home     news     bio     gallery     interesting     links     Go back to bio section. Feeling Invisible (cont.) You might have even felt that already. If you were to go to a gay club, then it is easy to find yourself in the area of at least 22 white guys. This, of course, is magnified even more if I were to add in the statistics of the number of black and Latino folks into my analogy. So can you understand why I sometimes feel invisible? Perhaps that is why I must stress why it's important to know where we, Asians and Pacific Islanders, fit in. If we do not identify as straight, we will automatically feel like a (numerical) minority in this heterosexist world. As we are not white, we then feel an added effect of being marginalized further. Think about it, you will remain to be that 1 Asian out of a group of 22 people. So what can you do? In my opinion, you have two choices. You can choose to live in this situation and have no problem with it. I have no problem if you decide to take this route, because we can't simply just make our numbers equal to others - at least not in any legal, non-violent way... The alternative would be investing time and interest in knowing more about who you are and your own community. By community, I mean specifically the Asian or Pacific Islander community in wherever you live. I am not asking for people to glorify nor exaggerate any sense of racial or ethnic pride. I'm asking that people just take a moment to see how a sense of community identity can be helpful when you feel invisible in a group of so many. I try and do this sometimes and it works...I feel a bit relieved and grounded in that I know there are others like me. I don't find much solace in knowing that there are gay people out there like me; the gay community doesn't bring me such relief anymore. I need the specificity in knowing that there are other non-heterosexual Asians and Pacific Islanders out there...like me. 1 | 2 | 3 Go back to bio section.

ELATED PageKits © 2002 ELATED.com/PageKits.com