Asian male gay
Many queer Asian men can attest to the stereotypes we face even within the so-called gay community, be it that we’re submissive, feminine, exotic, smart, or some combination. In popular gay Asian colloquialism, there lies the cultural notion that desires revolve around two specific racial choices – rice or potato?. Find the top platforms to meet gay Asian singles!
Connect, chat, and build meaningful relationships in a safe and welcoming space. More men than ever before in this year's selection. We are delighted to see that The New Asian Men Calendars are now available online at The Calendar marks the 14th year. Even in historically gay neighborhoods like West Hollywood or San Francisco’s Castro district, Asian Americans have long been ignored or fetishized, seen as feminine and weak.
Melbourne Asia Review is an initiative of the Asia Institute. Belonging, at its root, is a fantasy of a socio-cultural space where differences do not impede on feeling connected with others. It is often a social emotion: the feeling of affinity with a group, of being part of something larger than ourselves and being welcomed by others.
In popular gay Asian colloquialism, there
Many of us first experience this feeling in the family home and seek to recreate it in ever widening circles from school to workplaces to neighbourhoods and communities. If you are lucky, you mostly move through life feeling like you belong. This discrimination could manifest as a lack of affinity or feelings of discomfort to being actively demonised and even threatened with violence.
Unlike the benign, fleeting non-belonging that sometimes occurs, this unbelonging results from systematic behaviour that blocks or erodes a particular group from belonging. For minority groups that experience unbelonging, identity politics creates a refuge. This is why I believed as a teenager that when I finally became part of the gay community, I would feel whole.
Facing homophobia in the home, in the Filipino community, in the Catholic Church, and at school, I genuinely believed that once I became part of the gay community I would finally belong somewhere. However, as I have written previously of my experiences of the gay scene in the late s and early s, I was in for a rude awakening.
The racism I experienced on the Australian gay scene was so explicit, so vitriolic, so visceral, and so pervasive, I was ill-prepared for the shock. At that time, gay Asian men experienced being excluded from entering gay venues, refused service at the bar , and blocked from parts of the dancefloor. On some occasions I was spat on, sworn at, tripped or pushed down staircases, and sexually humiliated.
Physically, socially, emotionally, gay Asian men were made to feel that we did not belong in the Australian gay community. Thankfully, many of those more overt practices of social and physical exclusion have receded from Australian gay culture today. While they have not entirely disappeared, they are rare and no longer go unchallenged. It indicates some norms are shifting.
But one persistent practice that continues today is sexual racism : the practice of excluding men from, or including men in, dating and sexual life on the basis of racial stereotypes and characteristics. While some gay dating apps have attempted to remove racial filtering and banned racial abuse, such as Grindr, this has not stopped the pervasiveness of sexual racism.
Often these practices are defended as benign sexual preferences. One oft-cited study addresses this defence by demonstrating that gay white men who have racialised sexual preferences specifically anti-Asian were more likely to hold other generic racist views. This has been held up as proof that racial sexual preferences are indeed racist. But this is a guilt-by-association argument. If at some point in time, racialised sexual preferences are no longer strongly correlated with wider racist views, as a later US study found , is it still racist?
As many gay Asian men, including myself , have argued, sexual racism is problematic in and of itself. Sexual racism occurs when a racial preference is grounded in histories of racist stereotyping and violence, which reinforces racial hierarchies of inequality and violence through their dating, sexual and relationship practices.
Sexual racism as a cultural pattern establishes a racial hierarchy of desirability in the community that devalues gay Asian men in Australian gay culture. Being subjected to sexual racism tends to lead to lower self-esteem and lower life satisfaction. Body-shaming of Asian men is rife and often intertwines misogyny, racism and transphobia.
In such cases, white cultural expectations of beauty, ageing and gender, combine to portray Asian men as lacking masculinity. This is often imposed as assumed gendered roles of the Asian boyfriend who may be treated as the woman or wife of the relationship not only by the white boyfriend but their family and social network, which brings sexist stereotypes and practices into play.