At the Intersection: Gay Asian Male? Asian Gay Male?
I admit that as an Asian American gay male, I have long juggled these two identities, often favoring one over the other. As a person of color, I know without a doubt that the gay experience for us is different from the white community. There are additional things to consider, especially since race is still the first thing other people notice. However, for me personally I consider myself gay first, and Asian American second. I feel like I do this because I find my ethnic community to not be as accepting as the majority "white" community when it comes to sexual identity.
Much like the religious community, I feel as though there's a rejection of the idea of gayness with many ethnic communities. Oftentimes Asian Americans feel like their families are not accepting of their sexual orientation, so it goes undiscussed and evolves into a sort of "don't ask, don't tell" scenario. A report such as this one really gives insight to the pressure and issues that are at stake for pe ople of color communities. It also shows that these issues are almost universal across people of color communities. Not only is religion an issue for blacks, but I feel that from my personal experience faith and church plays a huge role in Asian American communities. I feel as though I've been "blessed" (pun intended?) to live in a not-too-religiously-conservative household (as a family we stopped going to chuch altogether some years ago), so this was not an issue for me. However it's an issue for other people.
Juggling these often conflicting viewpoints is a real struggle when both faith and ethnicity play a role in your life. Being gay is also still seen as being a "white" thing, so much so that even in other languages such as Spanish and Korean, the word for "gay" is simply "gay," merely a loanword from English. Even linguistically the concept of "gayness" seems to be a relatively new idea, almost unheard of in some ethnic communities. Because of this, I feel as though LG BT people of color really do feel "detached" from their people of color community, which is probably why, as I've mentioned before, I identify with the LGBT community first and my Asian American community second. However, this isn't always easy because I still feel as though the gay community is largely white, so oftentimes I'll stick out like a sore thumb at events such as Pride.
Personally, I've gotten used to it, mainly because as of right now Asian gay communities are of no big interest to me. Another big thing I find true from this report is the lack of representation of LGBT people of color in media and other consumerables. I think that black LGBT people are getting more representations (however, their accuracy is another story...but then again, is the media ever really accurate?), but Asian Americans are seriously lacking. This is probably just a reflection of the gay community at large in real life. Class also plays a big part.
I think right now the acronym "LGBT" is still a misnomer because the focus still seems to be on the "gay" (white men), and with this comes the class factor. This report is just the first step in bringing to light the very real issues that LGBT people of color face. Much more work needs to be done. I also wonder how accurate this report is in terms of representing the LGBT people of color community. For instance, how many transgender people were there? Why are Asian Americans still the smallest group represented in the report? Lot more needs to be done, but this is a good first step.