A couple weeks ago, I attended the above webinar with 3 South Korean Radfems. It was amazing.
I will warn you, some of the subject matter is not light. The first presentation in particular, around 2:00, is about digital sex crimes.
The presentation that most excited me has, unfortunately, been cut from the recording due to privacy. I'll do my best to summarize it.
Essentially, part of the momentum for the Radical Feminist movement in South Korea has been private social media groups. Jihye Kuk, the presenter, personally had experience with private Facebook groups. There would be groups within groups, and the most closely guarded groups would be invite-only and you swore to never show the group to anyone not in the group, not even screenshots.
They would start with large, generic feminism groups that anyone could join, and these were basically for general discussion. You could then ask to join smaller, more radical feminism groups. (They weren't radical feminism groups yet, that comes later. It was more a halfway point between liberal feminism and radical feminism, if my memory serves.) These would only have women who were actively feminists and would be more of a sisterhood, less of a free for all discussion. They often asked each other for help, even sharing posts where men were being sexist or awful, and many women would mercilessly shame the sexist man in question.
From these smaller, opt-in groups, you were watched and vetted until you earned an invite into the smallest, most secret radical feminism groups. This is where the real activism and sisterhood happened. The groups would have innocuous names in order to protect feminists from doxxing. Unfortunately, the group that Jihye was in was found out because one of the women showed the group to someone else.
A big part of the reason they went through so much vetting and security protocols was because of the presence of male trolls who would try and infiltrate these groups. I see many women on here are already enacting various vetting protocols for zoom calls, discord servers, etc. and personally it's nice to know we're not alone in that. Other women are taking the same precautions, other women are in a very similar fight.
In my mind, the important takeaway is that we need to connect with each other. We need to support each other, back each other up, help each other be effective activists, be a collective group instead of individuals feeling helpless. We need to learn from the success of South Korean Radfems and bring that energy into wherever we are.
I would love to hear anyone's thoughts on this.
Disclaimer: I do not fully agree with all of WOLF's stances.
