i was honored to have my half-developed thoughts on boundaries, consent giving, and the cultural contexts that effect the way people initiate and maintain relationships be included in a post by James Turnbull on his blog that i admire. it fired off very strong debate about how to stay true to the organic process of developing intimacy in a romantic relationship while being respectful to each other’s boundaries that really engaged me.
i must confess that this is just one aspect of something bigger i was trying to get at, but i think it is important to clarify this detail because it is important to me in its own right.
When no doesn’t mean no
some couples are fine with interpreting and working off of nonverbal cues of consent. i’m merely wanting to point out the fact that there is just a huge room for error in interpreting these cues, especially when the social media and cultural norms are sending conflicting messages that are so pervasive in the way we perceive these non-verbals.
it has been my experience that lots of korean dramas and movies promote the idea that a woman is not a sexual being until a man breaches a boundary and awakens her, that women don’t know what they want but they will once she is taken. i have seen so many movies with kiss scenes or love scenes where the heroine (usually the beautiful virgin, young and innocent) is unwillingly taken; she blinks and fights for a bit, then submits and starts responding back. she even likes it.
does that ring any alarm bells? no?
how about this one?
it is common practice to experience “bookings” at a korean club. bookings are a little ritualistic sort of process in which single men and women get “hooked up” through a neutral party (waiter/host) and it looks something like this:
a group of men enter the club and asks the waiter to hook them up with single women there (who are also paying patrons of the place). then the waiter/host goes around to look for women who seem available and suggest that they meet some new people. it is common that the women decline the waiter several times, then is unwillingly dragged over to where the men are. the idea of this little ritual is that if the woman doesn’t like the man she ends up with, then she has created a plausible reason to decline the man without having to personally offend him. and if she likes what she sees, then she will begrudingly stay; thus saving her face.
what is wrong with this ritual?
or, i guess the question is what is NOT wrong with this ritual?
i understand that it is intimidating for the guys to step out of their comfort zone and expose themselves to a vulnerable situation of approaching a complete stranger to strike up a conversation. i also understand that the women’s general reactions to these brave advances aren’t always the most gracious and generous. so i guess i am able to sympathize with the reasonings behind having a neutral party (the waiter) to “hook you up”.
but why is it that you never see men being dragged over to a group of girls wanting to meet new people? and why does this process keep overlapping with the images of meat markets and brothels where women are brought in for men to enjoy?
and what about the whole ritual of faking dislike and disinterest if you do want to meet people through booking? why do the women have to go through theatrics save the man’s face by creating a pretense to reject a man without really rejecting him? and what does saving face really entail if she does end up staying?
and what happens when no stops meaning no? if this process is normalized (and it is, as far as i’m aware), what happens to the women who go to the club with their girlfriends to just dance? what happens to the women who don’t want to get hooked up to a stranger at a nightclub by a waiter? does it not matter because if she is just forced to endure the situation, she might actually like it? she just doesn’t know what she really wants?
this is a dramatic example from the many similar relational norms in the korean culture to illustrate the point i’m trying to make.
i’m not necessarily saying boundaries and negotiating consent to cross them should be a rigid ritual of verbal communication. i’m saying there’s so many conflicting and confusing social rituals out there in the korean culture (and american culture, too, for that matter) that puts women at a disadvantage to even have the opportunity to consider what they want and be heard.
all in all, my main concern is largely around the women who are silenced by this assumption of not having to ask.
for some women, it’s okay to breach this line without explicit consent seeking. it’s okay to not ask before you kiss or hold hands or make love. if anything, it’s awkward. and i hear you. yes, it can be awkward because you have just broken the feel or the flow of the evening with your intimate partner.
but is it really awkward? i mean, what you are doing is you are caring for your partner to make sure she is enjoying this as much as you are. and that is pretty sexy move for my partner to make. furthermore, i think an awkward pause is hardly a price to pay in comparison to the cost of assuming consent.
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Came over here from the Grand Narrative, and I really appreciate what you’ve written here. Booking clubs are a bit of an odd space, where people can (and do) assume that women are tacitly consenting to the process by having gone to a booking club in the first place. I’ve argued before on James’ blog that booking clubs and bikki dragging women into clubs isn’t quite what westerners who comment negatively on the custom believe, because women here are usually completely cognizant of how this aspect of the culture works, and women who really do sincerely wish to not go into a club with a bikki or don’t want to be booked have culturally accepted ways to avoid being involved. And it’s true – but you’ve hit on some major problems with this idea of tacit, implicit consent (I think particularly in the case of women accompanying their friends).
Most importantly, as you’ve noted, the idea of implied consent instead of actual, direct consent, silences women. So thanks for a great post!
i want to really respect that i don’t know what it’s really like there. because i’m so far removed and i’ve been educated/cultured in a different context that makes me an outsider who looks like an insider, i’m trying to approach cultural and social practices in nonjudgmental manner. at the same time, there are dangers here and values that i’ve solidified through my experiences that i can’t compromise.
i’m really curious as to what the booking culture is like, and how women in that context make sense of it.
I also came to your blog by way of The Grand Narrative and want to thank you for broaching this topic because it’s something that has bothered me about Korean dramas as well. I enjoy watching Korean dramas, but the messages that normalize use of force in relationships as something expected of males and even desired by young females are worrisome. The airport scene in Take Care of the Young Lady comes to mind. In that scene, Seo Dong Chan throws Kang Hye Na over his shoulders and abducts her. She kicks and screams and asks for help, but he makes it seem like they had a lover’s quarrel—and somehow that made it acceptable to everyone at the airport that he was taking her against her will—and some even thought his actions were romantic. And that’s just one example of what seems to be the norm in the romantic comedy genre.
The implications of these messages raise questions about how they inform viewer perception of appropriate levels of physical force in relationships. Is physical force seen as display of passion in relationships? And are possessiveness and jealousy really romantic? And are young men and women being taught that physical aggressiveness is manly? Does anyone else think this rings the bell of potential dating violence?
I hate to admit it, but a part of me swoons when Cha Chi Soo forcefully stops Yang Eunbi from leaving and carries her away (Flower boy Ramyun Shop). If this is my gut-reaction as a woman in her twenties, how much more will these messages influence younger viewers?
I’m not yet sure how this issue could be addressed, but talking about it is a great first step, so thank you again, and I look forward to reading more of your postings!
a part of me swoons too, for sure. and i think there’s value to exploring that aspect: what is it about that sort of scenes that makes us swoon? it’s something to think about, for sure.
i haven’t seen flower boy ramyun shop or take care of the young lady–but even in secret garden and coffee prince, the most feminist and woman-power sort of dramas i’ve seen so far, has that sort of element: the unknowing, asexual sort of virgin whose boundary gets breached by force and she “awakens”, falling in love with the man who “violated” that boundary.