Terrorism (2)

That was me, according to the bastards in the video. Without even noticing, I'd unlocked another life achievement and become a household name.

I was the one who'd been hit with a protest-slash-terror attack, and somehow I'd become the perpetrator. Same old playbook as always. I supposed it was only natural — once people could eat well enough again, this kind of thing started cropping back up.

The whole thing was so absurd I skipped my lunch appointment with Hanna and kept replaying the video.

The courage to change the world, my ass. That was just terrorism. And the bodyguards who took those filth bombs to the face — what the hell were they guilty of?

Classic terrorist logic. We had no choice but to commit the illegal act of terrorism because you wouldn't listen to us. Was that even a fucking argument?

And that was classic feminist logic. God, my head hurt.

Rape culture? What the hell was that supposed to be? In my entire life I'd never once felt that such a culture existed in Korea, and I'd certainly never taken part in one.

I was exploiting women? Satisfying my sexual desires? Me — the man who kept going five times a day, half-dead from it, out of a sense of responsibility? These days I was struggling because I couldn't even work up the desire to satisfy. Sure, I'd enjoyed it. That didn't mean it wasn't exhausting.

I paused the video to look up this rape culture they kept talking about, and it came right up. They dressed it up in dense vocabulary and words I'd never seen in my life, but boiled down to a single line, it went like this:

In the end, that was just… actively putting your attractiveness ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠on display to another person, man or woman alike. So how the hell was that rape culture? The more I looked at it, the more it seemed like there was a gap between the actual meaning and the flavor of the words they'd chosen. Then again, wildly exaggerating things and slapping newly invented words onto them was this crowd's whole species-trait. This was probably more of the same.

The tragedy was the situation humanity was in. These people hadn't changed at all. Still the same. Every time a war broke out, it was men's fault. Look at them, telling only the stories they wanted to tell, because the men who'd died as victims could no longer speak.

And I'd gone and fulfilled my ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠military service — quietly accepted conscription — all to protect women like this. My patriotism was melting away by the second. What had I been doing it for, having sex five times a day, every single day, without fail?

…This bitch?

So now that there was nobody left to get offended by what she said, she'd say anything? There wasn't a thing she wouldn't say. Not a single thing.

Right… Start with the gender conflict, then split the upper class from the lower class with a sentimental reading of it. Of course they had to get that in too.

That, at least, was the one thing she'd gotten right.

What kind of homes had these people grown up in, to hate their fathers this much? I'd been wondering for a while, the way they'd been at it all this time. I'd grown up in a single-parent household too, and I never turned out like this.

Oh, there it was. The love of "support" and "solidarity," showing up here too.

I was going out of my mind. Why the hell was I a misogynist?

No matter how many times I replayed it, it was all nonsense. I didn't even know where to start, how to respond, or what to say. Had I always been this stupid? No. That wasn't it. I even seemed to feel a kind of self-reproach, confronted with facts and a reality I couldn't make sense of.

And how was I supposed to deal with this…

First I figured I should call the auntie who'd hung up on me, so I put the call through and managed to get a conversation out of her. I had to wait quite a while, though.

On that call, she told me to sit tight until things quieted down. If the government put out a statement, she figured it would naturally fade away — just a passing wind. Around 2017, was it? Compared to then, by around 2022 it had quieted down too.

Yeah. You could think that. It was a possible way of looking at it.

But I couldn't see it that way. Human beings are not that rational. Think about it even roughly: when a political group that benefits them comes along, people quietly go along with it and take their cut. Then they dodge the moral criticism by saying they didn't know, and dump it all on the politicians. And the politicians turn around and say they did it because the people who supported them wanted it. Nobody takes responsibility. This was passive-aggressiveness, that particular specialty of women.

Which was why I could feel a genuine threat to my life. If this wave grew and grew and overturned the world and the rules we'd worked so hard to build, I would actually end up in a semen extraction facility.

Listen to what they were saying. They wanted to create a new world. What those feminists typically meant by that was obvious: a crime-free society, built by eliminating toxic masculinity. Because they thought men were the agents of all crime.

And in their heads, they'd pick and choose only the tall, good-looking ones among the few remaining men to use as breeding stallions, and the rest of the boys could die doing hard labor or in assorted industrial accidents for all they cared. They were the kind of people who thought that was simply what those consumed men were for.

Then they'd take the sperm extracted from the stallions, grind it together with sperm banks that wouldn't even function in the current situation and the already insufficient medical personnel needed for IVF, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠and somehow convince themselves they could overcome this tragedy that way. And then they'd try to control the boys who would be born with misandrist education and a thicket of regulations, telling them that men were historically the perpetrators, possessed of a violent nature that had to be kept in check.

Stupid bastards. Just thinking about it was horrifying. Of course a world like that had no future, and of course it would fail. Then who would they blame next? The few remaining men? No. They'd blame the men who went to war.

They wouldn't understand that this country called the Republic of Korea had ended up on the winning side, that it had originally ranked among the developed nations, and that through the efforts of a great many people it was still, even now, in a livable condition. They didn't know — that was why they were pulling this shit. They'd really gotten too well-fed.

Right now, in other countries, on other continents, societies were collapsing. People were starving to death. One nation went bankrupt, and the refugees that produced were collapsing the country next door… It was a living hell out there, and this was what they were doing.

Anyway, I had to smash this bullshit so thoroughly they'd never dare bring it up again. In the old days I could have borrowed the strength of other men, but now this country barely had over five hundred. Give me a break. This was just too despairing.

Who was the socially disadvantaged here? Women? Was that right? If I remembered correctly, even before the war broke out, men had been treated as third-class citizens. And even now, with only about five hundred of us left — were men really the ones with the social power?

Ha… This fight was going to come down to who could persuade the ordinary female population — and how the hell was I supposed to do that? Whatever I said, it would have a man said— tacked onto it.