Beef and Choe

The first time I heard of David Choe, it was during an interview with Howard Stern. Even back then, I recognized that he fancied himself a raconteur, a guy who made his first million off of gambling using a strict Martingale betting system in blackjack (Doubling your next bet each time you lose), then eventually made a fortune by being asked by Facebook, then a young company, to paint their head office, and in lieu of cash he asked to be paid in Facebook stocks. He makes for a good talker, but most listeners know that you can’t take whatever he’s saying as 100% truth. I’ll buy the Facebook story… the gambling story, not so much.

So when Netflix’s show Beef got viral with its success and eventually a story by David Choe regarding getting away with raping a masseuse got viral as well, I wasn’t that surprised. And just like in Howard stern with the Martingale betting system, I can’t 100% tell whether the story is true or not. What is true however is that in telling the story at the time, he was looking to regale his listeners, as a raconteur would. And if he is not guilty of sexually assaulting a masseuse and getting away with it, he is definitely guilty in taking rape lightly and trying to turn it into an entertaining yarn. Now, I’m not a prude. I do believe that you can make a joke about anything. But there was no joke in the story. No punchline. Just a, “hur hur hur, I got away with raping a masseuse, isn’t that nuts?! I’m David Choe.”

Maybe it wasn’t even played as a joke. Maybe it was more of a machismo thing. “I’m David Choe, sex monster.” Who knows? It’s just a bizarre story to tell, or more accurately, confess, and not expect any blow back.

When I was watching Beef, (spoiler alert) my wife and I both observed that all families have someone like David Choe’s character, someone who borrows money from family, ends up wasting it, then sorta disappearing or just being relegated into the outside periphery of the family. The one uncle that failed. The one uncle who went to prison and is never talked about again. The one uncle who never quite fit in and is still trying to find himself even in his forties. This was David’s character. And he played it well. Unfortunately, just like his character in the TV series, his past statements is ruining it for everyone else. People are now trying to boycott the TV series.

I watched and finished the whole series before the David Choe story went viral. I quite enjoyed it. And I actually thought that David did some decent acting amongst more seasoned peers like Steven Yeun and Ali Wong. David sells the character quite frankly, at least to me, because he talks and acts in real life like the type of person that would actually do what his character did in the show. I mean, take his own words as evidence. He gambled himself into his first million, and at one point had nothing but $500 in his pocket. Now, isn’t that the type of stuff that black sheep uncles would do? Lucky for him, it all worked out for him if the gambling story is to be believed.

Knowing that at worst he is a rapist and at the very least he’s an awful comedian with rape fantasies, would I have still enjoyed the series? Would I still recommend it to people? I would like to think that I could suspend reality a bit and indulge in the story that’s being fed to me on screen. And as for recommending the show. I would still recommend it. Everyone is innocent until proven guilty, and as of now, David is just guilty of having bad stories. And to boycott the series would be doing Yeun, Wong, and everyone else involved in the TV series a huge disservice. It would be letting the bad uncle, the uncle that the rest of the family would rather you not know about, take the whole family down.

Now, this is different of course with enjoying the works of people like Woody Allen or Roman Polanski. By not watching their films, you’re not buying their products, You are actually hurting them. With Beef, David is not the main character nor is he the director, writer, or one of the executive producers. He just played the bad guy, and he turned out to be a bit of an awful guy in real life. Keep on not watching Allen and Polanski films. Go ahead and watch Beef.

On OnlyFans

So what was that whole thing with Onlyfans about? Well, just a quick recap of the events. Onlyfans, a platform that is made popular by creators selling homemade pornography, has grown even bigger due to the pandemic and many adult-performers opting out of mainstream pornographic productions. Looking for bigger investors, they announced that they will no longer be hosting sexually-explicit content, effectively alienating the creators that made them big to begin with. After a huge backlash from their creators and users, the company decided to go back on their announcement and continue to allow sexually-explicit content “for the moment.”

The initial move has been compared to Tumblr banning sexually-explicit content. For those unfamiliar with the events, Tumblr used to be huge, rivaling Twitter, Instagram, and Reddit. Then it decided to ban sexually-explicit content and its user base just plummeted. Now barely anyone uses Tumblr. Now, the sexually-explicit content Tumblr had wasn’t just raunchy pornography, it also included blogs on the LGBTQ community which were underrepresented online. But due to being forced by Apple, which has a notoriously anti—pornography stance, Tumblr had to follow suit in order to be available on Apple’s IOS platform and thus lost most of its value. Not many people remember it, but the whole thing reminds me more of Playboy magazine when it decided not to feature nude pictorials anymore. It was a move that spectacularly failed and had to be reversed later on when the publisher realized that GQ already exists.

I read commentary that Onlyfans needed to weed out sexually-explicit content in order to please payment processors like Mastercard who are quite conservative. Some even blamed Christian lobbyists as the ones pushing for the move. I also read that the problem that investors and payment processors are trying to avoid is the risk of being involved in child pornography. Onlyfans, being a platform for homemade pornography, it is possible for content with minors in it to be hosted in the platform. That, and perhaps other legal albeit unusual proclivities that investors might not be comfortable with. Now, instead of Onlyfans investing more money in policing their content, prematurely decided to scuttle the most profitable portion of their users. Laziness plus greed.

With that in mind, it also reminds me of the pump and dump scheme prevalent among cryptocurrencies these days. Influential personalities will publicize a new cryptocurrency, not mention that they are invested heavily on it, or perhaps even the creators of the cryptocurrency, and once people buy a huge amount of the cryptocurrency, they sell all of their shares and watch the value plummet on all of the people who trusted them. I’m thinking the heads at Onlyfans were trying to secure huge investments in order to expand, increase the value of the company, leave the company with their golden parachutes, and watch a pornless Onlyfans shrink to oblivion. The only problem was the backlash was so swift and so severe that their investors and payment processors got wind of the inevitable downfall that the plan had to be postponed.

And I say postponed because Onlyfans already showed their cards. Their creators better start looking for a plan B should Onlyfans finally decide to ditch them for good.

Regarding to the initial reactions, however. There were two interesting camps. The one trending on Twitter were the ones celebrating the downfall of Onlyfans and meme-ing that the girls on Onlyfans now have to find real jobs. Well, first off, sex-work is actual work. If anything, I think the men celebrating the plight of sexworkers are the same men who secretly enjoy pornography but don’t really pay for them. They hate women and feel slighted by not having the option of being able to take of their clothes and have swarms of women willing to pay for their time online.

The other interesting camp are from adult actresses who believe Onlyfans is offering a false sense of security among its creators. They are also giving naive young girls an “easy way out” by making easy money online. This is a more interesting take which I’m more keen on hearing. Apparently, Onlyfans is not very keen on its security and creators often have to deal with being hacked, stalked, and terrorized online. Not to mention that nudes online can easily be leaked and once your nudes are online, it’s there forever, often for free. Creators are also competing with one another. One girl posting for the first time is competing with several others who have bigger user bases, more content, and more experience with the platform. I do wonder how many people actually make a decent amount of money on Onlyfans and stick with it as compared to those who try it out for a few months and just flame out.

Thoughts on Peter Nygard

I was a bit surprised to learn about the allegations regarding Peter Nygard. For the uninitiated, Peter Nygard is the founder and was the head of Nygard Fashion. He immigrated to my hometown in Canada at a young age and built Nygard Fashion to become one of the richest men in Canada. His stores are all over Canada. I remember them being a common presence in department stores where women can buy athletic wear at a reasonable price.

I always remember Peter Nygard as a patron of the arts. When I was in art school, I and other artists were invited to suspend our studies for a semester in order to work and make art in his property in the Bahamas. It seemed like an amazing opportunity at the time, but it also meant abandoning the current semester. Not only did I have student loans at the time, I was also the recipient of a couple of scholarships. I wasn’t sure how dropping my studies for a semester would affect future loan and scholarship applications.

The person in charge of coordinating the whole project seemed a bit stand-off-ish as well. The sculpture tech in the studio, him and my sculpture professor at the time seemed to be far too in-love with their own greatness to be good instructors who encouraged their students. Honestly, I was going to pursue sculpture instead of drawing in university, but that sculpture professor turned me off completely. Anyway, I decided not to go.

I heard from some people who worked on the project, and they weren’t too happy about the experience. There was the usual work during the day and get blink drunk and party at night stories, but that didn’t really surprise me. Any kid in university or a fresh graduate on his first job would more than likely be indulging a bit. What surprised me are stories about people being overworked and being woken up at odd hours in the morning for what seemed like random tasks. I also heard about people contracting infections or getting ill during their stay, but I always dismissed that to being in a tropical environment and not being used to it.

Anyway, I didn’t really think about those anecdotes too seriously since I sorta admired the guy. He’s a self-made man. He’s an old-school patron of the arts. He reminded me of Bob Guccione. And, he dated Anna Nicole Smith, who I kinda had a thing for after watching the third Naked Gun movie. Just looking at Peter Nygard, he looked like the head of an elderly man with long, slick gray hair photoshopped into the tanned body of a club bouncer. He’s built like a boss villain in a King of Fighters video game.

So it was a bit tragic to hear that he is now being investigated for sexually assaulting around 36 women, 17 of them being Canadian. Apparently some of them are minors as well, with at least one incident occurring in my hometown. Several close executives are being investigated as well for covering up and allowing the crimes to continue. The Bahamas property was also alleged to be one of the places where he would gather women, many of them locals who happen to be minors, and force them into sex acts. There’s even allegations that he had minors defecate into his mouth. Interestingly, this is very similar to what the founder of McAfee, John McAfee, was accused of having women do to him in his private depraved kingdom in South America.

Nygard International has filed for bankruptcy protection in the wake of the allegations against Peter Nygard. There goes a legendary patron of the arts from my hometown. If all is true, what a scumbag!

An Advice. A Bad Advice?

I was talking to a friend, giving advice and all of that, and one of the things that struck me the most is that in recounting his list of complaints regarding his current relationship, he mentions the rather unbelievably long period when there was absence in sex. It struck me as odd because both people were still quite young and both seem to be attractive enough that I imagine they would have sex at least once or twice a year at the very least.

When I heard that, the rather young and immature part of me thought of it as a deal breaker, grounds for separation. Why would a person deny the other of sex?! What fresh cruelty is this?! What a sad and loveless existence!

But then I got to asking… what is sex in a relationship really? Ideally, in a long-term committed relationship, it’s you being naked with your supposed best friend, soul mate, and lifelong partner having sex. But do people really get that? Does this really happen? Do people really enjoy sex with their best friend? And if they do, how long does either friendship or sexual attraction last? I think the whole thing is a myth.

First off, most adult relationships are not just about sex. Often, it’s two people learning to live with each other along with the baggage they bring to the table. This includes their family, friends, habits, etc. This is why it’s often said that you marry not only your spouse, but also their family. Relationships are also partnerships in dealing with nature and the outside world. This includes things like bills, societal expectations, aging, etc. There’s nothing romantic or sexy about any of these.

And how often do grown adults really have sex with their partners? Do they really enjoy these encounters? And if they still have sex, at what point are people cut off? If you look online, you’ll see that couples have sex well into their 70s. But then this gets me asking: what sex are people having? Is it sex, or just being physically intimate? Is being physically intimate like hugging or kissing just as valuable as full-blown penetration in a relationship? And again, are people who are fully penetrating their partners, fully penetrating people they consider their best friend and soul mate? Don’t some people just see this as a chore? Don’t people just imagine other people in their heads as they go about their sexual routines anyway?

I wonder all of this because this friend seems to have this romanticized notion of sex and overestimated its weight in measuring the value of how good a relationship is.

And truly, it’s not that valuable at all. It is icing on the cake, if you’re lucky enough to have cake. It is difficult enough to find someone who would tolerate another person’s idiosyncrasies along with their family and friends, they also have to be physically intimate and compete with an ocean of porn and attractive people both in real life and in media (who will never get older).

So yeah…  you. I know you’re reading this. Find something else to complain about. You got lucky finding someone half decent who would be with you and don’t mind being seen in public holding hands with you. That girl doesn’t mind seeing you at your worst and dealing with your various odors. Don’t complain about sex. It’s overrated. Porn is lying to you. Just be grateful when it comes.

Danny Zuko is a Bad Boyfriend

I was having dinner at a restaurant last night, the meal was great, my wife was enjoying the excellent food and it appears that most other customers and families around us were equally pleased. While the restaurant served liquor, it was not so much a drinking place but a place where someone can bring their family, as evidenced by a couple of the customers and their kids. There was one table however, that kinda spoiled the mood for everyone else.

It was a group of six men, drinking not too heavily but enough that they are all loud and can be heard by everyone in the restaurant. They were fairly young, maybe late 20s-30s. And though they were speaking a tad fast and my Korean is not that good, I could catch enough of what they were talking about, namely: the women they slept with, how their girlfriends are in bed, which Japanese adult film star they would like to be with, and how to get a Japanese girl. My wife heard all of this, and she corroborated my guesses. It was quite annoying and uncomfortable hearing all of this, with my wife at the table, children in the restaurant, and the server being a woman. Good thing the food was excellent.

Now, call me old fashioned, but I never really understood the urge of bragging about sexual prowess and conquests. I mean sure, one can brag about having bedded several women as a way to measure themselves among their male peers in a caveman sort of way, but going about the lurid details is something else entirely. It’s almost like a group session of humiliating women… women who happened to trust the men in the group. It’s a tad too distasteful for me, and if I took a recording of the conversation last night and posted it online, I’m sure most of the men on that table would be single and unemployed within the week.

The incident last night was reminiscent of what happened with several famous celebrities in Korea who were caught sharing their sexual exploits including photos in a chatroom. These were men, doing basically the same thing I witnessed last night, being lewd, sharing too much information, and shaming women in the process. I don’t think it had anything to do with bragging or demonstrating one’s machismo since several members of the chat group are young, popular celebrities who could easily be with several young women if they ever want to. This chatroom incident sparked a huge outrage, bringing down several celebrities, starting several investigations, and calling for crackdowns against sharing photos and spy pornography.

This isn’t the first time people got in trouble for sharing intimate details online. I recall a couple of years ago, one of the biggest photo-sharing sites in Korea was shut down due to men sharing intimate photos of unsuspecting women, giving out tips on how to rape women, and even arranging for partner-swapping.  Now, I’m not against partner-swapping should everyone involved be in on it, but I believe the women were basically pimped out on the site without their knowledge and consent.

I don’t know what has prompted this wave of misogyny. Perhaps its men bottling in their feelings after being subservient boyfriends and husbands, perhaps it’s new technology and people just being their worst, perhaps it’s young people basically rebelling against the Confusion culture, perhaps it’s a backlash to the rise of the feminist movement, or perhaps this whole thing has been there all along. Perhaps it’s Danny Zuko and his friends merrily chanting, “tell me more, tell me more.”

So once I become a grizzled old grandfather, what do I tell young men? “If you wanna brag about how many women you slept with, go ahead. Give a number. If you really want to brag about your manliness, go to a sauna together. Leave the women who trusted you alone. Don’t be an ass and betray that trust just so your friends could have a disgusting mental picture. You don’t need to help them with that. They can make disgusting mental pictures on their own. ”

 

Raconteuring

A coworker was talking to me about the challenges and milestones of raising a son. She has a young boy, five years-old, and at some point, he’s going to have to shower by himself. I told her it’s probably best to let him shower by himself next year or so. Then later, the topic drifted into one of the probably most difficult things parents have to go through, coming home to a son who just got into a fight.

A child coming home from school with a bloody nose or a swollen lip is probably one of the most visceral signs to a parent that they cannot shield their child from all of the awfulness of the world. And what’s worse, there’s also the urge to tell your son that in such cases, they might inevitably have to be awful in return. Of course, this situation is not really unique to boys, but in this conversation, we focused mostly on sons.

…

I don’t have many memories of my parents protecting me from the direct awfulness and violence of the world. To be honest, I never really got into any serious fights. I’ve been sucker punched a couple of times, but I’ve managed to diffuse the situation without getting into too much violence. I’ve come home with a swollen lip before, but I managed to hide that from my parents as well.

One of the most memorable, and perhaps one of my earliest embarrassing moments to me in regards to my parents happened to me when I was around nine to twelve years-old. My neighbor had a cousin who would occasionally visit. She would play with us whenever she’s around. She was a cute young thing, very friendly, and a bit of a tomboy. I had a little crush on her as a kid. Now I don’t know whether it was known or not, but I really didn’t do anything to pursue the matter. What was I going to do? We were kids. But one day, after knowing her for quite a while, for some unknown reason, she wrote on permanent marker on a gate by our house, “Joe is ugly!”

Now, I really didn’t know how to react at the message. I was more bewildered than anything else. And the weird thing is I really didn’t see any point in trying to cover it up or erase it. I remember just moving on, playing with my neighbor, and going about my childish ways.

What happened next was my mother coming home and seeing the message. She didn’t confront anyone about. She didn’t talk to the neighbors, nor did she ask me what happened between me and whoever wrote that message. She just went back out with a permanent marker and covered it herself. I remember being embarrassed about it, showing her a world where people hate her son enough that they would write slurs about him. Not everyone thinks her young son is as wonderful as she thinks he is. But looking back now, that must’ve been quite a day for her: coming home, seeing evidence that someone is trying to pick on her son, and with a quiet dignity, trying to shield her kid from the world’s hurtful slings.

…

Interestingly enough, that girl was one of my first introductions to the world of sex. No, not directly, but she was the catalyst to so many questions growing up. Her cousin was spreading a rumor that she had relations with an older boy. Apparently, this all happened while that cousin was listening in. I’m going to leave out all of the details, but it was odd that it never really occurred to anyone back then that what happened might very well have been abuse. We never really knew the age of that older boy. And as for her, despite my foggy memories, she couldn’t have been older than twelve at the time. I didn’t really believe the rumor, and I remember compartmentalizing and just putting in a part of my brain that I don’t ever access (a useful trick Catholic school taught me), but damn… the stain of that news around the neighborhood is a thousand times more hurtful than that childish message she wrote on that gate.

…

Continuing with the drama: the cousin who spread that rumor around; we used to hear him get beat up by his father for being gay. We couldn’t do much about it at the time. We were kids, and I’m not sure if people really did anything for situations like that back then. I don’t really remember much about him. He was a bit older than the rest of the neighborhood kids but he was friendly enough with us. The last thing I heard, he died in a fire in a nightclub. Despite being barely an adult, he was working as a waiter and there was a fire. The club owner was negligent and kept the fire escape locked, trapping many of the people inside. Poor guy.

He was someone’s son. What happened to him was the world’s awfulness coming at full force. That’s the awfulness that mothers fear… the awfulness that permanent markers can do nothing to stop.

They are just kids… racist kids.

Kids will be kids, and 17 year-old young men are still children. Nevertheless, it is disheartening how so many people in the media are bending over backwards telling everyone that what we saw those Covington kids do was not racist at all.

It was racist. Anyone who’s been on the receiving end of any sort of bigotry will recognize the smug smile on Nicholas Sandmann’s face. It’s the smile that says among many other things, “I’m going to get away with this.”

I don’t want to dissect everything that happened. There are videos and different analyses about the event. It doesn’t have to be treated like a Zapruder film. Everyone’s actions are as plain as day.

First off, a Catholic school decided to bus a group of young men for political purposes. It was for the March for Life, an annual rally protesting the legality of abortion. Again, a Catholic school (which is not supposed to be political) decided to bus a group of young men (who will never, EVER, be pregnant) to protest the legality of abortion (participating in a political event, a very adult thing to do). The school organizers and their parents decided it was okay to have young men, voice their opinions on political issues, but the minute they get into racist shenanigans, they are immediately reverted back to innocent young children who have no idea how racist their actions were.

Also, prior to the viral video, there’s already evidence of the boys harassing young women with vile remarks. These are not the innocent actors that the Sandmann’s PR firm would have you believe. These boys are not the type who would freeze up and nervously pray silently when they see an old Native American man play a peace drum. They were loud, obnoxious, and combative.

What annoys me however is how quickly people in the media quickly turned from condemning their actions to making excuses for them after a PR firm got to them. So many articles and people online would try to convince you that the boys weren’t being vile, that there was a bigger story from a different angle. There isn’t. The boys were racists and misogynists. Their school and their parents are equally racists and misogynists.  If anything, the bigger story here is how easy it is to dupe the players in the media, and how yet again, attacks against Native Americans are so engrained in society that people easily ignore them. Tomahawk chops? That’s just something they learned through football! Mocking dance? Well, they were just moving to the beat of the drum! Native Americans experience racism regularly but you don’t nearly see much outrage about it. If anything, injustice against Native Americans is often seen with hopeless familiarity, “here we go again.”

It would be interesting to see how the media would react if the same actions the boys took were done by a group of a different color or gender.  I’m guessing more colorful language would be used to describe them, “a gang” if they’re black or brown men, and the word “hysterical” if it was a group of women. And you wouldn’t really see too many people quickly giving them interviews over the Today Show. Then discussions regarding crime, drugs, or rampant feminism would follow.

Ironically, Donald Trump has invited the Covington boy to the White House after saying they were victims of fake news. Donald Trump famously tried to get the Central Park Five, a group of black teens, executed despite being innocent of a crime. There are many differences between the Covington boys and the Central Park Five, but we all know which one matters the most.

And unfortunately, it’s not only Trump that has this bias. It’s so many people in the media as well.

Putting a Face on Creepy

I’m not a big fan of conservative politicians in general, but I find what’s happening to Tony Clement a tad unfair. Setting the hypocrisy of being a conservative, married politician fishing for young women online aside, I think people forget that he is a victim in this as well.

To recap Tony Clement, was caught sending lewd messages and inappropriate nudes online after it was learned that in at least two occasions, he has been extorted by people pretending to be willing adult recipients. Later, several surfaced and detailed Tony Clement’s behavior and calling it creepy. Apparently, he’s looking for extra-marital trysts with young women and would often boldly “like” women’s sensual pictures on Instagram, sometimes deep-diving into a user’s history of pics and liking them. This, apparently, is “creepy.”

Well, let me try defending a creep.

First off, I believe he should be disqualified for any leadership position, not for any of his behavior, but simply because he lost the confidence of his peers. Tony Clement is first and foremost a politician, and regardless of how unjust the way he lost his political influence and became toxic, you cannot have a leader which others would not want to be associated with. It is all simply politics. It has nothing to do with ethics, morality, or hypocrisy. No one would want him in the room. That’s not a leader.

Second, I believe that the “sin” of cheating on his spouse is solely between him and his wife. Anthony Weiner’s repeated escapades never really bothered me. I thought he was a good politician despite his crippling addiction to sexting. It wasn’t until he got caught for inappropriate communications with a minor that I got off the bandwagon. No one really knows what was happening in his marriage, no one except him and his wife. For all we know, his wife might have been okay with the whole thing. We can’t call it a sin if it isn’t a sin in their eyes. I can’t really judge what Tony Clement did to his marriage since we really don’t know what the nature of his marriage was at the moment. We can judge it for hypocrisy, yes, but it’s very difficult to call it a betrayal when we’re not privy to his marriage.

Just recently, 700 Club’s Pat Robertson proclaimed that viewing pornography is adultery. That is him judging everyone else’s marriages, marriages that he has no idea what the husbands and wives are okay with. I wouldn’t want to be like Pat Robertson and make assumptions on Tony Clement’s marriage. For all we know, his wife was okay with him messaging women. Maybe she thought it harmless. Men and women do things that others might consider infidelity but their partners are okay with. I’m sure many of the men who go see strippers have wives at home who are okay with that occasional behavior. Turning a blind eye to such activities is sometimes a pillar to many marriages.

And speaking of harmless, deep diving into someone’s Instagram gallery is harmless. It truly is. When a person’s pictures are out on the web, it is there for everyone to see. The harm or the “creepiness” that Tony Clement did was leave evidence. He let the women know that, yes, he did look through their pictures. He “liked” several of them. People are pretending that people, strangers, don’t do this. If your pictures are out there, people will look through them. Men do it. I’m sure women do it too. What Tony Clement did however is that he brought a face to that stranger looking through women’s Instagram history. He made the invisible stalker visible. Now, perhaps it was boldness on his part, or perhaps it was him simply being inept with the platform, but let’s not pretend that what he did was especially creepy. People do what he did all the time, they just don’t boldly “like” the pictures.

As for sending lewd messages and pictures, I don’t see anything wrong if it’s between consenting adults. As far as I could tell, the pictures he sent were towards consenting adults. And I could be wrong, but I haven’t seen any stories of him harassing women online by constantly messaging them. Sure, he would comment on people’s selfies and perhaps annoy, confuse, or make them feel a bit weird, but I don’t think that’s necessarily harassment. It’s weird and unusual, but he wasn’t on a campaign to menace people. It sounds more like he’s inept, if not socially then in terms of technology and security. Some of the women who have surfaced post rather sexy material online and appear to be open to online admirers. I am not placing blame on them for being harassed nor am I conceding that what Tony Clement did to them was harassment. But if total strangers online can make comments about a person’s half-naked pictures, why is it so wrong for a famous person to do so? Does it depend on the type of person who liking the pictures? What if it was some more attractive Hollywood celebrity instead of a conservative Canadian MP? And I don’t really buy into the fact that there is an unfair power dynamic since he is a famous politician. In fact, the recipients of the “likes” and messages had more power over Tony Clement since they were in position of what could possibly be embarrassing and politically damaging for anyone in government.

Again, Tony Clement is a victim of extortion. Let us not forget that. He is still being sex shamed after being a victim of what is comparable to revenge porn. He has made some women feel uncomfortable online, but he has not broken any laws. Everyone needs to calm down on the schadenfreude over his downfall.

Kimonos and Fake News

I’ve been doing a bit of an informal survey after hearing a friend spout off what sounds like anti-Japanese sentiment disguised as facts. In an attempt to disparage the character of Japanese culture specifically and the Japanese people in general, she mentioned that the kimono was designed specifically for the woman to easily have sexual encounters with men at a moment’s notice. That is why what appear to be cushions or pillows are attached at the back of the outfit. This factoid (or to cut to the chase, this lie) seems to be designed to hurt the Japanese image by basically calling their traditional attire a sex attire and by virtue implying that Japanese women have a history of having loose morals.

I’ve been asking Koreans around me about the reason for the kimono’s design and most people reference this rather risqué explanation to different degrees, with some being more polite than others. This was very fascinating since the people I asked were mostly well-educated people who have visited Japan several times, if not lived there for several years. They mostly came up with the same explanation, although some expressed doubts regarding its veracity.

Now, I’ve read about kimonos, seen them worn many times first-hand, and been with people who had it put on. There are many degrees, but kimonos can be quite complicated to put on. It took my friends almost an hour to have it put on them, and this is with a professional assistant. When you see people walking around Japan with their Sunday best kimonos, these are mostly complicated attires with several layers. They are not the fastest things to take on and off. Probably the easiest and least layered kimono I could think of are the yukatas worn in the summer, but compared to the Korean hanbok, they are probably a little more complicated to put on and off, so I don’t understand this idea of “easy access.” As for the cushions or pillows attached in the back. They are otakos or oversized ribbons mainly placed there for aesthetic purposes. I would hardly consider them pillows. One of the reasons for putting so much material around women at the time was that it was considered ideal for women to have a straight, flat figure. It was simply the aesthetic at the time. And as for pillows and the idea of having women basically be on their backs, Japanese women, when fully attired in traditional garb will have a very complex hairdo. Back then, they would never rest their head on pillows for fear of ruining their hair, and instead rested their head and neck on what amounts to a wooden platform. The whole pillow/easy access thing is simply a fantasy.

But what lends it credibility is a bit of truth. One is that there is a history of courtesans and prostitution in Japan which does involve the image of geishas wearing heavy make-up and kimonos. But this is counter to the easy access image the rumor I’ve been hearing. Another bit of truth is that kimonos are usually tied from behind, thus women would often require assistance when putting on such complicated attire. Prostitutes would sometimes tie their kimono in front so they could easily put them on and off without assistance, but that it not the only sole reason to wear a kimono with the ribbon in front. Elderly people for example, would tie their kimonos in front to make it easier to wear them. In any case, there are many reasons why kimonos could be tied in front, but I think the originators of the easy access lie just latched on to the prostitution story and made it true for all kimonos.

But what is the purpose of the lie. I imagine it is a relic of anti-Japanese sentiment in Korea. I ask people where and when they first heard of this explanation and not many people could tell me exactly when. It seems to have been rooted in their childhood. Thus, even when I offer a counter explanation, some find it hard to divorce themselves from the old take. Perhaps it was designed to disparage the Japanese, and in doing so, boost Korean nationalist sentiment. This is not the first time I’ve seen this happen. In the 80s, children in the Philippines were taught that Armando Lite invented the ArmaLite (M16), Agapito Flores invented the fluorescent lamp, and Eduardo San Juan invented the Lunar Rover. There’s a possibility that Eduardo San Juan did exist as an engineer, but there is no record that he was the chief engineer for the Lunar Rover. And as for the other two, they are nothing but clever puns. But why make up the lie? They were designed to boost national pride, encourage children to take up science and engineering, and instill a bit of anti-American sentiment since all inventors were said to have had their inventions stolen and their credits removed, thus making the lies unprovable. I suspect the Japanese kimono lie was created in the same vein, especially since the Koreas were occupied by the Japanese the same way the Philippines was occupied by the Americans.

I believe this is an early attempt at “fake news” or propaganda. Unfortunately, with me trying to disprove the old “fake news,” I could be labeled as “fake news” as well. I’m not sure if propaganda had the same vicious back and forth cycle back then as well. I figure some lies just faded after people saw the light of truth and reason. But maybe I was being naïve in thinking they are not as persistent, after all, what was my friend spouting? And to bring it back to the modern era, I had my wife look up some of the anti-Japanese sentiments my friend was spouting including the kimono explanation online. True enough, she finds them in a Korean anti-Japanese site. Old “fake news” makes it to the modern age.

Ugly Day in Canada

Being frustrated at not getting laid is a poor hill to die on. Worse, it’s a vile hill to kill people for. It’s sad how the whole misogynistic movement have grown so much that there are now several branches of it. I know Men’s Rights Movement, MGTOWs, and Incels are all different, but they all stem from a male frustration at not getting what they believe they deserve to have, whether it’s a higher social standing, deference from others, preference from society, female attention, or whatever. Though this male insecurity can sometimes just manifest itself mildly in low self-esteem or just a poor way in interacting with others, as we saw with Alek Minassian, it can also blow up into ugly hatred and a weird fantasy of overthrowing the way society works.

Looking into the whole thing, it’s amusing/depressing how the whole incel terminology is rife with self-hate and misogyny without a hint of irony. “Chads” are muscular, well-off, vapid, pretty men that get all the women. “Stacys” are your idealized buxom hot girl who falls for Chads.  “Normies” are people who are neither Chads nor Staceys. Deep dive into reddit (which banned the dedicated subreddit) or 4chan, and you’ll find ample usage of “cuck” and tons of derogatory term for women. Again, these are supposed to be men whose one uniting attribute is the frustration of not having any attention towards the opposite sex returned to them, thus they are “incel,” involuntary celibate. If you want attention from the opposite sex so much, why is there so much hate towards them? That’s not helping your cause. People can sense these things.

What I notice about the whole movement is that it (including a lot of misogynist movements) are based on bloated misconceptions and fantasies. Just looking at 2001’s Journal of Sex Research, it defines involuntary celibate as someone who wishes to have sex but has not been able to find a willing partner in the past six months. Six months? No one is owed sex twice or three times a year. Not having sex for six months is not a grave injustice. Heck, not having sex in a year is not a grave injustice. Sometimes it’s just pure laziness. Sex can be tiring. Incels must think that normal life is having sex once or twice a week, which would be great, but is not really realistic for most people. And with that in mind, who is the target of their sexual frustrations? The Stacys. Do they really think that if they work out enough, earn enough money, and be nice enough, they would get a Stacy to pay attention to them and sexually gratify them regularly? Sure, that could be possible, but that’s discounting all other men who might look better or simply just be better people than them. And then of course there’s also luck to consider. Some people are just lucky enough to charm their way into a Stacy’s or a Chad’s heart. But the keyword there is charm. CHARM!

A part of me feels that many of these men want a pornographic-plot lifestyle and are shooting for the moon, and in turn are getting angry and disappointed when the hot cheerleader next door doesn’t pay any attention to them. I have a friend whom I have never seen date anyone ever. He’s a decent guy, very kind, great job, and even has lots of women friends. The problem is he seems to be looking for 10s when he himself is a 6 on the looks department on a good day. I know it’s shallow, but the discrepancy in the way he talks about women is obvious. I think that could be the same problem with incels. They spend too much time pining for 10s, and by the time they decide to look at partners their own level, they’ve already built up too much frustration and resentment that it’s palatable.

What gets to me about all of these movements is the sense of entitlement, whether it’s incels or any other form of men’s right’s movements. It’s a sense of entitlement and frustration despite being the gender which has reaped thousands of years of societal benefits keeping women down. And no, I’m not trying to white knight here. I’m married. This attitude isn’t going to get me laid any more than if I didn’t believe these things. Anyway, after being born in a society designed to make you thrive, and you’re still failing, at some point, you have to realize that the problem is not women, the problem is you. And how hard is it to get laid? You can’t get laid? Go to a club or a bar. Meet women. Still can’t get laid? Call a professional. Pretend that it’s your own sexual prowess that got you hot women in bed. The president of the United States does it. Maybe that’ll clear your head a little and be the baby steps towards a more typical relationship with other women. Don’t start hating women or society in general because you can’t get laid (or at least afford to get laid). Getting laid is actually not that difficult. In fact, after a couple of times, you might think that devoting your spare time in an online community based on not getting laid is a tad silly considering how uncomplicated it truly is. There is no need to be misogynist because of your own personal failings.

Actually, these days I lament the fact that in South Korea, with the advent of the #Metoo movement, anti-feminist movements have been growing in response. In South Korea, a country which can still be quite sexist. What’s worse is that the anti-feminist crowd in South Korea has recently been fueled by the popularity of Canadian Jordan Peterson, the current intellectual rockstar of the aggrieved rightwing. Oh Korea! What have we done to you?