Faculty SooYeon Kim (Full-Time Lecturer, Department of English language and literature)

It is five months since I moved back to Seoul, where I was born and grew up, after eight years of staying in a small campus town in the United States.  From the moment I landed at the Incheon International Airport, what immediately caught my eyes was the ways my fellow Koreans, regardless of age and sex, were dressed up in a chic way.  Fully accessorized following the latest fashion, men looked (or, tried to look) masculine yet boyish and women °∞sexy°± yet cute. After years of hooded jerseys, snickers, and no make-up, I then realized that I was back in the center of °∞lookism,°± a gender-based prejudice against physical appearances with which a majority number of Koreans seemed, to my curiosity, too comfortable. 

Three months into teaching at KMU, what remains a question for me, is the extent to which female students want to look and act °∞feminine°±in their skimpy clothes and male students °∞masculine°± and tough; although the issue of gender-b(i)ased images is nation-wide.  Let me help those who are not familiar with the concept of gender. The word °∞gender°± as defined in a dictionary indicates a set of characteristics that are seen to distinguish between male and female.  Originally a term used only in grammatical categories, gender was introduced to refer to different social and cultural roles expected of man and woman by an American sexologist named John Money in 1955. Having little to do with biological sex, gender is often viewed as a social construct and presents itself through the binary opposition between masculinity and femininity. Then, a series of questions arise: what constitutes masculinity and femininity? Insofar as every person is either male or female, are we to strive to be masculine or feminine according to our sex?  The answer is, I would argue, definitely not.

My strong belief is that gender does not exist: not only are masculinity and femininity merely words but these words have no referent either.  That is to say, °∞manly°± and °∞womanly°± are empty words as there is no essential trait distinctively matching man or woman.  This truth is simple enough if you give it a thought, but in literature courses I teach I try to convey the message in a fun and interactive manner. Here is an example of the in-class activity I recently asked my students. First, we read together °∞Happy Endings,°± a short story written by a Canadian author and revolving around a group of highly stereotypical guys and girls.  For instance, °∞John°± is a married man but is having an affair with a young single °∞Mary°±for his selfish physical pleasure.  Although Mary hates having sex with John and is sick of his mean behavior, Mary never voices her thought and does every humiliating °∞duty°± of a good woman, hoping that John will be dependent upon her one day and get married to her.  This of course never happens and Mary kills herself at the end of the story.  John moves on to another girl and the world goes on as before. Faced with these blatantly stereotyped and exaggerated characters, my students are confused, not knowing whether to accept the story as it is or not.  As all of my students are good-natured and somewhat gullible, they accept the story as portraying an adulterous mid-aged man and a passive young woman to whom marriage is the goal of her life, a cliched theme of TV dramas.  Then, I ask the students to make a list of what they find °∞masculine°± and °∞feminine.°±What follow are some of the answers I have received from the class:

“Masculine”: Machismo and tough/ Muscular (six-pack)/ Physically strong and like sports/ Open-minded/ Loyal to his friends/ leadership and driving skills/ Brave heart

“Feminine”: Nurturing (like babies and kids)/ Straight long hair/ Fashion-forward/ Pretty but not smart/ Big eyes, slim waist, and pale skin/ Quiet and chatty/ Coquetry

Although it is a lot of fun to come up with adjectives supposedly describing manliness and womanliness, the next step is to find out that none of these attributes is intrinsically male or female. For instance, think about the national under-17 girl soccer team members and the pretty boy celebrities on TV. My point is that we need to be free from the social, cultural, and psychological pressure to act and look manly or womanly, so as to express ourselves in whatever ways our personalities lead.  It is really no fun at all if there are only two types of characteristics and you are destined to copy one of them depending on your predetermined sex.

sooykim@kookmin.ac.kr