My MIL is not an awful person. She’s a loving mother who carries emotional scars from having been in an abusive relationship with her minister husband for a long time, which has left her with a disabling preoccupation with “What might the neighbours say” in her life, and that often means she makes poor choices without realising it. She loves my husband no less; she didn’t withdraw love and affection from him, didn’t cut him off.

But she chose to pretend it wasn’t happening, and that sent him into a hefty shame spiral we had to work through. A few months later, a stand up routine he did about being bisexual was doing the rounds on Facebook, and despite normally sharing every single routine of his, she rang him to tell him she wouldn’t be sharing that one because “Your brother’s wedding is coming up, and I don’t want it overshadowed by people talking about you and your news.”

And again, this is not because she rejects him. That’s an easy narrative, and certainly the one you’d assume from the outside. But that, in her own way, was her attempt to protect both her children from negative scrutiny - she truly thought that people would care, and would care enough to make a scene at the wedding, and that would hurt the two of them.

Everyone already knew. He’s a celebrity in his culture. No one cared. But, that was my MIL’s fear.

And the message it sent, intentionally or not, was “This is something shameful.”

I could write a whole essay, a whole book about this experience in my family, but I won’t. It feels ungrateful to criticize the actions of people who still say they love you, and have never hurt you and will never hurt you in the big dramatic ways we see in the media. But in my case, and I think in many, it isn’t a clean, decisive cut. 

I love pop music. It’s a quite flexible genre, ranging anywhere from fan-favorites on the radio, bass drop heavy songs in the club, or mellow tunes over the speakers of your favorite coffee shop. This flexibility lends itself to being able to touch on topics both serious and light-hearted alight.

However, the subject matter of pop (and other popular music that is not necesarily strictly in the genre of pop) so often revolves around romance or sex. Romance and sex are not inherently bad things to write about, but as an aromantic person, I find myself wishing for something else that I find readily available from BTS.

I love pop music. It’s a quite flexible genre, ranging anywhere from fan-favorites on the radio, bass drop heavy songs in the club, or mellow tunes over the speakers of your favorite coffee shop. This flexibility lends itself to being able to touch on topics both serious and light-hearted alight.

However, the subject matter of pop (and other popular music that is not necesarily strictly in the genre of pop) so often revolves around romance or sex. Romance and sex are not inherently bad things to write about, but as an aromantic person, I find myself wishing for something else that I find readily available from BTS.