Pleasure and religious identity negotiation of female Indonesian K-Pop fans living in South Korea

This study examines the experiences of Indonesian female K-Pop fans living in South Korea, focusing on women’s pleasure and negotiating religious identities in fangirling. The concept of public sphere by Jürgen Habermas, which places only bourgeois men in the public space and excluding other groups was employed in this study. Nancy Fraser critiques this by introducing “subaltern counterpublics,” a space for underrepresented communities, including women. Meanwhile, in the context of Indonesian society, “State Ibuism,” an ideology formed during the New Order regime, idealizes women as devoted wives and mothers, positioning them within domestic roles. By involving 45 participants and using in-depth interviews as well as participant observation as data collection, this study found: first, Indonesian women’s participation in K-Pop fandom is a form of negotiated and contextual agency. Second, pleasure, often underestimated within patriarchal frameworks, is a crucial dimension of women’s agency. Third, for Indonesian Muslim female fans, fangirling is closely tied to moral policing that operates at the intersection of gender, religion, and social status. These findings suggest that fandom is more accurately described as an arena for ongoing negotiations between piety, femininity, and pleasure which expands the notion of subaltern counterpublic.