-Write 1 paragraph on something you learned about writing’s relationship to social change—perhaps using a favorite text as a guide, with the wisdom of hindsight.

The texts that shaped my ideas about writing and social change were Italo Calvino’s “Exactitude”, Layli Long Soldier’s Whereas, and Anne Boyer’s The Undying. Italo Calvino’s “Exactitude” helped me face some of the difficulties in discussing social problems. With the advent of social media, many people, including myself, have only fragmented ideas of what they are talking about, and often argue about different matter believing that they are discussing the same subject. “Exactitude” made me realize the importance of using the exact expressions to precisely describe the matter at hand. Reading “Exactitude” made me believe that it is essential to use language with precision when writing for social change, as using language in a vague manner could result in presenting the problem vaguely and incoherently.

If “Exactitude” taught me about using language precisely, Layli Long Soldier’s Whereas taught me about grasping the confinements of language itself—her poems made me aware of the “manacles of English” and how a poet could try to shatter them. Dissecting the formal language allows her to venture out of the linguistic structure and expose the violence behind the formal apology. Long Soldier’s work taught me that the structure and the language of written material is as important as its content, and that utilizing structure is a conscious choice for writers writing about social change.

The Undying by Anne Boyer taught me the importance of viewing a social problem in a larger scale, taking into consideration the social structures that cause the problem. Her refutation of the pink ribbon campaign and the consumption of breast cancer patients in popular culture made me realize that writing should not stop at raising awareness. Instead of isolating a specific problem and turning it into an object for sympathy, writing should unearth the causes that people fail to see and make the readers face them.

-Write 1 question you have about writing and social change that emerges from your work in the course.

Throughout the course, I have always wondered the effectiveness of writing in facilitating social change. Writing is affective in raising awareness about a given social problem, and making a reader feel compassionate about it. However, as Anne Boyer pointed out, raising awareness and making the problem visible is not enough if it fails to visualize the structural aspects that cause the problem. How can writing facilitate structural change, if it leaves the readers, the individuals, to act upon what they felt through the writing?

“96% of deepfake videos online are pornographic.

…We found that over 90% of deepfake videos on YouTube featured Western subjects. However, non-Western subjects featured in almost a third of videos on deepfake pornography websites, with South Korean K-pop singers making up a quarter of the subjects targeted. This indicates that deepfake pornography is an increasingly global phenomenon.”

-Report 2019: The State of Deepfakes by Deeptracelabs

“How many times do you have to report the Nth room in order to have it deleted?”

A new video from .face, a Youtube channel that helped me out a lot in my last week’s assignment. This time they are interviewing the group RESET, which made the petition on the National Assembly website(which reached 100,000 signatures and holds the same effectiveness as a law made by a congressman) and is responsible for reporting the Nth room in Telegram.

Clicking the video, I remember following RESET’s account on twitter. I remember the threads of accounts RESET asked their followers to report with them. I remember grimacing as I cover up the screen with my palm, trying to click “report” while looking less at the screen as I can. Sometimes the accounts were already disabled because others reported them as well. Some accounts gleefully announced that they got their account back and asked for recommendations on who to photoshop.

I try to forget about these accounts after I press report. Now I remember them, and the countless people who pressed report with me. I think of the furious fingers pressing report because they know no other way of reacting to this that would somehow make the tiniest change.

But does this somehow make the tiniest change?

-Were the chatrooms disabled when the RESET members reported them?

“The chatrooms, they do get disabled, they do… but it is unclear at what point, after what critical point they become disabled…. The most stifling thing about this is the platform of Telegram itself.”

-Is there any feedback from Telegram after reporting?

“No, there isn’t”

The RESET member politely yet firmly placed emphasis on the NO.

-Any feedback, such as getting a message back from Telegram about the reported chatroom?

“None, none at all.”

The interviewer’s narration grimly tells us that despite RESET reporting thousands of illegal content, they did not get a single feedback from Telegram. She tells us that users are unable to know how the report is disposed, or whether they are disposed at all.

So how many clicks does it take?

How many clicks on the report button does it take to remove deepfakes of women making faces that they never made?

How many taps on the keyboard does it take to replace the autocomplete that aligns a female celebrity with her body parts?

How many emails from RESET would it take for Telegram to take action?

How many clicks, how many emails, how many upset voices would startle the digital platforms into at least not facilitating sexual exploitation?

Click, click, click, click. Without even having a promised answer, me, she, or they click on.

The clicks accumulate into an ear-blasting racket

that is hushed by the single word,

profit.

Process notes: I initially wanted to write about my trip to the gynecologist since it was the weirdest hospital visit I ever had in my life (summary: my blood test revealed that I had the hormone levels of a menopausal woman, which freaked out my mom who accompanied me just in case, and when I told the gynecologist that I am going to the U.S. as an exchange student, she held my hand and warned me against unplanned pregnancy) but as it had little to do with my topic, I decided to write about the platform in which digital sexual assault is carried out. Although collective action does play a large role in making change, I wanted to focus on the responsibility of the platform. The platform, whether it is a website dedicated to deepfake pornography, websites with search engines that autocomplete words, or a messenger app that is used to distribute videos of sexual violence, often overlooks acts of sexual exploitation because it leads to profit. The conversations between .face and RESET were translated from this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xxLLrxpuJg

In “The Undying,” Anne Boyer firmly resists the narrative of the breast cancer patient given by popular culture. The narrative of breast cancer patients in popular culture- the myth that “attitude is everything,” the clichés of people with breast cancer who are consumed as both a source of courage and pity, the phrase that equates dying from cancer to “losing the battle against cancer”- unfairly burdens the patients with having to fit into the narrative. Critiquing literature that treats women’s illness as a sentimentalized tool for another character’s emotional turmoil, Boyer refuses to follow the common narrative form of cancer that ends with the protagonist’s survival or death. Boyer does not end the memoir with the end of her chemotherapy- instead, she excavates the reality of breast cancer by pointing out how the disease affects certain groups of people disproportionately, how the medical industry’s treatment of patients could be inadequate or even harmful, and how breast cancer is capitalized on. Her critique on how “Pinktober” profits from donations while doing little to improve the carcinogenosphere or develop a cure for breast cancer was startling, as it exposed the fact buying something with a pink ribbon on it might make you feel good about yourself, but actually worsens the problem. Boyer writes, “I would rather write nothing at all than propagandize for the world as is.” (116) By challenging the popular narrative about breast cancer, Boyer’s memoir urges readers to alter their perception of cancer as an unfortunate event that strikes an individual that either survives or doesn’t, and perceive the structures that cause more pain for the patients.

(warning: contains information about digital sexual assault)

Letter:

Dear Mom,

I hope you were not surprised when I sent you a petition link from the National Assembly since I don’t often do that. I was feeling a bit anxious because it was a month before the petition closed, and it needed 50,000 more signatures to make the National Assembly respond to it. And I couldn’t sign it myself because I needed to verify my Korean phone number, which I can’t do over here. Mom, I miss ranting with you about stuff on my mind and I hope I can talk about this with you in person, but I guess it’s too disturbing to be talked over via Skype.

You might have heard about the “Nth room” in the news before. Basically, they are Telegram rooms made to sexually exploit women. The “masters” of each room gather personal information about women through hacking their social media accounts and/or impersonating police officers, and threaten to expose them unless they act as “slaves” for a given period. This way, the “masters” make the women take exploitative photographs or films of themselves and distribute them to the users through Telegram rooms marked 1 to 8, which is why they are called the “Nth rooms.” Therefore it is hard for the victims to step forward- they do not fit in the “innocent victim” frame, which makes them more vulnerable. The images distributed through the “Nth rooms” also include “insulting acquaintances”- users photoshopping images of women they know to sexually harass them. It is estimated that at least 260,000 people are in these chatrooms.

One reason this crime proliferated the way it did is because users could easily evade punishment- Telegram is not a Korean app, and the police did not react properly to people reporting the incident. There is even one case where a man who reported the “Nth room” but did not get any response except “contact the Cyber Crime Unit” ended up becoming a “master” and making the Telegram rooms himself.

I remember you telling me it would be better if I become a prosecutor and do something with the justice system. I still don’t think that’s my calling or anything but these days I feel like you were right. What would my studying English literature ever change? What’s the worth of all the money I spend, all the books I read and all the essays I write if I can’t change a thing?

Anyways, to make this long story short, the petition is to be reviewed by the National Assembly because it reached 100,000 people in the course of a few weeks. We don’t know if this will change a lot, but I want to believe that we are doing what we can to make some progress. And I hope this also applies for me.

With love,

Nayun.

Lecture:

The “Nth room,” first exposed by an article from “The Hankyoreh” last November, are secret Telegram rooms where sexually exploitative images or videos of women are distributed. The “masters” of each room force women to act as “slaves” for a given period by threatening to expose their personal information. The method for gathering the victims’ personal information vary- one of them include sending a fake link that leads to a fake Twitter login page to women who post photos of their bodies without any personal information. When the victim logs in, the masters take hold of her ID and password, and gleans more personal information. Fearing exposure of their personal information, the victims are forced to comply to inhumane demands of the “masters.” The footages are then distributed to the “users” through rooms numbered from 1 to 8, which is why they are called the “Nth rooms.” Combining all the people in the Telegram chatrooms, it is estimated that at least 260,000 people are in these chatrooms.

It is difficult for the victim to step forward because people might blame the victim for not fitting in the “innocent victim” frame and attack them for uploading pictures of themselves in the first place. Nonetheless, the victims of the “Nth rooms” are not only victims whose social media accounts are directly hacked. Users also send pictures of women they personally know and their personal information such as their name and age, and ask people to photoshop them in a certain way or sexually harass them. This method of sexually harassing women are called “insulting acquaintances.”

The prospect of easily evading punishment made the crime proliferate this way, especially among young men in their teens or their twenties. As Telegram is not a Korean app, it is hard for the Korean police to track down the perpetrators. Moreover, the users of the Telegram chatrooms simply delete a chatroom and make another one when they sense that they are being watched. The police’s initial reaction did not help either- according to an article from “The Hankyoreh,” a 25-year-old who saw the “Nth room” and reported it did not get any response except “contact the Cyber Crime Unit,” and ended up becoming a “master” and making the Telegram rooms himself.

In order to take action against this proliferation of sexual exploitation, punishment for the “masters” and the “users” must be assured. International cooperation should be accompanied with tracking down the members of the Telegram chatrooms. The punishment for digital sexual assault must be strengthened, and every person should be aware that clicking the Telegram chatrooms and watching the videos is a crime in itself. Moreover, the “innocent victim frame” should be discarded. People who did not post photographs of their bodies online could a victim of digital sexual assault. However, even if the victims did, it does not change the fact that they were threatened and coerced.

Working notes:

My mom likes to talk about social issues or politics with me, and we often educate each other on parts we don’t know well about, which is why I chose to write to my mother. I’m worried that the letter contained too much of my personal feelings than the actual description of what is happening. In the lecture, I tried hard not to simply translate what is said on news articles or petitions and add my own opinion about how to solve this problem. I purposefully withheld what exactly the “masters” demand from the victims because it was too disturbing, but I wonder if they should be included to convey information about the crime.

This is an explanation of the “Nth room” in English that I think explained the situation better, if anyone wants to know more:

https://m.blog.naver.com/nomorenthroom/221782222359

The feeling of intimacy in Ruskin’s open letter gives it a conversational quality- in writing his letter, Ruskin often notes what he sees or what is happening around him and makes connections to what he wants to say about society, which gives the impression of him telling an anecdote rather than giving an argument. However, as Lucy stated, the letter strangely feels more preachy than the lecture. The part about the guards in the park, where Ruskin attempts to preempt some of the questions he supposes he would receive from the reader, felt the most moralizing for me. Perhaps this is because in the lecture, Ruskin attempts to validate himself as an objective analyzer whereas in the letter, he includes his own indignation or derision towards other people. In the lecture, Ruskin gives examples of his positive descriptions of the weather to ensure his audience that he does not speak of the storm-clouds negatively because he is a negative person. However, in the letter, Ruskin’s own arguments, and sometimes his biases as an outsider, are quite visible and he does not attempt to mitigate this. On a non-critical note, the letter slightly felt like listening to my grandfather talk about politics.

Baldwin’s letter illustrates how hurtful systematic oppression could be for an individual in the voice of an uncle giving advice for his nephew, which makes his message feel more poignant. As Baldwin’s explanation of oppression is clear and concise, it could be easily digested by the “innocent” readers of The Progressive. As Baldwin states in the letter that “innocence constitutes the crime,” Baldwin letter serves to break down the naivete of Americans who are ignorant about, or choose to be ignorant about the oppression of African Americans.  As Baldwin in speaking to someone in his next generation, who is also his namesake, his message to his nephew James reads like a message for the future generation. While Baldwin’s open letter is about persevering and not yielding to the prejudices of the society, his lecture to teachers emphasizes their responsibility to change reality. The lecture points out that myths about American history and African Americans must be dismantled, and that education should not teach students to be obedient. It was interesting how what Baldwin says he would teach children is visible in his letter to his nephew, but the audience is not the children, but the teachers who should be making change.

Layli Long Soldier’s “Whereas” carefully examines language and what it could do. The book even starts with the sentence “No word has any special hierarchy over any other” by Arthur Sze. Throughout the book, Long Soldier explores how words, sentence structures or even commas could convey meaning. As a person writing in a second language right now, I could relate to being “language poor” and losing meaning in translation. Replacing words of one language to words of another language often takes away the poetic beauty of what I meant to write, or even worse, makes what I am trying to say incomprehensible. Her meticulous analysis of the meaning, sound, and nuance of words reminded me of Italo Calvino’s “Exactitude”- selection of precise words matter in expressing the exact meaning.

This examination at the first part of the book lays the groundwork for Long Soldier’s response to “the Apology’s delivery… language, crafting, and arrangement.” Instead of focusing solely on the content of the apology, Long Soldier disintegrates the language of it. With her “Whereas” poems, Long Soldier explores the double meaning of the word “whereas” by using the legal term to document her inner life, and converses directly with the apology. Moreover, the way she dwells on the usage of certain words or phrases, such as “opened a new chapter” or “both” exposes how certain word choices could shadow the violence of a historical fact.

Throughout the text, Long Soldier also comments on the naivety of people who are unaware of the Dakota 38, or the existence of the apology. Her note on the Fourteen-Year-Old Girl’s comment on the online article, and her explanation of the Dakota 38 in “38” presupposes that the audience, or the listener, is completely ignorant about this issue. It is disturbing how this is probably true- I did not know about the Dakota 38 prior to reading this text as well. “Whereas” exposes that past occurrences continue to influence the present, and that ignorance could contribute to the violence as well.

Controversy: Male Student in Daewon Foreign Language High School Takes “Molka” of Female Classmate | Written 2018-12-03

http://m.kmib.co.kr/view.asp?arcid=0924042168

According to the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education and Gwangjin Police Station, on October 4th, A, a 3rd-year in Daewon Foreign Language High School, reported Student B of illicit photographing to the police. A told the police that “B took a picture of the inside of her skirt” and B admitted this. A stated that she suspected B of taking photographs of her by a similar tactic in the past and demanded an apology, and reported to the police when B refused.

This is the story of someone not involved. This is not the testimony of a witness. This is how someone who has been eating pancakes with her high school friends on the day the article was published has to say about what happened in her high school. This is her obligation as a graduate of the said high school to at least not forget.

As she does not know the victim or the perpetrator in person, she will not specify what the “similar tactic” of B was, although she has heard much hearsay from her friends, who heard about the incident from her underclassmen or her brother. However, she feels it is necessary to reveal what she heard about the incident- that A demanded an apology via the class’s chatroom and B conceded in front of the whole class. Which means every single person of the class inevitably knew what happened. But A suspected that the photo she caught B taking wasn’t the only photo of her.

Daewon Foreign Language High School suspended B’s attendance for 4 days and referred the incident to the School Violence Countermeasures Committee (SVCC) and the SVCC requested 20 hours of social service and completion of special education to the school. However, the school let B fulfill his hours of social service after his CSAT. Moreover, during his suspension, the school let him study in a study room made for him in the 2nd-grade staffroom. After the suspension, B continued to attend school and take classes as usual.

Posters were torn down. Students were silenced. When the girls talked about the incident in their classroom a teacher warned that they could be sued for defamation. Graduates shared links of the article in their social media, in hopes that the incident would be known and criticized. All this while the perpetrator was safely studying in a space provided just for him.

Among the students, suspicions have been raised that the school broke the rules to B’s benefit. According to the Act on Prevention and Countermeasures against School Violence, the school should carry out the measures imposed by the SVCC within 14 days. If the student refuses or neglects to do so, the punishment could be imposed again. “Considering that B is a CSAT taker, the SVCC told the school to carry out the punishment after the CSAT,” Daewon’s school official explained.

While possibilities that there might be more than one victim has been raised, no school-level research has been conducted. “There are rumors that someone saw more than 300 photos of this kind in B’s Cloud,” one student commented.The school has an obligation to report in case of sexual crimes against students, but this was also not followed. According to the Act on Prevention and Countermeasures against School Violence, the school must report to an investigative institution even when a third party already reported. A school official stated, “As the student already reported the case, we did not see anything else to do.”

They say

that B might have a thousand photographs of his peers which the police left untouched

that B might have installed a camera in the female lavatory(that the teachers even use)

that the whole class of male students might have been complicit in distributing these photographs, and B is just unluckily caught

that my homeroom teacher blocked the police from investigating by lying that they’re supposed to go to the 2nd grade staffroom

that the 3rd grade teachers rounded A up and asked her why she reported to the police in the first place

The memory is already a year old and it’s blurring.

How do I differentiate truth and fiction again?

The police closed the case without charging because the victim did not want any punishment. A police official stated, “We considered the fact that the victim is a minor and is about to take the CSAT. There were no reports or accusations afterward.” The incident happened right after September 27th, when Min Gap Ryong, Chief of the National Police Agency, declared take strict measures against “molka” (illicit photographing) crimes.

Working notes: I did not expect myself to be exhausted right after translating the article, but I was. There were many articles on the same incident, but I decided to choose the one I saw with my friends that day. I’m still worried that my translation does not sound formal enough. I first wanted to divide the text vertically and add my comments right next to the paragraphs of the article, but I could not figure out how to do this. So I decided to divide the text horizontally and add the comments.

It was striking how compared to the exhaustive details of Agee’s text, the photographs lacked any kind of explanation or captions. Readers are left with the anonymous photographs before they dive into any text that could confer a specific meaning to them. Leaving the photographs of the white sharecroppers anonymous, along with giving fictional names to the members of the three tenant families Agee and Evans met, might be an attempt to let the people in their piece exist as human beings rather than characters. Although Agee scrutinizes his subjects in meticulous detail, he thoroughly admits that he is an outsider who is let inside the society of these families to observe them. Moreover, the aim of this piece was to “recognize the stature of a portion of unimagined existence, and to contrive techniques proper to its recording, communication, analysis, and defense” and the families serve as representatives for North American cotton tenantry. Therefore, the lack of individual markers in the photographs serve to make the members of the tenant family appear as representatives of a certain group of people rather than products of Agee’s imagination.

The attempt to illustrate the subject as an observer rather than a narrator contrasts with the approach of Keene and Hartman. Both Keene and Hartman utilized critical fabulation to voice the unheard. Keene and Hartman used imagination to shed light to what would be an asterisk in the large book of history, and as they are imagining a part of history that could not be verified, they leave parts of the narrative out for the reader to speculate. In contrast, Agee and Evans had the advantage of visiting their subjects in person in order to examine what life is like for them. However, since their subjects are not beings conceived by them, they focus on illustration rather than endowing meaning, and speculate instead of speaking for their subjects.

A Song

Some songs do more than get stuck in my head. They seep into my memory until they become a part of my mental picture. The lyrics taste like the memories- the fervor of the sports competition my class cheered for in middle school, the shriek of my best friend on her surprise birthday party, tears welling up in my eyes after failing an exam…

Like a kid lying on her back picking her favorite cloud in the sky, I scoop one song from my fishbowl of memories.

I hum along to the melody and then I stop with a jerk.

I remember that the singer, a member of a popular boy band anyone my age would sing along to, owned a club that drugged and assaulted women.

A Sound

It makes me feel even more self-conscious, as if I need more awkwardness in my life.

In English the onomatopoeia for the camera-sound is “click,” although I’m pretty sure the sound is far more obnoxious. It’s especially irritating when I come across something in a museum that I want to photograph and the camera on my phone makes the loudest sound possible, tearing up the peaceful ripple of voices talking courteously in a low voice.

My roommate says she’ll buy a new phone while she’s in the U.S.

It’s unfair that only Korea and Japan forces phones to make clicking sounds. I know, they’re there to prevent illegal photographing. But it’s not like I take them, right?

A Secret

I was obsessed with secrets as a twelve-year-old. Perhaps because puberty struck me pretty early and I did not know how to deal with stuff happening to my body. Partly because I was beginning to resent “adults” for the first time and wanted to feel like a deviant. Hence began my treasure box of secrets- diaries with tiny locks on them, pens that need a special flashlight to see the ink, texts with my best friend that I would never dare let my parents read… and even googling the word “secret.” This directed me to a flashy article- “My Deepest Secrets Revealed? Gasp!”

I clicked on this article about Miss B, who recently broke up with her boyfriend. When she asked why, he sent her a link. The link was connected to a porn site with Miss B’s video that barely blurred out her face. The article described the video as “embarrassing” and I was too little to know the euphemism. But I thought the article was pretty useless- what am I supposed to take away from this? Be scared that this could happen to me?

It was the first article I read about revenge porn. I did not tell my parents about it.

Working notes: Similar to “To Be in a Time of War,” I wanted to convey how social problems permeate into everyday life. I tried to start from specific, mundane details and connect them to the problem I wanted to address. I wonder if the three paragraphs were formed too similarly, but I think this best portrays how I am continuously reminded of digital sexual assault that is prevalent in our society, even when I am doing something completely irrelevant in my life.

As many of the responses mentioned, the shifts in how Keene presented Carmel’s story struck me the most while reading Counternarratives. From the matter-of-fact tone presenting Carmel’s background to Carmel’s own journal entries and eventually embodying Carmel’s voice itself, the way Keene illustrates Carmel’s story shifts in a jarring way throughout the narrative. His style made me wonder why Keene did not choose to stick to one style alone- perhaps readers would be better able to understand Carmel if the narrative was shaped only on her perspective. However, the way Keene deals with his description of plantation owners contributes to the narrative by showing their brutality in a nonchalant manner. Parts such as “He remembered having lashed her once- or thought he remembered he had- along with all of the other slaves under forty, upon finding ten gold pieces missing from his library safe” (90) highlights how cruel slaves were treated at the time in an ironic manner by taking on a seemingly “objective” form.

It was also interesting how Carmel’s story began as an index of an academic writing, which expands into a larger story than what it began from. Although history does not often shed light to narratives like Carmel’s narrative, it is her story that occupies the most space in this text. This is where the title plays its role- because Carmel’s story subverts the idea of who the ‘main character’ is in a historical narrative, it could be a narrative that counters the historical narratives of the past.