Even with a triple gold achievement from the Olympics, An San was not spared with ‘anti-feminism’ remarks due to her hairstyle from men from her home country.
AN San kept South Korea's Olympic flag flying in women's archery on Friday as she took the individual title, shrugging off online bullying over her hairstyle to become the first archer to win three golds at a single Games
A few days back, An San also broke a 25-year-old Olympic record by posting a score of 680 in the women’s individual ranking round.
A day later, An alongside Kim Je-deok, became the first-ever winner of the inaugural Olympic mixed team archery event.
And with the third gold, the Republic of Korea has won nine of the last 10 Olympics staging.
She received a flood of support from other women after male social media users targeted her with sexist comments about her hairstyle.
They also flooded the Korean Archery Association with calls demanding for her medals to be returned, and spammed her social media accounts with hate speech, slamming her past use of online slang which anti-feminist groups have deemed as anti-male.
“We didn’t train and feed you with tax money so you could do feminist acts,” one of the Instagram comments read.
However, even South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in He also issued a statement on social networks to congratulate San for his success in the tournament and showed his support for the goalkeeper.
“Congratulations and thanks to An San for showing us the best game. Behind the great achievements of a person is continuous training and loneliness. Sometimes, we have to overcome expectations and discrimination.”
Olympics viewers from across the world have been showing their support for An following the anti-feminist backlash.
In addition to the positive messages, around 6,000 images of women with short hair were also posted.
The 20-year-old archer did not respond to the online abuse as her coach blocked journalists from asking “unnecessary questions” at a press conference following her winning of a match play in the 1/16 elimination round of the women’s individual event on Thursday.
After confirming her victory, An let her guard down, teared up during the medal ceremony and was later jubilant, taking selfies with the gold medal and checking a text message from her mother.
Tags: #TokyoOlympics, #archery, #AnSan, #misogyny