Which male idols do you think are gay?

[Tixy]

Still, a one-off like that doesn't change how they've acted before and after, which I just cannot justify as normal platonic behavior or out-of-this-world dedicated fanservice.

This is a bit of a personal story, but when I first got into kpop a long time ago I was totally convinced Eunhae was real. Everything they said and did seemed incredibly romantic to me and I thought they were the cutest. Now, when I'm a bit older, my opinion has changed. When I look at the two, I just see close friends, and all their lovey-dovey interactions, which previously seemed perfectly organic, now just seems kinda awkward. They look to me like either they are dating and are absolutely terrified to do fanservice together out of the fear of being outed, which I seriously doubt is the case, or that they are just two platonic friends who don't really know how to play up the fanservice very well together.

 

I think it's funny how my personal feelings regarding their relationship and those moments entirely changed, not because of anything that the two did, but because I figured it kinda didn't make sense anymore for me to believe in them, which meant I no longer found them cute as a ship, and suddenly I was seeing completely different things. My point being, people's perception of the way Eunhae act can be very different, and I went full 180 on it even. For me personally, wishful thinking and no dating scandals when mixed together really mess with my mind lol.

 

Just imo because we can't know for sure, but for me, the Eunhyuk/IU photo is the same as the Donghae/Sehun photo. I genuinely don't understand how one picture with their heads close together is more convincing of a relationship than two people being consistently glued to each other for 14 years. Like, some think Eunhyuk couldn't have been with Donghae because he took a photograph with IU, but if he had been with IU, why would he have spent basically all his time with Donghae, even outside of work?

I don't think it's quite the same. For starters, Donghae/Sehun picture was posted intentionally, meaning it's way more likely that there was nothing else going on behind it when compared to the Eunhyuk/IU case.

Donghae and Eunhyuk unquestionably like each other a lot, so I don't think there's anything weird about the fact that they have spent a lot of time together over the years, most close friends do that.

 

Also, separate from this whole situation, I've always thought IU was potentially not-straight. She wrote a romantic song about Sulli (in her words, "from a man's perspective")

I feel this serves as another good example of how people's perceptions may vary greatly, since a lot of people view IU and Sulli as friends who bonded together over liking older men lol, arguably the most heterosexual activity possible.

 

 

Click here to view the Tweet

How come these popular boycrush male idols often seem terribly not straight to me? Wonho is a total twunk, G-dragon practically outed himself 10 times now, men are out there describing Jimin as a black rose lol...

[Tixy]

things like this is why i remember why i hate to bring eunhae to discuss here

in a couple of pages it already appeared a eunhyuk anti spreading a story that make him look like a sexual predator, people trying to justify and normalize any suspicious eunhae interaction when if it was another kpop idol everyone would already making a big deal of it, people bring back eunhyuk's scandal with IU to dismiss any possibility that eunhyuk is not straight (not to mention the possibility that eunhae may have dated/are dating) and purposely forgetting that bisexuality and pan exist

i dont know if i will bring any more content related to donghae and eunhyuk to here

 

I'm sorry, it was certainly not my intention to upset anyone. I enjoy the regular posts here, but I also really love when people get into deeper discussions over disagreements. As long as they remain civil, which I think they always are, I don't see anything wrong with them. In fact, I would even argue that they might be good for the thread, since reading them may motivate other users to jump in as well and post more evidence, just like how you did in your post. I hope you won't stop posting content because of me.

 

Truth be told, I am extremely skeptical when it comes to shipping in general, so while I can say that some idols are not straight with a 100% certainty, I seriously have no clue who is dating whom. Having to act extremely close with your members as part of your job description, and then dating people whom you actually like in secret muddies the waters for me. I feel like some people definitely are dating within the group, but I have no idea who they are. Probably someone from NCT, purely numbers-wise lol.

 

I am not forgetting that people can be bi. I just tend to think that, while it's possible that people who have had a public relationship could be bi, or even gay for that matter, it's less likely that they are. Honestly speaking, this is just me protecting my heart! Thinking that an idol is dating his fellow group member, while dispatch is releasing photos of him on a date with his actual girlfriend, makes me feel like I'm experiencing some form of an lgbt representation cuckoldry lol.

[Tixy]

Honestly, you could take Yoongi's response to be in reference to the way female fans fetishize their idols dressing up as females.

 

Because at the end of the day, putting them in dresses and wigs wasn't about them expressing their sexuality or for queer fans. It was fan service for heterosexual fangirls who enjoyed it in the same way that most fanservice between members is rooted in that fetishization.

Can you elaborate more on how it's fetishization? I always thought it was just something fun to do for fans that they don't get to see often. Similarly to how female idols do the whole girl crush concept from time to time to look cool, male idols crossdress to look cute. I mean, maid Suga pulling his dress down and proclaiming "everyone, hip-hop is dead" is objectively hilarious.

[Tixy]

Female idols doing the "girl crush" concept is rooted in fetishization and is usually for their het male fans because a) they don't wanna picture them with a guy that isn't them or b) they fetishize lesbian relationships.

I don't think this is really the whole truth. For the most part, straight men are not into lesbianism, because they cannot imagine that sexuality can exist separately from male genitalia. A minority of straight men certainly do fetishize lesbianism, but even guys like that aren't really into the girl crush concept because that doesn't fit their personal fantasy of how lesbians should be. Things like yuri manga or Takarazuka, an all female theater troupe, are overwhelmingly enjoyed by women. For the majority of girl groups, at least half of their demographic is female, and girls tend to admire other girls who look cool, so I believe that the girl crush concept is in the end mostly for girls (and also me specifically).

 

Similarly, putting aside the times when male idols crossdress for comedy, I do think there's also a portion of the female fans who want male idols to crossdress so they can ship them with other members (bonus points if they think this somehow doesn't make it actually gay lol). But honestly, most often I've just seen girls praise them for being cute or beautiful, and complain about how they have better legs than them. Maybe I'm just projecting how I feel about this, since seeing a male idol doing a sexy performance while crossdressing has never made me instantly associate it with anything gay, I always just took it at face value. Though some idols are a bit too natural at crossdressing not to notice (Minhyuk's Dior was seriously something).

[Tixy]

Are you really out here acting like the fetishization of lesbians isn't a thing with straight guys? That a lot of the original "lesbian" content put out into the world wasn't made under a male gaze and intended for guys? Come on now, women may enjoy it and have an increasingly large role in producing it but there is still a huge problem with the fetishization of lesbians in the media. Look at what went down with Blue is the Warmest Color for example.

 

The majority of Twice fans are male and that needs to be taken into consideration when they do the girl crush concepts or have videos that romantically link members.

 

And nothing within kpop should be taken at face value, these are companies that are marketing a group and very deliberate in everything they do.

 

Fanservice between male members was built around the fetishization of gay couples along with letting the idols be "romantic" or "sexual" without direct competition in the fans eyes.

Well no, I never said that. But the issue is more nuanced though. For example, lesbian porn is made by and for straight men, even though it's actually a top porn category with the female viewers, and not the male ones. There is a very specific brand of lesbianism that appeals to straight males, because they are attracted to the fantasy of it, not anything resembling its reality.

 

So, for example, someone like Moonbyul, who is considered a girl crush idol, doesn't look and act the way she does for the male demographic. Girl crush doesn't inherently have anything to do with gay fanservice between the members, it's usually just about putting girls in suits or other cool outfits. Moonbyul can of course appeal to men too, but the phrase girl crush literally means that a female idol is supposed to make the female fans swoon for a change. Girls like girls in suits. (Twice demographic is pretty evenly distributed between the sexes btw.)

 

I didn't mean to say that I take companies' intentions at face value. Companies will always do things to maximize the profits and appeal to the widest demographic possible with their business decisions, so of course that male idols crossdressing can also appeal to the demographic that would fetishize male homosexuality. I just meant that for me personally, that is not what I get out it, and from what I've observed within the fandom, most female fans don't interact with it like that either. Again, just my experience, others might feel differently.

 

Gender nonconformity is heavily present in kpop, and it's something which appeals to a lot of LGBT people, including me, so I quite tend to like the crossdressing aspect too. A girl in a suit is cool, a boy in a dress is cute, there ain't much more to it than that for me personally. So mostly my point was that imo things aren't so clear-cut that I would feel comfortable saying that male idols crossdressing is specifically done so that the fangirls can fetishize them. I think that for a lot of people the gay fetishization aspect doesn't even come into the equation here.

[Tixy]

Do you know how lgbt+ tend to gravitate towards certain artists for example Lady Gaga. I was wondering if there was an artist like that in Korea that korean lgbt+ people gravitate towards.

From little that I know, for lesbians, the most popular group is Mamamoo. For gay guys, they are only really interested in girl groups, so I think probably something like SNSD or Mamamoo, and Sunmi for soloists. I know that when it comes to what type of male idol Korean gay guys are attracted to, they tend to prefer the ones with more masculine appeal, such as Kyungsoo or Shownu. However, I do wonder if there are any male idols that are popular within the LGBT community as icons specifically.

 

Anyway lmao. I kinda want to talk about idol culture. So it’s well established that Korean men are more touchy than men in Western countries. But, the level of touchiness when it comes to idols is definitely levels above and should be its separate topic instead of just saying that’s just how koreans are.

Could it be because they train together and live together for so many years? Or is it because there are a lot of queer idols (as mentioned previously by some “insidersâ€/people in the industry? Since a lot of things can be seen purely as fan service maybe they think they can be more open?

 

Would love to hear what you think.

Idols tend to be more touchy because it's part of their job description to entertain fangirls in that way. I do feel like some definitely get used to that and end up enjoying being more physically affectionate, but, on a whole, I don't think that the ridiculous amount of fanservice in kpop exists as some sort of expression of idols' authentic gay selves. It's all in the service of making more money for the companies.

Edited May 6, 2019 by Tixy

[Tixy]

Maybe this is not too relevant, but Jung Da Eun, the ulzzang that Wonho had supposedly dated, explained her position on her gender. Long story short - she's says that she has always been a girl. Since she sometimes get mentioned in this thread, I thought it'd be good for people to know how to refer to her. I'm assuming that she's probably just a butch lesbian, so I don't think that Wonho actually dated her. Bearding is more believable to me.

[Tixy]

Taeyong made the gay comment towards a friend so it was okay:

Option 1: The friend was not actually gay so the situation was that 2 straight people joked about gay people being shameful and failures

Option 2: The person was actually gay and in that case they had to take insults like that regularly and laugh them off

Dude's an asshole. None of us were born woke, but at a certain point things such as scamming, bullying and homophobia (as well as Haechan's alleged comment about him) at that age are probably indicative of what kind of an adult one will grow into, especially if they continue to get rewarded with money and fame in spite of all those things. 

A few pages ago someone posted Taeyong's surprised reaction to a fan rushing towards him as evidence of him being gay. Honestly, I have almost never seen anyone react to things in such a way, gay or otherwise. It's way too overly exaggerated to be 100% authentic. But you know which group of people constantly behave in this very specific overly exaggerated manner? Idols. In general, it's supposed to look endearing, but controlled at the same time. It's a performance. Idols are constantly in their idol-character when in public so, after doing that for so long, controlling their facial expressions in all situations comes naturally to them. In a situation like this one, where a fan was rushing towards Taeyong, idols' natural reaction might be to make a very disgusted and terrified face, which could easily be used by antis against them on social media to spread the idea that they hate all their fans. Taeyong's expression there was specifically only surprised, which is good for his image because it cannot be used against him, but looks completely fake and controlled if you ask me.

Taeyong's idol persona always seemed like just that - an idol persona. He never seemed authentic to me one bit, even before all this. And at the end of the day, I really don't care, cause you know what - male idols like him are probably a dime a dozen. He's not a criminal, he's just a rich good-looking (opinions may vary) Korean guy, and I fully believe that hundreds of male kpop idols are selling us these completely fake personas as well, while being moderate assholes behind the scenes. It is the nature of the industry, and of men~.

[Tixy]

9 minutes ago, MoonA_ said:

Could you please tell me what Haechans comment about him was? 

https://pann-choa.blogspot.com/2017/03/enter-talk-controversy-around-nct.html

"Haechan: Seriously Taeyong hyung has the best visual, but to be honest that's because his personalities are so so"

This remains only a rumor at this point as far as I know, but if true, then it seems like Taeyong's personality hasn't really improved from his school days.

Just now, raspberry84 said:

Call me cynical but considering it was confirmed he bullied another person who cried for an hour when they met for an apology and both SM & Taeyong referred to this person as a "friend".....

I'm not buying that the homophobic joke was actually a joke between friends. I think they're trying to use that word to lighten his bullying and it probably was done as a joke at the other person's expense.

The wording is just so bizarre. The choice of calling the victims of his bullying his friends is in some way so insidiously evil, because they are trying to subtly paint an image that while Taeyong did hurt someone, these were ultimately equal relationships, and not the ones between the victims and their bully. They are trying to lessen what he did so people would have an easier time forgiving him. He only remembered to ask for forgiveness now that Super M has debuted, give me a break lol.

[Tixy]

11 minutes ago, reiichi said:

Someone came out with the info ten years after the fact, the WEEK SuperM debuted.

Tell me it was a coincidence, I'll laugh.

It's not a coincidence obviously. There are 2 options here:

1) Taeyong debuting in Super M was the straw that broke the camel's back. This person finally became too sick of seeing him get away with everything he had done in the past and felt like they had to finally speak up.

2) Someone did it to cause harm to his career. Okay. Does that negate the homophobia?

Why exactly do you feel the need to argue that the person outing Taeyong's homophobic words is acting malicious? What does this add to the conversation, or change about the situation? And in the gay thread of all places.

[Tixy]

4 hours ago, singularstigma said:

From everything that I’ve read on here up until now it’s generally been accepted that Taeyong is gay but once this information was revealed as true it appears there’s been a backtrack on that assumption  (maybe I’m miss interpreting) and I can’t understand why. So much evidence pointing to him being gay is suddenly invalid why? Like it or not, this won’t change the fact Taeyong has a long list of receipts that suggest he’s gay.

Just my guess, but I think you're seeing two different groups of people there. The people who believe Taeyong to be gay still probably believe so. I, on the other hand, never saw his receipts as valid and always saw them as part of his completely generic idol persona he was playing. But also, at least for me personally, I don't like raining on other people's parade, so I never felt the need to comment on that in the past. Now that there are more reasons to believe that his image might not be entirely authentic, people who might have felt similar to me but kept quiet all this time have decided to voice their opinion. Everyone plays nice here most of the time cause it's sort of a safe space, and part of that is people not feeling the need to argue too often that an idol is actually a total fake straightie in a gay thread, but that doesn't mean that this thread is actually a hive-mind.

23 minutes ago, bb8__ said:

Usually individuals that are homophobic happen to be gay, just saying.

It seems like there are literally billions of gay people on this planet, whad'ya know! Homophobia status: solved.

[Tixy]

3 hours ago, bb8__ said:

the key word was 'usually', there are scientific studies to suggest individuals that have homophobic tendencies are part of the lgbt community and in a denial phase. Not defending his ass, and especially not excusing it because he was young-hate it when it's used as an excuse.

"Homophobia is gay" rhetoric was well-intended, aiming to associate homophobes with gay people as a power move to make them stop being bigoted, but was in my opinion ultimately misguided. Yes, some individuals tend to compensate for being actually gay by being homophobic, but in the overwhelming number of situations, the person being homophobic is just a straight homophobe, nothing more to it. This rhetoric ended up unintentionally shifting the blame of straight people's homophobia to gay people, so I'm not a fan. Point being that no, homophobic people aren't "usually" LGBT at all, usually they are just straight and influenced by their homophobic culture just like everyone else, although occasionally a homophobe can actually secretly be LGBT. I find that closeted people's brand of homophobia is kinda unique and comes across as much more desperate though, which makes them more obvious if anything, but that might be just my personal experience. 

[Tixy]

On the topic of Ryeowook, he always seemed obviously gay to me. The whole "haha I just love being single, y'all should try it too" shtick is in my opinion just an answer for the straights so they'll leave him alone. Noah fence to anyone, but labeling Ryeowook as potentially asexual makes me quite uncomfortable, since there's a long history of desexualization of gay people by straight people. They cannot agree with the fact that a person is gay, so it's preferable to them that the person is at least asexual if they cannot actually be straight.

[Tixy]

I think it's perfectly fine to discuss an idol's potential attraction to the opposite sex, because if we are not allowed to debate that, then this is inherently not a discussion thread, but a spam one. The issue arises only if someone is a threatened het (whomst remembers the infamous Sehun is a huge het poster?). If we cannot cope with hearing disagreements over our favs being gay, then how are we gonna cope when they get into a het dating scandal? It's good to stay grounded I think.

Likewise, I don't see why we have to clown someone for disagreeing with us, even if it's about people like Sehun. Dislikes being visible has kinda changed the dynamic of the thread I think. I just hope that it won't deter people from voicing disagreements in the future.

On a kinda irrelevant note, to the best of my knowledge, your mouth gets wet in relations to food, but it goes dry when you get excited or nervous. That's why when someone is in the presence of a person they are sexually attracted to, they might lick their lips to offset that.

12 hours ago, Parkney Bomston said:

First time posting in this thread so I don’t know how discussed these idols have been (and I’m not sifting through 3k pages) but the idols who I genuinely think are LGBT in K-pop are: 

1. Key from SHINee

What is your opinion about Taemin? His image has been (especially lately) kinda connected with things one could associate with gay culture, but I always wonder if that's all that it is, because off-stage Taemin doesn't ping me one bit.

[Tixy]

Discourse under spoiler, sorry, I got miffed.

I wonder when people claim that it's transphobic to say how sexual orientation is based on sex if they are even remotely aware of how deeply homophobic they sound. Transphobia is a form of bigotry, and thus can be examined and worked through, so essentially the message is that gay people need to examine and work through why they are only exclusively attracted to the same sex. As if gay people haven't spent their entire lives examining why they just cannot be attracted to the opposite sex, no matter what. This literally makes my stomach turn. In your efforts to have the wokest politics ever, you have made a full circle and came straight (heh) out the conservative homophobe side, congrats!

Additionally, intersex people aren't another sex. Intersex people experience a medical condition regarding the variations of their sex characteristics, and this condition not always but often requires some form of a medical intervention to ensure a relatively healthy life for them. For intersex people to be another sex, they would have to have both completely different chromosomes (other than X or Y), and be healthy and fertile at the same rates as the non-intersex population. So this rhetoric is pretty offensive towards intersex people too~. 

[Tixy]

Regarding dating scandals, it may not be the same in other aspects of the Korean entertainment industry, but with idols I totally believe that their dating scandals are real. The idea that these are released to cover government scandals is really silly, because the general public doesn't care one bit about idol dating scandals, nor idols in general (besides BTS). The only "idol" scandal that they've cared about in the recent years has been the Burning Sun. Bearding also doesn't make much sense to me, since Koreans perceive just a few idols as potentially being gay, and none of those people have ever had one (I guess Nam Taehyun could count as an exception, but he wasn't exposed by a tabloid agency, but by the woman he had cheated on). PR doesn't work either because idols are supposed to be selling the fantasy of being the fans' partner, so having a partner of their own is the exact opposite of that. Besides, agencies like Dispatch don't expose nugus for dating precisely because it would destroy their careers. They only do it to big stars, and those people don't need this kind of PR to begin with.

Things like the potential release of the scandal or its timing are definitely influenced by the talks between the tabloids and the idols' agencies, but I do believe that the actual relationships themselves are real. Some people involved still might be gay, but I wouldn't exactly bet on it.

On another note, I have a question for Chanyeol fans who believe him not to be straight:

I don't follow Chanyeol extremely closely, so if I am missing something please tell me, but how do you guys reconcile this idea of Chanyeol being a sweet bi guy with the fact that he was/is very close friends with like half of the people from JJY's molka scandal? He has always had many rumors of being a het fuckboy (which ain't illegal I guess), but after the molka scandal hit, and after seeing that he was close friends with not just one, but multiple people from that crew, I've grown extremely suspicious of him. Cute and friendly selfies don't really make me convinced of anything when he has those with CNBlue's Jonghyun and Zico too.

[Tixy]

That picture looks like a standard picture that shippers would take to fantasize about it being their OTP, with their faces being perfectly concealed so shippers can imagine anyone that even remotely fits the body type. Shippers are also obsessed with separation narratives - evil companies swooping in from the top trying to destroy young love. Adds tension and obstacles to the love story, because the whole fantasy of it would be boring without an enemy (as well as all those ~jealousy~ moments lol). Not saying it is or it isn't then, just that it doesn't seem very believable to me.

[Tixy]

I don't think there has been a huge change to this thread, but I too have noticed that within the last week or so there have been a lot more downvotes on rather inoffensive post. Now, we have someone making a completely random and useless post about all of BTS being straight (which is a valid opinion to have in relations to someone else's argument, but not one you need to state for no reason here, because this thread is not called "who is straight in kpop"), and to my surprise as well, it was met with many likes. But this thread can go through weird phases sometimes, so maybe we shouldn't think too much of it (I remember once upon a time people were discussing here how Seungri might be bi lol, and when someone argued that he's an obvious het fuckboy, people jumped to defend Seungri's purity lmao). I'm hoping that no one leaves this thread rashly.

I also believe that upvotes and downvotes are honestly almost entirely irrelevant. What matters here is the words that are being said, and the environment that we foster together. If we can have engaging discussions with each other, who cares about the number of skull or clown emojis next to our posts?

Regarding posts that are along the lines of wanting to educate us annoying gays that everyone except for Holland in kpop is a het, can't we just do what we have always done, which is ignore them? To me they are equally as dumb as those posts that claim how 95% of idols are not straight (and the remaining 5% are totes sus too lol), so I don't even register them.

Even on days when I disagree with everything I read here, I still love coming here, and that we have this place to begin with. I hope that everyone will be able to deal with the occasional unpleasantries so we can preserve this place and the community.

[Tixy]

28 minutes ago, witchcocktor said:

Jo Kwon, Ren, Sehun and Heechul are really the only people that have pinged me or have otherwise some evidence they might not be totally straight. I've been watching the thread for years, and these are the only three I'm more or less sure of. And I wouldn't be surprised if G-Dragon came out as bisexual either. But that's about it.

Didn't GD's insta likes include stuff like "bottoms do it better" and "half gay?" Also, when he was asked about what he'd do in a love triangle, he created 2 scenarios, one being a situation in which he was in love with a friend who had a girlfriend. Upon realizing what he had said, he proceed to stumble around for a while to make it sound somehow not gay. Out of all the idols that I can think of, only Sehun has stronger explicit receipts than that, all mannerisms aside. To me personally, GD is confirmed bi.

I do agree regarding the idols that you mentioned being the safest bets (although I flip-flop on Heechul a lot), but I'd confidently add Key, Sungjong and Daehwi there too off the top of my head.

[Tixy]

5 hours ago, Targaryen said:

I didn't know this about G-Dragon! Do you have any links to the interview or video where he said that? As for Heechul, he once had a Facebook for a very brief amount of time and set his orientation to "interested in men and women". I don't know if anyone here remembers that, but I do.

Props to the other person for finding that clip. As for the facebook thing, it is my understanding that many Koreans think that "interested in" on facebook relates to friendship, which is why even Shindong supposedly had men and women selected too.

[Tixy]

1 hour ago, Targaryen said:

what is everyone's opinion here about edward avila (as in, does everyone here hate him? i think he's quite a good source of potential information or speculations as far as this thread goes...)? he's not an idol and this isn't about him, but some of the idols he's interacted with...

I only know him for his spicy hot take on Holland and the diversity in kpop. There was like a kernel of truth there, but it was overpowered by all the thinly-veiled homophobia. Like how he said "gay people in South Korea don't like to shove their sexuality in other people's faces [as opposed to how people are in the west]" but then felt like he had to add in editing "not that there's anything wrong with [the way people are in the west] teehee." Nah, you clearly frown upon that kind of behavior, you're just afraid of the backlash. I also know that he was thirsty for Wonho, but I've never heard of any valid information about idols being revealed by him, nor do I know which idols he has interacted with, so please do share.

[Tixy]

This thread has always been used to discuss some broader topics, such as advancements of gay rights in other countries, or celebrities just being supportive in general. It's less of a laser-focused thread, and more of a community at this point.

I definitely resent the objectification of Jonghyun into a tragedy itself. That's all that some people see him as, and they have no interest in discussing the good that he did in his life. So I think there are no issues in bringing up Jonghyun here to celebrate all the positive and kind things he had said about LGBT people.

But now, here is where I gotta agree with @Catness, I cannot stand the speculation about his sexuality, or even worse, speculation about him dating Key. It's easy to default to a social justice interpretation and say that if anyone thinks that's disrespectful, they must think that being gay is disrespectful too, but I can assure you, it's a bit deeper than that. Whether you want to admit it or not, the core purpose of this thread is at least a tiny bit sketchy. Yes, there's nothing wrong with being gay, and nothing wrong with having our own opinions on who's gay. But equally, if someone is gay, that's private information that that particular person genuinely does not want us to know or think about (seeing as they are not out yet). So we always walk a fine line here. I want to make it perfectly clear: we are not being any worse here than people who discuss and collect receipts on imagined straight couples in kpop, or participate in any other kind of speculation about idols' private lives, but all these activities are a little bit sketchy by their very nature.

Do you guys know that there are places where people discuss with full conviction how Jonghyun was dating Yeri? Did your stomach turn reading that? Why? What's wrong with 2 adults of the opposite sex dating? Can I bring this as counter evidence whenever someone posts about Jonghyun/Key? Yeah, it quickly became utterly morbid, it just shows that there's something different and more nuanced about this situation.

The issue isn't that some people here secretly believe how it's morally wrong for people to be gay, but rather that not only is it at least somewhat inherently shady to discuss any aspect of a person's private life in general (being gay in this context), a part which they obviously want to keep as a secret (seeing as they aren't out), but on top of all that, now we're talking about a person who is no longer with us. The fine line that we normally walk on should adjust according to that, because the fact that Jonghyun has died so young from suicide should absolutely matter in a way that we approach discussing him. Jonghyun wrote how "the life of a celebrity was not for me," and I imagine that includes being speculated on everything and anything, including whether he is gay, bi or straight, and how suffocating that must have been for him.

Whenever I think about Jonghyun's family, friends, potential partner, Key, Yeri, I cannot help but pray that none of them have to ever come across any new impassioned shipping speculations, because it's literally total strangers taking the death of a person that they've all loved so much, and completely disregarding the reality of it to discuss the narrative that they have constructed instead. It's yet another form of objectification. Even if we say that you are totally right, and that Jonghyun was gay and dating Key, can't you imagine how intrusive that would be for Key? To have people repeatedly speculate on all that even after the tragedy, instead of letting him grieve in peace? I know that Key realistically isn't reading this thread, but I only discuss things about idols here that I would feel comfortable personally if they happened to hear it.

[Tixy]

I'm not an expert at Japanese, but the translation sounds correct to me. Doesn't seem like too odd of a comment, kinda just a simple dumb "haha Haechan's gay lol" joke. Japanese are more open to joking in this way than Koreans.

[Tixy]

4 minutes ago, krystaljxng said:

Right, so you're saying it's more of a "hahah ur gay" type of joke thing that Western dudes for example would do among each other rather than anything we should take seriously? I guess it makes sense if that type of joking is more common in Japanese culture.

Yeah, exactly, it's just a ur gay joke, wouldn't take it too seriously, regardless of what you think of Haechan's sexuality.

To elaborate since I find it interesting, while Japan is a highly conservative country like Korea, Japan's attitude towards homosexuality in general is slightly bit different and more relaxed I'd say. I notice it even with something like fanservice: Japanese are not naturally very physical with each other, so you'll rarely see them perform the kind of fanservice we see in kpop all the time (unless it's visual kei, then they are just straight up making out lol), but they're a lot more comfortable with heavy verbal fanservice that seems to be generally discouraged in Korea, such as saying really couple-y lines or framing things romantically as a joke. Kpop boy group articles in Japan sometimes have the vibe of a BL manga I swear, it feels like a culture shock every time I see them lol. 

[Tixy]

20k likes for some rando being homophobic, we truly live in a society and twitter is a hellsite.