The rise of trans-exclusionary feminism in South Korea: popular feminism and the mediation of women’s bodies

This article examines the relationship between popular feminism and the rise of trans-exclusionary feminism in South Korea through the lens of mediation. Focusing on the Escape the Corset movement as an example of feminist mediation, I show how feminists’ repurposing of dominant, misogynist stories about feminine bodies has contributed to biological essentialism, trans exclusion, and the right-wing turn in feminism. Based on the analysis of the women-only online community Womad and trans-exclusionary social media posts, I argue the following: Drawing on multiplied mediation that enables affective immediacy toward the body and on neoliberal fetishization of the individual body, these feminists construct the bodies that “escaped” feminine markers, like make-up, as self-empowering. However, this gendered effort to de-gender the body reaffirms biological bodies as the foundation of feminism. Popular feminism’s decontextualized mirroring and premediation of trans women, underpinned by digital context collapse, denigrates trans women for reproducing sexualized femininity, overshadowing cis feminists’ visibility, and bringing potential danger. As a node of globally networked transphobia, such feminism has also been affiliated with right-wing politics. Using the lenses of popular feminism and mediation, the article provides a new approach to analyze the rise of trans-exclusionary feminism outside of the context of White supremacist feminism.