‘You’re not invited’: Negotiating feminism within digital public sphere surrounding Lisa’s exotic dance

This paper presents an examination of the online backlash against Lisa, a member of the K-pop girl group Blackpink, triggered by her decision to perform in a burlesque club. It explores how feminist counterpublics operate within Asian fan communities in discussions concerning the visibility of female celebrities. Employing critical discourse analysis (CDA) in our study, we examined gender, power, and ideology in feminist discourse surrounding Lisa’s action, paying close attention to how feminism is negotiated within counterpublics of online communities. Analysis of 22 Facebook posts and accompanying comments from Vietnamese K-pop fan groups and pages revealed how feminist discourse in Vietnamese online fan communities is deeply intertwined with cultural preservation, social responsibility, and class considerations. Reflecting broader societal tensions between individualism and collectivism, as well as between Western and Asian values through varied interpretation of feminism within a discursive framework, this contextualization builds on existing scholarship of how feminist discourse is shaped and contested in non-Western settings.