Clergy Sexual Abuse and an Ethics of Recognition: An Example of the #ChurchToo Movement in South Korea

abstract:By examining the recent #ChurchToo movement in South Korea, this paper argues that treating clergy sexual abuse is not only a matter of seeking justice but also a matter of struggling for recognition. Understanding human subjectivity and agency as embedded in social recognition is key to examining the issue of sexual violence. To this end, this paper does two things. First, I show that Hegelian theories of recognition provide the Korean church with a useful tool through which they can analyze the current #ChurchToo movement occurring globally, and particularly in Korea. Second, given the role that the ethics of recognition plays in political activism, I suggest that the hashtag activism of #ChurchToo must transform into a political assembly in the street that helps the church break free from the grip of oppressive social norms, structures, and ritualized patterns that rend women and minority genders' bodily lives more precarious.