Sex Communication Tactic Derived from S&M #3: Journal-Keeping

I’d like to thank all the brave pioneers of the BDSM community, for plumbing the depths of human sexuality, and coming back with maps.

~ an unsourced quotation provided by commenter Motley on my gigantic manliness thread

I’ve already written about S&M checklists and S&M safewords, and how both those things can set really great examples for everyone’s sex life — not just us BDSMers. This entry will be about journal-keeping!

Some BDSMers play with really, really strong power dynamics. A good example of this is couples who choose a “24/7 dynamic”: one partner is dominant and the other is submissive … all the time. I attended a workshop once with Sir Top and slave bonnie, two wise BDSM educators, where I learned that slave bonnie was only ever allowed to disobey orders of two kinds:

* Suicidal orders,

* Orders that would cause financial ruin.

The rest of the time, bonnie obeyed Top — all the rest of the time.

Obviously, relationships like this are totally cool with me as long as they are — say it with me, everyone — 100% consensual! Such relationships can also encourage the use of interesting communication tactics, because many of the usual tactics don’t feel right to the participants. For example, these relationships often take place between people who feel such a strong power dynamic that it would be almost impossible for the submissive to feel comfortable safewording — safewording can feel disconcertingly like a form of resistance.

One way of dealing with this problem is for both partners to keep journals that are open to the other partner. (With some couples, only the submissive keeps an open journal.) They talk about their romantic feelings, they process their sexual encounters, they articulate anxieties, etc. Here’s an example of some great submissive journaling prompts. The idea is that it’s easier to express these things when there’s a designated space for it outside the relationship; the journals mean that partners (especially submissives) can talk about what they need without fearing that they’re undermining the power dynamic.

I find the concept of simultaneous journals intriguing for a number of reasons. One is that I’ve used similar tactics myself; I kept a private journal for many years, and once in a long while I’d give entries to my partners when I needed to explain something complicated about my feelings. I only did this a few times, ever, but it was really effective when I did.

Later, I took to writing love letters that I noticed were very similar to both my journal entries, and to the simultaneous relationship journals suggested for Master/slave couples. I realized that I was writing letters because, at the time, I felt more comfortable writing about my desires than talking about them. I’ve gotten a million times better at talking about my sexuality honestly and shamelessly since then; but back then, there were definitely things I wrote to my partners that I couldn’t have said aloud. I also wrote because — just like Master/slave couples — I wanted to communicate my feelings outside the anxiety-inducing frameworks of the “serious discussion”, the bedroom, etc.

So when I developed my sexual communication workshop, I encouraged love letters. I gave two suggested points of departure for a love letter:

1) Describe what happened during a sexual encounter you had together, with particular emphasis on what your partner did that you really liked — and what you liked about it. (“I love it when you fuck me” is a great thing to say, but you give much more information to your partner if you say “I love it when you fuck me from behind,” or even better, “I love it when you fuck me from behind and it feels amazing when your balls hit my clit.” This blog does not necessarily reflect the desires or encounters of Miss Clarisse Thorn.)

2) Describe a fantasy you have. Bonus points if you explicitly put your partner in it. (“I like to imagine you sinking your teeth into me until I scream.” This blog does not necessarily … oh, who am I kidding.)

Check out the previous posts in this series, Sex Communication Tactic Derived from S&M #1: Checklists and Sex Communication Tactic Derived from S&M #2: Safewords and Check-Ins.

A few changes ’round these parts

Regular readers have already noticed that I’ve changed themes (that is, the appearance of this blog has shifted markedly). Awesome! However, the new theme does not support the [blockquote] tag in comments, nor does it provide comment numbers. This makes some of the longer comment threads, like the thousand-plus comment thread on my final Manliness post, pretty hard to navigate. However, I’ve emailed WordPress and they’re working on it. If you are just reading a long thread for the first time, there may be some confusing formatting issues. Keep that in mind when you comment. And leave a comment on this post, or email me, if you notice anything else.

Also, for the sake of clarity, I just reworked and expanded my old post “There Is No ‘Should’” and the Sex-Positive “Agenda”. It’s the closest thing to a manifesto I’ve got. Check it out!

[litquote] “Allowed to feel horny and fucked-up at the same time”

I’ve had some wrenching personal decisions and transitions lately, and it put me in mind of other times in my life when I felt in flux. I love this quotation from Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity, which I first took down when I was coming into my BDSM identity.

I wake up around dawn, and I have the same feeling I had the other night, the night I caught on about Laura and Ray: that I’ve got no ballast, nothing to weigh me down, and if I don’t hang on, I’ll just float away. I like Marie a lot, she’s funny and smart and pretty and talented, but who the hell is she? I don’t mean that philosophically. I just mean, I don’t know her from Eve, so what am I doing in her bed? Surely there’s a better, safer, more friendly place for me than this? But I know there isn’t, not at the moment, and that scares me rigid.

I get up, find my snazzy boxers and my T-shirt, go into the living room, fumble in my jacket pocket for my fags and sit in the dark smoking. After a little while Marie gets up, too, and sits down next to me.

“You sitting here wondering what you’re doing?”

“No. I’m just, you know ….”

“‘Cause that’s why I’m sitting here, if it helps.”

“I thought I’d woken you up.”

“I ain’t even been to sleep yet.”

“So you’ve been wondering for a lot longer than me. Worked anything out?”

“Bits. I’ve worked out that I was real lonely, and I went and jumped into bed with the first person who’d have me. And I’ve also worked out that I was lucky it was you, and not somebody mean, or boring, or crazy.”

“I’m not mean, anyway. And you wouldn’t have gone to bed with anyone who was any of those things.”

“I’m not so sure about that. I’ve had a bad week.”

“What’s happened?”

“Nothing’s happened. I’ve had a bad week in my head, is all.”

Before we slept together, there was at least some pretense that it was something we both wanted to do, that it was the healthy, strong beginning of an exciting new relationship. Now all the pretense seems to have gone, and we’re left to face the fact that we’re sitting here because we don’t know anybody else we could be sitting with.

“I don’t care if you’ve got the blues,” Marie says. “It’s OK. And I wasn’t fooled by you acting all cool about … what’s her name?”

“Laura.”

“Laura, right. But people are allowed to feel horny and fucked-up at the same time. You shouldn’t feel embarrassed about it. I don’t. Why should we be denied basic human rights just because we’ve messed up our relationships?”

I’m beginning to feel more embarrassed about the conversation than about anything we’ve just done. Horny? They really use that word? Jesus. All my life I’ve wanted to go to bed with an American, and now I have, and I’m beginning to see why people don’t do it more often. Apart from Americans, that is, who probably go to bed with Americans all the time.

Why do I love it? I love it because it simultaneously acknowledges that sex can be awkward and weird and intersect with negative emotions, and then deftly points out that this isn’t a problem or argument against sexuality in itself.

Also, I can’t help noting that the only guys I’ve hooked up with who seriously used the word “horny” were British.

(This passage is from the book, not the movie. Alas, the movie version of this scene wasn’t nearly as good.)

[storytime] Sympathy for the Anti-Porn Feminists

When I was in my late teens and early twenties, I really felt uncomfortable with and uneasy about porn. I believed it was something that “all men watch” and “all men like”. I didn’t yet realize that there are lots of different kinds of porn out there, and so I believed that the mainstream porn I’d seen represented “all men’s desires”. Given that I didn’t look like women in mainstream porn and I didn’t want to act like women in mainstream porn, this made me suspect that I couldn’t possibly be awesome in bed; so I couldn’t help feeling pressured and threatened by porn’s very existence, because it seemed to be fulfilling “all men’s desires” in a way that I couldn’t. (I felt even more uneasy when I first came across SomethingAwful’s hentai game reviews around age 18. The reviews were so funny that I laughed out loud, but I also literally cried — right in a public computer lab, actually.)

But I accepted that the men in my life watched porn, and I made it clear that although I didn’t want to hear about it, I didn’t mind — that I certainly didn’t expect them to give up porn while dating me.

Except one. I dated one man who insisted that he didn’t use porn, and I believed him. Keep in mind that I had told him I didn’t mind if he used porn, so his insistence that he didn’t came entirely from him, not me. And then one day I was going through our computer’s search history looking for something I’d been reading the day before, and I came upon rape-fantasy porn. And I was heartbroken.

Way beyond the fact that the man I loved had outright lied to me — which, I think, legitimately entitled me to be angry — my reaction went something like this:

A) The only man I’ve ever met who I thought truly didn’t like porn was lying to me, which means I can’t trust men who say they don’t like porn, and probably indicates that men who have told me they don’t like rape porn were lying too.

B) Porn indicates real preferences, right? So what this means is that all men secretly crave to rape women, but that they are either too afraid of the legal consequences or care too much about the women they love to actually do it.

In other words, I thought something like: I can’t trust men to be honest about their sexuality, and their sexuality is scary and predatory.

This was a highly overwrought and almost totally wrong read on the situation! But that’s how I felt at the time. I couldn’t figure out a way to talk to my boyfriend about the porn without causing a fight (it was a rather non-communicative relationship, and I’m glad it’s long over). So I never talked to him about it, and it took me years to unravel all the incorrect assumptions I had wrapped up in my reactions to porn.

In the circles I run in today, saying that I’ve got sympathy for anti-porn feminists is kind of like saying I’ve got sympathy for the devil. But the truth is, I’ve got quite a lot of it. Don’t get me wrong: I emphatically do not support censoring porn. I screened some documentaries on feminist and alternative porn when I curated my sex-positive film series. And I often point out that, despite what anti-porn feminists say, there’s absolutely no evidence that porn increases sexual violence. In fact, there’s reason to think that increased porn access reduces sexual violence.

These issues have been highlighted lately with the release of Pornland, a book by anti-porn zealot Gail Dines. I haven’t read it, but from the reviews and excerpts and interviews I’ve seen, it’s obvious that Pornland is breathtaking in its lack of evidence. (My personal favorite coverage is this interview, in which Dines’ own former research assistant — who is now a porn performer — disputes Dines’ claims.)

So how can I have sympathy for anti-porn feminists? Only because I remember how I felt just a few years ago. I remember that I felt so confused about my own sexuality; I remember how resentful I felt, that sex seemed so easy for men — that the world seemed to facilitate their sex drives so thoroughly, particularly by providing all this porn!

I remember how hurt I felt by porn, because I believed that it represented “what men want”, and that therefore I was “supposed” to act like porn women — even though the way women acted in porn didn’t appeal to me at all. I remember how scared I felt, when I believed that rape porn reflected “all men’s desires”, and concluded that “all men secretly would love to commit rape”. The porn that I’d seen felt as though it set the standard for my sexual behavior, and I hated that standard, but I didn’t see a way out. Because even with all my liberal, sex-positive sex education, there were serious flaws in my knowledge about sex. Not to mention the fact that I hadn’t yet wrapped my mind around the concept of fully-negotiated, 100% consensual rape fantasy sex.

And that’s really the heart of the problem with porn: that is, the problem is not porn in itself at all. The problem is bad sex education. The problem is that all Americans are subjected to sexual mores that shame sex; that refuse to talk honestly about sex; that claim we shouldn’t be having sex at all. The problem is that millions of people are too ashamed and afraid and repressed to talk or think seriously about their sexual desires. That millions of people don’t recognize the diversity of sexual desire. And, therefore, that millions of people’s primary source of information about sexuality is highly stylized mainstream porn.

Anti-porn folks are shaped by society’s irrational sexual fears and stereotypes:

1) There’s a stereotype that male sexuality is inherently dangerous, unwanted, or predatory and that it must be contained or restrained at all costs. This means that porn cannot be allowed to thrive, especially if it seems to cater to men. This is also, I suspect, the source of the claim that porn access increases rape (again, false). Anti-porn activists rely on the societal belief that men’s sexuality is hard to control, scaring us into believing that allowing porn will enable uncontrollable men.

2) There’s anxiety about alternative sexuality. Almost everyone in the world can be freaked out by some form of sexuality, and most people are freaked out by very predictable taboos. This freaking-out reaction doesn’t actually mean that there’s anything wrong with that form of sexuality — because, folks, nothing is wrong with any form of sexuality as long as it is 100% consensual! — but most people don’t think past their immediate freakout. So anti-porn folks often use images of extreme sexuality to alarm people who aren’t prepared to see those images. In other words, they often rely on freaking people out to make their case — possibly because otherwise they haven’t got a case.

3) Does porn create certain desires? Or does it merely cater to existing desires? The answer is probably “a little bit of both”, but anti-porn activists rely on the idea that porn makes its viewers want certain kinds of sex or certain kinds of partners. Many of us (like me, years ago) are afraid that we can’t “live up” to our partners’ preferences, and many of us (like me, years ago) tend to believe that “all men” or “all women” want the same thing. So there’s an anti-porn fear that if we allow porn to flourish, those of us who don’t enjoy acting like [mainstream] porn stars will be unable to satisfy our partners.

Again, I got sympathy. I understand these fears because I used to feel them; I felt them so strongly that it made me cry in a public computer lab. But the solution isn’t getting rid of the porn, it’s getting rid of the fears. The solution is:

1) Reframing male sexuality so that we aren’t so damn scared of it all the time. Men can and will control themselves sexually, and they’ll only get better at it — not worse — if we encourage honest, non-scary, open-minded dialogue about male sexual desire.

2) Encouraging people to see alternative sexuality as just another human preference, rather than something weird and/or freakish. Encouraging people to accept and come to terms with their own sexuality, though this can be a tough and hard-to-recognize process — it certainly was for me. Once people feel comfortable in their own sex lives and recognize their own weird fetishes, they’ll be much less likely to judge other people’s sex lives.

3) Making it incredibly clear that everyone has different sexual desires, that different kinds of porn express different desires, and that “all men” and “all women” don’t want the same thing. Porn can be a wonderful tool for exploring particular desires, and allowing people to explore their particular preferences makes it easier for everyone to find sexual satisfaction, not harder — because it means that people with particular preferences can find each other, rather than ending up in unhappy partnerships where those desires are ignored.

4) Oh, and of course we need to encourage people to recognize that violent sex isn’t necessarily bad sex; that even something as extreme as a rape scene can be 100% consensual. One key idea that I’m trying to push is writing about the amazing variety of sexual communication tactics derived from S&M — tactics that enable some awesomely extreme, awesomely consensual sex.

I have a theory about how porn affects men in bed. I don’t have any data, I’ve just got my experience, and that means I’m on the same level as Gail Dines (so maybe I should publish a book). I’ve had a pretty fair number of sexual partners at this point, and it’s true that, in my experience, men who don’t like mainstream porn are often better in bed: more attentive and less likely to make assumptions, for example. Perhaps they’re better off because they never learned or believed in the stereotypes of mainstream porn — then again, some guys who don’t like porn are horribly repressed and terrible in bed, so obviously the issue cuts both ways.

However! There’s another group of men who are excellent in bed. Often, they’re even better than men who don’t watch porn. And that group is men who have watched a lot of different kinds of porn and who have thought carefully about their reactions to it. They have learned how many different flavors of sexuality are out there in the world. They are men who have gotten over their sexual repression and learned to talk about sex in an open, accepting, honest way. Those men are fantastic in bed.

And they’ve probably got more exposure to porn than any of the men cherry-picked by anti-porn zealots who talk about the horrors of porn.

A few changes ’round these parts, part 2 in a 3-part series

Again, readers may notice that I just changed my blog’s appearance back to an older version. This is because a lot of older threads were unreadable due to a technical problem with the new version. I am working on a long-term solution. In the meantime, sorry the font is so small.

UPDATE: Anyone who likes this blog and knows CSS, I’d love your input on some stuff.

Virginity Is More Important To Men Than Women Would Admit

Robin Hanson has a post comparing the female preference for high status men with the male preference for virginal women. Without getting into the particulars of the comparison (a valid, if imperfect one), the larger point here is that virginity in and of itself continues influencing men’s mate choice decisions and judgments of the women they date. Even American legend Ben Franklin knew virgins were worth more than debauched women. Fuck that, women *themselves* know that virgins are higher value than sluts.

Why should the meaty intrusions of past lovers be of concern to men deciding which women to pump and dump and which women to date with more rigorous romantic investment? To find the answer to that, we must put a magnifying glass to the hindbrain. Throughout most of human existence, a woman with a sordid history of lovers presented multiple risks for the man intending to devote his resources to her and the raising of any children they would have. (“Would” being the operative word, since sex for most of our contraceptively poor ancestors usually led to children irrespective of our wishes.) The risks of committing to a non-virgin woman would be:

1. She might be carrying the unborn spawn of a recently discarded lover. (In ancient times, when the female fertile window was shorter, younger, and rarely unplundered while the plundering was good, this would be a big concern in a way it is not so much today, thanks to condoms and the pill severing the connection between sex and insta-pregnancy.)


2. She would be more likely to cheat. A slut presents a higher risk to a man of future cheating. And female cheating = threat of cuckoldry, which means it is much worse than male cheating. Chicks with high testosterone, as evidenced by a suite of mannish features, are good candidates for sluttiness and are least likely to have retained their virginity much past the age of thirteen.


3. She won’t bond as strongly from the sex act. A woman who has been around the block will find nothing spectacular about the next in line cock. (Slam poetry!) Virgins will bond like Krazy Glue to the first man who deflowers them. The love will be so strong that she will look up to him as a king, and Eat, Pray, Love boredom killing journeys of tingle-actualization will never even enter her consciousness.

And so men, for very ancient biological reasons, prefer to marry, (or in the parlance of modern thought, have a long term relationship with), virgins. This is as unalterable as the female preference for high status men.

Of course, nothing good is without its costs. Female virgins, for one, are hard to find in modern society, and are usually only available to the highest status men or to alpha teenage boys who got in on the ground floor. Very religious communities have more of them than the secular axis of ardor, but few secular men are willing to sacrifice the good times of nonmarital sex for the strictures of religion and better odds at bagging a virgin. So they suck it up and tell slutty SWPL fembots what they want to hear:

“No really, baby, I don’t care how many cocks you’ve hoovered up your hooch. I’m enlightened that way!”

…all the while drag drag dragging their feet on the marriage proposal.

Second, female virgins present a risk of sexual aloofness. Is she a virgin because she’s nobly chaste, or is she a virgin because she never felt much compulsion to have sex? As bad as marrying a high risk slut is, marrying a sexually repressed low libido woman is worse. (Although there is evidence that low libido women are really just sexually dissatisfied women who have yet to enjoy the wonders of sexual awakening with an alpha male.) Marriage isn’t much of a happy deal for men if the sex is a twice a year event. This wouldn’t be a concern if marriage adhered to the traditional notion of indentured servitude exchanged for sexual access, and men could tap that ass whenever the mood hit them, but in today’s radically feminized society, a man must have consent even with his wife, who simply cannot conceive of laying there and taking one for the team (or, heaven forfend, out of deep love for her husband’s well-being).

Third, many men fear the inexperience that female virgins are apt to bring to the bedroom. This is a minor concern, as a woman’s sexual inexperience is quickly and easily overcome as long as she has a normal sex drive. Sex isn’t friggin rocket science. A few weeks of hot nonstop sex with a virgin and she’ll have a repertoire of positions that would make Andrew Sullivan’s beagle blush.

The biggest cost to pursuing virgins is the reason why it sometimes benefits to pursue sluts:

They don’t put out.

Virgins have value as wives and girlfriends, but sluts have value as easy lays. Don’t underestimate the power of the easy lay to cloud a man’s future oriented judgment.

Pickup Reenactment

Roosh has a couple of funny — and educational — videos reenacting his pickup attempts and interactions with girls. He suggested a contest where people post videos (created via the xtranormal website) of their actual approaches.

Here’s one of mine. It’s a direct game nighttime approach on a girl who was giving me obvious flirty signals.

The fart wasn’t quite that loud in real life.

I don’t recommend cocky direct game unless the girl is throwing out blatant approach invitations.

What Should She Do?

A reader sent the Chateau the following email with no explicit instructions to withhold releasing for readership consumption the photos she attached. As per Chateau rules (Sec. 8, para. 14), if you don’t want your advice-seeking email correspondence or accompanying pics posted to the blog, say so. Otherwise, it will be assumed you are OK with it.

Hi Chateau,

I have been reading your blog and although I’m not a fan of some of the misogyny some of the guys that comment spew, I respect overall that you have a pretty good handle on the dating game. I saw the post & advice you gave that one girl who posted. I’m wondering if you would give me your honest opinion on how well I can do in NYC dating based on my attractiveness & other stats? I just moved here from California & it’s a jungle out here :)

Background on me: I just turned 25, am 5’6, around 125 pounds (attached photos). 0.7 hip to waist ratio, D breasts (they’re real).

Other statistics: went to Stanford, used to work in finance but quit that when it started changing my personality into a man’s, am now a writer / marketer. I can be funny, I have good manners & etiquette, I’m usually very positive and nice, and guys I’ve dated have said I’m fun to be around / very low drama/maintenence. Although I can be opinionated & want to be respected, I definitely voice those opinions in a respectful way. I can also cook decently well & I like sex a lot.

Money is important to me since I want to be a stay at home mom eventually (or at least have the option) and I never want to worry about money, and I’m wondering if I can do better than the guy I’m currently dating who wants an exclusive relationship with me. As I know my prime is now, and my options will only decrease with time, I’m wondering if you can give me an honest opinion of whether I should stay with him or start taking other offers more seriously? My friends don’t like this guy because he gives people shit sometimes / doesn’t care about being polite & so they’re saying I can do better, but they always say that. I like him, and I want your opinion. I have recently had the CTO of [major bank] ask to date me, and various other high earning finance guys. I just want to know what my chances are of actually landing a guy like these instead of being dicked around, or if I should even be concerned with it since I am really enjoying the guy I have now who I think is on the way up and I’m definitely unsure I’ll be able to match the level of chemistry and compatibility? I am wary of dating in NY because I’ve heard how brutal it can be, and I remain pretty much unscathed so far. I’d really hate to lose my optimism by getting abused by some douchebag who was never that into me anyway.

There’s nothing wrong with us, we get along really well for the most party. [Editor: A most excellent Freudian slip.] He’s a beta, 27, learned a lot of this pickup stuff and is dominant, which is great. Also can be cooperative & talk about psychology / relationships with me, which is so fascinating. He comes from a poor background in eastern europe, just started working for a hedge fund (seems to be good at it, the youngest guy there by 20 years) & sends money back home (admirable but a possible detriment in the future if they need to be continually supported). Very focused & interesting. Negatives are that he can be manipulative & critical, and doesn’t socially dominate / lead like some guys I know (was very uncomfortable in one large party situation where he didn’t know anyone & I knew some guy friends from school). Although he’s not the largest guy (5’10), he could probably hold his own in a fight (have heard stories about his rough upbringing).

Anyway, your opinion would be greatly appreciated.

Sorry the email is really long, I’m not a concise person :)

L.

These are the pics of (presumably) herself she attached with her email:

She wants to know whether to stay with her doting, all-around niceguy boyfriend or to dump him to take one more stab at trading up in the hothouse dating market of Manhattan.

(rubbing hands)

She’s come to the right place!

Reading between the lines what we have here is a girl who likes, perhaps loves, her boyfriend, but has recently been propositioned for a date by a higher status man (the CTO of [major bank]). Her sexual market options suddenly thrown into stark relief, her hypergamous instinct is kicking in and she is contemplating, via the sounding board provided by the residents of the stately countryside Chateau, whether her boyfriend is really all that she thinks he is, and whether her ego isn’t as big as it deserves to be.

Gentlemen, behold the awesome power of female hypergamy. You can be the best boyfriend in the world, (and judging by her description of him, he sounds like a stand-up guy with plenty of positive traits), but if a higher ranking man comes along and shows some interest in your girlfriend (or wife!), you can bet your last penny she will be unable to resist pondering the opportunity to trade up and the concomitant reevaluation of her own market worth that goes along with attention from higher status suitors.

Women, of course, will cheer this as an example of female empowerment and being honest with oneself and yada yada down with the patriarchy yada, but imagine a man doing the same to his loyal girlfriend when a hotter, younger, tighter babe flirts with him. Those same women would be screaming like banshees from the rooftops.

It is the nature of the beast when the sexes have opposing reproductive goals.

But enough highlighting the underlying mechanism. Let’s examine this woman’s situation in point by point detail to determine whether it is in her interest to risk a breakup with Beta Lover for a shot at Mr. Big.

The Chateau keepers have reviewed the facts and rendered their judgment.

She is:

A 5.5. Maybe a 6 on a good day. She is not especially cute, but not invisibly plain either.

Her youth is her strongest asset. 25 years old gives her three to five years to complete her marriage quest according to the demands she has set for herself. Much depends on how well she ages. Her swarthy ancestry (Puerto Rican? Half black? Lebanese?) suggests she will stave off wrinkles for a longer time than the average white chick.

Her body is good. The numbers she has given put her at 20.1 BMI, which is right smack in the center of body weight desirability. But the photo she supplied makes her body look chubbier than would be expected with that low BMI. There is some tentative agreement among the hosts that she could stand to lose ten pounds.

Her breasts are magnificent funbags. But watch out! D cups are mesmerizing in their prime, but their prime is short-lived, surrendering rather quickly and ignominiously to National Geographic style sag.

The tone of her email gives the impression of a pleasant personality, but the content tells otherwise. She might qualify as a genuine golddigger. Golddiggers are one step below whores, because at least whores have the integrity to follow through on their end of the deal.

Look at the waist-hip ratio. She is the submissive type who needs a dominant man to make her feel like a woman.

She had a U-shaped smile. Untrustworthy.

Stanford? Irrelevant.

Writer/marketer? Irrelevant.

Good manners and etiquette? Meh. Girls who know where to place the salad fork have a detailed mental schematic for how to get them off in bed. Woe be the man who deviates from the script. Also, “good manners” reeks of try-hard, as if she is compensating for a poorly mannered cultural background.

Positive and nice? Your boyfriend might think differently if he reads this.

Opinionated? Translation: Loudmouthed nag.

Cooks well? Bonus.

Likes sex? Double plus bonus. But not much of a selling point in this raunchy day and age.

Her current boyfriend is:

A greater beta. He sounds like a higher ranking man than she is giving him credit for.

27 years old. So much for closeness of age being an important factor.

“Gives people shit sometimes / doesn’t care about being polite”: This is a trait of a greater beta, lesser alpha. Regular old betas do not give people shit. Instead, they take shit.

“On the way up”: Greater beta. At least.

“Level of chemistry and compatibility”: This guy sounds too good for her. If I were him I’d tell him to let her go get pump and dumped by the (likely married) CTO. When she comes crawling back, he can have his new, hotter girlfriend see her to the door.

“Learned a lot of this pickup stuff and is dominant”: Not seeing the problem with this guy? Oh, that’s right. He’s not a CTO. Manhattan, isle of twue wuv!

“Also can be cooperative & talk about psychology / relationships with me, which is so fascinating”: She is talking herself into staying with him. The hamster is really running the shit out of his little legs in this email.

Poor East Europe background? Irrelevant. Possible net positive, if he has brought over to America some of his cultural learnings for benefit of good wifely obedience.

Hedge fund work? Slimy, but alpha.

Sends money back home? As much as women say they admire generous family men, their self-interest pushes them into the arms of selfish men who give all their money only to wifey and the kids to the exclusion of her in-laws.

Manipulative and critical? Again, this is a characteristic of greater betas and alphas, not run of the mill betas. A beta always attempts to assuage his woman when she is upset. Stronger, more dominant men take a different tact.

Doesn’t always socially dominate/lead like other men she knows? This is beta, true. But it also shows how a woman’s perception of her lover is so heavily skewed by the behavior of other men in her social circle. If you are a beta, you’d do best to date a girl who is not often in the company of alphas.

5’10″? Neutral to slight negative.

******

The Chateau has rendered its judgment:

You are a fucking handful. You ask for advice, and yet every other sentence is a self-pleading justification for staying with your current boyfriend.

So stay with the man. But don’t be surprised if, in a few years time when his status goes up as yours is going down, he decides to dump your demanding 463 bullet-point checklist ass for a hotter chick.

Quite simply, in New York, you don’t have the looks to compete for the alphas as anything more than a convenient wet hole to be discarded unceremoniously when girlfriends #3 and #4 call.

Having delivered that harsh judgment, the Chateau does understand where you are coming from, and your feelings in the matter. A higher status CTO wants to fuck you. This makes you feel good about yourself, and you wonder if maybe, just maybe, this alpha will be the one who marries you and gives you the life of the princess stay at home mommy you’ve always dreamed of. There is room in the world for such arrangements. But based on your looks, it is more likely that you will begin dating the CTO only to either

a. find out he is married, or

b. get dumped after a three month fling.

What you didn’t tell us was a description of the looks of the CTO. If he is particularly ugly or nebbishy then there is a chance that dumping your loyal boyfriend to date him would work out for you. It’s not as if there aren’t plenty of couples featuring hot chicks dating physically unimpressive but rich herbs in our glorious cities.

But the bottom line is this: You answered your own question.

If you were truly tempted to stray with the CTO or any other high flying finance guy, you would have done it without emailing the Chateau beforehand for the imaginary green light. That you have done this instead tells us that you find yourself falling in love with your good-hearted but sometimes awkward boyfriend, and it scares you.

It scares you because love means a cutting off of options. But that is a risk worth taking. Before it’s too late.

Great Zing

In the comments section to an article in The Daily Mail about the gilded weaponry of Mexican drug lords, Bill from Richmond, VA responded to an effete glove slap from an Englishman.

“Its so comforting to know that our American friends have so much time to concentrate on the finer things in life such as part and model numbers of guns… keeep it up chaps!”

- Peahead, Hebden Bridge

Well, Nancy, the next time the topic is part and model numbers of the latest purses, we’ll be sure to ask you.

- Bill, Richmond, VA

Ya gotta hit em where it hurts. And with the Euroweenies, that’s just about everywhere.

Hoax?

Has the Chateau been duped by a scorned beta male? A reader (who shall remain anonymous) emailed the following to Chateau headquarters regarding yesterday’s post about a woman seeking advice whether to upgrade from her current boyfriend to a luxury model alpha:

That chick has used the name [xxxxxx] to comment on other blogs. She frequents [another dating website]. She previously claimed that she was a virgin. Her real name is [xxxxxxx]. She didn’t seem dumb enough to do this so I’m thinking maybe someone with a grudge is pretending to be her. If it is really her, this is an epic fucking fail on her part.

As has been repeated here many times, if you email looking for advice and don’t specify that you wish to keep it private and off the blog, your email can and sometimes will be used for a post. The girl in question did not state any wish for her advice-seeking email to be kept private. Fair warning was given, and total privacy was offered. Chateau proprietors keep their word.

However, if it is the case that someone impersonated her, then this is unfortunate. Betas impersonating in email their cheating girlfriends, ex-girlfriends or women they just don’t like for whatever personal reason and pretending to seek advice from your humble hosts in hopes of exacting a bit of the ol’ ultravengeance through the medium of this blog are engaging in subterfuge of the vilest sort. We run a tight operation here. And the Chateau *really* doesn’t like to play the dupe.

It’s a clever ploy, and one that is impossible for Chateau keepers to defend against. Thus, because of the ploy’s indefensibility and potential to harm innocent parties, the post has been removed. In addition, all future reader mailbags have been put on hold until further notice. There is now no way for the hosts here to know which emails requesting advice are genuine and which are impersonations by sly, vengeful betas intent on summoning the Kraken for a game of “let’s her and Chateau fight”.

While there is no hard proof that the original email is fake, the Chateau has decided to take all necessary precautions and treat it as if it were fake. As a result, the reader mailbag is dead. So thank you, haxxor betas, you have ruined it for every other emailer seeking genuine advice to improve their love lives and find happiness.

New Rule For Reader Mailbag

If you write in for advice and have included photos of yourself, write the word “Chateau” on your palm and hold it up for the camera. Make sure it is clearly seen, along with your face, in the same pic. This will serve as the verification process, and prevent future cat’s-paw breaches of the Chateau grounds.

A Chick Who Gets It

The purple nail polish is killer. Now if we could just get wide angle shot with nekkid breastessesss included.

“There is no God but Love and Breastessesss are His prophet”

The Plain Girl Test

Whenever you’re stuck with a particular girl you’re trying to bed, and wondering what to do next, a good mental test to give yourself is to swap roles so that you are the one being chased by the girl. Except that in this reformulation, the girl is a plain looking girl for whom you have no strong feelings one way or the other. In other words, imagine a plain girl is gaming you exactly the same way you are gaming the new girl you want. The psychology of this scenario closely mimics what is going on in most girls’ heads when you game them. Does this imaginary plain girl’s game actively repulse you or does it spark an attraction for her? If it repulses you, then you’ll know that the game you are running on the actual girl is probably repulsing her as well.

For example (actual email from a male reader seeking advice):

An acquaintance invites me to meet some girls who are in town for a short while. It turned out to be a chaperoned “date” with his parents, us two guys and three girls. We are seated strategically, but I’m not next to the girl I want to know. After stupid conversation my friend and I take two of the girls to a nearby bar. I suggest we break into a nearby campus and make other comments. In the car ride to the next place, the girl says “sketch” and says that the guy in front has better conversations.

I know, half of that paragraph was Beta. Anyhow, the girl I was furthest from was hanging on my every word and gave me her number. I barely said “hi” to her, but she saw the attention the other girls received. I have her b-card and number. How to proceed? I was thinking “You didn’t get to talk to me, though you were dying to. Coffee?” I hear she has a bf, but that does not concern either of us.

The emailer should imagine he is being chased by a plain girl running the same game that he is thinking about running on this chick he likes. So in this thought experiment the plain girl has his business card (nevermind how she got it, it’s irrelevant), and she has just called or texted and said the following to our emailer:

“You didn’t get to talk to me, though you were dying to. Coffee?”

As a man, would you be more or less interested in a plain chick who texted the above to you? Probably less. It sounds like a girl who is trying vainly to conceal her motives, i.e. try-hard. If you were the man being chased by a plain girl running this game, you would say to yourself “No, I’m not really dying to talk to her.”

Well, that’s close to what the real life hot chick is saying to herself.

Now what if the plain girl called or, preferably, texted you this instead:

“I have your business card for some reason. Did we talk last night?”

More intriguing, eh? A little more aloof, too. You’d wonder if this plain chick was hotter than you thought, and you’d be compelled to follow-up with an offer to meet. Well, if our emailer sends this improved version to the real life hot chick, she will think the same way. This text is tighter game.

The plain girl test won’t apply in every hypothetical situation, but it is a handy guide for deciding whether your next move would be ill-advised or helpful toward getting the close.

Scaring A Girl Into Sexual Arousal

I have this fire- and waterproof safe at home. I store financial papers, love letters from past and former girlfriends, and backup hard drives in it. In other words, anything that I don’t want a girl I am dating to see, or to ever see.

Maxim #20: Do not ever reveal the details of your finances to a girlfriend or wife. Avoid getting joint accounts. As a man, you must draw a line in the sand separating money from love. If she balks, dump her.

Naturally, when girls come over and happen to notice the safe (it’s in a closet) they are curious about its contents. Most of them are usually savvy enough to refrain from asking me what’s inside while the relationship is still in its infancy. If a girl is champing at the bit that hard to discover my secrets so soon after starting to date, then she is likely an untrustworthy, self-aggrandizing prospect for the long term. If she asks after a couple of years, that’s more understandable. But she still won’t get to know.

There’s something else I keep in the safe. Since I know that a girl will sometimes ask, I have prepared for the eventuality.

GIRL: “Ooo, you have a safe. Um… so what’s in it?”

THE GRAVEN IMAGE U FAP TO: “The severed fingers of my enemies in a jar.”

GIRL: “Ha, ha, funny. No, seriously.”

At which point, and with a totally straight face, I open the safe and remove a jar of yellow red-ish liquid resembling formaldehyde containing severed fingers which I then show to her. The last time I did this, the girl screamed at the top of her lungs and fell backwards over my couch, bruising her shin on my coffee table in the process.

You can get realistic looking novelty severed fingers at any online magic shop.

Later that night, we copulated with a ferocity that would have made wild boar sex seem tender in comparison. She never asked to see what was in the safe again.

So, yes, there does appear to be a direct line of connection between the fright neurons and the vagina neurons in girls’ brains. Stimulate one, and the other kicks out reflexively. (During foreplay, girls are often frightened — and cross-eyed — when I whip out my enormous offshore drill.)

Surprising girls with pranks is also an effective arousal state inducer. The girl in this video might have been pissed for an hour after she was victimized by her boyfriend’s prank, but I guarantee he had the best sex of his life that night.

Men Can’t Get Raped in Korea?

( Source )

But in Korea at least, perhaps the most appropriate revenge would have been to inflict the same back on the rapists? For I’ve just been shocked to learn that legally speaking, men can’t actually be the victims of rape here.

In fairness however, Korea is by no means the only jurisdiction that strictly defines rape as non-consensual penile penetration of the vagina, so perhaps my reaction was quite naive. But still, recall that not only is spousal rape not a crime, and that the Korean Bar Association remains opposed to its criminalization, but that there is also endemic sexual violence within the military. So it’s not like some decidedly archaic notions of sexual identity and rape don’t still exist both in theory and in practice in Korea.

Accordingly, the fact that males can’t be raped is not so much highlighted as taken for granted in the webtoon Judge Byeon Hak-do’s Puzzling Law Questions (알쏭달쏭 변학도 판사의 법률이야기) below, instead focusing on the question of if a rapist of a male to female transsexual would be charged with rape or indecent assault instead, concluding that as the victims are not considered women in Korean society then it would be the latter. And indeed as of 2006, only 25 transsexuals had been successful (and 26 denied) in their applications to change their legal gender, easily the most famous being entertainer Harisu (하리수) and model Choi Han-bit (최한빛) below:

( Sources: T-L, T-R, B-L, B-R )

Without discounting all the work that Harisu in particular has done for LGBT rights and highlighting the plight of transsexuals, as celebrities their experiences are probably not representative, and so for anyone further interested in the subject then I highly recommend the excellent chapter “Hallyoo, Ballyhoo, and Harisu: Marketing and Representing the Transgendered in South Korea” in Complicated Currents: Media Flows, Soft Power, and East Asia (2010), downloadable for free here (full disclosure: I’d priase any book that mentions this blog!), and from which the above figure was taken. As for the webtoon itself, unfortunately it raises more questions than answers, and the last 2 panels make little sense (I think they’re supposed to be a joke?). But I’m not going to write it off because of the medium (quite the opposite), and unlike the pig-ignorant, racist, and anti-Semitic comic history books that some of you may recall from 2007, the webtoon series as a whole does at least seem to be written by someone who knows the subject, probably even by a judge himself.

Below, I’ve literally translated all of it, adding notes where necessary, but as always I welcome and appreciate any corrections:

• Comic #2. In the case of the rape of a man who has had a sex change operation to become a woman, does that [actually] carry the charge of rape?

• Heo-poong, we are going to launch a product called “Eong-bbong”, and want you to come up with a marketing plan.

What’s an Eong-bbong?

• Eong-bbong: a device to create an S-line by putting it under a skirt or pants.

How would wearing that feel?

“Eong-bbong” is actually quite a good name: it comes from a combination of the “eong” in eongdeongee (엉덩이), or bottom, and “bbong” (뽕), not unlike “boing” in English.

Meanwhile, when Heo-poong asks how wearing that would feel, he means literally or physically, not in the psychological sense of what it would be like to be a woman having her S-line ogled.

• Okay then, let’s try becoming a woman!

Hee (Your guess is as good as mine)

• Done/Changed!

Syoong! (a quick moving sound, in this case through a magic portal used in all the other stories)

• Oh~Oh~~

Cheok! (a grabbing sound?)

What’s this?

• Your bottom is so pretty…

Hweik! (used for something sudden and abrupt)

Jerk!

Yaaargh!

• You bastard, you want to eat rice and beans (prison food) by raping someone?

• Stop!

Beonjjok (Flash)

• Go back to Judge Byeon Hag-do and try asking about what the crime of rape is!

GGudeok, ggdeok (Nod, Nod)

• What? You say you almost got raped??

• According to article 297 of the criminal code, a person who rapes a woman by violence or threat of violence gets a jail term of at least 3 years.

• So in other words, the only people that can be raped are women?

Woman, then Syak! (quick swishing sound?)

If so, what are women?

• Here in article 297, all females are referred to: adult women, teenagers and girls, married women, and unmarried women.

Who doesn’t know that?!! (lit. Where is someone that doesn’t know that?!!)

• A man who dresses as a woman is only a woman on the surface. But for someone to be called [really be] a woman, they need to have the heart, mind, and body of a woman.

The Korean maum (마음) is often translated just as “mind” in English, but if you just ask Koreans where it is located then they’ll usually say the chest, let alone often use it in a “heart” sense. I don’t think there is any real distinction between them in Korean.

• However, what about the case of a man who has had a sex change operation and thinks of himself as a woman?

• Let’s have a look for any precedents.

Chwa-ra-rak~ (the sound of flicking through pages?)

• If Miss “I am a woman” was a man and has a sex change operation…

When I go in I’m a man

When I come out I’m a woman

• …through having her male “important parts” changed to a woman’s, she comes to think of herself as a woman.

Finally, I’ve found myself.

I’ve found where I belong!

• And her personality is completely like a woman’s, and she also completely looks like a woman, and has lived as a woman…

A cockroach!

My master/mistress~

• Then Mr. Evil rapes Miss “I am a woman”, all the while thinking she was born a woman, will he be charged with rape?

Sob sob sob~

You bastard! I will curse you forever!

“Mr Evil” may sound facetious, but actually boolhandang (불한당) is the usual term for a bad person, a little like the bogeyman in English (but more specifically a criminal of some sort). Meanwhile, jooinnim (주인님) is gender neutral, so I don’t know if the caterpillar(?) thinks of Heo-poong as a man or a woman sorry.

• There is a precedent for this.

• The sex chromosomes, internal physiology and external genitalia were all male…

(Before the operation)

• He lived as normal man, but a time came when he wanted to have a sex change operation…

Feelings of confusion about if he was a man or woman.

A hard time doing his military service.

He met his true love, a man.

After the operation.

• After the operation, she had no reproductive ability as a woman, so in the case of average people on the street’s assessments of and attitudes towards her…

• They would decide that she couldn’t be called a woman.

- Not a woman~

• This way, even if you had had a sex change operation, someone who rapes you would not be charged with rape.

• Of course, being a woman is not a prerequisite for charging the perpetrator with indecent assault under article 298 of the criminal code, yes?

• According to article 298 of the criminal code (indecent assault), if someone assaults another through the threat of violence then he or she can go to jail for a maximum of 10 years or pay a maximum penalty of 15 million won.

In this case, “assault” means not just something which infringes on the victims’ sexual freedom and is in contradiction to normal sexual ethics, but also leaves them with a sense of sexual shame and disgust (Shim Hwae-gee, Official Law Studies (#359), 2004)

• This was also established by the Supreme Court in their judgment on case 96.791 on June 11, 1996.

• Your honor, do you think that Miss “I am a woman” is also included in the definition of woman for the charge of rape to apply?

• What’s that got to do with anything? I just want to do whatever feels good~

Bbok (Bash?)

• Master/Mistress, kill this bastard in self-defence!!

Sure!

Bbak! (Bash?)

• That’s strange?? The contents of the Supreme Court’s judgment on case 96.791 on June 11, 1996 have been changed!!

• Clearly, it was about rape, but here…

Gyaoodoong (?)

• Now it’s about how far one is justified in inflicted violence in self-defense??

Save me~

Oodangtang (Thump! Stamp!)

Fade to White

Recently waking up to find the family camera in the kitchen sink and full of pictures of the ceiling, 2 year-old Elizabeth’s feet, and my wife and I sleeping naked in bed…then I’ve wisely decided to hide it from 4 year-old Alice in future. And what better place than the computer bag I take with me everywhere?

Unfortunately though, this subsequent attempt at my own photos on Sunday was taken in between chasing after both daughters, which gave me no time to change the camera settings. Still, I do love the juxtaposition, and I only wish that I’d stood a little closer to make it clearer, for the woman probably has the most dejected, doleful expression I’ve seen in my entire life:

( Source left: Hera )

Seriously, is anyone else also feeling sorry for her now?

Fighting Sexual Harassment at Samsung: Part 2

( “What? Sexual Harassment at Samsung Electronics?? Heaven Forbid!”. Source )

This post, about Lee Eun-eui’s successful suit against Samsung Electronics for sexual harassment by her boss and then being punished for reporting it, follows directly from Part 1. If you haven’t already, please read that before continuing:

블로그에 “1차 레이싱이 얼추 막이 내렸다“라고 썼더라. 1차 레이싱을 뛰고 난 소감이 어떤가.

On your blog, you wrote that”The First Round is almost over”. How do feel about that?

아직 실감이 잘 안 난다. 꿈꾸는 것 같다. 회사가 항소를 할 건지 안 할 건지에 따라 바뀌겠지만, 지금은 해묵은 숙제를 끝내고 조금 쉴 수 있는 시간이다(삼성은 “내부적으로 법률적인 판단을 거친 뒤 항소 여부를 결정할 것이다”라고 밝혔다). 판결 뒤 며칠 편하게 잠을 잤다. 사건을 겪으면서 죽고 싶다는 생각도 많이 했다. 내가 일하는 건물(수원 삼성전기 본사)에서 죽을까, 삼성 본관이 있는 강남이나 태평로로 갈까…생각하면서. 그런데서 죽었으면 신문에 한 줄이라도 날까? 결국 살아서 싸우니까 좋은 결과를 본다고 판단했다. 삼성 사건 치고는 기사도 많이 나왔다(웃음).

It doesn’t feel like it’s real yet. It’s like a dream. Of course, Samsung may yet decide to file an appeal, but for now at least I am finally able to finish all my work related to the case and take a rest (Samsung stated that it will “decide whether or not to file an appeal after discussing the legal judgment within the company”), and I’ve slept soundly in the few days since the judgment was handed down. While the case was going on, I often thought of killing myself, but wondered whether to do it at my workplace (Suwon Samsung Electronics branch), at Samsung’s headquarters in Gangnam, or on Taepyeong Road [in front of Seoul City Hall - James]…but if I did, would it even get one line in a newspaper? So, I decided to carry on and fight, and in the end I was able to see a good result. And now (laughing) there are many articles about Samsung electronics in the news!

5억을 제기했었는데, 판결은 4천만 원을 배상하라고 나왔다.

You sued Samsung for 500 million won (US$422, 305), but were only awarded 40 (US$33,784)…?

따 지자면 5억을 받아도 성에 차지 않지만, 금액이 중요한 게 아니라 내용이 중요하다. 판사도 용기 있는 결단을 했다고 생각한다. 판결문 보고 엉엉 울었다. 판사에게 너무 고마웠다. 억울했던 것들에 대해서 인정을 받았으니까. 판사는 수많은 재판 중에 한 건이겠지만, 이건 굉장히 많은 여성 직장인들에게 큰 영향을 미칠 거라고 생각한다. ‘네가 이겨줘서 고맙다’ ‘뜨거운 마음으로 박수를 보낸다’ 등 연락도 많이 받았다. 회사에서 어려움을 겪는 분들, 특히 여직원들이 상담을 해오기도 한다. 아주 많은 숫자는 아니지만, 중요하다고 생각한다. 4천만 원을 배상하라는 것과는 비교할 수 없는 일이다. 회사가 항소하지 않으면 나도 안 할 생각이다. 이 판결을 그대로 유지하고 싶다.

이은의씨는 “미안한다는 말이 그렇게 어려웠을까”라고 기자에게 되물었다. 그녀는 가해자나 회사가 ‘미안하다’라며 사과를 했다면 소송까지도 가지 않았을 것이라고 했다.

Even if I’d received the full 500 million won, that wouldn’t have been enough to satisfy my anger, but then the amount isn’t the important thing anyway. I thought that the judge was very brave with his final decision, and I wept as it was read out, I was so thankful to him for showing everyone that what I’d said was true. And while to him this was surely just one case out of many, I think it will have a huge effect on women workers. I have received many messages like “Thank you for your victory” and “I applaud you with a warm heart” and so on, and have also been asked for advice from other women experiencing similar problems at their own companies. While their numbers aren’t great, I think that it is very important, and 40 million won can’t compare to that. And if Samsung doesn’t appeal, then I won’t either: I want this judgment to stick. (source, above)

“Was it really so difficult for them to say sorry”? Lee Eun-eui asked. And she adds that if the offender or the company had simply apologized, then she probably wouldn’t have gone so far as to file a lawsuit against them.

2005년 5월 이후, 판결이 나기까지 5년이 걸렸다. 싸움이 쉽지 않았을 것 같다.

It has been 5 years since the first incident in May 2005 to the final judgment. It can’t have been easy.

사내에서 받아들여지지 않아 2007년 인권위에 진정했다. 인권위가 삼성전기에 재발방지 대책 수립 권고를 내렸지만, 회사는 권고를 취하해 달라며 행정소송을 제기했다. 그리고 2008년 내가 제기한 민사소송(손해배상)까지 내면서 ‘전문가’가 됐다. ‘삼성’이라고 하면 어느 곳도 싸워주겠다고 제대로 덤비는 곳이 없었다. 어렵게 도와주시는 변호사를 만났지만, 그런 과정을 거치다 보니 시간이 길어졌다.

회사가 ‘미안하다’라고만 했어도 일이 이렇게까지 안 됐을 거다. 사과는 커녕 ‘외부에 이런 사실을 알리면 민형사상 소송을 진행하겠다’라는 회사의 메일을 받을 때마다 처음엔 무서웠다. 인권위에 진정하기 전까지 2년 동안 병이 났다. 아버지가 갑자기 돌아가시고, 부서에서는 내쳐지고…배신감과 누적된 정신적 피로감이 폭발해서 실어증이 왔다. 당시에는 말만 시작하면 계속 울었다. 회사가 ‘성희롱 없었다’ ‘대기발령도 사실이 아니다’ ‘왕따도 없었다’라며 전면적으로 부정하는 데 정말 할 말을 잃었다. 결국 인권위에서 권고가 나왔고, 회사가 인권위에 제기한 행정소송에서도 인권위의 손을 들어줬다. 이번 민사소송도 승소했고. 주위에서는 ‘기적’이라고 한다.

As nothing was done within the company about my accusations, in 2007 I informed the Human Rights Commission, and they made an official recommendation to Samsung that the company needed to institute measures to prevent such sexual harassment from occurring again. Rather than following that recommendation however, Samsung sued the Human Rights Commission to have that recommendation withdrawn! Then in 2008 I filed my own civil suit against Samsung for personal damages, and in the process became quite the legal expert, as there were no lawyers prepared to take up my case and defy Samsung. In the end I did find a lawyer to help though, but that was just the start of a long and arduous legal process. (source, above)

If only Samsung had said sorry, things would never have gone this far. But rather than apologize, instead they sent me emails saying they would sue me if I informed anyone outside the company of it, which was very scary at first. And in the 2 years before I informed the Human Rights Commission, I got very sick. My father suddenly passed away, I was completely cut out of the department I’d worked in…I felt such a sense of betrayal, and the mental stress and fatigue just kept accumulating and accumulating to the extent that I even developed aphasia; whenever I started speaking, I would cry [James - It's a minor point, but wouldn't that really be depression?]. But the company completely lied and said that there was no sexual harassment, that I was not placed on extended leave, and that I was not ostracized at work, which just left me speechless anyway! In the end, once the Human Right Commission’s recommendation came, the company sued them but lost, and this time I won too. People around me say it’s a miracle.

( Source )

And daughters permitting, Part 3 of the interview will be up on Monday!

Korean Gender Reader

( Source )

1) As mentioned in #9 last week, Christian Dior has been heavily criticized on the web for the heavily Orientalist imagery of its latest advertising campaign Shanghai Dreams. But it turns out not to be Christian Dior’s own creation, but rather that of Chinese photographer Quentin Shih, who commented in an interview at China Rises that he:

…wanted to express a dialogue between Chinese fashion (60s to 90s) and Western fashion (Dior Haute Couture represents it the most). During that time, China was a country with socialism — people wearing all the same outfits and divided into different groups/identities like workers, students, intellectuals etc.

And that far from being racist, the Caucasian model:

…stands there only to represent the clothes, not herself and not a western people. I was not lucky enough to shoot a Chinese model wearing Dior — if I did I would have put her in my work.

But as commenters there point out, given the obvious potential for misinterpretation then it was still a bad choice on Christian Dior’s part, and in particular Gary Soup says:

I half agree with Shih. The “cloning” of a representation of a Mao-era worker is just a device frequently encountered in contemporary Chinese art. It’s generally used to good effect, and the artist seldom seen as racist. But China certainly has plenty of tall, elegant models who could pull off the generational contrast, and the use of a Caucasian model certainly seems to send the wrong message.

While we’re on the subject of art, see works by Zhang Wei for examples of a common Occidentalist theme in East Asia, particularly Qi BaiShi vs. Marilyn Monroe and Madonna vs. Qi BaiShi (both NSFW).

( Source )

2) Just out of curiosity, I noticed these Bunny Girl-like headbands above all over Haeundae Beach last weekend, and wonder if they are just a Busan thing, or if they are the fashion in the rest of Korea too?

For a photo to compare the originals, see this interesting article about how the “Chick-Lit” label is very frustrating for women authors!

3) A doctor in Gwangju has been arrested for molesting sleep-induced patients, and was ultimately caught when one became suspicious and brought a hidden camera in her bag.

This reminds me of a UK scheme I once read about to prevent such abuses, under which all patient visits were to be recorded by a security camera and automatically deleted perhaps 3 months later, but before which they could be reviewed by authorities if any allegations of abuse are made. Can anyone confirm if that scheme was actually implemented?

4) From this week, sex-offenders and murderers are to be paroled wearing electronic ankle bracelets. See #2 here for more on why now exactly, but regardless it’s about time, as despite its low crime rate in general Korea is in fact becoming one of the worst places in the world for sex crimes against teenagers, outnumbering those in Japan by more than three times and Germany by nearly nine times. Moreover, those high figures are despite a great number of such cases ending up being unsettled because victims are reluctant to undergo police investigations, and also the age of consent in Korea being 13 serving to lower the number of ultimate prosecutions.

Meanwhile, the Korean military has set August up as a special month to reduce sex crimes within the ranks; see my post Sex as Power in the South Korean Military for more background, and also this follow-up.

( Source )

5) Not unsurprisingly, a recent straw poll has shown that most teen mothers quit school. Also, the numbers of miscarriages and infertile couples are rising, as are the numbers of women drinking alcohol during pregnancy, and it probably doesn’t help that some old people are almost literally assaulting pregnant women for sitting in subway seats reserved for both of them either.

Perhaps the government response will again be to devise slogans to encourage childbirth, just like in Taiwan?

On the positive side though, the drama Nanun Jonsol Eeda (I am Legend; 나는전설이다) is currently providing a very positive portrayal of a young single mother. And for positive news in real life, see the New York Times for more on a group that is resisting the Korean stigma for unwed mothers.

6) I haven’t been following the inane “virtual marriages” of various celebrities on Korean variety shows in recent years, but hijinx at SeoulBeats notes that in one, Ga-in of the Brown Eyed Girls has yet to show her bare face to “husband” to Jo-kwon of 2AM, and says that apparently a lot of Korean women do go out of their way to always have make-up on when their boyfriends or even husbands see their faces. Which says a great deal about their relationships if true, but is it?

7) Unfortunately the video that spawned it has since been removed from YouTube, but still see Curiosity Killed The Eccentric Yoruba for a great post on relationships between African women and Korean men. And for more practical advice, also see The Three Wise Monkeys and Hot Yellow Fellows for why you can seem to be having a great relationship with a Korean guy…but then all of a sudden he may completely and inexplicably cut off all contact with you.

8) Not that he doesn’t still have a great body, but perhaps I was mistaken in thinking that singer Chang-min’s pecs had been badly photoshopped?

( Source )

9) I’ll let Lee’s review of Remembering Koryo, a fascinating book written by S.K. Chae, a Korean French adoptee, speak for itself:

The story of Korean adoption is highly complex and prone to being misunderstood. While I don’t claim to know the whole truth behind the scenes, I do know some things from my own experiences and have heard a lot more from interacting with others in the Korean adoptee community. Making claims for or against adoption is futile unless one first understands that each case is unique and that there are a multitude of societal forces at play.

Remembering Koryo follows the lives of a few Korean adoptees returning to Korea for various reasons. The stories are unique and colourful, easily understood by an adoptee like myself, but perhaps more unfamiliar to the average reader. To appreciate Remembering Koryo in a realistic context, one first needs to know a little more about Korean adoption in general.

Read the rest at Lee’s Korea Blog.

10) “As pedotastic as some of us feared” says Extra! Korea of GP Basic’s new video, whom with an average age of just 15 years, are easily Korea’s youngest girlgroup. But is it as bad as that? Take a look for yourself below, and see my posts Reading “The Lolita Effect” in Korea and Ajosshis & Girls’ Generation: The Panic Interface of Korean Sexuality for some context, then two separate posts by hijinx at SeoulBeats here and here for a big debate among its readers: