It's time to examine the victims - the rational absurdity of patriarchy

The reading club of "Gender Knotted" is on the right track, and members also share their discussions on gender issues in the community. In the last reading club, someone pushed a documentary about the incident of Room n in South Korea (for details, please refer to Encyclopedia) , I went back and looked for it. After reading it, I felt a lot. I wrote down some of my own experiences so as not to forget them.

The N Room incident is a cyber crime that took place in South Korea from 2018 to 2020. The prisoners used the encrypted network communication software Telegram to verbally humiliate and control (sexually exploit) the victimized women (almost all underage women), and asked them to take various nude photos, which were then shared and sold to the community. If the victim tries to resist or get out of control, the perpetrator threatens to harm the women. The victimized women were either forced to take all kinds of highly humiliating photos, or they took the risk of being stalked in the real world, and some victims were even sexually assaulted in the real world.

The entire documentary is narrated by a confrontation between justice and crime, and most of the pictures are used to deduce the story on the pages of the communication. That is to say, keywords such as the Internet, crime, gender, society, and justice were deeply imprinted in the audience's minds ten minutes before the entire documentary, and the stage scenes were set up quite clearly. The narrative is calm, and the whole case is thrown to the society at the climax of the case. Based on this case, it accuses the extreme distortion and perversion of the gender consciousness of the whole society.

Let's start with "control".

In the whole case, whether it is a doctor's room or a digital room, the crime content is almost the same: through threats, women are allowed to take all kinds of extremely humiliating photos by themselves, including licking the floor, sticking a pen in the vagina, making All kinds of strange things, even kneeling and crying...

The reason? The reason is often attributed to the perverted psychology of the perpetrator. When social issues are involved, people always avoid talking about it, because they will scold themselves as a member of normal society. Can these photos bring sexual pleasure to the men of the community? Can these pictures make men orgasm better than real women? The answer is no, so what is behind these photos? Why would the perpetrators let these women take these pictures?

"Control" . Controlling these women, and even manipulating these underage women, brings the perpetrators a superior mentality: "I can make these women do these 'unsightly' things, can you?"

Superiority, superiority, control, competition... In this society, men are imagined to look like these. From an early age, the various qualities of men and women have been subtly forged by ourselves. It is not so much that we are men or women, but that we create men and women. Men need to be in control, they need to control everything, and they need to take good care of the people and things around them, so that they will not be excluded from the group of "men". Men's dialogue logic can easily get caught up in the limited game of competition, and there is a "I need to win this dialogue" vibe between the lines, and when I control this dialogue, I can become a "real man".

These traits can be placed on the spectrum, the most extreme may be oppression, then the desire for control, the least may be the love of face, and the competitiveness... Men position themselves in these traits, and constantly compare themselves to other men (probably father, peers, etc.) look at yourself as a standard and keep improving, trying to be more like a real man. So, what is pushing men to keep going to the other extreme? It's a cycle of "control-fear". In this cycle, one has to keep looking for objects that can be controlled to eliminate one's own fear (fear of being ridiculed by other men as not being a man), and when there are more things under control, the more the fear becomes. more and more.

The documentary mentions that after the capture of "Doctor" (the founder of the doctor's room), "Gaga", the founder of Room N, who was originally Shenyin, suddenly "declared war" on the reporters, and even contacted the reporters actively. Escape from prison. Why did the perpetrators who escaped safely take the initiative to declare war on reporters? The reason turned out to be because the "Doctor" once said that the "works" shot by "Gaga" were of poor quality. Ridiculous? No, it's just one aspect of the "masculine" nature that society has created. In order to become a man "recognized by the opponent", he would rather risk being captured and come out to "declare war" against a just society and justice.

In addition, the perpetrators of sexual exploitation in documentaries often portray themselves as gangsters with big careers , and even teenagers who are clearly in their teens talk to reporters or police in a mature tone. All of this shows how the "controlling" masculinity acts on the individual male and takes it to extremes. During the reporter and the doctor's dealings, the doctor even gambled with the reporter, swearing that he would not be captured. Such behavior is unnecessary and would not occur in a "normal" crime scene, but why would the Doctor make such a statement? Find some scorn from the doctor's speech after his arrest. He said this:

Thank you very much for putting an end to this inextricable demonic life for me.

One of the reporters in the documentary angrily thinks that he has insulted the "devil", at least the devil will not do such a vile thing. Let alone demons, let us first think about who is the object of this sentence? Is it this society? Or the victims? Or journalists?

On the surface, this sentence is aimed at a society representing "justice", but in essence it is aimed at a society representing "men". His concluding remarks elevate his own status, and there used to be a considerable number of "men" who recognized him, followed him and hoped that he could control more women to show that he could control these women (do some humiliating extremes). strong behavior). Rather than saying this sentence is a confession, it is better to say that this sentence announced the end of his "legendary" life.

The "Doctor" imagines himself as the righteous hero of crime literature, "benefiting" society by breaking the existing legal and social framework. To be more radical, such logic can even absurdly point to the so-called "Liao Tianding"-style criminal logic. Through the criminal model of "robbing the rich and helping the poor", Liao Tianding pits substantive justice and legal justice against each other, while Dr.'s speech pits men's "justice" against legal justice . The foundation of male justice is the cycle of "control-fear". Only by controlling everything can one become a "real man" and get rid of the fear of being crowded out by a "real man". And the doctor officially became a "real man" when he sexually exploited women, and when he grew up in the community and controlled the desires of other men, he became a "successful man". Thank you, everyone, for ending this inextricable demonic life for me." As a conclusion, he became a "legendary man". Step by step, when it is recognized, the fear behind it will become larger and larger, and finally, it will be "unable to extricate itself" and bear greater fear and greater control in fear and control.

You might find such an inference absurd, but that's exactly how society works. These plausible absurdities are hidden in every dark corner of our society, around our lives, and even in the language of conversation...

What about the woman?

What's interesting is that "control" is often the basic logic of dialogue between men and men, or "control" is the identification of becoming a man. Only after you learn to control can you become a real man. Women are excluded from this battlefield, and women are appendages of this battlefield, as favorable objects to support men's war.

That is to say, the role of women is to support the illusion of male independence, to draw a clear line between men's battlefields and women, whether to support the struggle between men and men; or to remain neutral and not participate in the struggle. The role of women is to complete the struggle between men through the role of "women". Remember the spectrum of masculinity I mentioned before? Femininity is obedience to masculinity. When men want to control, women must be obedient; when men love face, women must give enough face; when men want to control, women must be wise...

And when men are unable to extricate themselves in the "control-fear" cycle, women become the symbol of men proving themselves as "real men". In other words, when a man is able to control a woman, and even make him do something nasty, dirty, and dirty, men can find a sense of identity from it, the identity of other "real men".

In the case of Room N, women are embodied and become synonymous with control. In these sexually exploitative photos, watermarks can even be seen. Watermarks are a common means of declaring copyright, but when a female subject is affixed with watermarks, women become accessories to the man. In the process of resale, delivery, and sale, it is not the woman's body that is delivered, but the message "I control this woman".

In these groups, men even began to discuss various information about these women, including breast shape, age, measurements, address and even class. When women are reduced to numbers and data and recorded in groups, men can master these women and declare to each other "I now master/control these women!"

Control is human nature, and gaining power is a very cool thing in itself. But under the patriarchal system, this kind of nature is limited, even rationalized and routine.

What about society?

A reporter sighed in the documentary:

I may be fighting against the phantom, and the object I am fighting against may not be the doctor, but the illusory space where the doctor is active.

The illusory space where the Doctor is active is the society we live in.

The incident in Room N mentioned in the documentary was ignored by the society after it was first exposed in the Hankyoreh, and people generally believed that it was an ordinary gender case. Even under the deliberate manipulation of public opinion by the perpetrators, these media reporters who exposed the incident became the target of public attacks. "Because of the exposure of reporters, more women have become victims.", "Because of the exposure of reporters, More men know that there is such a channel to satisfy themselves." These remarks further fueled the arrogance of those who perpetrated their abuse, and even started a celebration in these sexually exploitative groups, celebrating the journalists who let this society The group exposure makes its business better, "the family is like a city".

What absurd logical deduction is not rationalized under the patriarchal system? This society provides a perfect breeding ground for these public opinions to run wild. After the incident in Room N, one of the netizens left a message:

I was so aggrieved that I couldn't sleep. I'm not committing a crime, I'm just paying to watch adult videos, is this wrong? If the participants in Room N are to be punished, should the women who upload obscene videos be punished first? If they didn't upload these images, 260,000 people would not have been victims. We paid and the room was gone, they were the scammers.

When women become commodities under the market mechanism, when women go out alone, they need to be reminded to be careful about their own safety, when this society is still full of all kinds of absurd logic of patriarchy, gender consciousness will always stay on the surface, and cannot touch the deep-rooted "hotbed" ".

More and more social events will emerge in an endless stream (the N-room incident in China, the N-room incident in Taiwan ), and what we see is only the least absurd part of the absurd logic...

It's time to go down and stop focusing on the perpetrator's personal mental illness, childhood shadows, friendship environment...

It's time to examine the victims, and it's time to examine the victims trapped in the patriarchal system - us in the system.

(The cover photo is Zhongping Zhuoma's "PROVOKE Provocation")

Ruthless business:

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