CL Tries to Pull a Saul Williams and Fails + Relationship Works

Look, I got nothing against CL. In fact, she's my 2NE1 bias mostly for being the most interesting and entertaining member as well as being the most attractive member in the group to me. However, we can't deny that she's approaching some of the issues she's been discussing rather ignorantly.

Some quotes from a recent magazine shoot include "All Asian girls are basic because it's safe" and "I feel that I've done so much to help my women." Now, this is not only having a majorly sized ego but damaging to your race of people.

Note, I didn't say nationality because she doesn't just say Korean girls but Asian girls in general. 

CL probably didn't mean for it to be insulting, but it does come off rather typical. So let's take a look at something right quick. There is a way to approach negative stereotypes of people and building up your race while simultaneously crushing them is not the way to go. Here is an example on how to tackle stereotypes in a good sense:

I learned about Saul Williams last year in my English class, and the poem we had to break down was "Amethyst Rocks." For those of you that are not too English-savvy, basically Saul is tackling negative portrayals of African Americans. I'm not going to go too in depth about the poem, because that would be way too long and way too boring of a post. Since I'm Black, I could see where he was coming from: Stereotypes are only negative because we let them have a negative meaning. But this can go for practically anyone who has a negative stereotype. For instance: How and why in the fuck did eating watermelon become something negative? People gave it that negative twist. It's the same thing with censorship: Tits and dicks aren't something inherently offensive until you get over protective/overly sensitive people trying to dictate what is acceptable and what is not.

So CL was basically calling out Asian stereotypes, but instead of trying to get people to see the positive sides of those stereotypes, she flat out insults them. So I'm going to break down the main stereotype she discusses: female submission.

She talks about how it's bad that Asian women are submissive in relationships, and yes, Korea has an issue because a woman can be the dominate one in the relationship but they appear to carry old fashioned gender roles to a tea, however she doesn't discuss them  in a way that can change that mentality. Instead, she plays into the Western mold of out-right wearing shame on it. Which portraits another stereotype the West has about Asians carrying self-hate. 

But when it comes to relationships, there needs to be a balance of dominance and submission (I'm not talking about BDSM but other stuff outside of sex in a relationship). And both are equally important; however, people tend to overlook the importance of that.

Yura and Suzy know what I'm talking about.

A "submissive" role in a relationship is not taking orders from your lover and doing whatever they say — that is a slave. Think of it like this: The dominant "role" in the relationship is the brick, and submissive "role" of the relationship is the adhesive that keeps it all together. They both need each other, and both are vitally important for a healthy relationship. It doesn't matter which sex takes on what, as long as the balance is there. 

So does Taeyeon and Baekhyun.

Now anyone who tells you that a man is the dominant role of a relationship is lying, and anyone who tells you a woman is always the dominant role in the relationship is lying. You simply cannot put a sex/gender on something like that, and the minute you do, you get issues. Some people are just more dominant/submissive than others, and they come in ever race, gender, etc. ... Plus, these factors can change depending on the perspective of who's looking at it. This also doesn't mean that one person is dominant 100% of the time and one person is submissive 100% of the time. Sometimes, you'll have to be a brick, and sometimes, you'll have to be the adhesive. 

If you get two overly dominant people in a relationship, they're going to have a hard time getting along and same for submissive people. I'm not saying it's impossible (nothing is impossible), but it's going to be extremely hard. This probably explains my attraction to idols like Onew and Jimin versus, say, Bobby. I'm too dominant to be with Bobby, and we'd probably spend more time trying to out-hip-hop each other versus trying to make the relationship work. 

J-Hope and Jimin for fun. Watch all of it.

Now I'm not saying CL has no right to discuss gender issues and gender roles in Korea, because they do exist. But she shouldn't just outright go about perpetrating a stereotype and on top of that, only express the negatives of that stereotype. On one hand, CL is a k-pop idol and expecting her to be a spokesperson for political issues or whatever is asking a bit too much. But at the same time, a lot of people look up to CL, and a lot of them are young females who are already being exposed to a one-sided view of looking at things, and arguably, the No. 1 things young people and teenagers are never really taught about well are relationships. 

In the end, CL is harmless, but she is a huge public figure and perpetrating stereotypes like that does more harm than good.

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