Ba Qing E Shao De Xiao Tao Qi (2023)

Assault, abuse, and sexual violence cosplaying as romance

The drama starts out with an attempted forced abortion, flashes back to FL's drugged sexual encounter, and proceeds to domestic violence, workplace sexual harassment, violent assault (choking), and kidnapping a woman's children to force her compliance - and I'm not yet at the halfway point in this "romantic" drama. There's even a scene where the daughter admonishes ML for bullying her mother, but son "boysplains" to his sister that ML choking and assaulting FL is just 'kissing'. I've seen comments online where people are normalizing this and calling it "cute" and "romantic". That mindset is genuinely appalling and makes me fear for the safety of every woman and girl in China if this is the norm. The female lead should be grabbing her kids and running for their lives. Preferably to a different country.

If I could have rated it less than 1.0, I would have. That this drama got written and produced and has a 7+ rating on MDL says something truly horrifying about the cultural normalization of violence against women.

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