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KPOP FANDOM YOU ARE KILLING ME!!!!
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![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
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.]
Soaerintine 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:
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.
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.
no subject
again, she was apologetic (YAY!) and humble about it (YAY!) but then trawled out the excuses again too and showed total cluelessness about the crux of the problem. BOO.
I KNOW. She's clearly a very sweet person, but her way of thinking is just so, so wrong.
God, poor everyone. The admins, the women and girls following this blog, all of this fandom in general. POOR EVERYONE. (Poor Myungsoo. He'll never see it thank goodness, but it was hard to read, on his behalf alone. Hence the need for WARNINGS.)
I KNOW I KNOW I KNOW.
This fandom brings me more joy than possibly anything else I've been involved in since I entered fandom in 2007. I don't say that lightly. The last 6-8 months have been like a dream discovering all of this WONDER and EXCITEMENT and pure, unadulterated JOY. And frankly, I only expect it to grow. There is so much goodness here, so much to love, so much that enriches my life in a number of ways big and small.
So yeah, this is a cold pail of water. And I don't know how to address this because that story and all the reactions to our messages tells me that we've hit the Kpop fandom iceberg, so to speak. Now we have to face it and deal with it. And it seems way too huge to even know where to begin. I'm paralyzed with not knowing how to handle it.
I could not agree with you more on all of this. All of it.