From Current: Rainbow Nation, a five minute “pod” on stereotypes and Gay Asian males.
That’s a way to get a response from me; create a video that starts out with the line, “Asian men have a lot of diseases [and] small penises.”
Gimmicky way to start off a documentary aside, some interesting points are raised by this video: stereotypes of Gay Asian men exist – that they’re skinny, smooth, only date white guys and that they are effeminate and thus passive. The pod also asserts that non-Asians feel that the stereotypes of Asians are justified because that’s all they see when they walk around in the Castro on go on chat rooms.
Usually it’s easy to write my own personal opinions on the matter, but for this post I’m having a strangely difficult time on this one. Maybe it’s because I’m definitely not a gay Asian stereotype – I’m definitely NOT skinny, I can’t dress for shit (ask my friend Royce; he’ll tell you stories) and I don’t think I’m THAT effeminate (other 8A writers, feel free to shoot me down if I assume wrong.) While fighting stereotypes sound like a noble thing, when you’re coming out of the closet you WANT to fit in somewhere, be in a tribe, look and act like everyone else as a way to not feel ostracized. I had huge self-esteem issues where I’ve felt like the only way I could ever find a boyfriend is if I were to somehow magically lose fifty pounds and dress in DKNY, because that’s the only thing I saw – horrible, but true. As a result, I hung out with the bear subculture for a while, but that didn’t make things any better – an experience with discrimination there is one of the reasons why I started 8Asians.
Now I’m a little older and I know that if someone is trying so hard to live up to a certain label that they’re not really worth my effort anyway. Dating is still a challenge but if someone is not into me, then their bad. Gaysians, what are your experiences?
