WALSH: If Men Can Be Women Then This White Dude Can Be Korean 

In a stunning display of courage, a white British Tik Tok influencer has revealed to the world that he identifies as Korean. Oli London has been getting plastic surgery for several years in an effort to, as a Newsweek article puts it, resemble “their K-Pop idol, Jimin of BTS.” I have only a vague idea what any of those words mean, but the upshot is that now London, who also identifies as non-binary, has completed his surgical transition and is ready to fully live his life as the gender fluid Korean that he’s always been deep down. For too long he has had a Korean trapped inside his body, and now, with $150,000 of assistance from cosmetic surgeons, his true East Asian self has emerged like a bruised and swollen butterfly from a fleshy cocoon. 

In a video recorded just after his latest procedure, Oli explains that his surgically adjusted eyes and nose and other features now confirm him as a tried and true Korean. Bigots might voice disagreement, insisting that one must actually be from Korea, or at least have Korean citizenship, in order to be considered in any sense Korean. They might even argue that surgically narrowing your eyes to resemble Asian facial features not only fails to make you Asian, but is also insulting and degrading to the real Asians, of which you are not one. But Oli deftly countered these arguments in a series of tweets, disarming and debunking such discriminatory talking points. “Being Transexual is the same as being transracial because you are born in the wrong body,” he wrote. In other tweets he announced that “trans rights are human rights” and that “there are millions of underrepresented transracial people in the world and I want to elevate their voices and help them live their truth and be themselves.” 

Being Transexual is the same as being TRANSRACIAL because you are born in the wrong body.

— Oli London (@OliLondonTV) June 28, 2021

Please add TransRacial to the LGBTQI+ Flag @LGBTHM 🇰🇷🏳️‍🌈 I know there are millions of underrepresented transracial people in the world and I want to elevate their voices and help them live their truth & be themselves 👏🏻🙏🏻🌎 #olilondon #lgbt

— Oli London (@OliLondonTV) June 28, 2021

These may be more assertions than arguments, more spitting slogans than making a case, but if that has been sufficient for transgender advocates then why shouldn’t it work for a transracial pioneer? In the age of Psychological Man, when all that matters is an individual’s mental states, and all that you must do to justify an action is claim that the action makes you feel good and causes no direct physical harm to anyone else (whether or not the latter is actually true), the validity of a white man’s transformation into a genderless Korean cannot be denied. Certainly, if you accept trans ideology then you can have absolutely no logical basis for denying Oli’s truth, a truth which is grounded in the exact same premise — a premise which asserts that a person’s physical identity is totally determined by how they feel about themselves. A man who feels like a woman is not merely a feminine man, but is actually a literal woman. All of the physical barriers which have for millennia served to separate and distinguish men from women are dissolved and discarded as biology is subordinated to the emotional whims of the individual. Why should Oli’s emotional whims not be afforded the same supernatural weight? 

His case, based on the logic of progressivism, is airtight. And yet the Left has not accepted him. Comments on the internet about his racial transition have been overwhelmingly negative. The Daily Wire documents a few of them: 

“I’m sorry, but you can’t just choose to be Korean. It’s a nationality and ethnicity,” tweeted one trans-identifying account. “You have to be born Korean! Just because you like the culture, doesn’t mean you can take it and become it. There is a way to appreciate a different culture, this is not it.”

“As a Korean nonbinary person, I haven’t really talked about the Oli London thing. But, the fact that they are acting like it’s genuine and that it’s part of a ‘journey’ due to a ‘identity issues’ really irks me. It’s a mockery of trans people, it’s cultural appropriation,” posted another.

Finally, one Korean user replied that while he celebrates London’s new gender identity, it’s wrong for him to claim a new ethnic identity: “Korean isn’t a pronoun, nor is it a persona you decide to suddenly take on because of kpop hype. I’m glad you identify as non-binary and I applaud you for being transparent about that, but I can’t commend you for taking a whole ethnicity and treating it like a persona.”

An article in the left-wing Paper Mag, written by Sandra Song, editor-at-large and a fellow Korean, is just one long transphobic harangue against the entire transracial community. Song writes: 

As someone who actually has Korean DNA though, I can say that some white fetishist — as proven by those 15 surgeries to look like Jimin — suddenly deeming themself “Korean” is incredibly offensive, especially since it effectively trivializes our identities because they’re suddenly “trendy.” Apparently though that doesn’t really register for Oli, who’s continually been a notable example of the Western fetishization that’s objectified us based on South Korea’s recent contributions to global culture… So yeah, obviously it’s pretty sus that a white person is saying they’re Korean.

Leaving aside the embarrassing fact that the magazine’s editor-at-large wrote and published the words “so yeah” and “pretty sus,” the real problem is that she would accuse a person of fetishizing and trivializing her identity simply because he is cartoonishly mimicking her appearance and claiming that this degraded mockery is as authentic as her own identity. She is essentially arguing that an imitation cannot by its nature be as valid or real as the thing it is imitating. Come to think of it, she makes a good point. Unfortunately, though, she has already thrown open the doors and invited men to fetishize, trivialize, and mimic her identity. It’s just that she wishes the mimicry would remain focused on her sex, not her ethnicity.

The problem is that sex is far more objective and far less fluid than ethnicity. If the former can be erased then so can the latter. Oli London knows that, and now he is entitled to be seen as fully Korean, just as Korean as any other Korean. If cis-Koreans don’t want to tolerate or accept trans-Koreans, that is their problem and their bigotry that they must work through. It would be better for them to remain silent in the meantime while the march of progress continues, and all objective markers of identity are erased, and human existence is reduced to a murky puddle of meaningless ambiguity. This is the world the Left wanted. Now they have it. Congratulations.

The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

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