Digitalpolis and the ‘Safe’ Feminism: Focusing on the Strategies of Direct Punishment and Gated Community

Abstract

This paper starts with the following questions: Why did some of the digital feminists in Korean society set safety as the number one issue today, rather than freedom? Why did they come to emphasize gatekee** communities for women? Digitalpolis is the time-space conditions under which the recent digital feminism is reignited. It is characterized by a deterritorialization and hybridization, unlike traditional cities as territorial places of homogenization. In digitalpolis, women experience the invasion of their body territorial image through unexpected connections from others online, which leads to mental breakdown and anxiety of uncertainty. In the psychasthenia and anti-intellectualism which appear with the fear and anxiety in the digitalpolis, women tend to drive a movement that puts safety first. While emphasizing safety, some digital feminists intend to directly punish perpetrators by disclosing the identities of those who robbed their body images online, and to create a gated community only for women while emphasizing ab imaginary identity such as biological woman. However, direct punishment and the creation of gated communities go in the direction of strengthening security while fostering fear rather than guaranteeing women’s safety.

This chapter is a revised version of an article that appeared as Hyun-Jae Lee (2023) Digitalpolis and the 'Safe' Feminism: Focusing on the Strategies of Direct Punishment and Gated Community. Journal of Asian Sociology. 52(1).

Appendix

I conducted a survey among 112 Korean women aged 16–43 who had the experience of using women-centered Internet sites and online communities⁶ in July, 2017 by using a questionnaire with 76 items rated on a 5-point scale in order to investigate the relationship between the online and offline experience of misogynistic hate speech, perceptions about cyberspace, and identity formation.⁷ The results showed that the level of fear of crime among respondents was 3.9 points for the fear of online crime and 4.3 points for the fear of offline crime, revealing that women have a high level of fear for both online and offline bullying and crime (Fig. 1). As shown by the fact that the emergence of the fourth wave of feminism is related to fear about rape culture, the users of women-centered online communities in Korean society also have a high level of fear of cyberbullying or sexual violence.

Fig. 1

Levels of fear of online/offline bullying and crime among women

When asked a question about the appropriate responses to cyberbullying against women in online space, respondents showed a preference for legal regulation (4.4 points) and retorting/mirroring (3.36 points). ‘Mirroring’ is a strategy used in female-dominated communities, and it refers to retaliating in kind in response to men’s derogatory comments by using similarly disparaging expressions when males objectify or ridicule women with a sexist or male chauvinistic attitude. For example, ‘hannam’ (literally ‘Korean man’, a derogatory term for Korean men) is used as a retort in response to derogatory terms such as ‘kimchinyeo’ (literally ‘kimchi woman’, a derogatory term for Korean women) or ‘deonjangnyeo’ (literally ‘soybean paste woman’, a derogatory term for women who tend to engage in conspicuous consumption of luxury goods beyond their means). To take another example, ‘heosuaebi’ (‘scarecrow’; ‘aebi’ is a word for father in Korean) is used to respond in kind to the disparaging expression ‘momchung’ (literally, ‘mom worm’, a derogatory term for mothers who let their children cause trouble or inconvenience to others in public places without managing their children’s behaviors as parents). Although mirroring started as jocular or jesting remarks, it has rapidly brought women together on a large scale, and the women brought together in this way have identified themselves as feminists. In this study, direct responses such as mirroring were shown to be less preferred than legal regulation but it was found to be a more preferred approach than logical persuasion (3.25 points) (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2

Preferred responses to cyberbullying against women

In addition, I performed a regression analysis to examine the impact of the degree to which respondents show a higher level of fear of online crime than offline crime on their perceptions about cyberspace, experience of hate speech, and responses to hate speech.⁸ Interestingly, the level of fear of online bullying and crime was found to have a significant effect on the degree to which respondents perceive cyberspace to be male-dominated, the degree to which hate speech is considered a playful or jocular remark, and the need for the legal regulation of hate speech (α = 0.05). More specifically, as the degree to which respondents perceive online bullying and crime to be more threatening than offline bullying and crime was increased by 1 point, the degree to which respondents perceive cyberspace to be male-dominated was incremented by 6.59 points (Fig. 3). This result suggests that women’s fear of bullying and crime in online space may be associated with hate speech, cyberbullying, and the illegal distribution of videos with illegal content by males. It is more remarkable that as the degree to which respondents perceive online crime to be more threatening than offline crime is increased by 1 point, the degree to which hate speech used by females among themselves is perceived as acceptable and jocular was increased by 3.75 points (Fig. 4), and the need for the legal regulation of misogynistic hate speech was rather decreased by 4.99 points (Fig. 5). These results suggest that women with a higher level of fear of online crime or women with a higher level of fear about uncertainty regarding digital policing show a greater preference for direct retaliation over legal regulations.

Fig. 3

Correlation between the degree of fear and the degree of male dominance in cyberspace

Fig. 4

Correlation between the degree of fear and and the acceptance of hate speech among women

Fig. 5

Correlation between the degree of fear and the legal restriction demands of hate speech