This post is related to the announcement that Taeil is being investigated for sex crimes. Please be aware that discussions of sexual violence against women are included in the post.
One of my first classes in undergraduate was a class called “The Sociology of Crime.” Almost every major had a requirement for some sort of liberal arts elective course, and this was one of the more popular choices because everyone loves talking about a crime. People want to understand why someone did something horrible and so they will speculate and share gossip and talk, talk, talk about it until they can’t talk about it anymore. So this class was filled to the brim with people from all backgrounds and disciplines.
But my professor said something on that very first day of class that has stuck with me, and truthfully, it is the only thing from that class I remember at all. They said, “Everyone is so interested in why people do the wrong thing. But if you think about it, isn’t it more interesting why people do the right thing? Far more people follow the rules than break them. Most people aren’t criminals.”
And it’s true.
Most people aren’t criminals. If they were, it wouldn’t be big news when a crime was committed because we’d all be so used to it day in and day out. So despite how awful the world can seem sometimes, despite the dire nature of the news, most people you meet are not serial killers, murders, or even violent sex criminals.
Yes, statistically, you have met or interacted with at least one violent criminal in your life. And statistically, if you are a woman, you have probably experienced some form of sexual violence. But also, statistically, most people are not criminals.
In fact, it is not normal to go around assuming that every person you have met, interacted with, or encountered is a violent, sexual deviant. Even if that person is a man.
But I admit the state of things is Bad. The state of things with regard to violence against women has been bad for a while, both in the United States and around the world. Those of us who have been paying attention have known this, but as is often the case, many more people are paying attention now that News Is Happening. A high profile crime is fresh. There is something to talk about: Taeil.
For full disclosure, I like a couple of NCT songs, but I couldn’t even tell you what unit of NCT those songs are from, much less identify a single member of that group (which I understand is Very Large). So the news did not personally affect me in the sense that I did not have to come to terms with someone I loved in the past doing something heinous.
But it did of course affect me as it affects everyone who hears it. I do not know many women who have not been affected by some form of sexual violence. (This includes myself.) But even without personal experience, one can imagine the pain of the victim and one can be sad to hear upsetting news.
All of this comes at a time when things in South Korea seem especially bad for women (but it is my understanding that things in Korea have been particularly bad for women for a very long time). Right now, another news story is blowing up: over 200,000 men have been in chat rooms that create AI deep fake porn of women in their lives (students, colleagues, family members). The amount of men in the chat rooms is discouraging to say the least, and the nature of what they have done to women is downright disgusting. Women have lost their lives, livelihood, and friends because of the images created in these chat rooms. And it is very serious.
The accusations are serious; the consequences are serious; and we do need to have serious conversations about systemic issues that have caused this type of crime to flourish.
What we don’t need is a conversation about how all boy groups are Bad Actually because they have Men in them, and Men cannot be trusted.
Women who like boy groups are part of the problem.
How dare stupid women trust Men who have proven themselves Bad over and over again. Do we not remember Burning Sun?
Those of you who have trusted and loved a male idol are stupid, and you shouldn’t have ever trusted and loved an idol because the idol comes from South Korea where things are Bad.
This is the problem with parasocial relationships AND WHY I’LL NEVER STAN A BOY GROUP.
That’s not any more helpful than the “I’m so glad I can trust my ult” crowd who are so tone deaf it’s not worth mentioning. Or the “if it was my ult” crowd who want to speak on what would obviously be a heart wrenching situation when they have not personally experienced said heart wrenching situation (sorry but your moral superiority is so loud I can’t hear anything you’re saying). What happened is not about you, actually.
But the news of someone who has a reputation for being sweet and innocent, which I’m told Taeil did (though again I had never heard of this man until the news dropped), actually being a criminal is scary to a lot of people.
The “it could be anyone” statements are true. Any idol could be in these chat rooms; any idol could be a violent sexual criminal (and that includes women idols because women can and do commit sexual violence too). But “it could be anyone” is not meant to be the boogeyman statement that it has become on social media these days.
“It could be anyone” means you shouldn’t blame yourself. You shouldn’t blame yourself for not being all knowing and all seeing, or for not knowing that someone was a criminal when they didn’t want you to know they were a criminal. You don’t have to go back and blame yourself for being fooled by them. They fooled you. They committed crimes. They are the problem.
You are not to blame because you couldn’t have known. It could be anyone.
When I was in law school, I had two very good male friends. I knew everyone in my graduating year and we all hung out constantly (anyone who has been to law school will understand), but I was particularly close to two guys. We did everything together. We took classes, studied, and partied all together. I don’t think it would be an exaggeration to say I was with them every day.
But they were more gregarious than I, and they had many other friends. We started a study group together, and they invited some of their other close friends. One of them was a guy that I will call Male A.
Male A was, by all accounts at our law school, “a nice dude”. We went to a very social justice minded law school (at one point it was the number one social justice law school in the nation), and he was at every social justice initiative on campus same as myself. He even volunteered with me at the public interest law foundation where we would help low income clients connect with lawyers.
So I was around Male A a lot. He credited me to helping him pass some of his exams because of access to my notes and outline. He was my classmate and squarely in my circle of friends. After law school, he went on to become a civil rights activist.
It came out 3 years after we all graduated that he was a literal monster who had recorded himself raping numerous women across the United States. And we all watched this story unfold, each detail making it worse and worse, in shock.
Sometimes, I still think about how we could all be around him and not have known. My two closest friends were close to Male A, and they hadn’t known or suspected anything. No one in my graduating class did. Because Male A knew what he was doing was a crime, he didn’t share that part of himself with us.
It has been almost 7 years since this happened, and I still think about it sometimes. How close I was to someone who could behave so deplorably. It makes me uncomfortable; it makes me wonder if I should've suspected, or if even maybe deep down I did and that’s why we were never closer. But I didn’t suspect anything, really. I was surprised when the news came out. How could this guy that I knew have done all of those terrible things?
And that’s okay. That’s a normal reaction to finding out something so shocking and disturbing. It’s okay that I didn’t think all of my male law school classmates were monsters or fear that they were deep down hiding some sort of depravity from me, even though one of them was.
I am not at fault for thinking Male A was a “nice dude” before I was shown otherwise because it can be anyone.
Just like I am not at fault for trusting men who went on to take advantage of me or hurt me. I am not at fault for believing the words of others.
It is normal to assume that most people you interact with are not criminals. And in most cases, they are not.
A person who says “I’ll never fully trust boy groups because you just never know” is not better than me simply because they choose to engage with the world in a way that presumes the worst. The former fans of Taeil who are surprised and struggling to comprehend how this could happen are not to blame for being fooled by a man who was trying to fool them—you with your “this is why I don’t trust boy groups” are not better than them.
Yes, be angry at those fans who continue to support him or apologize for his behavior, but his former fans were not stupid and silly and deserving of mockery for their “parasocial relationships”. They are deserving of compassion because they have been fooled, and that’s not their fault.
If something like this does happen with your ult, then you can swoop in and say how totally fine you are because you never fully trusted them anyways because of your very high and mighty moral superiority. As if that is how any of this works.
You presuming the worst about an idol prior to them committing any crimes does not make you better or smarter than anyone. And if that shoe drops, if you’re proved right, it’s going to hurt just as fucking bad as it does for all of the other people who loved that artist. You will be sitting there blaming yourself, thinking about all the money you spent, the time you wasted, the interactions you had. And it will feel really, really bad. Even if you expected it.
Anticipating the worst doesn’t make it any better when it arrives. Anticipating pain doesn’t make it hurt less. It only makes you miserable in the lead up to it. And personally, I will not go around assuming monsters are hiding everywhere.
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