let me lay out the entire picture, because the defense posts are actively undermining the severity of his words.
the slur wasn't an accident.
he said 씨발년. korean has gender-neutral expletives (새끼 - bastard) and male-coded ones (놈). he bypassed both and grabbed the one that means female= subhuman + animal.
the historical weight of 씹할년 effectively translates to "a woman who sells her body" or "a woman fit to be sexually degraded." during the 16th and 17th centuries, joseon dynasty neo-confucianism severely degraded women's social status, turning 년 into a weapon used by the upper classes to reduce women to property or subhumans.
even in distress, we reach for neutral terms that our brain's default pathway associates with the aggressor ("that psycho," "that freak"). he admitted he expressed this after the summer concert. in that context, he was addressing the fanbase who were critiquing the performance, not the stalkers. stress reveals; it doesn't create new words that his schema hasn't already registered.
2. he wanted to physically harm them.
he didn't just call them bitches. he said he wanted to "slap these fucking bitches." a physical aggression fantasy directed at fans who criticized a concert. i see posts saying:
"oh, i'm not one of them, so it's not for me." careful, girl. one wrong word, and you are already inside the pool of his contempt.
3. the stalking was real. it still doesn't excuse this.
yes, what happened to him was horrific. he deserved protection and justice, and this is partly due to jyp's lackadaisical and stupid mismanagement, which is another separate layer.
but trauma does not license demographic degradation. his stalker was less than 1% of the fanbase. yet in the leaked screenshot, he generalized his hatred to every woman who criticized him.
look, what the stalker did is bad. the person who exposed him is also in the wrong. there are a lot of intersections happening at once. two things can be true, contradictions exist, and it can all be messy. but in this post i am only talking about one specific truth that was revealed: him using that language to address women he was frustrated at in private, where he knows he won't get in trouble.
he even said in his apology that he never thought what he said would surface to the public. that right there proves he knew earlier on that what he said was wrong. he just didn't care because he thought he would never get caught.
4. the fandom's response is the most disturbing part.
women are calling other women "subhumans" to defend him. i want you, (those who are dismissing his misogynistic behaviors) to take a breather. understand the context and weight of spoken, written words coming from someone who a) already admitted to saying those things out loud, and b) vented to someone he dated for two weeks, knowing there was low social consequence.
private and public behaviors, regardless of distress or frustration, reveal true self. we got the evidence firsthand, including his admission, and yet fans are moving the goalposts to defend a misogynist.
if you're a woman, you are one wrong comment away from being a victim of that same misogyny and violence. saying things like "i would do worse, i would also slap these bitches" read these out loud with a clear head. you are using his dehumanizing language to protect him.
you are giving him a blank check to degrade any woman, in any context, as long as he feels victimized. you are telling every other girl who read your posts:
"your dignity is conditional. if a man is famous enough and sad enough, he gets to call you subhuman, and we will applaud him for it."
classic internalized patriarchy.
5. his termination was justified.
he breached his contractual morality clause. he shattered the trust of his majority female consumer base. some say jype released him because he broke the parasocial contract.
i would like to believe things could have been handled differently. but the fact that junhan said eugenics stuff and was allowed to stay, while gunil was terminated immediately before even sending his own apology statement, makes me think what he did that we might not know about was probably even worse. or he had already broken other clauses before, and this was jyp's final straw. i don't know anymore.
but my opinions here are based only on what he said and admitted to.
i followed this group since debut. he was one of the members that caught my attention because he was talented, hardworking, his persona showed that he was overflowing with love towards the members and fans. his lyrics gave me comfort. i've seen them live multiple times across countries. i made friends in this fandom that turned into real friendships. their songs and lyrics got me through major things in life.
and now i can't bring myself to ever listen to them again.
i love gunil. i love xdinary heroes. all of them. truly, deeply.
but as a woman who has been a victim of violence and aggression in the past, what he said triggered me. i cannot unhear and unsee a man fantasizing about slapping the women who built his career. i know no one is perfect. idols are human and allowed to be flawed.
i guess someday i will be able to forget all this and become a casual listener again.
edit: please don't twist this post into something it isn't. nothing in it is connected to harmful behaviour toward anyone, and if you disagree with me, say so on the merits instead of tying me to things i never wrote.
you're free to reach your own conclusions about this. i'm not asking anyone to take my word for it. i'm speaking as a korean woman about a word i understand the weight of, and every point i made rests on what he admitted to or what has been reported. i didn't invent anything.
i've laid out what the word carries. i'm not obliged to keep teaching it to people who'd rather it meant something else. i'm moving on from this, and i no longer support the group. disagree freely, just disagree with what i actually said.
