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.
If you read my little editorial about
not being white, then you
know why I am stressing this so much. Feeling invisible is frustrating when it comes
to our own personal identities and our identities in a larger community, but
also becoming the target of both love and hate by people outside of our
community is frustrating too. Yes, it is both love and hate: the key is whether or not these
two things are feelings that we are asking for or if they are trusted upon
us.
Hate - We
sometimes are called racist when we want to date within our own race. We
sometimes are called uneducated or stupid if we can't speak perfect English
and
without an accent. We sometimes are called ignorant foreigners if we ask to
have products or services in our own language. We are made to feel
invisible, because there are people who just don't want to deal with us.
Love - We
receive love from people outside of our community, because they find us to
be exotic. We remain the object of people's affection, because they equate
us and our culture by what they see on TV and read in books. They tell us
that we should be loved and admired, because it is our beauty that makes us so attractive.
We are seen by other people to be beautiful on such a superficial level,
when we
would otherwise be invisible without those outward qualities.
