What Could We Make of #ABODesire's Portrayal of Consent Violations?

posting my twitter thread on this topic here hoping it could aid in shaping the discussion into something more fruitful. apologies if the sentences read oddly constrained; they are indeed tweet-sized.

there seems to be two dominant discourses surrounding #abodesire’s portrayal of consent violations & both seem dismissive. it’s not fair to disregard the genre-specific world-building but it’s also a disservice to dismiss the non-consent because of it when it’s intentional. 

through science fiction, the omegaverse dramatizes the gender inequality between men and women in real life where men’s desires are treated as necessary and uncontrollable under patriarchy. being in heat is akin to compulsion and rape “isn’t a thing” if it is your biological imperative to do so. 

in their thesis, milena popova calls this defamiliarization, where the sex/gender dynamics in the show feel familiar to our real-life experiences but are made strange by the characters' biological imperatives, making it easier for us to see the power structures that also govern these dynamics in our world.

by taking inspiration from animal lore, the omegaverse makes coercion inherent to its biological frameworks and this premise naturally limits the characters’ “agency & ability to seek, give or withhold consent” in this dramatized, parallel version of a hierarchical social structure. these scenes are deliberately portrayed as explicitly non-consensual as they parallel real-life consent violations taken to the extreme through the science-fictional elements of the genre, like how alphas being dominant and omegas being submissive parallel male/female gender scripts in our world.

so, we read these scenes not just as rape scenes but also as narrative devices that showcase how consent can easily be rendered meaningless when biological imperatives are written in. this is why it matters that we don’t dismiss these depictions for a more digestible romance story. 

seemingly, in the context of abo desire, these dubious/non-consent scenes aren’t added for shock value or to rationalize assault; they reshape the romantic dynamics we see in the show. we are confronted with the question of what counts as a valid foundation of romance in this world. the show is still ongoing but what we are seeing so far is the series acknowledging how these violations have changed these characters as people and their relationship dynamics with others. it doesn’t dismiss the weight of these scenes just to preserve the fantasy of love or “redeem” the sexually transgressive characters. by acknowledging the coercion in these interactions through the characters experiencing trauma or changing their relationship with the perpetrators or by renegotiating their boundaries, the show allows for the romantic dynamics to be reshaped in a way that critiques rape culture.

(quoting the scene where during gao tu's heat, a background character is worried for him and notes he could be in trouble "if he meets an unscrupulous alpha or a high-compatibility one) in abo desire’s omegaverse, the dominant constructions of gender and sexuality are confronted and aren’t presented as morally neutral. like here in this scene, they are worried because there are factors beyond biology, like constructions of (alpha) masculinity, where alphas can lack moral principles and this can influence their sexually transgressive actions.

so, i find these two dominant discourses dismissive because they ignore the cultural work done in this show to interrogate consent and its limitations. by ignoring these coercive dynamics in order to safely enjoy the romantic parts of the show, we would be the ones normalizing non-consent. by completely eliminating control and autonomy from humanized subjects, the show forces us to think of the limitations of consent (wanting vs consenting) and why/how we excuse some coercion in real life but (hopefully) not here in this fictional world where it’s easier to see. 

in the context of this show, i think it’s useful to ask these questions: how is the coercion framed? it could be biological (heat/rut) and/or hierarchical (alpha/beta), etc. how is the aftermath handled? what is the purpose assigned to these scenes? e.g. exposing power imbalances.

well, it is a convoluted discussion. i agree that it is fine not everyone likes this genre or the show in general but i do think it matters just how we, as those who do like it, are engaging with its themes.

Media literacy is not for everyone 🙊 

Thank you for this thoughtful discussion! On a personal level, I'm not really interested in A/B/O generally, partially because of the inherent bioessentialism the genre relies on, and I'm somewhat neutral on "toxic" romances generally (when they're good they're good a lot of them aren't). I'm watching the show mostly because Hua Yong is a weird little man and I'm very entertained by him lol. I'm not personally a fan of assault in my romances (particularly when it is romanticized), but I understand why it has a presence in the genre.  I saw this post before I got to the episodes in question and I was really interested to see how the show would frame the assaults that occurred given this post and what I've seen elsewhere on social media. 

I found the result very interesting. Both encounters were, as you mentioned, framed as out of the aggressor's control, but also not morally neutral because of that lack of control. The background characters are concerned, most of the people involved (particularly in Gao Tu and Shen Wen Lang's case) feel violated and upset. I think the framing of Shen Wen Lang's feelings is particularly interesting as in some other representations of this trope, the person who loses control isn't usually considered to have been hurt by the situation. 

From a more mechanical narrative perspective, both assaults are used to move the character's relationship forward in some way. In the case of Gao Tu and Wen Lang, it pushes their somewhat tenuous relationship past the breaking point where Gao Tu is finally forced to choose his own (and his future child's) happiness when Wen Lang's hatred becomes unbearable. On the other end, Hua Yong's loss of control doesn't have an immediate effect, but it does set up the reveal of his identity for the future and gives Shao You a stronger emotional reason to push him away once he learns the truth (or at least some of it). 

Finally, the aesthetic framing was something I'd also like to discuss. I think on a general level the show does a decent job of critiquing rape culture as you said, but here is where it fell somewhat flat for me. In part perhaps to avoid the scenes seeming like pure shock value, they're framed a little more romantically and more like typical NC scenes. The music (specifically love songs), lighting (dark, lots of backlighting), shot choices (focusing on hands, faces, lots and lots of crossfades, very soft transitions)... I found it a little jarring in the case of Gao Tu and Wen Lang particularly, because it was much more visible and Gao Tu is very aware and upset. 

While these assaults are not overly trivialized and to some extent exist to critique rape culture, they are also there to excite the audience that enjoys those tropes (not here to comment on that specifically, just stating the fact), and I think that should not be overlooked in a discussion of why these scenes were included. As Popova states in the quotes you pulled, it is being used as a tool of critique but it is simultaeneously a vehicle for romantic and sexual fantasies. In my opinion it can be hard for these two things to exist together. The romantic framing can weaken that critique and water it down (my personal experience). 

Overall there were definitely some interesting choices and I appreciated personally that the framing wasn't 100% romantic and that there was actually some discussion of sexual transgressions. 

 Karanja:

The only thing I don't understand in the alphaxomega universe is that, omegas are important and valuable, but they treat them like trash, dirty, can do with them whatever you want, etc
Or maybe I get it wrong?

Yes.  An Omega identity parallels how women and feminised people are treated in our non-fictional world which gets more intense if you’re a racialised minority and/or poor.

I'm sorry this became very long very quick and also very cliché and I feel like I'm maybe repeating a lot of statements already made but I wanted to share it all the same because I love thinking about this. 

I also want to bring up how Alphas although a minority just like Omegas are also at the same time at the top of the food chain (second only to Enigmas but those are even more rare). Omegas are parallel to women and Alphas, parallel the identity of the Masculine Man which are not a minority in our non-fictional world. To take it even further: they are not just any man, they are that 1% of the top that benefits the most from the system also as seen in our own world where only a few benefit from keeping the patriarchy intact. 

It also makes me think of how the justice system would work. From our own reality we already know that sexual assault and rape cases are already difficult to 'prove' and most people don't report it because of the difficulty and the emotional trauma that comes with it. 

Desire is set in a modern era (post ABO-virus) and we can assume that before all this happened there were similar laws and sentiments as we have now on gender inequality issues of all kinds (at least in Jianghu, i have no clue what they're doing in country P if they have any laws at all). But then the ABO dynamics happened and everything gets flipped upside down.

Omegas often (are taught to in the case of GT and DESIRE) fear being found out that they're an omega but alphas don't have this same fear. They get to show off and be proud and generally just exist. They don't fear seeing another alpha at night. So keep a low profile during heat, don't look for confrontation, don't go out late at night, don't wear those revealing clothes (but don't be so prudish), you did it on purpose, you must have liked it, it was your fault.

Fiction is a reflection of reality. Looking through the lense of defamiliarization mentioned earlier the dichotomy of the current system is laid bare:  Women/Omegas are inherently sexual and Men/Alphas inherently have The Urge (and nothing can change That TM). (re what you said: "heat is akin to compulsion and rape “isn’t a thing” if it is your biological imperative to do so.")

We are caught between preserving autonomy of Women/Omegas and preserving their right to exist.

Before I end this, I briefly want to mention domestic abuse and marital rape. 

In the past, a married woman could not be raped by her husband because she was his property and marriage automatically gives consent for every sexual encounter henceforth with her husband. A married woman could not even testify against her husband without his consent (which of course if he really was guilty he wouldn't allow)! Most people will agree now that this is wrong. A woman is no longer the property of her husband and consent is needed after marriage too - not despite. Our current laws have been reflecting this and have been changing because our view on consent has changed. This was not and has never been an easy journey and it has never been an easy discussion but it's getting closer and it's more normal to talk about consent :)

Back to the omegaverse. So, how do you protect someone from their 'own biology' (or somebody else's)? Or, how do you protect someone from their 'own body'? 

To answer that we must ask ourselves this: How has the real world protected women? How has our society found solutions if, any at all? How do women continue to live and persist in a system built against their thriving? 

About Hua Yong's motives, I'm being honest and i'll say it once again only if somehow ep. 9 could disappear from my memory then I can accept everything else which is bad about him. I can accept lying, manipulation, obsession, stalking, scheming personality or anything else to make your target fall for you but not a r@ping and a$$ault this straight-up sends him to the criminal category. Ik it was not his motive. It was out of his control but I can't accept this fact. 

I felt so bad for Sheng Shaoyou when he was left alone after getting a$$aulted. He cried in front of his secretary helplessly and I felt like crying with him. It came to my mind that just how cruel could you be Hua Yong to get what you want ?? Leaving just the next day after you did that to him atleast for the sake of his mental health you could've stayed another two days before leaving to continue with your goal. You love SSY and instead of trying to make him happy you're destroying him and making his life miserable. Nobody deserves it. 

Consent in any omegaverse story is literally rare to see, ABO Desire was very very very morally grey and we all know that, which is why it's totally understandable for it to be disliked. But for omegaverse fans like me, I went into this expecting as such, and absolutely love the story to bits