Digitalpolis and the ‘Safe’ Feminism: Focusing on the Strategies of Direct Punishment and Gated Community

This paper starts with the following questions: Why did some of the digital feminists in Korean society set safety as the number one issue today, rather than freedom? Why did they come to emphasize gatekeeping communities for women? Digitalpolis is the time-space conditions under which the recent digital feminism is reignited. It is characterized by a deterritorialization and hybridization, unlike traditional cities as territorial places of homogenization. In digitalpolis, women experience the invasion of their body territorial image through unexpected connections from others online, which leads to mental breakdown and anxiety of uncertainty. In the psychasthenia and anti-intellectualism which appear with the fear and anxiety in the digitalpolis, women tend to drive a movement that puts safety first. While emphasizing safety, some digital feminists intend to directly punish perpetrators by disclosing the identities of those who robbed their body images online, and to create a gated community only for women while emphasizing ab imaginary identity such as biological woman. However, direct punishment and the creation of gated communities go in the direction of strengthening security while fostering fear rather than guaranteeing women’s safety.