Gayasian American: A minority within a minority

Gay and Asian.
For some, it’s like being a minority within another minority.
“I think it amplified the feeling that we were different,” Andrew Hamano said. “Adding on now that I was gay and Asian – at least I could hide being gay whereas you couldn’t hide being Asian.”

For others, it meant confronting the cultural stigmas within many Asian-American households.
“Being Asian American, you just hear about parents basically disowning their children,” said Mitch Dao, a 26-year-old Vietnamese American. “That’s what I was scared about.”
Many are faced with the question of when did they know they were gay or when did they choose to be gay. All agreed, it is just who they are.
“When people ask me that question, I ask them how long they’ve known that they were straight,” Stephen-Henry Bae said. “They can never answer and I can never answer either. When you hit puberty, you start liking boys and girls, and I just realized I liked one more than the other.”

Coming Out
Every homosexual has a unique experience when they decide to share their orientation with their loved ones. For some, it is an intimate talk with close friends and family. However for Thanh Ngo, it was something much more public and abrupt.

Being a model, he said he often travels for his job. Subsequently, the media is always around him and his industry. A quote was picked up in a publication and he was out to his family before he chose to be.

“I didn’t tell my parents,” the 25-year-old Ngo said. “They actually read it in a magazine that I was doing an interview for. They weren’t really happy about that. … They were really in shock because when you read something, it’s more shocking than when you are being told by someone.”

Bae, 20, came out to the world in his blog on Jan. 4, 2010. That was easy, he said, compared to telling his family and friends in person.

“It’s much harder because I have been blatantly lying to a lot of them,” Bae said. “And on top of that, a lot of them being both Korean and Christian, which is what most of my world is, it definitely was harder coming out to close people.”

He said the reaction from his family and friends ranged from denial to shock to anger.

“They (my family) weren’t willing to accept it,” Bae said. “I think a lot had to do with their heritage. Over there (Korea), the culture simply doesn’t even acknowledge that people like me exist.”

Twenty-five-year-old Alex Paramore, an adopted Korean American, came out when she was 22. But it was not a surprised to her friends and family.

“My parents, they knew,” she said. “They were waiting for me to say it.”

Paramore said the support system she received from her friends and family made the transistion easier.

Dao said he came out to his best friend Amy in 2004, a year before coming out to his parents.

“I think the reason for that was I needed to talk to someone,” he said. “It’s difficult to hide yourself. I just needed someone to talk to. I was living a double life. It’s hard to lie to yourself. I came out to her to relieve myself from being hidden.”

Dao said the way he came out to his family was a scary experience – his mother had found homosexual-networking websites bookmarked on his computer.

“When my parents first asked me, I denied it a few times,” he said. “After coming out, my parents told me they’d love me regardless of what my orientation is, so that made me feel a lot better, but I still felt uncomfortable being myself.”

Twenty-three-year-old “Spencer,” who asked to stay anonymous because he has not told his family, said he tried coming out to friends as a freshman in high school. Unfortunately it did not go well and has made him reluctant to share that bit about his life with others.

“I had figured it out and (was) becoming more comfortable or accepting that I’m more attracted to guys, and I told these two girls about how I was feeling and I wanted to share it with them because I had trusted them,” Spencer said. ” … I find out a week after that they had told everyone.

“It was really traumatizing and I didn’t take it very well. I flunked out of the school and I had to change schools and start fresh as a sophomore.”

Vicki Taniwaki, 50, came out in the early 1980s to her family and friends – a fact, she said, was not surprisinging to her mother or friends. A time when there were not as many visible gay Asians, particularly in Colorado, Taniwaki described her experience as transformative.

“It was a mixture of being both quite liberating on the one hand, but also very intimidating and isolating because, as you can imagine, there really weren’t any role models,” she said.

Hamano, 60, said he didn’t come out until he was 32. A lawyer in the early stages of his career, he was dealing with his sexual orientation and felt that being gay was going to be a hindrance for his professional progress.

“You could still get fired and it just was a situation where even if you didn’t get fired, I perceived it would hamper professional development,” he said.

But hiding his true nature was taking a toll on his mental health. And before he could come out to anyone, he had to come to terms with it himself.

“For me, it (coming out) meant I personally could come to grips and start dealing with it,” he said. “It didn’t mean I was ‘out’ to anyone in my family or my friends. To me the initial step was I was willing to admit to myself that I was gay.”

Living a Double Life
Bae said he never intended on ever coming out. A Korean American and devout Christian, he wanted to just live his life and be a successful, single man in the public eye.

“Before I came out, I claimed I was my biggest critic,” Bae said. “Every time I would control how my voice sounded. I would control my pitch, I would control my register, I would control things I liked, like ‘Sex and the City.’”

He wanted to follow the path of actor Robert Reed, the father on “The Brady Bunch,” who took the secret of his homosexuality to his grave. But realizing that people like Reed lived difficult lives, he decided to forego his plan and open himself up.

However being a religious individual, Bae has been pondering on how his religion coincides with his orientation. He asked friends to ask their pastors for advice.

“One of them is completely radical and said that the bible is completely the way people interpret it, so you can be gay, you can be a Christian and God wants gays to be just as happy as straights – that includes dating and your love life,” he said. “The other pastor tried to convince my friend that sexuality can be changed by prayer. So they’re both very extreme views.”

For Ngo, who is Catholic, he said he feels that being gay has nothing to do with his own faith.

“I believe that God doesn’t judge you because you’re gay,” he said. “He judges you by the things you do. And if you are a good person and you do all this good stuff in your life and if he were to cast you to go to hell because you were gay, what kind of a god would he be?”

Coming out, Ngo said, created an chance to be who he really is rather than trying to pretend he was something he was not.

“When I came out, I felt more fulfilled and it gave me an opportunity to be myself,” he said.

For Spencer, he repressed his feelings after his experience as a freshman in high school. It wasn’t until he moved away to college that he felt he was allowed to discover himself.

“Being able to date people and have a relationship because I wasn’t confined to come home to my family every day, I was able to live a life and not keep a secret because I had become independent,” Spencer said.

Gay in an Asian-American World
Among the interviewees, a prevalent opinion was that being gay is a taboo in most Asian households.

“I think we view our cultures as being somewhat conservative and certainly focused on family and having kids, passing on the family name – all of that,” Hamano said. “So I always perceived it would always be a very not supportive community.”

However, his experiences and reactions from within the community have been positive, he said. He credits that to most of his friends being third, fourth or fifth generation.

“I think within the Japanese-American community, we’re more Americanized now, so the views that they have are much more liberal tolerant than let’s say my parents of my grandparents,” Hamano said.

But for others, like Dao, the notion of saving face for his family is one that still keeps him from being completely open with his sexuality.

“I’m not comfortable being all the way out yet because I’m scared I’m being judged or embarrassing my parents’ name,” he said.

Bae said growing up he was taught that being gay was not only not an option but reprehensible.

“It seems that the Asian-American community is unaccepting,” Bae said.”Our parents raise us in a way that teaches us that having sex before marriage and being gay are automatic things that you don’t have to think about – they’re just horrible. Because of that, I think people are just brainwashed at a young age.”

Spencer agreed, saying that he worries about how his family would react based on what he has seen with his lesbian cousin. He said although his family appears supportive on the surface, he hears the talk that goes on behind her back.

“On the one hand I’d like to think the family is perceptive and accepting, just because of the fact that I have a gay cousin who got married,” Spencer said. “But I know the flipside is that they don’t really agree or support them.”

For some, the topic of being gay is simply not talked about. Taniwaki said that when she brings someone to Asian-American functions, that person is “just sort of there” as no one brings up the subject.

“If I could put one word to it, it would be avoidance,” Taniwaki said. “It’s not really talked about. Nobody has ever, ever, ever asked me anything personal in that regard.”

Ngo said he shares similar experiences and never discusses his personal life with his family.

“Basically my family, everyone knows,” he said. “Since my parents are really conservative and really religious, we just don’t talk about it.”

Asian American in a Gay World
Being an gay Asian American in Colorado is something that is rare, according to the interviewees. Having come out in the early ’80s, Taniwaki said it was a long time before she saw others like her around town.

“For a very long time, I was the only Asian in any of the women’s bars and I didn’t notice until sometime in the mid-90s, I would see a couple more Asian women, although much younger than me,” she said. “But I recall thinking to myself, if my presence in the bars encouraged these other women to show up, then I’ve done at least one thing positive for this community.”

Even today, the number of gay Asians who go out is limited, Paramore said.

“The places I go to, there’s a grand total of four of us (Asians),” she said.

Ngo said he shares similar sentiments.

“I think I add more diversity to the (gay) community because you see a lot of white and Latino, but you don’t see a lot of Asian people who are gay,” he said. “There are probably, but they’re not out or afraid to come out.”

The lack of openly gay Asians is a factor, but Hamano said the gay community is a reflection of the majority community. But as is with the majority community, there are many Asian Americans who are marrying outside of their race.

“Much like the majority society, when you’re dating or when you’re with somebody, being Asian you find a lot more outmarriages,” Hamano said. “So you tend to see more of that in the gay Asian population just as you do in the majority one.”

Living in New York, Spencer said the gay community is much more pronounced and he has been able to meet other gay Asians.

“I know a few other gay Asian guys and it’s always really cool to know people who look like you and who have the same types of cultural values or upbringing that you have,” Spencer said.

Dao said he moved out to Los Angeles in order to expand his dating pool so that it would include more Asian Americans.

“Prior to (my current boyfriend) John, who’s Cambodian, all my boyfriends were white,” Dao said. “I felt like i needed to connect to someone who’s my own race.”

For Ngo, being Asian creates opportunities to meet people when he goes out to cities with larger gay populations.

“When I go to LA and New York to work, I get a lot more attention because I guess a lot of guys like Asian guys, so I get a lot more attention,” Ngo said. ” … At the same time, it’s hard to date when you’re Asian because a lot of guys, especially white, like dating other white guys. Being Asian doesn’t give you that much opportunity to date.”

For Spencer, there’s certainly a difference between meeting people who have an interest in who he is as compared to people wanting to meet him simply because he is Asian.

“You can tell when someone’s talking to you just genuinely because you’re interesting or attractive, but you can also tell when someone’s talking to you because they’ll literally just say, ‘I’ve been to Thailand a few times,’” Spencer said. “And they’ll have all these preconceived notions of what you’re like. There’s a stereotype that all Asian guys are very effeminate and passive.”

The effeminate and passive stereotype has a name, Dao said.

“They have a name for us – we’re twink Asians,” Dao said. “I feel it’s derogatory toward us Asians sometimes, too, because the word basically means … skinny Asian, feminine boy.”

Taniwaki said she believes she is still often seen as novelty when she goes out in Colorado because there are not many gay Asians here. But because of that, the Asians stereotypes become amplified.

“I don’t think I have faced as much racial or socioeconomic or gender discrimination in the general community as much as I have in the gay community,” Taniwaki said. “It’s very odd and it’s always puzzled that a community that is already marginalized would perpetuate that marginalization among its own, but it happens and it’s very distinct and it’s very clear.”

These stereotypes are just things that Asians face in the majority society, Hamano said.

“There are those who certainly have prejudicial views of any minority, even though you think they shouldn’t, but they do,” he said. “I would say it’s not any different from being Asian within society in general. You’re going to find all types there.”

However, Bae said he sees much of what he has experienced as simply others poking fun and making light of him rather than putting him on a pedastal.

“Some people see it as degrading, but they’re treating me as an equal – they don’t put me on a booster seat,” he said. “They’re as inconsiderate to me as they are inconsiderate to others.”

Looking Forward
Growing up, Taniwaki said, there were not any role models for gay Asian Americans. But now, she said she enjoys seeing Asian-American celebrities who come out.

“I am still tickled to death when I hear things like George Takei coming out,” she said. “I was just thrilled with that because it puts a face and a name to us. And for him, it was a very courageous thing to do.”

Perhaps these role models will help those, like Spencer, whose living away from Colorado has allowed him to feel more comfortable in his own skin. But when he is back home to visit, he still feels it is necessary to lead his double life.

“I think people have preconceived notions in my family about what being gay is,” Spencer said, “and I don’t want people to either dismiss it and write it off as some sort of phase, or be completely rejecting me.”

Despite some hardships and discrimination since he came out, Bae said he finally felt he was being himself.

“After I came out, I liked myself.”

[source]

-Titles of Drama