Do you dislike BTS because of their music or because they’re not white?

Three-dollar chains, banana milk, and “I purple you”: if you’re a fan of worldwide famous K-Pop septet BTS, these are just some things that you’re familiar with. As an ARMY (the name of their fanbase) who’s been listening to them since mid-2016, I’ve been in the game for some time and could tell you anything from the breakdown of their music career to an in-depth analysis of their albums. Originally a hip-hop group, BTS has slowly but steadily attracted their audience from their debut in 2013. They received mainstream domestic attention for their single I Need U off of their third EP, The Most Beautiful Moment in Life, Part 1 in 2015 where they received their first music show win. In 2017, they broke multiple sales records with their hit single DNA on the Love Yourself: Her EP as the first K-pop boy band to enter the Billboard Hot 100. Since then, BTS has been smashing records and paving the way for the K-Pop industry; most recently, their single “Life Goes On,” from the album BE, debuted as number one on the Billboard Hot 100, marking it as the group’s third number-one single in the United States. They’ve spoken at the United Nations, are the first Asian and non-English speaking act to sell out the Wembley stadium, became the youngest recipients of the Order of Cultural Merit from the President of South Korea, and are bringing an estimated annual amount of $3.6 billion dollars to South Korea’s economy.

Evidently, BTS’ career has been filled with impressive milestones. However, they receive their share of criticism for being a boy band. It is now edited out, but a piece written by Deadline in July 2020, started off with “What’s that, you say? You don’t speak Korean? Well, rest assured, the little girls understand.” Actually, in a survey conducted by online ticketing marketplace Vivid Seats for BTS’s 2019 Love Yourself: Speak Yourself tour, it was found that while the fanbase was still mostly female, only 39 percent of the ticket sales were from women aged 18-24, with ticket sales for women aged 24-35 increasing from 16 percent to 27 percent. Considering that BTS is known for their diverse fanbase of all ages and genders, generalizing ARMY as “little girls” is not just factually incorrect, but belittling and infantilizing. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with being a little girl and being an ARMY, but it’s patronizing to generalize the entire fanbase and also suggests that  the interests of little girls shouldn’t be respected.

 The fanbase has also been called rabid and hysterical, with a writer for the New Yorker stating that “The audience reaction shots from the band’s performance at the Billboard Music Awards earlier this month relieved young women going cuckoo, clutching themselves in a kind of hysterical rapture.” This isn’t just something that happens to BTS, but to boy bands in general. Groups like One Direction weren’t taken seriously no matter how great the impact of their music career was, solely because they were perceived to have predominantly female fan bases. They faced criticism that followed the lines of being inauthentic, manufactured, annoying, or gaining popularity for looks alone. I personally claimed to hate One Direction in the fifth grade because I didn’t want to be seen as someone that liked ‘dumb boys who couldn’t even sing,’ even though I loved the few radio singles that I did hear and hadn’t listened to any other B-sides on their albums. Any boy band, or trend in pop culture in general, is considered silly if the primary consumers of it are young, especially young women, who have been painted as hysterical for ages. Things are only considered cool and acceptable if older people, specifically older men, deem them interesting. For instance, The Beatles, who are now one of the most influential music acts of all time, were dismissed early on in their career for having mainly young female fans. Their fans were described in the following manner in a now-famous article: “Those who flock round the Beatles, who scream themselves into hysteria, whose vacant faces flicker over the TV screen, are the least fortunate of their generation, the dull, the idle, the failures.” They were once known as a silly band that only teenage girls liked but are now known as legends; once men decided that they liked the Beatles, they became respected. Why do we take musicians with predominantly female fan bases less seriously, or view the fanbase as vapid and frivolous? Young women in general have been made fun of for their interests time and time again while men have their interests taken seriously. You’re a woman and you like basketball? Name every team in the history of the NBA; if you can’t, you’re faking it for male validation. Do you like makeup? You’re shallow and must be ugly, because why else would you wear it? You like video games? You probably only play Minecraft and say you game to impress boys. The infantilization of women diminishes our voices and is used to ignore the importance of what we have to say. Our culture believes that teenage girls’ opinions aren’t worthy of respect and the criticism that BTS faces is just another reflection of the age-old misogyny that reduces women to being foolish and disrespects their interests.

It’s clear that boybands, BTS included, have their fanbase diminished in a way that reflects misogynistic ideals. However, a significant amount of criticism towards BTS doesn’t focus on their music, but is rather a thinly veiled excuse for xenophobia, homophobia, and racism—the latter being something that not many other boybands have not been subject to. In 2019, 20 to One hosts Erin Molan and Nick Cody mocked BTS in a segment talking about the top 20 global crazes which was riddled with xenophobic undertones. To begin, Molan and Cody seemed to think it absurd that BTS had a number one single in the United States despite the fact that “only one band member actually speaks English.” While the other members may not be fluent, they do speak English, so suggesting that “broken” English isn’t “actual” English is clearly xenophobic. On the same show, British comedian Jimmy Carr gave his input on BTS and compared their breakout in the US music market to nuclear war, stating, “When I first heard something Korean had exploded in America, I got worried.” Other commentators stated that they loved the members’ “gangster names,” even though BTS members Jimin and Jungkook don’t use stage names. And in a display of homophobia, the members were insinuated to be gay; it obviously isn’t an issue if they are, but what is an issue is to use “gay” as an insult. Over a clip of BTS’ address at the United Nations about their charitable work with UNICEF (an ongoing partnership since 2017), rather than talking about their campaign to stop violence against children, Molan and Cody instead joked that they must have been speaking about “hair products.”

I have my own thoughts of BTS and their music and I encourage people to be critical about the media they consume. As a fan of them, it doesn’t bother me at all if someone has well-thought-out criticisms of their music, but as a person who is frustrated by racism and xenophobia, it angers me to no end if someone jabs racist or xenophobic comments disguised as a personal opinion. Most recently, BTS appeared on MTV UK to perform an excellent cover of Fix You by Coldplay. Their performance was met with general praise from the public, but there were a series of really disturbing comments that came from German radio host Matthias Matushick, who described their music as “some crappy virus that hopefully there will be a vaccine for soon as well.” He compared the group to COVID-19, said that “you can’t accuse me of xenophobia only because this boyband is from South Korea… I have a car from South Korea, I have the coolest car around,” and claimed that they “will be vacationing in North Korea for the next 20 years.” His comments were direct attacks on their nationality and reflect the increasing number of anti-Asian hate crimes that have been occurring since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Though  BTS are worldwide superstars, they are unfortunately still subject to the violence of white supremacy.

Diseases have been used to justify xenophobia and racism for quite some time: HIV was blamed on Haitians, the swine flu was blamed on Mexicans. COVID-19 being blamed on Chinese people and East Asians as a whole is an example of history repeating itself. Within the last year, there have been racist conspiracies about Chinese people eating bats and spreading the virus, despite the fact that the video in question was taken in 2016 and was part of a travel show where people ate local delicacies. A lot of the xenophobic attacks and sentiments have been encouraged by Donald Trump who had repeatedly called COVID-19 the “China virus” and “kung flu” throughout the end of his presidency, which contributed to the normalization of anti-Asian xenophobia and racism. Unfortunately, there are countless cases of Asian people that appear East Asian who have experienced harassment, racism, discrimination and xenophobia since the start of the pandemic at various public places. According to a recent report, anti-Asian hate crimes have increased by 1900 percent in New York City in 2020. Anti-Asian hate crimes increased by 717 percent in Vancouver from a dozen incidents in 2019, to 142 incidents in 2020. The number of hate crimes in Ottawa increased by 57 percent in 2020, from 116 cases reported in 2019 to 182 cases reported in 2020. In one incident in October, a complainant was walking into a store when a man told him “being forced to wear a mask makes me want to kill Asians.”

The coronavirus has clearly demonstrated the shocking amount of anti-Asian rhetoric occurring in North America alone, but the reality is that racism against Asians has been present in North America for quite some time, it’s just not talked about a lot. Part of this is due to the model minority myth, which refers to a minority group that is perceived to be successful in the eyes of dominant groups, especially when compared to other minority groups; oftentimes, Asian Canadians and Asian Americans are referred to as model minorities because of our relative perceived social, political, and economic success compared to other minority groups such as Black Canadians and Black Americans or Indigenous peoples. The model minority myth not only dismisses the struggles that minority groups face but also ignores the unique experiences and forms of centuries-old systemic oppression that Black and Indigenous peoples have faced. It creates a fallacy that Asians in North America don’t face racial discrimination, and in some cases, leads to us being categorized as white. With that being said, I do want to make it very clear that while the pandemic has shown an example of widespread discrimination against Asians who are perceived as Chinese, non-Black and non-Indigenous peoples do still benefit from the systems that oppress Black and Indigenous peoples. I can only speak for my own experiences as an Asian Canadian person—while I have been called slurs and have been subject to racial stereotypes, I also have never worried about being perceived as a physical threat, followed around stores, or terrorized by the police, which are all privileges that reflect the systems of oppression that I still actively benefit from. There is an absurd amount of anti-Blackness in Asian communities that is tied to colourism, which people of colour with lighter skin benefit from. Many of us are critical of anti-Asian racism but do not reflect upon on the anti-Black, anti-Brown, and anti-Indigenous racism that we perpetuate and reinforce. Overall, the model minority myth is a double-edged sword: it helps for us to be associated with whiteness or privileges that come with whiteness, but also diminishes our struggles as people of colour.

BTS’s rise to fame has brought light to the sexism that exists in fandom culture as well as the pervasive racism that East Asians face, which has been magnified by the COVID-19 pandemic. The band has been smashing records and breaking down stereotypes, but are vulnerable to incredible amounts of hate that not a lot of Western artists face, all which come with the burden of being the first ever K-Pop group to reach and maintain mainstream success. I have a billion other thoughts I want to share about misogyny and xenophobia, but all I can do in the meantime is support their endeavours and hope that Asian success as a whole becomes more common, especially in the context of growing amounts of anti-Asian sentiments.

Editor’s note:

Dear reader,

The night before the publication of this article, a domestic terrorist murdered eight people in Atlanta, Georgia—six of them were Asian American women. To say we are devastated, angry, and having trouble finding the words to express it is an understatement. But we want to say something. The white supremacist institution of law enforcement refuses to call this act of violence what it is—a hate crime. Instead, they are making excuses for the murderer.

The tragic deaths of Xiaojie Tan, Daoyou Fan, Yong Ae Yue, Hyun Jung Grant, Soon Chung Park, Suncha Kim, Delaina Ashley Yaun, and Paul Andre Michels were the result of a hate crime in a long history of discrimination against Asian American and Asian Canadian people. But the term “hate crime” doesn’t quite capture all of the systems of violence and exploitation that a tragedy like this is rooted in: white supremacy, colonialism, fetishization, and sexual violence, to name a few. This is not just a conversation about race, but about gender and class as well because the targeted women were likely to be perceived as sex workers for myriad reasons. We cannot let structures of oppression continue to function and cause irreparable harm to our communities.

If you are of Asian descent, we hope that you are taking care of yourselves. If you are not of Asian descent, we hope that your sympathy will grow into actions to help us create transformative change. We urge you to think about how you may uphold stereotypes about Asians, how you may educate yourself on the history that continues to inflict violence upon Asian Americans and Asian Canadians, and how you may support organizations that fight for the rights of Asian and migrant sex workers.

Please be mindful of your responses to anti-Asian hate; increased policing has historically brought more harm than good to Asian women and migrant communities. The following organizations are ones that do not call for increased policing:

Red Canary Song

National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum

CAAV Organizing Asian Communities

Butterfly Asian and Migrant Sex Workers Network

Asian Mental Health Collective

This has been an especially painful week, so we would like to share a few resources if you would like to seek support: you can speak to a counsellor for free at any time by calling 1-844-451-9700 if you are in North America, or 001-416-380-6578 if you are outside North America.

Take care of yourselves and each other,

Khadija Alam (Features Editor, Volume 63) and Sooyeon Lee (Contributor)

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