18 procedures to become Korean
Well, you know…”they” is only doing what so many others do. Why can’t Oli do that?
They says they feels like “someone that feels like they’re born in the wrong body so for the last nine years I’ve felt like I’ve been trapped – since I lived in Korea I feel like I identify as Korean”…and so on.
Of course nationality isn’t in the body, but it doesn’t do to point out what makes sense and what doesn’t, because that gets you into the towering weeds instantly.
Anyway I’m sure actual Koreans find this person very flattering.
So this is the main argument the Korean news reporter brought up? Not “you’re not Korean” — but “I’m offended.”
Of course, the pseudo-Korean may have used the analogy to transgenderism and talked about being in the “wrong body,” but didn’t seem to be pushing the “I AM KOREAN I KNOW MYSELF DONT ARGUE BIGOT” line we all know and love. Nor was he demanding citizenship or privileges reserved for the Korean. He only kept saying he was more “comfortable.” He probably is.
In which case I don’t see the point in either telling him what he already acknowledges or getting offended at Koreans somehow being ”trivialized.” If this was what trans people were doing — “I wish I was the other sex so I LARP and enjoy it” I wouldn’t much care, nor, I suspect, would otherGC people. It perpetrates stereotypes. So do many things. I don’t see how Pseudokorean even does that.
At least he’s not a “human Barbie.”
18 procedures! None of them would have been necessary if we had Korean self-ID.
I wonder if any doctors who were asked by this person to do this to him said “no.” I wonder if on any future official forms asking for ethnicity, he will now claim he’s “Korean” rather than Caucasian?
At least ethnicity, unlike sex, is actually a spectrum, or mosaic, as humans happily intermix across lines of ethnicity, if not actively prevented by government decree or social stigma. That being said, like sex, an individual can’t change their ethnicity. Your genes are going to be what they always have been, however many “procedures” one endures. People undergo plastic surgery to look younger, but that doesn’t change their actual age. Let’s see how far this guy gets when he demands Korean citizenship on the basis of his “transition.”
I’m curious to see if any trans activists respond to this in the way they did to Dolezal, insisting that transgenderism is totally different than claims of transracialism. It’s sad to think that Oli is serious, and not just taking the piss.
Do Koreans have exaggeratedly puffy lips? What makes someone “look” Korean?
Bruce: Be careful there. You are verging on bigotry. As a trans-chronological person, I was offended by this: “People undergo plastic surgery to look younger, but that doesn’t change their actual age” That surgery is AGE AFFIRMING, I tell you.
Michael @3 “What makes someone “look” Korean?” — Forget about what they actually look like, it’s about how much effort and sacrifice they endured in order to ‘feel good’, which consequently enables them to persuade people of the ‘truth of their reality’ through unquestionable personal testimony. How dare anyone not believe him? Can we not see the This Morning crew nodding in agreement? Buying into people’s bullshit is the most maximally politically correct thing to do nowadays. We must deny our own reality in order to accomodate those who we are most inclined to disbelieve. It’s all very postmodern, antiempirical, and oh-so-trendy! :P
(by the way, I’m sure he means South Korean, and trying to look K-pop, he would not get away with this in North Korea)
Well, you know, twiliter @5, it’s more important to be kind than it is to judge.
Does no one want to challenge him on what it means to be “trapped” in a white body and actually feel Korean? And why Korean, specifically. That’s oddly specific. Why is he not truly Japanese, or Chinese. How does being a Korean feel? Can we ask any Korean-Americans if they feel different inside from a Korean in Korea?
Is there a cap somewhere that I can put on to compare how I feel to someone who is another race? Is there a cap somewhere that I can put on that will let me know how it feels to be another sex?
You mean that I just would know? That’s scientific, isn’t it?
Well, at least in terms of age, I have experienced being 10, being 18, being 35, etc. So in theory, I suppose I could know what it feels like to be those. Strangely, I don’t. I literally do not know what it would mean to feel like I’m actually 31, and that unfortunately this doesn’t fit my chronological age. I don’t have any internal “age identity”. Maybe other people do. I don’t.
So if I can’t know what it “feels like” to be 31, which I actually have been — for an entire year! — how on earth could I know what it “feels like” to be Korean or to be a woman?
Michael @6, yes, far be it for me to be judgemental ;) but really, when I was young, I fantasized about being a race car driver, an old west cowboy from the late 1800’s, and other similarly overly romanticized things. But this wasn’t an illusion I could maintain, for I was a middle class kid from the suburbs. It seems now that if you go to some lengths to appear to be what you fantasize you are, that it can become some sort of personal reality. But now, there are people who, despite their knowing better, will indulge these kinds of alternate realities. So yes, although this has never been true before, you can actually become your own fantasy, have people who will indulge you and support you, and live happily ever after. It’s the ‘nice’ thing to do, right? But I’m old school, and I think it takes more than just a fantasy, and more than just dress up, and more than these posers are willing to actually go through to be what they fantasize about. It’s lazy and phony, it’s a con, and I don’t think it’s healthy for people to, no matter how happy it seemingly makes them feel, for the wider world to accept things that run contrary to the actual state of things in the world, however ‘nice’ we think we are being. Ultimately we are doing them a disservice to buy into their version of reality, because there is a larger, more agreed upon version that would be better for them to live their lives according to, that is based in our shared reality. I can’t seriously think or believe that I won a race at Monte Carlo, because there is no evidence. I have never driven a formula 1 car, certainly never competitively, and I don’t have the trophy, video documentation, or anyone’s personal testimony to back up my claim. But now, if I have the conviction, and the true belief that I did such a thing, there will be people who will indulge me in this fantasy, because if they hurt my feelings I might become suicidal.
As if.
I never thought I’d see the death of empiricism, but here we fecking are. :P
twiliter: That was a truly amazing post. I am sending it some other…skeptics…who I think might enjoy it.
as the world teeters towards climate catastrophe, the massive social disruption of a.i. and the growth of an increasingly aggressive Chinese totalitarian new world order, the sheer energy spent by these various trans-es seems amazingly self indulgent. Just so thinking will not be helpful at all in this world. And it seems to have completely conquered the political left that is supposed to be battling the forces of oligarchy and reaction, making the left somewhat useless?
Yes. The fact that women are being forced to fight again to defend their hard-earned rights against narcissistic usurpers is an infuriating waste of energy and talent that could be used to help shift things on other issues. Their fight to do this is vital, but so fucking needless; it didn’t have to be this way. It shouldn’t have been this way.
He’s right in that last bit, where he notes that this is not really any different to the logic behind identifying as a woman/man. In each case, the person is declaring themselves to be something they are not.
This is priceless. “I understand the journalist is of Korean ancestry (…) she’s targeting me wrongly (…) I feel like I am one of the biggest ambassadors for Korea”.
White English dude is better at Korea-ing than Korean woman, the same way that dudes are better at womaning than women.
This seems like the inverse of the phenomenon where some East and South Asian people undergo cosmetic procedures to remove or reduce certain characteristics we Westerners think of as “asian” (e.g., skin lightening, epicanthic fold removal, etc) in order to make themselves more attractive in their own societies, which often value what we Westerners think of as “white” characteristics…though often these ideals have little or nothing to do with modern European colonialism and are indigenous social stratifications.
One could argue that the Hindu caste system is based in Indo-European “white” supremacy, but that’s reaching a looooong way back, to posit that the Indo-Europeans who conquered and settled India five thousand years ago installed themselves as the upper class and used their presumably-lighter skin as a major signifier of this distinction. While in broad strokes this is likely, it has very little to do with how we conceptualise race and white supremacy today, and has nothing at all to do with European colonialism of the previous few centuries.
Korean and Japanese and Chinese obsession with lighter skin and unrounded eyes have arguably nothing at all to do with Europeans whatsoever, as we find many descriptions of these preferences in literature and artwork from times before these cultures had ever been exposed to Europeans at all. Okay, various Chinese dynasties had a vague notion that Roman barbarians ruled a few tracts of land in the ass-end of Sunset Land, and when the English showed up in the 18th C to try and trade with them, the Chinese scrounged up a couple of nerds who could speak Latin in order to try and communicate with the English pig dogs, but that is hardly indicative that pre-Opium Wars China had a broad-based cultural fascination with Europe or held Europeans in high esteem.
Also, and not for nothing, I initially read the title as “18 Procedures to Become a Karen”, and I was momentarily nonplussed.
https://mercatornet.com/oli-london-transracial/73098/
What fun!
Hmmmm…
He could certainly become Korean, similar to the way immigrants to the US become American or immigrants to France beome French. It’s this conflation of nationality and ethnicity that’s causing confusion.
Or…
https://www.quora.com/Can-people-apply-for-North-Korean-citizenship
Aha! Michael L. Best hypothesizes the following in his answer to that Quora question:
If he is right, then it could be useful to become transethnically Korean in order to become eligible for North Korean citizenship. Hmm.
Okay, now I want to know how many procedures it took him to become “they?” Is the process anything like a magician sawing someone in half?