#taeyong and suho single parents/moms

[reblogor]

Serious Talk: When Seungcheol becomes “Jon” and Jeonghan becomes “Kate”

Okay, so a little break before I get into my whole gender roles/sexism spiel, I want to talk specifically about fanfiction, specifically about kpop, and specifically about “mom and dad ships” in boy groups.

Yes, this applies to every mom/dad ship including -

Namjoon & Seokjin, Jeonghan & Seungcheol, N & Leo, Jaebum & Jinyoung, etc. and “single parents” like Taeyong and (I guess?) Suho. 

But let’s be real, this next portion is really just going to apply to the “mom” sides of these ships.

I get it, it’s cute to think of your bias groups like a family--JongKey the husband and wife taking care of their dear senile father Onew, dealing with the hormonal breakdowns of their teenaged soccer star son Minho, and trying their best to stop their toddler son Taemin from eating ants. It’s kind of cute as a totally fictional concept--the quintessential nuclear family. But the problem is that it never stays entirely fiction for some shippers

Take, for example, Jeongcheol. Jeonghan is the gorgeous, refined, “mother” who frets over his children, especially his baby Chan. Seungcheol is the fun dad who lets the kids run through the house and ruin Jeonghan’s newly cleaned floors. It’s cute, (I guess, I mean this isn’t really my idea of a good time but whatever), but it became weird when fans started purposely misgendering Jeonghan. Jeonghan repeatedly stated that he is a man and that he doesn’t like the misgendering. The same thing happened with Seokjin, who didn’t want to put up with the whole Pretty-in-Pink Princess shit fans took waaay too far.

Now, I’m sure there’s some idols who wouldn’t mind that (especially since gender non-conforming idols do exist), but these two specifically, said they didn’t

It’s also a problem because it’s rooted in stereotypes. The idea that: Jeonghan had long hair, Seokjin mentioned liking pink, N having a somewhat curvy body, etc. and not actually anything the idol said about being female-identified. It’s rooted in the idea that ONLY women can do certain things and ONLY men can do certain things. And when you contrast this with the so-called “single parents” of kpop, it’s somewhat different

Taeyong is called the “mom” of NCT, but I haven’t really seen it to the point where he’s being misgendered in the sense that it is uncomfortable for him OR that it spills over into reality. It seems to just be fans’ imagination of what an alternate universe would look like if Taeyong really did just decide to adopt 17 kids. It’s also never really paired with stereotypes on femininity--at least not at the same level as Jeonghan and Seokjin. Of course, it can always cross that line but the key is to make sure it never does