A politician in South Korea is being criticised for making dangerous and unsubstantiated comments after linking a rise in male suicides to the increasingly “dominant” role of women in society.

In a report, Seoul City councillor Kim Ki-duck argued women’s increased participation in the workforce over the years had made it harder for men to get jobs and to find women who wanted to marry them.

He said the country had recently “begun to change into a female-dominant society” and that this might "partly be responsible for an increase in male suicide attempts”.

South Korea has one of the highest suicide rates among the world’s rich countries but also has one of the worst records on gender equality.

Councillor Kim’s comments have been criticised as the latest in a series of out-of-touch remarks made by male politicians.

  • Blaine
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    5 months ago

    If you’re going to fight a just but losing battle, fight the one that informs all others that won’t get rotten fruit unfairly pelted at you in the public square.

    Love this line. I’ve been eating a lot of fruit here on Lemmy. Going to have to put some thought into this one.

    • Allonzee@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      I did as well when I started pontificating on the current gender conflict, only to be rebuked not on the facts or the data, but on the feels with ad hominems directed at me.

      But the thing is, in addition to dictating all poors must work in the wake of the loss of their jim crow pseudo-slave workforce, the market capitalists want us divided in every conceivable way so we never look up at them basking in the dragon hoards we never stop growing for them with our bodies.

      They use the media they own and the curriculum they inform through captured governments to stoke racial/political/sex/cultural divides. It is in their interests to keep us ignorant, largely devoid of critical thinking, and hostile towards one another.

      Neither men nor women are setting these terms on the basis of their inherent drives, their drives are being manipulated to serve the market by a few thousand sociopath families with aligned interests based in unquenchable avarice. All of us without considerable net worth are less than human to the market capitalist owners.