An opinion piece in The Korea Times explores societal perceptions of unmarried women's bodies and sexuality, drawing on interviews with four unmarried women from a feminist liberation theological perspective to advocate positive views.
Lee Nan-hee, in a recent opinion piece for The Korea Times, highlights the rising number of one-person households and never-married individuals in South Korea, noting their implicit and explicit discrimination. Focusing on hidden issues around body and sexuality for unmarried women, she conducted in-depth interviews with four such women—two under 45 and two over 60—from a feminist liberation theological viewpoint. Influenced by British scholar Lisa Isherwood, Lee seeks to view women's bodies and sexuality positively as mediums of divine creation.
Western philosophy's traditional dichotomies—man/woman, mind/spirit versus body/sexuality, humans/nature—have linked women to the inferior categories of body, sexuality, and nature. Korean traditional customs similarly discriminate against women in nearly every aspect, including their bodies and minds. Women's bodies have been traditionally seen as deprived, inferior, fickle, negative, dirty, seductive, and passive, while idealized as docile, thin, and beautiful.
Early church fathers' theology, shaped by Aristotle's Greek philosophy from the 2nd to 4th centuries, fostered limited and negative views of the body, women, and food. The cultural image of God embodies unchanging, rigid, upright, and hegemonic masculinity. Only in the 20th century, influenced by Alfred North Whitehead's process philosophy, did Western thought and theology begin affirming the body as a divine medium and critiquing negative perceptions of women's bodies.
In modern society, women are objectified, leading to self-denial and hatred rather than esteem, often through food restriction and weight obsession for thinness. The interviewed women expressed dissatisfaction, resistance, resignation, and frustration regarding their bodies and sexuality for various reasons. Yet all four reported general satisfaction with unmarried life. One noted, "I've seen so many married women who are unhappy because of raising children alone, money problems, or tough relations with in-laws or family."
Lee argues that unmarried life is not a negative deviation but a positive, active choice among life's paths. She calls for overcoming the visible and invisible alienation faced by unmarried people. Lee studied English in college and theology at Hanshin University.
