Mr. J, a Former Professor Series – Entry 4: Hidden Like Accountability
Poetry, Consent, and the Fine Line Between Tribute and Trespass
Context:
The author previously held an academic affiliation in Australia.
The excerpt analyzed here is drawn from a 16,000-word personal literary defense, informally submitted post-complaint.
Methodological Frame:
It prioritizes formatting responsibility and institutional readability, while also engaging ideological and postcolonial readings where relevant.
This piece engages with symbolic structures through a lens of educational ethics and reflective critique.
Intent and Integrity Statement:
It is written in good faith, with no intent to target, defame, or discredit any individual, institution, or nation.
Table of Contents
I. Structure and Formatting Ethics Analysis
II. Symbolic Boundaries and Postcolonial Readings
Excerpt from Author’s Literary Commentary
(original description of Hidden Like Rice by the author)
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I. STRUCTURE AND FORMATTING ETHICS ANALYSIS
In professional and academic communication, structure is not cosmetic; it is a reflection of rigour, respect, and intellectual discipline.
When a 16,000-word literary defense arrives condensed into 11 pages — lacking standard academic formatting such as 12pt font, double spacing, clear paragraphing, and sectioning — the issue transcends intention. It becomes a question of presentation ethics and readability integrity.
Properly formatted, the submission would have expanded to approximately 55–65 pages.
Its compression, chaotic spacing, and disregard for structural coherence significantly hinder evaluative processes — and this omission is not trivial.
In unsolicited communications following boundary withdrawals, the ethical burden to present information with maximum structural clarity intensifies. Poor formatting in such contexts not only disrupts assessment but further undermines trust and accountability.
Given the author’s former affiliation with higher education institutions, the lack of basic academic presentation undermines both content credibility and the broader mechanisms of institutional response.
This case highlights a broader issue: how form, tone, and timing can be weaponized — consciously or unconsciously — to complicate ethical and institutional resolution.
In academic and legal contexts, clarity is not merely an aesthetic preference; it is a form of professional protection for both the reader and the writer.
Without structural discipline, narrative credibility collapses, regardless of emotional sophistication.
In addition, the failure to distinguish direct quotations through italicization or structural separation blurs authorial responsibility and narrative fidelity, further eroding professional standards.
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II. SYMBOLIC BOUNDARIES AND POSTCOLONIAL READINGS
Furthermore, the excerpted narrative blurs boundaries between death imagery (“teeming minnows around a dead carp”) and eroticized descriptions (“soft urgent skin,” “pheromone haze”), raising serious ethical concerns.
Such symbolic conflation, while permissible in abstract fiction, becomes problematic — even manipulative — when applied to lived relationships without ongoing consent.
The aestheticization of trauma without ethical framing reflects a failure to respect narrative autonomy and may constitute symbolic exploitation.
In the literary commentary and social posts surrounding Hidden Like Rice, the author repeatedly asserts that his writing is an act of reverence, tenderness, and personal healing. However, a closer ethical and discursive analysis reveals a darker undercurrent — a persistent refusal to acknowledge the boundaries of the woman he writes about, disguised beneath the language of affection. This is not a poem. This is power, romanticized.
When Western individuals describe Asians without consent, without dialogue, or through gendered symbols — it is no longer literature.
It becomes a reproduction of colonial structures through language.
— Theories by Edward Said (Orientalism), Sara Ahmed, and Spivak
At its core, the author’s argument follows a familiar logic rooted in colonial intimacy: “Because I once had access to you, I now have narrative rights over you.” Despite being told directly that consent was not given for public portrayal, the author justifies publication with claims such as “there’s nothing identifiable”, “she’s neurodivergent and brilliant”, and “there must be ten thousand Linhs in Hanoi.”
These statements echo a precolonial mode of authority — one in which proximity justifies possession, and love justifies disregard. The individual being written about is stripped of contemporary agency and re-rendered through a past narrative the author refuses to let go of. In doing so, he performs what feminist scholars might call narrative entitlement: the assumption that emotional history confers ethical permission.
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KEY PATTERNS OF ETHICAL VIOLATION:
1. Disguised Control through Sentiment
By saying “I still care about her. Even though there’s no reconciliation,” the author cloaks an act of narrative overreach in emotional nobility — a classic power inversion tactic.
2. Epistemic Dismissal
The woman’s clear “no” is framed as “her current narrative” — implying it is a passing phase or emotionally reactive, while his writing is the enduring truth.
This reflects colonial epistemology, where the subaltern’s voice is valid only when it aligns with the dominant storyteller.
3. Emotional Imperialism
“The poems are written in gratitude.” Yet this gratitude is used to override autonomy — proving that even “positive” portrayals can be ethically coercive.
4. Post-relationship Extraction
The work re-mines a personal relationship for literary capital. This commodification of lived intimacy parallels resource extraction logics in colonial histories — where territory (or womanhood) continues to be used after consent is revoked.
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The individual in question does not demonstrate postcolonial awareness. Rather, his written portrayal of me — an Asian woman — reflects a pre- or neo-colonial mindset disguised as literary expression. He exercises narrative authority without consent, layering orientalized tropes of fragility, mystique, and emotional distortion onto a real person who holds less institutional and racial power. His language aestheticizes the imbalance, erases my agency, and reenacts a long colonial tradition of Western men defining Asian women on their behalf. This is not a literary choice. It is a political act — one that bypasses the ethical responsibility to question who holds the right to speak, to describe, and to circulate stories of others. In doing so, he invokes a one-sided narrative legacy that has historically silenced women of color under the guise of poetic license. This is not “art.” It is a repetition of epistemic control rooted in racialized gender dynamics, enabled by academic credibility and insulated by aesthetic ambiguity.
Given his professional background — over 20 years teaching psychology and neuroscience in Australia — the individual in question cannot reasonably claim ignorance of the ethical and racialized implications embedded in his written portrayal of an Asian woman. His academic exposure would have required engagement with cross-cultural ethics, trauma-informed frameworks, and the psychological impact of symbolic violence. Furthermore, having previously partnered with a woman of Asian–Irish heritage, he would be intimately familiar with the social coding and fetishization often projected onto Asian identities in Western discourse. That he proceeded to publish a stylized depiction — marked by orientalist tropes and a gendered power imbalance — suggests not naivety, but a deliberate use of narrative control. The act is therefore not a lapse in judgment, but a knowing transgression of ethical boundaries dressed in poetic form. This indicates a deeper problem: not lack of awareness, but lack of restraint.
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Conclusion:
This is not about literary value. It is about the ethics of narrative power.
When a person refuses to hear ‘no’, they will always rewrite it as ‘test’ or ‘narrative’ — because accepting the boundary would mean accepting their own irrelevance.
That is appropriation. And love that ignores consent is not love — it is narrative colonization.
Selected Theoretical References:
Spivak (1988), Can the Subaltern Speak?
bell hooks (2000), All About Love
Sara Ahmed (2004), The Cultural Politics of Emotion
Anzaldúa (1987), Borderlands/La Frontera
Leela Gandhi (1998), Postcolonial Theory
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Disclaimer:
This post includes excerpts from a literary submission shared without solicitation and is analyzed here under fair use provisions for educational commentary related to public interest and institutional literacy standards.
No personal identifiers have been included.
All reflections are offered from a professional perspective on formatting ethics, symbolic representation, and the ethics of narrative portrayal — not to provoke, target, or malign any individual.
Further professional or legal clarification is welcome via direct correspondence.
Read the full series
- Entry 1: The Man Who Taught Me Ethics by Failing All of Them
- Entry 2: The Disappearance of the Public Poet
- Entry 3: The Hanging Tree Case Study
- Entry 4: Hidden Like Accountability — Poetry, Consent, and the Fine Line Between Tribute and Trespass (you are here)
- Entry 5: The Collapse of Assumptions
- Entry 6: The Ethics of a Tinder Bio
- Entry 7: How He Ate Told Me Everything
- Entry 8: What Makes a Scholar Dangerous
- Entry 9: Fragment of Life, Fragment of Accountability
- Entry 10: Anatomy of Disappointment
- Entry 11: Legal Defense Challenges: A Framing Statement
- Entry 12: Six Years After Ronell – What Academia Still Doesn’t Get
- Entry 13: QUT and The Man Who Raped Me
- Entry 14: Why Sarcasm Toward Institutions Can Backfire
- Entry 15: P*ssy or Toxic Masculinity?
- Entry 16: Who is Your Favorite Comedian?
- Entry 17: And What is Your Favorite Song?
- Entry 18: Grant Proposal — Narrative Ethics as Survivor-Led Forensics
- Entry 19: The Coward Behind the Clone
- Entry 20: [URGENT HIRE] CRISIS COMMUNICATIONS SPECIALIST
- Entry 21: [URGENT] Legal Counsel Needed for Complex Reputation Rehabilitation
- Entry 22: YOU’RE AN ABUSER. STOP CONTACTING ME
- Entry 23: Seeking Counsel for a Fallen Academic
- Entry 24: Internal Legal-PR Briefing
- Entry 25: For Journalists – Legal & Ethical Clearance Summary
- Entry 26: Symbolic Prostitution, Transactional Intimacy, or Just a “Loan”?
- Entry 28: Why He Simply Cannot Shut Up
- Entry 29: Forensic Commentary on “LARGE Language Muddle”
- Entry 30: Don’t Just Threaten My Future. Because I’m Going To Archive Your Present
- Entry 31: Open Letter to the Person Who Tried to Break Me with Defamation
- Entry 32: Defamation, Harassment, Doxxing Class 101
- Entry 33: Confidential Crisis Recovery Proposal
- Entry 34: Forensic Behavioral-Somatic Report
- Entry 35: Forensic Commentary on the Tattoos
- Entry 36: QUT and the Abuser They Once Had
- Entry 38: When Poetry Becomes Revenge Porn
- Entry 40: A Man Built for Applause, Not Accountability
- Entry 41: Neurobehavioral Addendum
- Entry 43: Why Does It Sound Like a War Metaphor?
- Entry 44: Forensic Commentary on Racialized and Fetishizing Language in “Hidden Like Rice”
- Entry 45: Public Misuse of Former Academic Affiliation
- Entry 46: The Two Things That Didn’t Leave a Bad Impression
- Entry 47: When Affection is Just an Alibi (A Bundy-Inspired Reflection)
- Entry 48: Humbert, Lolita, and the Fetish of Fragility
- Entry 49: The Fetish of Smallness as Symbolic Violence
- Entry 50: Motif Risk Analysis
- Entry 52: Can an Abuser Be a Good Father?
- Entry 53: Who Protects the Children?
- Entry 54: From Blackmail to Children
- Entry 55: A Letter I’ll Never Send
- Entry 56: Outc(L)assed - Critical Race Analysis
- Entry 57: Forensic Breakdown: “A Voidance” by Johnston
- Entry 58: Johnston, Who Raised You?
- Entry 59: Public Financial Terms & Narrative Conditions
- Entry 60: What Kind of Future Do You Think Awaits You?
- Entry 61: Why I Believe He Has No Real PR or Legal Team
- Entry 62: Why I Can Legally (and Ethically) Call You a Pathetic Pig
- Entry 63: Tell Me You’re a Pathetic Pig Without Telling Me You’re a Pathetic Pig
- Entry 65: Did Your Mother Teach You To Speak Like This?
- Entry 66: Nobody Cares Anyway
- Reflection: The Miscalculation
(More entries coming soon)
→ [Back to Start: Introducing Mr. J, a Former Professor Series]
© 2025 Linh Ng. All rights reserved.
This publication is intended for educational and reflective purposes only.
Sharing the original link is welcomed and encouraged.
Please do not reproduce, redistribute, or translate this content — in whole or in part — without written permission.
This piece reflects both lived experience and critical analysis. It is not meant to be detached from its author or reframed without context.
Misuse or decontextualization may lead to formal clarification or takedown requests.
This work has been reviewed and quietly followed by scholars, educators, and ethics professionals across multiple sectors.
If your institution is engaging in critical discourse around narrative justice, symbolic coercion, or representational ethics, feel free to connect via Substack DMs or formal channels.
A regulatory case regarding this matter has already been classified under a protected status within national education integrity systems.
Should any reputational countermeasures or distortions arise, I reserve the right to publish the documented timeline, behavioral patterns, and contextual metadata.
All relevant documentation has been submitted through formal legal and regulatory pathways.
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