Okay, so yesterday's live has further fueled the flames of the good old Jimin Gender Discourse that were already pretty flammable ever since he decided to make his hair blond and long. I have nothing else to do today so I thought I might share my own two cents.
From all the different translations I've seen, the situation seems to be this:
They were talking about Jimin's hair. Tae said Jimin could pull off pigtails and Jin says he should do it but Jimin's reaction indicates he doesn't really love the idea. Then Hobi says that Jin had pigtails for PTD On Stage in Vegas and Yoongi says something (it's hard to hear what) that prompts Jimin to share that staff told him fans have started calling him unnie instead of oppa (presumably because of his hair), which Jimin seems to find funny, but not in a bad way, based on how he laughs and smiles. Then Yoongi says that Jimin being called unnie is suspicious and Jimin asks what's suspicious about it in an offended (but not very seriously) tone. My (possibly wrong) interpretation of this is that Yoongi is jokingly saying that he's suspicious that Jimin is actually an unnie, aka is a woman, and Jimin seems jokingly offended by that suspicion.
Two other moments are Jimin saying he's going to grow his hair until it's as long as the AI Rapunzel edits fans make (unclear if he's serious or not, but I sure hope he is) and him finding it funny but not offensive to be called Rapunzel's little sister.
What I gathered from all of this is that: a) Jimin does not want to do pigtails (rip to taejin's hopes and dreams), b) Jimin is not offended by fans jokingly calling him words normally exclusively used for women (like unnie and sister), and c) despite that, Jimin doesn't actually want his identity as a man to be questioned. So basically, he isn't bothered by feminine terms but he still very much so identifies as a man and not a woman.
Now let's talk about whole manly thing.
In the Face Production Diary fanmeet Jimin picks up this rack thing and fans start calling him manly while laughing. After he sits back down, he gives the fans this short lesson about good communication skills where he says that they shouldn't laugh while calling someone something. He also mockingly imitates them calling him manly and gives it a thumbs down. To me the main conclusions here are that Jimin thinks you shouldn't laugh while complimenting someone because it may sound like you're making fun of them and also that he thinks it's silly to think picking up something and showing physical strength is manly. From this situation alone you can't really know how he personally feels about being called manly.
However, earlier that same year, during the promotion of the Face album itself, Jimin went to this radio interview show and at one point he's asked about drinking and says he can handle alcohol well, which makes the fans present there start calling him manly but he denies it and very directly says he isn't manly. To be more specific the word they used is ěë¨ě. That word is actually the original Korean name for Boy In Luv (the old one not the pink one, that would be Boy With Luv).
(Aside: Boy With Luv being that pink and featuring a woman is a very purposeful contrast to Boy In Luv, and it's why they have almost the same name. It's essentially BTS saying âwe had some not-so-great ideas back in the day, but we know better nowâ. It's the same thing they did with War of Hormone versus 21st Century Girl. It's no coincidence that both Boy In Luv and War of Hormone are from 2014, because BTS didn't have the healthiest portrayal of masculinity back in 2013/2014, which is something I'll mention again later.)
So if you listen to Boy In Luv with translations and watch the MV that's kinda the vibe of what the word means. To explain more, it means manly man, real man or macho man, basically just a very masculine and tough guy. It's used a lot online, often in a joking or even mocking way because it describes a very exaggeratedly masculine man, which a lot of people (especially young people) find to be silly. So it's very unsurprising that Jimin would disagree with being called that.
This is also the same word Namjoon used for Jimin in the recent live with the two of them plus Hobi and Tae. Tae used a different term (í
í ë¨, aka testosterone man) which is kinda like an alpha guy. They were calling Jimin this based on the fact he normally doesn't eat dessert and sweet things. Obviously, those terms don't fit Jimin, especially not because of something like not eating dessert, but I'm pretty sure that's the whole joke. It's obviously very silly to think not eating dessert is manly, and to say that about Mr. What-the-heck-is-man himself is even more silly.
In fact, I think a good amount of the fans in the radio interview and in the fanmeet were using those terms jokingly, especially because, as I said before, they are often used like that online. Just like with eating dessert, it's also silly to think picking up a lightweight-looking rack and being able to drink a lot of soju means someone is a real man.
There's also that one video of Jimin talking about his past self and how he used to have to pretend to be a strong man and he's glad he doesn't have to do that anymore. It's not a coincidence that a song from that era would literally be named Manly Man (as I mentioned, that's the actual name of Boy In Luv) because early in their career BTS did have an exaggerated masculine image and Jimin, more so than the other members, was especially responsible for upholding that image.
An example of that is when all the members didn't want to lift their shirts to show their abs during No More Dream so the choreography was changed so they wouldn't have to do it anymore but Jimin's part was kept the same even though he was uncomfortable with it and asked to not have to do it (and let's also consider how on top of making him uncomfortable, having a body like that in the first place would require a lot of strict working out and dieting and he was doing all of this at 17).
Having to pretend to be this type of man would naturally not feel great for a guy that isn't actually some super manly macho man and is instead someone who seems to like masculinity in moderation, who seems to be perfectly fine with more feminine things and who, as Taemin said and Jimin agreed, has a gender-neutral charm.
My opinion about this whole topic is that Jimin most likely only identifies as a man and does like masculinity but not the hyper and toxic kind. He also seems to not want to be restricted to only masculinity and isn't afraid to be androgynous and even feminine. Basically, he's most likely a cis but gender-non-conforming man.
Now, I could be wrong and he could not be cis at all. I'm very aware that his ability to actually confirm something like that is very limited, and as such, expecting him to do it would be naive. And that is why I say that this is only my opinion and not a fact.
What is more factual, however, is that Jimin has shown many times that he does not conform to gender stereotypes. So the people insisting he's some macho guy who would hate to be associated with anything feminine are almost certainly completely wrong, while the people speculating he may not be cis are only just probably, but not certainly, wrong.
There's also the fact that misgendering a presumably cis guy (therefore someone who would not be as heavily affected by misgendering as trans and non-binary people are) is very much not on the same level as being borderline, if not straight up, transphobic, homophobic and misogynistic.
Yes, there are absolutely fans who take it too far (in particular, shippers' tendencies to force heteronormativity and misogyny on what would be a gay couple is beyond frustrating to me), but I'm not gonna sit here and pretend like calling a guy an omega (which he is unlikely to even find out about) is worse than saying very bigoted things (which queer fans are forced to see in what they hoped would be a safe and accepting fan community).
But instead of competing to see who's worse in each extremity, why don't we all just go to the middle? Let's have some nuance and just agree that we shouldn't make conclusive statements about the gender identity of someone we ultimately don't know, but that we also shouldn't try to force Jimin into a stereotype he has clearly shown he doesn't fit, all while ignoring the parts of him you don't like and pretending like he's the one who doesn't like it to justify what are actually just your own prejudiced ideas.
Really, a lack of nuance and inability to not take things to extremes is what causes much of this discourse. Jimin isn't a black-or-white kind of person. A big thing about him is his duality and his multifaceted nature so I really don't understand why fans of someone like that keep trying to limit him to being just one thing. There are so many male idols who present themselves as more one-note, but for some reason people will insist on being fans of Jimin instead of those guys. Those people would be doing all of us, including themselves, a favor if they just admitted that Jimin isn't who they want him to be instead of doing mental gymnastics to prove that he is.
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