Of course you're right, and I was going off on a pet peeve and ignoring what Dave was trying to get at. (Someone on the 'Net being unfair to Dave Moore! Stop the presses!)

I should learn not to make it a habit to wade into things when I know I don't have time for immediate follow-through. I have to give a talk tonight, and I've got to concentrate on that before I pay more attention to this. But my gut instinct tells me that ultimately my peeve is right. E.g., regarding something like aegyo, for instance, which I'm sure I don't understand, the question isn't "Is some girl letting some guy objectify her" (I think a lot of the audience for cuteness and pressure for it is from females as well as males, and men surely see cute women as human beings) but rather, "Is its context still tied to women being socially and financially dependent on men,* or can it work outside that dependence? How does it play when the financial restrictions change?" [*This statements is simplistic, since it's not as if men aren't financially and socially dependent on society, too, or that they've got freedom of demeanor. But the inequality still leans heavily one way, I gather more so in Korea than in the U.S.]