Lens's, Part 1
So my first official post on this platform is going to be an insufferably long one
Mostly because I can't stop these thoughts from bouncing around my head. Right now the boys are cooking up their comeback and as excited as I am, the general silence and gap in activities is ROUGH (honestly I'm just spoiled, the boys really have been non stop with content even through enlistment. We really are so lucky to stan them but I digress) All this to say, I know a lot has already been said and a lot of people are comfortable laying this to rest so please feel free to ignore this short novel i'm about to write.
(this is already going to have to be multiple parts. What a disaster 🤦)
I'm gonna talk about The Statement
More specifically, the reaction to The Statement.
Before we start, a few things: i've been an ARMY for around 6 years and am jikook biased. I'm also queer (lesbian + ace, with some gender things mixed in) and so a lot of my POV and understanding of things is colored by a queer lens. When I started to notice notice jikook, it was as a queer woman first, and I have maintained a policy for lack of a better word of making sure to see both Jimin and Jungkook as individuals first as well - very likely queer individuals, possibly having feelings for each other, possibly in a relationship, etc.
(I say "possibly" not because I doubt my perception, or jikooks bond, but just as a recognition that we as fans cannot be sure of anything 100% unless we hear it from their mouths directly. I myself am very certain of things I believe but logically we always have to keep space for being wrong, especially about specifics.)
So what does this have to do with The Statement? Well I want to talk about the different lens's we as a collective of fans (and even anti's) can see things through.
Once the elevator video dropped you had most ARMYs respond with....confusion. What video? Who? What's going on??? There were also far too many ARMYs who responded with something like "if that video is real good for him! He's finally free from shippers!!! See he's totally straight" which...let me not speak on how sick it is that THAT is your first thought at someone getting their privacy invaded. But whatever. Of course tkkrs were celebrating, they had a huge hand in pushing this to happen - and then there were Jimin biased/focused accounts and jikookers, who responded with shock. Because we DID know who SD is, and to be honest most of us had spent the years she's been dropping rumor bait thinking she had no connection to Jimin outside of living in the same complex. So seeing her in close proximity with Jimin, seeing them share words and talk together was a huge shock to the system. And, for a lot of us, it was terrifying. I'll be charitable and say MOST of us were terrified because of the huge invasion of privacy, the implications of her posting his face and what this could mean from a woman who has threatened to blackmail him before - and mostly how this would affect Jimin, who so values his privacy.
So we reported the video and accounts and started preparing for Jungkook's Birthday, but things were tense. Discourse was being had. People were waiting for the next shoe to drop. And it did.
Not many people were expecting The Statement, so when it dropped it dropped HARD. There was a lot of anger and panic from Jikookers, Jimin biased/focused accounts. And I'll speak for myself and say I got swept up in it too: I was shocked, I was confused, I was upset. BH had never made a statement like that before, and it felt SO weird and borderline insulting, especially the last part.
Now because September seems to be cursed on all ends (a special type of cursed if you're a queer POC like me, living the US) I got covid when this whole thing happened, so I had a lot of time to lay in bed and think about things, read posts on here, try to find perspectives I trust and find an understanding of this situation outside of the uproar.
I talked to friends and moots online, but I didn't get clarity until I talked to one of my friends irl. Now, this friend is also a queer ARMY who I met through BTS, and who is smarter than me because she is completely off ARMY twitter and most online ARMY spaces. I asked her if she knew what was going on with Jimin, and she said no. I asked if she knew who SD is, and she said she never heard of her.
So this is where we circle back to lens's.
It didn't take me long to start feeling frustrated with what seemed to be the general understanding of this situation in ARMY spaces: "So they dated but it doesn't matter, we don't care, lets move on" It was Jungkook's birthday, so there was a good reason to push this thing to the side if that's your understanding of it. Because, honestly, who DOES care if they dated before? Years ago even. They're very grown men, most fans to some degree understand that they've all had the possibility of having dated before. And its a good thing tbh that so much of the fandom is accepting of it because we've all seen what happens to idols who's fandoms reject their right to private lives.
(Does there also exist a correlation to the fact that a lot of larger ARMY accounts are or were tkkrs and they are generally responsible for managing the tone and response to these things? Maybe. That this kind of rumor involving Jimin wasn't as pushed back upon as the ones involving other members does say something but its ultimately not relevant to the point i'm going to make.)
But something didn't sit right with me because The Statement never said they dated. It never used specific language to make determinations about their connection, it left things vague and up to interpretation. Given the context, a lot of people did interpret it as a confirmation because thats the most simple way to see things and ultimately did not matter to a lot of people.
It was very important to me to understand my own feelings of unease with my initial understanding and the fandoms overall reaction to The Statement, because it's important to me that once again, I see Jimin and Jungkook as individuals first and I don't get sucked into any world I build for them. So, when jikooker accounts and Jimin focused accounts were very quick to be the first to push back on some of the inconsistencies of the translation of The Statement, It was important to me that my feelings about it wasn't just cope and I didn't just buy into it because it was more comfortable to believe. It was important to me to find unbiased perspectives and understandings outside jikooker or Jimin biased communities. It was important to me to investigate where my feelings were coming from so I could see the situation as clearly as possible. Because if you're going to see things through a lens, you have to make sure the lens is clear.
Cont. in part 2
