KPOP FANDOM YOU ARE KILLING ME!!!!

[lirazel]

Gah, y'all, I have been so incredibly spoiled by my flist/dashboard, by my years in Buffy fandom, by the happy little world of feminist-consciousness I've been living in fandom-wise for the past few years. Trying to figure out how to deal with a fandom that isn't even on Feminism 101 levels is hurting my heart and my brain and making me realize how grateful I am for all of you.

Warning: fairly explicit talk about rape/sexual assault below the cut. PLEASE don't click on it if it might hurt you in any way at all.



Okay, so there's this tumblr blog that's basically dedicated to the female gaze and reveling in how hot the Infinite boys can be. All good: I love that. A lot of the graphics (gifs/pictures/whatever) in the posts are accompanied by little mini-fic scenarios involving one of the guys and 'me.' Now, I mostly don't read these because I really don't care much about them--very few of them are anything like my kinks and you know how I feel about porn when it isn't accompanied by character development.

But last night aerintine messaged me and asked me if I'd seen the latest one about Myungsoo and how uncomfortable it made her and how she'd sent an anonymous message to ask for a trigger warning. So I went over there to read it and y'all: it was a rape story. There is no way around that. Myungsoo gets mad at 'me' kissing his BFF and he tears the narrator's clothes off and forces himself on her while she's saying "no" and "stop" over and over. And there was NO INDICATION in this post that something like this was coming: it was totally out of nowhere.

I was appalled.

[Brief moment aside: I realize a lot of women have rape fantasies and I have zero problem with that. Fantasize about what you want to fantasize about. But I realize it makes me profoundly uncomfortable when this particular fantasy is shared like this because...Myungsoo is a real person. I know I'm all about the whole 'rpf isn't actually about the real people it's about the characters of their public personaes that doesn't have anything to do with who they really are' thing, but apparently not when it comes to casting one of these real people as a rapist. Myungsoo is a sweet, really good boy who is easy-going 99% of the time and that remaining 1% when his anger gets to be really big he does the smart thing and he gets out of there (I really admire this, btw. He knows what his limits are and he tries to remove himself from the situation, so while I've seen him REALLY PISSED OFF, I've never seen him act in an inappropriate way in that anger. Precious baby). Of course I don't really know him, so I don't know what he's actually capable of, but I really don't think he'd be blatantly evil like that. Somehow the fact that he's a real person as opposed to a pure character makes me feel like this whole scenario was just...slandering him. I hate that. I hate him being associated with something like that (and this isn't even getting into my own personal belief that he's demi-sexual/asexual ANYWAY--I won't go there b/c it's pure speculation). Ugh. ANYWAYS.]

So aerintine and I both messaged the comm and said 'hey, that was a rape fantasy, can you please include trigger warnings'? We were both firm but polite.

To her credit, the admin apologized immediately and went back to put on a trigger warning. YAY! All would be well and good except....

Except that she talks quite a bit about how 'that wasn't her intention' and that it might be read as rape but the character enjoyed it so it really wasn't, etc., etc. Cue, again, me wanting to pull my hair out. Y'all, I can link you to the story if you want, but I hope you'll take my word for it: there was literally no other way for this story to be read. The 'Myungsoo' character has NO WAY OF KNOWING the narrator's character was 'enjoying' it (and the narrator didn't make the enjoyment very clear, either, other than a brief 'but I kind of liked it' sort of thing) since THE ONLY WORDS SPOKEN were begging to stop and saying no over and over. That is rape, at least on 'Myungsoo's' part even if the narrator secretly enjoyed it.

Plus, there's this:

I personally don’t see it as something that severe but you are right, some may. It’s just that some times saying “no” while having actual sex does not have to precisely mean the real thing. It can 1- be used as a pretext for the other person to continue, and/or 2- just a way of turning the other person on; And while I wrote, it was used in that exact content and never as an order which Myungsoo dissobeyed.

UM. NO. It's true that 'no' can be used in other ways during sex BUT ONLY IF THE PARTNERS HAVE ESTABLISHED THAT UP FRONT AND HAVE A SAFEWORD IN PLACE. Which was totally, totally not the case in this context. The fact that the admin doesn't understand that is killing me, especially since she and a lot of subsequent commenters said a whole lot of stuff about how 'it's all in different povs' and 'you didn't mean for it to be taken that way' and 'different people interpret things in different ways' and people saying that our messages were 'hatemail' and that 'if you're reading this blog you know it's about pervy stuff you should get over it.'

THERE IS NO CONSENT ESTABLISHED IT IS NOT OKAY END OF STORY.

So I wrote a long series of comments explaining that, explaining consent and safewords and things like that, accompanied by thanking the admin for apologizing and putting the trigger warning in place and reassuring that I don't think she's a bad person and that I appreciate the female gaze of the site and things like that.

I did all this on anon not because I don't want the admin to know it's me--I'd be fine with that--but because I know for a fact that if I included my url I would get hate (perhaps really extreme hate) from other people. I know that would happen because that's what tumblr fandom and kpop fandom is like. UGH.

I have very little hope that I'll change the admin's mind. It sounds pretty made up already. But the fact that so many of these young girls (most of the followers are teenage girls) agree with her just scares me. Because they have no conception of consent. None. And that terrifies me. I've been lulled into an incredibly false sense of security by the awesomeness of my flist and I forget that there are all these girls out there who are so brainwashed by rape culture that they don't even know how consent works (YES MEANS YES!!!) and oh it hurts my heart and it scares me and I just want to hug them all and make them hot chocolate and sit them down and explain consent and ownership of their bodies to them in ways they will understand but I can't do that it I hate that I can't. I hate it.

Kpop fandom has given me so much unbelievable joy--maybe (maybe) more than any other fandom I've ever been in. But it's been accompanied by all these reality checks about how awful people can be and how vulnerable young girls are and how absolutely indoctrinated they are by rape culture.

I JUST DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO, Y'ALL. I just really don't.

Comments

[ghostyouknow27.livejournal.com]

Well, I am coming from a fandom where RPF characters do ... a lot of bad things, which may affect my general level of surprise/shock. But if someone's writing out their rape fantasy, I don't expect established consent, because that can interfere with the fantasy? You know, the fantasy isn't based on a carefully negotiated scene with safe words, even though if someone wanted to act out their rape fantasy, that's the way it would go. On a similar note, on general memes, I see a lot of BDSM types saying that, when they read/write fic, they're not necessarily going for the realistic, negotiated, carefully constructed scene. They want the scenario that would be unacceptable/awful in real life, because the fic is constructing the fantasy, just like the real life scene constructs the fantasy. I'm not an expert on this stuff by any means, but it makes sense to me that, when people write out their kink fantasies, a lot of it won't align with acceptable behavior in real life. The author definitely should've used a content warning, but I don't think the fic necessarily needed to include established safe words, etc.

That said, her response is upsetting. It is concerning that you have young girls/women who don't understand consent and who confuse the fantasy with how things should operate in real life. It's also ridiculous to expect people to know your non-con scene was all consensual in your head or to say that your non-con scene wasn't non-con; for that, you definitely need some kind of context/set-up. But I'm guessing that you're smacking up against some language/culture differences. I don't think you can change the whole fandom, but hopefully these kids will grow up and get exposed to new ideas and learn to think differently about things, like a lot of us do. And maybe some feminist meta wouldn't hurt. :P

[penny-lane-42.livejournal.com]

I totally, totally get what you're saying, and I agree with you by and large. The two issues for me were that A) there was no trigger warning and B) she refuses to see it as rape at all. If you're going with a fantasy, no, you don't need to do all the negotiations like you need to do in real life. But since she seems to have no concept of what consent even is, that's why I went into the negotiation stuff, if that makes sense. Like, write your rape fantasies, but first you have to know that they're rape? Like...know the rules before you break them type thing?

I think you and I agree a whole lot here. :D

But I'm guessing that you're smacking up against some language/culture differences.

Possibly. I don't think she was Korean--she could be American, she could be from anywhere, so I have no idea in this case. There definitely are a lot of language/culture differences in this fandom that are hard to navigate.

i don't think you can change the whole fandom, but hopefully these kids will grow up and get exposed to new ideas and learn to think differently about things, like a lot of us do. And maybe some feminist meta wouldn't hurt. :P

Thank you thank you for all your thoughts! I think you're right about everything.

[angearia.livejournal.com]

B) she refuses to see it as rape at all.

:((((((((((

just... how?

[angearia.livejournal.com]

So your comment inspired ~thoughts. Hope you don't mind if I ramble a bit at you.

The author definitely should've used a content warning, but I don't think the fic necessarily needed to include established safe words, etc.

Yeah, I understand this. Because it is a fantasy, in a sense the ~safeword is the action deciding to read the story (that's the moment of consent for the reader), deciding to engage in rape fantasy. And that's why failing to include the trigger warning seems like the worst offense to me, because it removes a person's ability to decide if they want to engage or not.

I'm less comfortable with rpf simply because I haven't really read/written a lot from that genre. But it does make sense to me thinking about the characters as their public personas while writing. Though, once you take it to separating the actual person from the persona -- what is the limit on how to portray them in fiction? And I don't think one can really police that.

What if the story were about the RPF character engaging in other acts of extreme violence? What if it's a murder mystery and the RPF character is the criminal? Where does one draw the line on the ~appropriate portrayal of RPF characters? Once the precedent is made that they're personas, not the actual living person, then I think it's more firmly entered the realm of fiction. And that rationale is what makes it okay to write RPF characters engaging in NC-17 fiction.

I think educating on consent is incredibly important, but I'm not sure that fantasy fiction is the arena for that. Then again, the fantasy fiction becomes a catalyst for revealing how much misinformation and misunderstandings there are about consent exist for so many people.

And maybe some feminist meta wouldn't hurt. :P

Right, this. I think feminist meta is the answer. Offering knowledge to the fandom directly, rather than educating through the fiction by making the fiction feminist-friendly. Being able to help people see why and how it's problematic.

[ghostyouknow27.livejournal.com]

Rambling is fine by me! <3

And that's why failing to include the trigger warning seems like the worst offense to me, because it removes a person's ability to decide if they want to engage or not.

I definitely agree. Readers should have the ability to opt out of content they find disturbing, just like readers should be able to opt into kinky content they think they'll enjoy. It sucks to be smacked with something unexpected. Whether you want to list it as a kink/trigger/content list/whatever, fandom convention expects authors to give readers the information they need to choose their reading material. (If only writers would warn for political opinions, etc., that I don't want to read...)

what is the limit on how to portray them in fiction?

Oh, boy. Hold on for Ghost's Thoughts on RPF.

You know, a couple of years ago, I would've listed RPF as a massive DNW, and now I write quite a bit of it and have ships, etc. And a lot of it is that I have a firm separation between the real life person and their public persona (which provides the basis for my fictional representations of them, except when it doesn't suit the story I want to tell). I don't care how Jared Padalecki and Misha Collins behave when they're at home with their families. I'm not trying to write the real people; I'm writing ridiculously good-looking OCs.

Also, J2 fandom (which I am admittedly not in) has been around long enough that it has its own fanon and cast of characters, etc.

But anyway, you're right that there's no way to police how people handle RPF. The characters are treated like fictional characters, and fandoms don't police how people represent those. That said, some communities will have rules, mostly pertaining to underage RL people, which I appreciate. I don't like actors' kids showing up.

What if the story were about the RPF character engaging in other acts of extreme violence? What if it's a murder mystery and the RPF character is the criminal?

You can find each and every one of these things in Supernatural RPF. In my experience, most individuals draw their own lines in the sand to deal with the ~ethical qualms~ of RPF, but it mostly has to do with what people are used, not how they're used. For example, you won't find me using any RL underage actors, and I won't use anyone who isn't an actor. So I won't write Misha's wife (she's an author, not an actor), but Danneel Ackles (Jensen's wife and an actress) is fine by me, even though she's never appeared on SPN. I won't use Jared's RL non- famous parents/siblings (a lot of authors do, mostly out of convention, but then you'll also find people who are okay with those RL people as long as they're not in villainous roles, along with the people who don't care how they're used).

[ghostyouknow27.livejournal.com]

Many, many thoughts ...

I don't write non-AUs (stories where the actors are actors on a show called Supernatural). But I had pretty much zero qualms about turning Misha Collins into an incubus or an omega for a story (or, you know, pairing him with whomever), and I'm mostly only bothered by the ~idea~ of dark content if it's used to bash a particular person. I don't really see anything inherently wrong with putting fictionalized versions of real adults into all kinds of objectionable situations (though there are definitely some things that I do not like and DNW and do not read), because I don't think they have anything to do with the actual, real people. But clearly I also take steps to preserve that separation, and I don't think that's super unusual among RPF readers/writers.

Also, it varies by fandom. From what I've heard, sports RPF seems a lot more concerned with capturing the real people's characterization than SPN RPF/CW Actor RPF.

I think educating on consent is incredibly important, but I'm not sure that fantasy fiction is the arena for that. Then again, the fantasy fiction becomes a catalyst for revealing how much misinformation and misunderstandings there are about consent exist for so many people.

I think that this situation is clearly one where the author didn't realize the rape was rape (or maaaaybe just got defensive and didn't want to admit to knowingly writing it???), but I agree with you that fantasy fiction isn't the right arena for education. A lot of the people writing non-/dub-con are very aware of consent issues, you know? Stories that ~feel~ more generic and unconscious in their treatment of certain issues bother me a lot more, because then it really seems like the author doesn't know. But even there, I feel like meta is the better way to go about things. Educating and provoking thought is great!