여성 BJ와 ‘여성인권’ : 여성의 성적 대상화에 대한 온라인 담론 분석

Abstract

This study analyzed perceptions and discourses surrounding women's rights and sexual objectification, focusing on debates about female BJs and nude chat rooms within women-centered online communities. Female online community users spatially positioned female BJs in the ‘shadow’ and themselves in the ‘light,’ constructing a subject position that speaks as a normal woman and feminist. The hierarchical structure of voluntariness versus involuntariness, previously used to exclude and stigmatize sex workers, was repeated. In this process, the discourse focused more on condemning women as participants in the industry rather than addressing the recent structural problems of the diverse sex industry. This positioned women within the category of ‘normality’—pure and participating in society through effort—on the level of sexuality, granting only such women the possibility to speak. Within this discourse construction, female subjects became fragmented, with certain women denied the right to speak or silenced by cyberbullying mechanisms. The current discourse within online women’s communities, which re-positions women according to a sexuality hierarchy, can make it difficult to resolve structural gender discrimination issues. Consequently, this study argues that addressing the problems of the sex industry structure in digital spaces as a ‘women’s issue’ requires a feminist politics that reconceptualizes the meaning of ‘women’s rights’.