#tw feminism i guess i dunno

[storkmuffin]

A friend (Korean woman in Korea) told me about a 25 yr old guy who stabbed his ex-girlfriend, also 25, to death. It's been revealed that he's a med student and got a perfect score on the college admissions test and got media coverage for it at the time. The question my friend asked was, "Do you think that the reason he killed her was because he's never been rejected, ever, like - he got a perfect score and got into med school, and couldn't accept that she would want to leave someone like him?"

And I just felt so fucking tired but it's not my friend's fault so I said, "OK by that rule then no man who was bad at school or doesn't make a lot of money or is short or ugly or poor should ever kill a woman and we know that isn't true, right?"

That seemed to stop her short so I added, "Misogynist men murder women because we're women, and any sort of man can be a misogynist. A lot of men hate women a LOT. Also why do we have to know about what his dreams and plans were for his life? Why instead aren't we told how many women were murdered so far by a man they knew? That woman probably did everything she could think of to do to have a 'nice' break up - why aren't we told about all the things she tried that didn't work for her?"

And I think I went too far and made it too scary because my friend did that thing of walking backwards away from me when I get my scary autistic feminist face on. Oh I forgot to say - my friend also graduated from a prestige university as well as her husband, so for her this is personal because I guess kids who are brilliant at rote memorization tests aren't supposed to commit murder and like, she really thought that women who get murdered by exes made the mistake of not being good enough for men who went to the Top 3.

The Korean media coverage about the Gangnam Exit 10 killer was just like this too - they talked about how the killer, who specifically said he waited until a woman showed up to his hiding spot to kill one, had at one point been a divinity student or something. The chatter about this murderer is like, Gosh why did someone so smart have to waste his life and become a murderer in this way? Shame attaches so automatically to the woman who got murdered that even her family is asking that nothing about her get revealed. There isn't a discourse about how "she had her whole life ahead of her" and like "This is what she majored in at university" or whatever about the woman who got killed. The fact that she was someone's girlfriend that wasnt loved enough to not get slaughtered by him is shameful so we're all supposed to turn away and let her family mourn in silence. It drives me insane about my culture. If you have a crime happen to you the shame is ON YOU somehow. Not being forced to lose your anonymity after you lose your life is supposedly protective to the dead, but that's so bullshit to me.