#I can't force you to agree with me but at least treat me with dignity and stop acting like every thought I have

[oyeicher]

Decided to turn my late-night ramblings on Starstruck into an actual post for the three people who might be interested in a little bit more of Yoojae's characterization in the source material. Yoojae reacted poorly to Hanjoon's confession, to say the least, but the novel gives much more insight into why Yoojae reacted the way that he did.

Now the show didn't really explain how Yoojae found out where Hanjoon lived, but in the novel, Yoojae goes to see Hanjoon at his old home the day before the college entrance exam to give him something, only to be told by the landlord that Hanjoon and his mom moved out ages ago. The next day, after the college entrance exam, Yoojae goes to see the owner of the boxing club, who has been feeding Hanjoon meals because he doesn't have enough money for his meals. It is the boxing club owner who fills Yoojae in about Hanjoon's current predicament.

After Yoojae says, "Don't try to preserve your dignity in front of me," to Hanjoon, he also says the following:

Throughout high school, I often went to school hungry, so you invited me to your home to eat. This happened countless times. Why did you do so? Wasn't it because we're friends? So why can't I do the same for you? Why is it that I am allowed to rely on you, but you can't rely on me? If things are difficult, just say so. What's so difficult about that?

Both of them grew up in poverty in the same neighborhood so neither are strangers to not having enough money to buy food. However, while Yoojae's family has made a small fortune and moved into an apartment in a fancier neighborhood, Hanjoon and his mom have been kicked out of their home. Nevertheless, having been through similar situations himself, Yoojae is painfully aware of what it's like to be so poor as to go without meals, as well as not wanting to be seen as a charity case and pitied by others. Thus, after Yoojae's family escapes poverty, Yoojae treats Hanjoon the same as he always has, save for small things like occasionally buying a few snacks and offering to pay for Hanjoon at the comic cafe. Yoojae did not want to tell Hanjoon about his family's newfound wealth on account of Hanjoon's family's finances. Especially after witnessing his parents show off to everyone, Yoojae had no desire at all to show off or even tell others about his family's wealth. As for Hanjoon, he did not want to be a downer about his own situation in the face of Yoojae's "good fortune."

Both of them do what they think is in the other's best interests, but they still struggle to understand where the other is coming from. Moreover, a lot of Yoojae's thoughts and experiences on love and relationships seem to reflect what he has witnessed from his parents, who constantly fight and blame one another. At times, they also force him to take sides. Therefore, it's no wonder that he has such a warped view of love and relationship. And this isn't even taking into account the internalized homophobia that others have mentioned as well.

Hanjoon loves Yoojae so much, and has loved him for so long, that he takes the opportunity to express his love to Yoojae through an expensive heart-shaped box of chocolates, under the pretense of wishing Yoojae good luck on the college entrance exam. We see how happy Hanjoon is to buy the box of chocolates and give them to Yoojae, and then how crushed he is when Yoojae throws it on the floor. But all Yoojae sees is that Hanjoon spent money he doesn't have on the fancy chocolates.

Yoojae reacted poorly, there's no question about that. However, I do think that the rest of the dialogue, which was cut from the show episode 4, gives more insight into what was going on in Yoojae’s mind at the time. [edit: portions of this dialogue were in episode 5]

Are you threatening me?

Are you saying that if I don’t go out with you, I won’t be able to see you ever again? How could you say something like that to me?

You must have known that there was no way that I would ever agree to something as ridiculous as that. So why did you say it to me? Are you really going to never see me again? Are you really going to give me up just for that sort of reason?

Contact me once you’ve sorted out your feelings.

My interpretation is that Yoojae viewed Hanjoon's confession as emotional blackmail of some kind, which coupled with his own confusion regarding his feelings toward Hanjoon, led him to react even more strongly. All this is to say that yes, Yoojae was behaving like an immature teenager, but his life experiences shaped him to be that imperfect person, and he wasn't simply being a jerk just for the hell of it.

That's all I have to say about Starstruck for now and if you're still reading this, thank you for reading my word vomit💕

[zoyalannister]

hi! I agree with your post I hate when people make Kit look like he knows nothing of sex. I dont see him aroace as many of the fandom, but one thing is to be aro and another to be completely oblivious.

I also think many consider him aro because that way for them he cant be with Grace, but this is a whole other rant.

Lucie is by far more naive and there are never jokes with this, probably prompted by CC decission of making her horny with Jesse in chot destroying their tender naive relationship and making it a decaf version of Jordelia. I found it weird she went from knowing nothing of sex, to joke about it with Jesse or him having boners and her noticing and knowing what was the cause, this all happnes in what? a week? So little, so incoherent

But yet no one jokes on Lucie being clueless, or anyone else really, only Christopher, and coincidently are people who also picture him as aro and/or autistic... is it a headcanon or just ableism? I know autistic people who know what sex is, so thats no excuse.

Sorry for the long rant, I'm very tired of seeing Christopher get even more mistreated than in canon

Hi! I totally agree on everything except about the "tender and naive" relationship Jesse and Lucie have in the first 2 books, for me they always had so many red flags and they were creepy even before they became Jordelia 2.0.

I don't see Kit as aroace (except as demisexual, because in my mind he would need a platonic interest before getting involved sexually), but come on, aroace people know what sex is, they’re just not attracted to it. As you said, one thing is being aroace, another is being totally oblivious, and if some people see Christopher as the former, I can't accept when people portray him as the latter.

Lucie had this 180° turn because CC wants to force the readers to like JesseLucie, so now they're super horny and Lucie in 12 hours discovered sex, boners and her own body's reaction. And people had the courage to say that who doesn’t like ChoT does so just because it doesn’t align with their headcanon.

But even before ChoT came out, when still canonically Lucie didn’t know anything about sex, no one ever wrote headcanons like:

Alastair: I'm on top this time

Thomas: Come on, I know you like when I'm on top

Lucie: Guys why do you live on two different floors of your house?

(References to an actual headcanon where Christopher was actually the clueless one may or may not be accidental).

This is just stupid because she is canonically oblivious at this point of the story, and she should have been "mocked" by the fandom for it in the same way they do to Christopher.

And here comes your last point. Kit is canonically neurodivergent, but this fandom needs to be reminded that neurodivergent doesn’t equal stupid or ignorant.

One person reblogged the post saying that the fandom acts like this towards Christopher for ableism, and I personally agree. Lucie isn’t neurodivergent, but in the eyes of the fandom she catches sex jokes even when canonically she doesn’t know about it. Christopher is neurodivergent, and even if it doesn’t make sense in canon that a scientist who also dwells in biology doesn’t know about sex, in the headcanons he's always the one who doesn’t catch sex jokes and Anna must stop Matt or Alastair from telling him.

It's very hard not to think that ableism is the reason.

Don't worry about the long rant, my answer is even longer ahah

And I agree: Christopher was already done so much dirty in canon, at least in fandom spaces let's treat him with dignity.

[a-womans-rhetoric]

Natalie Wynn's "J.K. Rowling" and Disruptive use of Women's Rhetorical Tropes: A Defiant Reply to Transmisogyny

ContraPoints, surrounded by an opulent, candle-lit set and adorned in witch's garb, leisurely pours champagne into her glass — she's ready to breach the internet's hottest topic of January, 2021: her childhood idol being outed as a transphobe (link here). The video itself being over an hour and a half long, I would be hard-pressed to claim that I could ever hope to cover its entirety, comprehensively, in a single post. So to save-face, I'll be dedicating this space only to breaking down her most frequently used rhetorical tropes, one by one.

Irreverence

"Joanne, I wanna talk to you, Joanne! [Fans herself with a rainbow paper fan with the word "BIOLOGICAL" written across it] What is it about Joannes? I can't catch a break from these people" (00:23-00:29, emphasis added).

Wynn's introductory lines immediately open a dialogue with J.K. Rowling — however, this invitation of discourse is defiantly "irreverent" (reminiscent of Nomy Lamm's punk-feminist style in "It’s a Big Fat Revolution” (1995)). Contrapoints, herself a transgender woman, is aware that her very existence is considered in opposition to the TERF-ideology that Rowling subscribes to. Thus, she's rather playful — even openly disrespectful — with her diction: calling the British author by her first name in a mocking-tone and flaunting her own trans identity to the camera (in a way that would likely offend the fragile sensibilities of a transphobe). Her personal tone (with ample use of the pronoun "I") servers a duplicitous purpose: a simultaneous message of "sit down and listen" and a fair degree of "I don't care if you can't accept me."

"So, now that 2020 is finally over, I think we can let the record conclusively show that it was a year whomst is bad. And on top of everything else going on, truly the last thing we needed was the author of Harry Potter coming forward to announce there's two things she can't stand: bigotry, and the transgenders. (00:31 - 00:50, emphasis added).

Finally broaching the subject at hand directly, Wynn employs kairos alongside her irreverence. Kairos, or the rhetorical use of an "opportune moment," holds incredible weight in the first month after 2020: the year in which the whole world fell into a stasis. Characterizing Rowling's transphobia as a collective "the last thing we needed," is also rather dismissive — she unites herself with her audience with the pronoun "we" and invites us all to groan at the exasperating nature of Rowling's bigotry.

Claiming the Right to Speak / Personal Experience

"This is a painful topic for me all around because, as a transgender woman, I am honestly really hurt by a lot of the things Joanne has said in the last year. But I also know what it's like to be the target of a Twitter mob" (01:36-01:47).

As she begins to touch on the topic, Natalie Wynn claims the right to speak on the issue of Rowling's transphobia — a type of bigotry that directly effects her. However, Wynn also situates herself partially with Rowling in her acknowledgement that receiving Twitter backlash is a terrifying experience (an experience, she argues, that the human brain is not prepared to handle the scale of, 01:49-02:39). In treating her subject with such dignity — and adding her own deeply personal account— ContraPoints creates a credible ethos in the beginning of her video essay. The audience is inclined to listen to someone who has been directly effected by the subject of Rowling's controversy (transphobia) and someone who is, rather compassionately, willing to empathize with those who would wish her harm. Although the generally sassy, glamorous, and irreverent tone of the video still appears soon after (see: the above image), her opening up for this somber moment garners a fair degree pathos in the viewer — we, as human beings, are inclined to sympathize with people who are open about being hurt.

Metis (Embodied Rhetoric)

[The following ContraPoints quote is addressing the above J.K. Rowling tweet, content warning for transmisogyny] "Transphobes love to play this game where they pretend that trans people just don't understand basic biology, that's our problem! As if I didn't start taking female hormones because I'm acutely aware that my body is not the same as a cis woman's body, that sex is real. "[Fictional TERF character] You will never be a woman, Nathan. Every cell in your body is male and has a Y chromosome." Really? That's crazy. How you'd you learn so much about science? You know I don't really feel the need to have a second X chromosome, I get by with only one, I make it work. I actually like the Y chromosome, I think it's a little more dainty, you know, it's little softer, a little more petite. The X chromosome has a lot of extra appendages, and don't you think? I don't need anymore of those, thanks. No trans person thinks it's possible to change chromosomal sex and to pretend otherwise is to argue in bad faith" (08:47-09:34).

If you can excuse my gargantuan quote, I hope you'll agree that the dialogue ContraPoints builds here was just too good to cut short. Within this excerpt, we see Wynn's use of irreverance and personal experience blended seamlessly together. For this YouTuber, the personal is perpetually political — especially when her own identity is constantly taken as an ideological stance. She uses her own expertise in trans issues to pick apart just how disingenuous Rowling's assertions are — even accusing her of "argue[ing] in bad faith" with her reductive claims (later, taking specific issue with how Rowling treats trans-ness as a costume). But, here, she also directly invokes another rhetorical trope: that of metis, or embodied rhetoric. Natalie Wynn specifically references her transgender body as a sort of counterpoint to the condescending "sex is real" claims by TERFs. She cites her intrinsic desire to pursue hormonal therapy as evidence that she — and other trans people like her — are all "acutely aware" that there are chromosomal differences between themselves and cis women. With this salient statement, she then follows with some humor: which, again, utilizes her trans body in her rhetoric. Her characterization of the Y chromosome as "more petite" and playful declaration of not needing "extra appendages" lightens up the often dark tone that arguing for trans rights and liberation can take. The clever points she makes are by no means weakened by her humor — if anything, the audience is more willing to listen to someone who can "joke about themselves" (so to speak) while still arguing an incredibly important message.

Naming and Defining Issues

"When I see Joanne tweeting about how trans people think sex isn't real and they're erasing same-sex attraction and they're silencing women, alarm bells are ringing because I recognize these as familiar transphobic talking points, specifically TERF talking points. "TERF" means trans exclusionary radical feminism. God are we still talking about this? I promise this is the last time. So TERFism is a hate movement that disguises transphobia as feminism. ... The fundamental problem with TERFs is not that they're mean. It's that they're politically reactionary, they want to reverse the progress of trans liberation." (14:05-16:02)

In her definition of TERF rhetoric, Natalie Wynn outlines some dog-whistles that are obvious to her, as a trans woman. She calmly explains to the viewer that, oftentimes in the present-day, rhetorics of exclusion are thoroughly disguised; TERFs, specifically, hide their rampant transphobia as a form of feminism. However, she further clarifies that the specific "danger" that TERFs pose is not from their cruelty — it's from their fervent dedication to strip away trans rights through political means. By specifying this danger, Natalie Wynn shifts the conversation away from empty discussion of offensiveness/terminology, to issues which directly affect the lives of trans people every day.

[This portion addresses the picture above] Also an act of naming and defining, ContraPoints makes a distinction between "Direct" and "Indirect Bigotry." She argues that many people envision bigotry as a festering, public, frothing-at-the-mouth hatred — a phenomenon she dubs "the Westboro Baptist Church theory of bigotry" (20:06). In bringing attention to the human tendency to think of people as exclusively practicing "direct bigotry" — envisioning them as a sort of delusional "other" — she then forces the audience to contemplate the relative omni-presence of the more covert (and possibly alluring) "indirect bigotry." This definition, crucially, requires introspection. By allowing ourselves to think of bigots not exclusively as "Westboros," we're made to adopt a much more nuanced view of subjects (most) generally prefer to keep black-and-white. Natalie Wynn uses her J.K. Rowling case study to complicate this 2D view of "The Bigot," inviting others to more carefully examine how politically reactionary views develop.

Phew, this was probably the longest post I've ever typed up on tumblr! Hopefully, I succeeded in demystifying (or at least adding clarity to) some of the specific tropes ContraPoints uses (that are common to women's rhetorics as a whole). Thanks for reading if you stuck around this long, and my ask box is always open!

[just-themys]

May I ask what ABA is, please? I read the post you linked to and I can't seem to make sense of it? Sorry if I'm being silly ono

ABA stands for Applied Behavior Analysis, which is one fields of Behavior Analysis.

It’s behavioral psychology, and so mostly focus on behaviors, what causes them to appear, what maintains them, and what makes them go extinct.

It’s recommended to help persons with autism (although hardly recognized in France, where the situation people with autism is… dramatic, to say the least). I say “to help” and not “in the treatment of”, because it’s not a “treatment”. It will help people with autism (but not only this population, it can be applied ot a variety of settings) to develop behaviors that will help them communicate, be more socially included, maybe access to jobs and most important : don’t have to depend on someone all their lives, and can get some dignity.Concurrently, we’ll work on reducing (and if needed eliminating) some behaviors that either harm them, harm others, or cause troubles. Most of the time alternative solutions will be taught.

But nowadays, some autistic people (generally verbal people and/or aspergers) will condemn it, saying it’s a “torture” method, “basically the same as conversion therapy because made by the same guy with the same intent” (do you have any knowledge on the history of behavior analysis ?), and just a way to “force autistic people into a neurotypical mold to fit society’s norms” or a way to “treat autism”. They also pretend we don’t even see the autistic person as a person.

Which is wrong.

You’re not “treated” from autism. It’s stupid.

These criticisms show a bad understanding of ABA, but are applauded on tumblr from allistic people because “We’re autistic so listen to us !”

basically for them, autism is a neurodivergence and we should just celebrate it and don’t do anything to change them, but change society’s way to see it.

I agree a bit on last part, but to a certain extent. You can’t ask society to totally adapt to one type of individuals, especially individuals who are so varied and different.

It’s a both parts effort. People with autism (and other disabilities) have efforts to do, and those should be recognized and eased out at a maximum by society and therapies.

One point of criticism is auto-stimulations. We won’t search to systematically eliminate them. Most of the time, it’s more a reduction that’s sought, OR teaching when to do them so it’s not an issue, where to do them, and teach alternate ways to produce the same effects (for example stress reduction) in a more socially acceptable way. Note that sometimes self-stimulations are also dangerous. These will generally be suppressed or reduced or modified so they don’t hurt the person or the others anymore.

As for “autistic people aren’t seen as people”, idk where they found that from. I’d like them to tell me how we don’t see them as persons when we spend so many time finding exactly what type of procedures we can use with this particular person, what things will reinforce them (and how we can use our best to use reinforcement and non-restrictive procedures), what behaviors we should enhance to help them best, what is the most comfortable, etc.Just yesterday I spent one hour with a young autistic teenager to try to teach her to say “No” to other kids bullying her, to report any bullying to adults, all of this to protect her. Before, other sessions have been made to help her express her feelings and find ways to help her feel better at school, teach her to take small breaks to help with her attention issues, etc.

So yeah, basically, ABA is a torture method that should die, and what I’m studying and about to graduate in. (yes this is sarcasm. I have reasons to be really angry at this new trend of condemning ABA, not even knowing what it is).