Prologue
There’s an interesting perspective in Asian feminism: a small dose of feminist awareness has, paradoxically, made women’s exploitation even worse.
On the Asian internet there’s a phrase, maybe it is a bit sharp —”Half-awake women are the most delicious / Half-awake women are dished best.”
What it means is that women who have been exposed to feminist ideas but haven’t fully committed to them often end up being exploited even more. Whether she decides to follow trends, or feels ashamed of being a ‘traditional woman,’ she still ends up caught in the same structure: she believes she should be financially independent and not rely on men, so she splits the bill on dates, earns her own living,—yet still gives birth to children who take the man’s surname, does a massive more amount of domestic work that helps her husband climb higher in his career and earn more, while also contributing financially to ease his burden. In contrast, the so-called “traditional women” who expect men to pay for dinner, bear financial responsibility, and refuse to work at least receive some economic compensation.
Men already hold a massive advantage in economic income—their smoother career progression and preferential treatment stem from the career interruptions women face due to childbirth(This is what some sociologists called the motherhood penalty). At the same time, wives often take on a vastly greater share of domestic labor to support their husbands’ careers. Men’s higher pay for equal work is effectively subsidized by women’s lost income from unpaid household work and career breaks.
So women’s half-awakened state makes men’s days smoother and even more comfortable.
Hence “Half-awake women are the most delicious / Half-awake women are dished best”, this phrase is used to elaborate that exposure to a small amount of feminist thought has actually made women’s exploitation even worse within the female population of contemporary social structures. (of course looking at the broader arc of history, there is no denying that women’s access to education, inheritance, and employment has vastly improved through the rise of feminist thought and movements. These advances have significantly transformed women’s conditions and expanded the scope of their agency)
When a woman is in heterosexual relationships, there’s simply no way to avoid being exploited. That’s why some feminists say: reject heterosexual relationships altogether. Because once you’re in one, exploitation becomes inescapable.
So, girls – if you’re already inside the system, we might need to think more carefully about how expenses are shared in relationships.
But that doesn’t mean I’m encouraging financial dependence. The idea of being economically tied to a man terrifies me. Not being able to leave a man if he hurts you, having to endure because you have nothing else. So economic independence isn’t about proudly spending your own money to prove independence, or even spending money on men just to show how progressive you are; it’s about protecting yourself. Save your own, spend his. Build a financial foundation that lets you walk away at any time. After all, men already have the upper hand when it comes to income.
There’s another saying I believe you probably have heard: “Sexual liberation was men’s trick to sleep with more women.” I don’t completely agree—women have gained pleasure and agency too—but men still inevitably benefit from it.
And that’s the saddest and most ironic part: no matter what women do, men seem to benefit. Within this structure of systemic oppression, there’s almost no real escape. Why is it like this? Is it because patriarchy possesses a foreseeing perspective, always anticipating and responding in advance? Or is it because patriarchy is so impenetrable and flawless that there is simply no way to escape exploitation? It’s because trying to improve the system mildly, instead of rejecting it altogether, only ends up feeding the same old structure. Soft reform still plays by patriarchy’s rules and therefore sustains it.
Thus, the only way to escape is—to completely reject the patriarchal game. Until patriarchy truly recognizes women’s value, relinquishes its undue gains, and grants women rights that correspond to their worth, women should refuse to obey gender norms, sustain the family, which is the very foundation of patriarchy ( The idea comes from Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex.). But this is incredibly difficult to achieve—it seems to place too heavy a burden and too high an expectation on women, asking them to endure the loss of present pleasures for the sake of future outcomes. Yet at the very least, we must first identify the root of the problem before we can respond correctly to what comes next.