gay identity without actually being, you know, gay.
Calling yourself bisexual when you're not is not "appropriating a gay identity", it's appropriating the sexual orientation of actual bisexuals. Which as I've already mentioned is fully supported by trans ideology as a distinct issue from the way it enables appropriation of gay male and lesbian identities.
Quote:It's noteworthy that, by contrast, the number of lesbians and gay men "has remained stable", i.e. seems unaffected by changes in the public's general mental well-being. Perhaps because that is a naturally occurring phenomenon.
Or perhaps because while both are naturally occuring, bisexuals are significantly more likely to be closeted than both gay men and lesbians and a significant amount of those will be closeted as heterosexuals (which is an option you don't seem to want to acknowledge).
RE: Beauty Resistance is Gender Resistance - Impress Polly - Jan 25 2026
(Jan 24 2026, 5:01 AM)Magpie You are correct that it used to be almost entirely a male concept, but your numbers for TIFs that choose to identify as men are off. They are about as common as both "transwomen" and "enbies" in the States (https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/publications/trans-adults-united-states/) and in the UK among young people they are more common than "transwomen" and while there are less than "enbies", the gap isn't nearly as big as you imply. (https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/culturalidentity/genderidentity/articles/genderidentityageandsexenglandandwalescensus2021/2023-01-25)
Hm. My data was based off the data referenced here indicating that "Worldwide estimates for transwomen are 1 in every 30,000 people. Transmen are estimated at 1 in every 100,000 people." The worldwide, rather than national, estimation was the key thing for me. However, the publication dates on the referenced studies are both from the late 2000s, so ancient history by the standards of the gender ID movement, and the data collection was also limited to those with a gender identity disorder diagnosis, so clearly a serious under-representation compared to the realities before us today. Still, even more recent and in-depth survey out of the U.S. circa 2022 by KFF and the Washington Post still indicated significant identification disparities that looked like this:
Demographic breakdown of trans-identified Americans:
Non-binary: 40%
Trans-women: 22%
"Gender-nonconforming": 22%
Trans-men: 12%
Some other way: 2%
Your data, however, looks more current and appears to represent the overall direction of the global trend, so...some aspects of my case here are obviously wrong then. Thanks for the helpful update!
Quote:Incredibly confusing argument. You take something that actually does in a way prove a certain type of physical strength that women possess (longer life expectancy aka longevity) and you choose to make it about... emotions? We live longer on average because despite lacking brute strength we have plenty of other physical advantages like a healthier fat distribution and a lesser likelihood to develop a variety of deadly diseases. Female sex hormones get trashed a lot (even in feminist spaces, for some reason) but they do have a bunch of upsides.
You've misread what I proposed. I said nothing about why women on average outlive men. Rather, I was arguing that by decoupling ourselves from men more fully, that women's lives would be extended further and men's would shorten. I was capturing the impact of the stress and anxiety that living with boys and men takes on us.
Quote:None of this is actually how the brain works, and iirc I've already corrected you on this once before.
For one, just because a "sex difference" is found in brain architecture that doesn't automatically mean that this also matters in functioning. Women's brains are on average smaller than men's because we are on average smaller than them, and brain architecture would have to adjust to keep the function the same. So the important thing here is to look at whether the supposed sex difference remains or disappears after correcting for size. Unfortunately for your theory, the difference in connectivity between men and women is indeed explained by differences in brain size: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0149763421000804?via%3Dihub#sec0065 (the relevant part is under point 5.1). I'd also like to point out that they mention that a number of studies found either no differences or only minor ones.
Secondly, even if the higher connectivity was a true sex difference, that does not mean its functioning would translate as literally as you claim it does. Higher connectivity would not mean that you actually see things as more interconnected, that's a very big leap of logic which you do not support with any sort of evidence at all.
Frankly, these arguments to me seem like reaching. Let's suppose for the sake of argument that you're right; that the only real difference between the typical woman's brain and that of the typical man is its size and every other distinction is in fact attributable solely to that. Let's just assume for the sake of argument that you're right about all that. So what? What dif does it make in the real world? Men's and women's brains are still functionally different and functionally work quite differently regardless of whether the cause of that difference formally lies in the chromosomes. I'm not an essentialist about this stuff: I'm not arguing that differences in brain structure between the sexes are absolute, but simply that they clearly exist in aggregate.
Let me give you a concrete example: women need more sleep than men because our brains process information five times faster than theirs do. You act like that's a made-up difference that has no impact on our lives. And that's just the beginning!
Quote:You are correct that there is a correlation between sexual orientation and mental health. Bi women (and bi men, too) have higher rates of a variety of mental health issues (self-harm, suicidal ideation, substance abuse) than their heterosexual and homosexual counterparts. But why jump to conclusions and assume that the mental health is causing the sexual identity, instead of being open to the idea that when a group is met with a disproportionate amount harm (like the sexual abuse I've mentioned above) this can cause the mental health issues?
I didn't jump to that conclusion. In fact I specifically said, quote: "Causation isn't firmly established here, but the correlation has to be taken as significant for sure. There's no need to put words in my mouth. I also later on elaborated that "None of this is to suggest that there's no such thing as a genuine bi woman or that all bisexuality is false or fabricated in every case...". There are in fact ways of even arguing in fact that all women are technically at least marginally gay, although they are dubious.
Quote:Gay boys/men and lesbian girls/women also have worse mental health outcomes than heterosexuals, does that imply their sexuality is a consequence of it too, according to you?
In contrast to "bi" people, the sexual identification of lesbians and gay males seems unaffected by general social changes in mental health. It doesn't seem to go away as one's general mental state improves. The correlation doesn't exist.
Quote:It's a well-known stereotype, not a well-known "reality". At least it isn't true in the EU: https://www.ilga-europe.org/files/uploads/2023/08/FRA-Intersections-Report-Bisexuals.pdf (the relevant table is on page 7). Interestingly enough, bisexual men also go against their stereotype according to the same report.
That data is interesting because it starkly contradicts both the circumstantial evidence that I've experienced and the survey data I have on the same subject. For example, Pew Research has found that 84% of self-identified bisexual people in committed relationships are in a relationship with someone of the other sex while just 9% are currently in a same-sex relationship. Even that doesn't necessarily mean anything because the simple math of who one's options include would naturally favor the other sex, but it also could be a case of dating landscape having changed in the six years between these two surveys. After all, the intervening period saw a certain crisis of heterosexuality begin to emerge. Maybe more bi people in general are focusing on same-sex options in this next context? I think that's also a possibility. Yet none of this is incompatible with the conclusion that less than 100% of bi women are in fact gay in a way that finds meaningful expression in the way they live.
NOW, what would really like to point out is that we're not even discussing the core thing that this thread is truly about here, which is the defining role of the beauty industry in the modern female identity crisis and the prescription of organized beauty resistance as therefore the basic answer. I sought to make that point in the title even. We've gotten a bit sidetracked on this discussion of bi-ness that maybe I've overstated the significance of a bit in truth.
RE: Beauty Resistance is Gender Resistance - Magpie - Jan 25 2026
(Jan 25 2026, 1:20 AM)Impress Polly You've misread what I proposed. I said nothing about why women on average outlive men. Rather, I was arguing that by decoupling ourselves from men more fully, that women's lives would be extended further and men's would shorten. I was capturing the impact of the stress and anxiety that living with boys and men takes on us.
I was responding to your heavy emphasis on emotions (men being emotionally dependent, women being emotionally stronger, etc) while also claiming that women are physically not as strong. This is probably just a pet peeve on my part but I'm not a fan of physical strength only ever being defined in a male default type of way while women only ever get to have the "softer" stuff.
I'm not disagreeing with your point that the stress caused by men and how they treat us has an impact on women's health, and I should have made that clearer in my previous comment. If I'm allowed to nitpick though, I personally think the main improvement would be in morbidity, not life expectancy. There's only so far you can stretch the latter due to the mechanics of ageing being built in to our bodies. But an increase in life quality due to better health would obviously also be worth it regardless of whether we would live longer or not.
(Jan 25 2026, 1:20 AM)Impress Polly Frankly, these arguments to me seem like reaching. Let's suppose for the sake of argument that you're right; that the only real difference between the typical woman's brain and that of the typical man is its size and every other distinction is in fact attributable solely to that. Let's just assume for the sake of argument that you're right about all that. So what? What dif does it make in the real world? Men's and women's brains are still functionally different and functionally work quite differently regardless of whether the cause of that difference formally lies in the chromosomes. I'm not an essentialist about this stuff: I'm not arguing that differences in brain structure between the sexes are absolute, but simply that they clearly exist in aggregate.
Let me give you a concrete example: women need more sleep than men because our brains process information five times faster than theirs do. You act like that's a made-up difference that has no impact on our lives. And that's just the beginning!
I did not claim at any point that the only difference between male and female brains is size. Obviously there are real differences since we have different bodies that need to support different functions.
What I did was (try to) explain how research and more specifically brain research works. If there is a potential different explanation for your findings you're supposed to correct for that in your analysis. In brain sex research the big one is brain size. If the sex difference survives correction for brain size you might have found an actual sex difference, if it does not the difference is due to brain size, not sex.
The link you added is an interesting case study in the way brain sex research gets reported. As far as I can tell this is one of the studies being talked about: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.3233/JAD-170432. It's a cerebral blood flow study. They found sex differences in blood flow throughout the whole brain and specific areas, some of which were statistically significant, some of which weren't. How does this get reported? "This might explain why women have more empathy!", which then apparently becomes fact even though the study was, again, about blood flow. To further the understanding of sex differences in psychiatric diagnoses, specifically.
(Jan 25 2026, 1:20 AM)Impress Polly I didn't jump to that conclusion. In fact I specifically said, quote: "Causation isn't firmly established here, but the correlation has to be taken as significant for sure. There's no need to put words in my mouth. I also later on elaborated that "None of this is to suggest that there's no such thing as a genuine bi woman or that all bisexuality is false or fabricated in every case...". There are in fact ways of even arguing in fact that all women are technically at least marginally gay, although they are dubious.
At a later point in your post you said: "It does kinda seem like the immense majority of them are basically mentally-emotionally deeply pained and struggling heterosexual women with some very broad identity issues going on." You will have to explain to me how that is NOT jumping to the conclusion that the mental health issues of these women are causing the sexual identification.
I will also be honest and admit that I'm not exactly convinced by you saying you think maybe there are some actual bi women (in a very roundabout way) when literally every other thing you say and do implies something else. Like your incessant use of scare quotes around the word bi, for example. Or the fact that you linked that article and claimed that it's an argument for women technically being "at least marginally gay" when the implication is that heterosexual women are actually bisexual, not partial lesbians. You do realise that framing it that way harms lesbians as well?
(Jan 25 2026, 1:20 AM)Impress Polly In contrast to "bi" people, the sexual identification of lesbians and gay males seems unaffected by general social changes in mental health. It doesn't seem to go away as one's general mental state improves. The correlation doesn't exist.
So I originally had something else written out in response to this, but I made the wise choice to get off my lazy ass and actually read the full report so I'm just going to do a short summary of every survey on sexual orientation that was included.
- Looks like these were the statistics picked for the article you linked. Bisexual numbers rise then return to slightly above previous baseline.
- The L, G and B were all equally stable in this one, the fluctuation was caused by the Q.
- B and Q rise than average out. L and G also oscillate, with a peak coinciding with the other two.
- Big fluctuations for all four.
- Description claims the decline in non-heterosexuality is concentrated in both bisexuality and the "other" category, but eyeballing the graph I don't see where the drop in bisexuality is supposed to be. The "other" category on the other hand...
- A decline in the B, but also mentions a rise and fall for the L and the G. "Queer" was not an option and the sample size was small.
- Just gives a percentage of heterosexuality, zero info on anything else.
In all cases where there was a drop in bisexual identification the most recent number was either roughly the same or higher than the original baseline. They don't ever seem to separate the stats by sex either. How you read this stuff and come to the conclusion that it's actually an immense majority that correlate with mental health for women specifically is absolutely beyond me. The stats you linked do not support your conclusion.
(Jan 25 2026, 1:20 AM)Impress Polly That data is interesting because it starkly contradicts both the circumstantial evidence that I've experienced and the survey data I have on the same subject. For example, Pew Research has found that 84% of self-identified bisexual people in committed relationships are in a relationship with someone of the other sex while just 9% are currently in a same-sex relationship. Even that doesn't necessarily mean anything because the simple math of who one's options include would naturally favor the other sex,
If it doesn't necessarily mean anything, why 1) point it out and 2) do so right before your claim that bi women are for the most part just straight?
(Jan 25 2026, 1:20 AM)Impress Polly but it also could be a case of dating landscape having changed in the seven years between these two surveys. After all, the intervening period saw a certain crisis of heterosexuality begin to emerge. Maybe more bi people in general are focusing on same-sex options in this next context? I think that's also a possibility.
I wouldn't call it a crisis of heterosexuality since I would consider that to be the innate sexual orientation, but other than that I can see how changing dating cultures could be a factor influencing the statistics.
(Jan 25 2026, 1:20 AM)Impress Polly Yet none of this is incompatible with the conclusion that less than 100% of bi women are in fact gay in a way that finds meaningful expression in the way they live.
0% of bi women are gay in a way that finds meaningful expression in the way they live. Because they are bisexual, not homosexual. If you are measuring bisexuality by the standards of exclusive same-sex attraction of course it's going to seem weird and "heterosexual" by comparison. Because it's not the same sexual orientation.
(Jan 25 2026, 1:20 AM)Impress Polly NOW, what would really like to point out is that we're not even discussing the core thing that this thread is truly about here, which is the defining role of the beauty industry in the modern female identity crisis and the prescription of organized beauty resistance as therefore the basic answer. I sought to make that point in the title even. We've gotten a bit sidetracked on this discussion of bi-ness that maybe I've overstated the significance of a bit in truth.
I mean yeah, you making it a major point is why I responded in the first place. Does it have anything with femininity/gender expressions? Not at all. But you chose to elaborate on it anyway. If you include it as if it's relevant to the topic I will respond to it as such.
RE: Beauty Resistance is Gender Resistance - Impress Polly - Jan 25 2026
Okay, so I did some more research today on the percentages of bi people in same vs. opposite-sex relationships since prior estimates I relied on could've been outdated, especially with how many more people (girls and young women in particular) have begun identifying as bi in these last 15 years or so and the survey data you (Magpie) provided was more recent, with the data itself dating to 2019. I found a more recent study by Pew Research published in 2019 (actual data collection having occurred in the late summer of 2017) and noooooooooooooope, things look very much the same as in the 2013 iteration I mentioned in my last post. Slightly more pronounced even. What I'd really like to highlight here though for our purposes here is the starkness of the contrast between what bi-identifying people say and how they live. In describing their personal leanings, here's what they say:
Here though is how they live:
(This survey doesn't distinguish between the sexes of bi people, but we know that it's mainly young women who call themselves bi.)
To summarize this, of those who claim to be attracted more to one sex than the other, the skew favors opposite-sex attraction by a margin of more than three to one (44% vs. 13%) while a large minority (43%) claims equal attraction to both sexes, or "true bisexual" status if you will. The 13% who report being mainly or exclusively same-sex attracted aligns closely with the 12% of partnered ones who are or have most recently been in same-sex relationships. Those stats are essentially identical, which makes sense. Here's what doesn't make sense to my brain though: everyone else, apparently including every single one of the "true bisexuals", is partnered with someone of the opposite sex. It's 88% versus 12% in actual lived practice. Surely there should at least be a few from other categories who are in same-sex relationships, but no, none. None at all it would seem. This is the kind of thing that makes me question the seriousness of many people's claims to be bi. It just seems to me like somebody has to be lying here. Probably a lot of people. But again, 2017 wasn't 2019 and America isn't Europe, so cultural differences and changes in dating culture itself that really seem to have begun in earnest specifically in 2018 could still be an explanation for the contrast between the study you've shared and the ones I'm readily able to find so far. Maybe more bi women today are choosing same-sex relationships than in the past owing to these changes or cultural differences.
I'm not going to parse words with you about the rest of this. I just want to respond to two other things real quick this evening:
Quote:I was responding to your heavy emphasis on emotions (men being emotionally dependent, women being emotionally stronger, etc) while also claiming that women are physically not as strong. This is probably just a pet peeve on my part but I'm not a fan of physical strength only ever being defined in a male default type of way while women only ever get to have the "softer" stuff.
This is a fair point. I was obviously referring to muscle tissue, as are most people when they say men are physically stronger, but in truth physical strength is more complex and multifaceted than that and there are many areas where women have a clear advantage in fact!
Quote:I mean yeah, you making it a major point is why I responded in the first place. Does it have anything with femininity/gender expressions? Not at all. But you chose to elaborate on it anyway. If you include it as if it's relevant to the topic I will respond to it as such.
To be clear, here was my line of thinking in the OP:
- A female identity crisis has swept much of the world in recent decades (mainly the 2010s) and South Korea stands out as a more developed nation that's been an exception where this got addressed largely without transgenderism.
- South Korea had a women's movement against beauty practices. We, by contrast, had a gay rights movement for marriage equality and a body positivity movement that seemed to absorb much of that same energy, drawing in the same vanguard demographics. They waged a fight against femininity and we fought for more lifestyle choices. Consider the difference in outcomes.
- Since most of the growth in the "LGBTQ+ community" in that same span of time has come in the form of a new generation of people -- mainly teen girls and young women -- increasingly identifying as bisexual and given the significant overlap we know exists between non-binary ID and bi women, I mentally connected the apparent recent uptick in "non-binary" desisting with a seemingly parallel drop in bi identification. Looking back on it now, this was obviously my most dubious conclusion. We need more data to reach real conclusions about that. But I was seeking to get at who the most core demographic is experiencing the female identity crisis -- at who's been experiencing it in the greatest magnitude -- as part of my overall message.
RE: Beauty Resistance is Gender Resistance - ShameMustChangeSides - Jan 25 2026
(Jan 25 2026, 9:02 PM)Impress Polly Here's what doesn't make sense to my brain though: everyone else, apparently including every single one of the "true bisexuals", is partnered with someone of the opposite sex. It's 88% versus 12% in actual lived practice
I'll chime in here as someone who is bisexual and has been for almost as long as I can remember. While "queer theorists" have made an absolute mess of the concept of "compulsory heterosexuality," it explains a lot about why I've mainly found myself romantically involved with men. Our whole society is structured around pairing women with men, and all our socialization and examples of what romance looks like happens to be based on women partnering with men. Add in the fact that you can't just tell who is also same-sex attracted by looking at them, and it tends to be immensely easier to find a partner of the opposite sex. I don't walk around announcing that I find women attractive, and neither do other people around me--well, at least women don't. On top of this, many homosexual people aren't interested in dating people who are bisexual--I don't know how much that applies to gay men but I've heard it quite a bit from lesbians.
All that to say, I think it's less a matter of bisexual people wanting to be "cool and unique" through mistaken identity claims, and more a matter of convenience. People most often date people in their geographical region and of a similar SES and cultural background--why? Because it's familiar and easy. I don't think romance for bisexual people is much different than that.
RE: Beauty Resistance is Gender Resistance - Impress Polly - Jan 25 2026
(Jan 25 2026, 10:25 PM)ShameMustChangeSides(Jan 25 2026, 9:02 PM)Impress Polly Here's what doesn't make sense to my brain though: everyone else, apparently including every single one of the "true bisexuals", is partnered with someone of the opposite sex. It's 88% versus 12% in actual lived practice
I'll chime in here as someone who is bisexual and has been for almost as long as I can remember. While "queer theorists" have made an absolute mess of the concept of "compulsory heterosexuality," it explains a lot about why I've mainly found myself romantically involved with men. Our whole society is structured around pairing women with men, and all our socialization and examples of what romance looks like happens to be based on women partnering with men. Add in the fact that you can't just tell who is also same-sex attracted by looking at them, and it tends to be immensely easier to find a partner of the opposite sex. I don't walk around announcing that I find women attractive, and neither do other people around me--well, at least women don't. On top of this, many homosexual people aren't interested in dating people who are bisexual--I don't know how much that applies to gay men but I've heard it quite a bit from lesbians.
All that to say, I think it's less a matter of bisexual people wanting to be "cool and unique" through mistaken identity claims, and more a matter of convenience. People most often date people in their geographical region and of a similar SES and cultural background--why? Because it's familiar and easy. I don't think romance for bisexual people is much different than that.
But to such an absolute degree?
To your point about many lesbians not wanting to date bi women, speaking for myself, I'm afraid I've had little actual dating experience before outside of my wife (ask me about my femcel era
), but I did briefly date one bi woman before many years ago. It turned out that I was an experiment. It's not too fun being someone else's experiment, though we all have to start somewhere. To sum it all up, basically she wanted me to be "the man" in the relationship, as in to the point that, in her vision of our potential future together, I was supposed to earn all the money and wear a strap-on, and I let her down. She obviously wasn't representative that way, but I've known lesbians before who didn't want to date bi women at all, or at least not ones lacking prior experience dating other women, precisely because they'd had some kind of negative experience being someone else's experiment before. I guess this particular issue then becomes a vicious cycle where bi women choose male partners because lesbians won't date them and (well at least older) lesbians, in turn, won't date them because of their lack of experience dating other women. It looks like a self-reinforcing problem to me.Well anyway, thanks for the additional perspective! I guess that's all I've got to add.
RE: Beauty Resistance is Gender Resistance - Magpie - Jan 26 2026
Originally I had something written out to the stats you posted but going back and forth with those does not seem to lead us anywhere so if you don't mind I will stick to the part I wanted to respond to and the one you wanted a response to.
(Jan 25 2026, 9:02 PM)Impress Polly This is the kind of thing that makes me question the seriousness of many people's claims to be bi. It just seems to me like somebody has to be lying here. Probably a lot of people.
Why does someone have to be lying? Genuine question. Why does there have to be a standard for bisexuality that people need to live by to prove they're not lying and why would that standard get to be set by someone who couldn't possibly know what it is even like to be bisexual? Like it or not, dating the opposite sex is as much of a natural "expression" of bisexuality as dating the same sex is. Dating men does not disprove a woman's bisexuality, just like dating women does not disprove a woman's bisexuality. How is she meant to truly prove something that cannot be seen or felt by anyone that is not her? By living as a stereotype her entire life? Because that is the only way I can personally see and it sounds like a deeply unpleasant way to live your life just to gain someone else's approval.
Women are already assumed by men to not know our own minds every day of our lives. And we are sitting here arguing on a feminist forum whether or not women get to know their own minds about their sexual orientation just because it isn't neatly either/or like the other two.
And for the record, I'm not arguing about any of this because labels are all that matter to me or something like that. These things have real life consequences. For example: a bi woman dates a man/too many men, so she is expected to call herself straight rather than bi because otherwise she is assumed to be lying. Some of these women are out only to their male partner (dangerous, but happens quite often), or they're not out even to him but he finds out about her past or otherwise notices her attraction to women. He starts abusing her because he assumes she will cheat, cannot be trusted around any of her friends, has no boundaries, does not have to consent because she's a sex object that always wants it. Because she is assumed to be straight she will have no support specific to her situation and her abuse based specifically on prejudice against bi women will instead disappear under the statistics for straight women making sure others like her will not receive that support either because it won't be known that there is an issue in the first place.
Personally I find that more important than deciding whether a woman gets to "earn" calling herself bi or not based on how much I like her dating history.
(Jan 25 2026, 9:02 PM)Impress Polly To be clear, here was my line of thinking in the OP:
NOW, what I'd really like to ask you is what your take is on the first two points? I'm genuinely curious.
- A female identity crisis has swept much of the world in recent decades (mainly the 2010s) and South Korea stands out as a more developed nation that's been an exception where this got addressed largely without transgenderism.
- South Korea had a women's movement against beauty practices. We, by contrast, had a gay rights movement for marriage equality and a body positivity movement that seemed to absorb much of that same energy, drawing in the same vanguard demographics. They waged a fight against femininity and we fought for more lifestyle choices. Consider the difference in outcomes.
To your first point, I think in a sense that this "female identity crisis" is not truly only a recent phenomenon. It comes in waves and they tend to look different. Like how beauty trends expect women to change how they look dramatically every so often, the way women are forced to agonise over their place in the world due to misogyny also changes based on the culture at the time. For example, I would argue that women getting forced back into the home after getting a taste of a different life during the war and this leading to high rates of substance abuse should also count as a sort of female identity crisis even if it's not literally about an identity label. They got to build an identity outside the home and then it was taken from them. This interpretation is more broad than you meant it but seeing it as a longer chain of events could help to see how we can actually break it without needing the extreme circumstances women faced/are facing in South Korea.
Because I do agree with that part in your original post. Even beyond the escape the corset movement. Men go to extremes with molka, the radical feminists have an equally strong response. Any effort from the powers that be to shut their movement down only seems to fuel them with more righteous anger.
Whether it's the only thing keeping transgender ideology at bay though, I don't know. South Korea is a fairly unique country. They got to where they are very quickly. It sets them apart from other first world nations. Unlike the west I don't think they are a fertile breeding ground for the sort of consumerist, decadent ideology that is pretending to be a sex you're not.
As for point two, the west also had a women's movement, which was against beauty practices amongst other things. Just like the other two you mention it got co-opted to make money off of it. The existence of the original movements wasn't the issue, as all three in their own way had the potential to challenge gender as enforced by society. We will never know if they could ever have realised that potential because they all got turned into cash cows.
RE: Beauty Resistance is Gender Resistance - ShameMustChangeSides - Jan 26 2026
(Jan 25 2026, 11:20 PM)Impress Polly(Jan 25 2026, 10:25 PM)ShameMustChangeSides(Jan 25 2026, 9:02 PM)Impress Polly Here's what doesn't make sense to my brain though: everyone else, apparently including every single one of the "true bisexuals", is partnered with someone of the opposite sex. It's 88% versus 12% in actual lived practice
I'll chime in here as someone who is bisexual and has been for almost as long as I can remember. While "queer theorists" have made an absolute mess of the concept of "compulsory heterosexuality," it explains a lot about why I've mainly found myself romantically involved with men. Our whole society is structured around pairing women with men, and all our socialization and examples of what romance looks like happens to be based on women partnering with men. Add in the fact that you can't just tell who is also same-sex attracted by looking at them, and it tends to be immensely easier to find a partner of the opposite sex. I don't walk around announcing that I find women attractive, and neither do other people around me--well, at least women don't. On top of this, many homosexual people aren't interested in dating people who are bisexual--I don't know how much that applies to gay men but I've heard it quite a bit from lesbians.
All that to say, I think it's less a matter of bisexual people wanting to be "cool and unique" through mistaken identity claims, and more a matter of convenience. People most often date people in their geographical region and of a similar SES and cultural background--why? Because it's familiar and easy. I don't think romance for bisexual people is much different than that.
But to such an absolute degree?
To your point about many lesbians not wanting to date bi women, speaking for myself, I'm afraid I've had little actual dating experience before outside of my wife (ask me about my femcel era
Well anyway, thanks for the additional perspective! I guess that's all I've got to add.
Just speaking mathematically, it makes sense to me. If, in my geographical region, I'm a bisexual woman and there are 90/100 men attracted to women and 10/100 women attracted to women around me, and not only am I unable to discern which 10 women those would be, there's no guarantee that I'm both attracted to and compatible with all 10 of those women, nor them me. Maybe 5 of them are exclusively attracted to women and uninterested in dating a bisexual woman for the reasons you mentioned. Selecting from a pool of now 5 versus a pool of 90 significantly skews the chances one way, even if I knew who the 5 were. Chances are, the opposite sex is easier to find because statistically you can assume they are probably opposite-sex attracted and there is a larger variety of candidates looks-wise and values-wise.
Quote:Magpie
And we are sitting here arguing on a feminist forum whether or not women get to know their own minds about their sexual orientation just because it isn't neatly either/or like the other two.
I see this a lot when "late bloomer lesbians" are discussed. A man can have a whole marriage and family and come out in his 40s or 50s and people believe him when he says he's gay. A woman in the same situation, or even one who comes out even earlier, is often told she must be bisexual, despite only wanting to date women from then on after coming to terms with her sexuality.
Kinda crazy to me given that, for a man to have children with a woman, he would have had to exhibit pretty clear arousal... For a woman to have children with a man, not so much. She doesn't have to be aroused for even a second. But the man is who we believe.
RE: Beauty Resistance is Gender Resistance - Impress Polly - Jan 30 2026
(Jan 26 2026, 8:17 AM)Magpie(Jan 25 2026, 9:02 PM)Impress Polly To be clear, here was my line of thinking in the OP:
NOW, what I'd really like to ask you is what your take is on the first two points? I'm genuinely curious.
- A female identity crisis has swept much of the world in recent decades (mainly the 2010s) and South Korea stands out as a more developed nation that's been an exception where this got addressed largely without transgenderism.
- South Korea had a women's movement against beauty practices. We, by contrast, had a gay rights movement for marriage equality and a body positivity movement that seemed to absorb much of that same energy, drawing in the same vanguard demographics. They waged a fight against femininity and we fought for more lifestyle choices. Consider the difference in outcomes.
To your first point, I think in a sense that this "female identity crisis" is not truly only a recent phenomenon. It comes in waves and they tend to look different. Like how beauty trends expect women to change how they look dramatically every so often, the way women are forced to agonise over their place in the world due to misogyny also changes based on the culture at the time. For example, I would argue that women getting forced back into the home after getting a taste of a different life during the war and this leading to high rates of substance abuse should also count as a sort of female identity crisis even if it's not literally about an identity label. They got to build an identity outside the home and then it was taken from them. This interpretation is more broad than you meant it but seeing it as a longer chain of events could help to see how we can actually break it without needing the extreme circumstances women faced/are facing in South Korea.
You're right, I was meaning to address a somewhat more specific phenomena (since I haven't actually dedicated a tremendous amount of time to discussing my own opinions on addressing the gender identity movement here up to now), but very true! It's why The Feminine Mystique took off the way it did, and identity crises that stretch beyond the bounds of outward expression require different, broader solutions.
Quote:Because I do agree with that part in your original post. Even beyond the escape the corset movement. Men go to extremes with molka, the radical feminists have an equally strong response. Any effort from the powers that be to shut their movement down only seems to fuel them with more righteous anger.
Whether it's the only thing keeping transgender ideology at bay though, I don't know. South Korea is a fairly unique country. They got to where they are very quickly. It sets them apart from other first world nations. Unlike the west I don't think they are a fertile breeding ground for the sort of consumerist, decadent ideology that is pretending to be a sex you're not.
As for point two, the west also had a women's movement, which was against beauty practices amongst other things. Just like the other two you mention it got co-opted to make money off of it. The existence of the original movements wasn't the issue, as all three in their own way had the potential to challenge gender as enforced by society. We will never know if they could ever have realised that potential because they all got turned into cash cows.
The case of the South Korean movement has long been especially fascinating to me because of just how different it is from ours. Frankly, even sympathetic Western radfem outlets usually try to portray Korean feminism as resembling ours, but just with a few distinguishing flourishes here and there. No. Nooooooooooooooooo! Korean feminism borders on unrecognizable from ours, and this has been especially true in the most core spaces like Womad and its ideological ancestor Megalia. Misandry and rhetorical role reversals are standard practice. Race debates barely exist. Political partisanship is expressly opposed in Womad. In Korea, it's the MRAs who more often deploy liberal rhetoric about equality these days because their position in the culture wars is generally defensive. We recently lost our national right to abortion here in the U.S. Korean women gained one instead in that same window of time despite already having the world's lowest birth rate beforehand. The largest women's rights rallies in the nation's history were anti-porn ones. The comparison isn't even close. It's like night and day and to me it shows that, as they say, nice, well-behaved ladies finish last and rarely make history.
The women there didn't have chivalry or opportunities to "marry up" traditionally and so have been comparatively unspoiled and lack the romantic illusions that many Western women have about marriage. The place is also pretty ethnically homogeneous, so discussions of race relations tend to gain comparatively little traction next to discussions of gender relations. Male violence here in the U.S. victimizes girls or women about half the time, but also boys and men the other half. In South Korea, by contrast, about 9 out of every 10 victims of violence are female; a fact that has a way of being more clarifying about your class position in the sex hierarchy. The considerable prevalence of women's universities in South Korea compared to here also cannot be overstated as an influencing factor that provides young women with far more in the way of practical organizing opportunities separate from men. Honestly, I even think the fact that South Korea has a larger per capita video gaming population that anywhere else in the world influences the severity of its sex divide because, in my experience, gaming culture tends to be especially misogynistic, having a more male-dominated culture. To the extent that misandry is a thing in the English-speaking world, conversely, I think you'll find it perhaps most often among female gamers and the same has been true in South Korea, where it was game streamer GodGunPear who popularized the current usage of the famous "69" phrase making fun the fact that apparent Korean men have the smallest average dick size on Earth. Korea (both north and south) is also just known for being a rude and aggressive place, so it kinda follows that feminism there would be too. It ain't Japan.
But like the American women who protested the 1968 Miss America pageant, the ability of the Korean women to sustain the radicalism they've been known for the world over lately has come into question. Basically, once a nationalist men's rights activist named Yoon Suk Yeol won the country's presidency in 2022 (however narrowly) on a pledge to close the Ministry of Gender Equality on the grounds that it discriminated against men, Korean feminism fell out of favor, according to local opinion polls, and traffic to feminist sites (including Womad) dropped precipitously. Now after attempting to impose a widely-hated DOGE-like regime in South Korea and imposing martial law after his party badly lost a midterm election, Yoon Suk Yeol has since been ridden out of town on a rail and his party obliterated in last year's new presidential election and the women have won multiple new legal reforms this last year, but I still think it's worth pointing out the existence of this new, arguably more liberal chapter in the history of the Korean women's politics. Perhaps liberalization of the movement there is as inevitable there as it was here. For now though, consumption of beauty products appears to have dropped.
In the year 2026, I'm most excited about the direction of Chinese feminism, tbh. Which has itself been significantly influenced by their neighboring Korean sisters much more than by us.