South Korea & Online Anti-Natalism

June Sternbach (0:02)

When people talk about the male loneliness epidemic, it's a discourse that ultimately always leads to the discussion about how much more conservative and reactionary young men tend to be, while young women have become quite a bit more liberal. It's a hard question to fully answer in the United States, but a common theme is that it often revolves around misogyny. South Korea has one of the biggest gender political divides in the world, and also one of the lowest birth rates in the world. What's going on in South Korea is key to understanding the dangers of an unbelievably polarized society.

My name is June Sternbach.

Josh Boerman (0:39)

My name is Josh Boerman.

June Sternbach (0:41)

This is Ill Conceived, a podcast about natalism. So Josh, how's your golden pig, your golden idol doing? You've still got it near you. Oh, he's right here. Oh, it's beautiful.

Josh Boerman (0:59)

Oh, I love it. I didn't even know you were going to bring him up.

SPEAKER_4 (1:02)

He's just on the desk.

Josh Boerman (1:05)

I wasn't expecting the episode to be called The Golden Pig Presents Baby's Choice last week, but it just kind of came to me and I was like, I feel like maybe the golden pig could be a bigger and bigger part of the ill-conceived lore. I'm not really sure, but.

June Sternbach (1:18)

Yeah. You know, I think every show, you know, sports teams have their mascots. Everyone has like their logo. We have the logo, we have the praying hands, but I think we need a mascot, and I think it does fit very well as a nice symbol.

Josh Boerman (1:32)

Definitely.

June Sternbach (1:33)

We have a golden idol. You know, religions say to not have the golden idol.

Josh Boerman (1:37)

Right.

June Sternbach (1:37)

You shall not worship an idol other than God. But I think it's good that we're worshiping a specifically golden pig. I think that's great.

Josh Boerman (1:45)

Yeah. He is our graven image.

And he's got a lot on his mind. So it's huge.

June Sternbach (1:51)

But no, I did just want to give you props on that banger of a mailbag episode title. It just thinking about the baby's choice, the golden pig presents baby's choice makes me smile.

Josh Boerman (2:02)

We today, of course, are going to be talking about South Korea. And you've, as promised last week, you've put together a banger of an episode for us today.

June Sternbach (2:11)

Oh, yeah, I'm hoping.

Josh Boerman (2:13)

But having baby's choice last week, I think really caused a lot more people to want to write into the world famous mailbag.

June Sternbach (2:20)

Yeah, we got so many new emails. You guys always send so many emails, it like it's spurred, you know, it's kind of like what governments, these natalist governments want to do when they're like, hey, having kids is cool. We're like, hey, check out all these awesome emails. And you responded, we got a lot of really great emails that we're going to start this episode with.

Josh Boerman (2:40)

This is the thing that they don't tell you, is that emails are how you get the birth rates up.

June Sternbach (2:46)

It's kind of the same thing.

Josh Boerman (2:47)

But yeah, I can go ahead and read the first one here.

We just got a couple of short ones for you today. The first one is called Re, How Did They Do This? And this is in response to last week where we were talking about-

June Sternbach (3:01)

The desecration of the unk.

Josh Boerman (3:02)

The desecration of the unk and specifically the tomb of the unborn child that is over there at that Franciscan University. And one of the things was, I think, June, you'd been like, well, where do they get the fetuses from? Or maybe I asked it, I don't really remember. But this email makes it horrifyingly clear, and I quote, Right wingers just steal fetuses, you guys. Are you not aware of Lauren Handy keeping stolen fetuses in her freezer?

There's a priest who does clandestine funerals for aborted fetuses in the DC area. This feeds into my favorite conspiracy theories that the primary energy source for the DC power grid is fetuses.

Likely they bribe people at the medical waste companies that clinics contract with. I work in abortion, and my whole job is to help people access abortion care. But something we don't talk about publicly, because of people like these, is that not all clinics are created equal. Some do not follow best practices. You'll notice stories like these usually trace back to the same handful of clinics. And then the letter writer also included a number of links to different articles specifically about this lady, Lauren Handy.