(UPDATE: Lee responded. Read “Writer who told women to ‘get real or die alone’ loses his cool, swears at commenters“)
You know what we need more of in our lives? Sexist pigs. Specifically, sexist pigs who tell women to lower their standards for men, that men are like “fine wine”, and that it’s a “woman’s job” to turn men into mature human beings. (Unsurprisingly, he doesn’t once tell men what to do.)
EJ Insight today published a piece by male columnist Alan Lee. It’s oozing with so much sexist douchebaggery we had to check to make sure it wasn’t published on April Fool’s.
Lee talks about the latest Census and Statistics Department numbers that showed that the proportion of women to men in Hong Kong is increasing, with 1000 women to only 856 men last year, compared to 1000 women to 904 men in 2013.
Women in Hong Kong, Lee explains, face extreme societal pressure to get married in their 20s, and if “an average woman can’t get married by the age of 40, it’s basically Armageddon for her — she will either be seen as a freak or a nun by people around her”.
To his credit, Lee does state that the pressure on women to get married is misguided: “there shouldn’t be any stigma attached to being single” for “both men and women alike” since it is a “personal choice about one’s way of living that has nothing to do with his or her looks, age, education level or wealth”.
A screenshot of the article.
But with that caveat, he proceeds to tell “single women who are still holding their breath waiting for their perfect Prince Charming and won’t settle for anything less” to “get real”, since the “extremely handsome, tall, fair-skinned, chivalrous, rich and caring Mr Right[s] they dream of” are “commodities tailor-made for female TV viewers”, and “only exist in Korean soap operas” – so they should “just forget about it”.
He then talks about “Kong Girls”, a term he says was coined by Hong Kong male netizens to refer to “local young females who bear the kinds of character flaws and twisted values typical of Hong Kong women, such as being materialistic, calculating, snobbish, inconsiderate, selfish, ignorant, non-demure and notoriously hard to please”.
Lee then very helpfully instructs women that marriage is about “taking care of each other and raising a family together”, and that “looks, height and wealth should not be the main priority” for a lifelong companion.
If you’re a woman who’s still unhappy about “having to resign to this cruel reality” despite the words of wisdom he so graciously gifts to the world, he offers one last piece of advice:
“Men are like fine wine. They all start out as rough grapes. It’s a woman’s job to work on them and keep them in the barrel until they mature into something you’d like to have dinner with.”
Does this mean he’s volunteering to crawl into a barrel in a dark cellar to ferment for a few years? Or does he need us to stomp on him with our bare feet? Because those seem like better alternatives than having him continue to write pieces that hurt women and perpetuate heteronormative, sexist values that led to the social stigma against single women in the first place.
We’ve reached out to EJ Insight for comment.
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