Underneath my yellow skin

Category Archives: Topical Politics

My country’s dangerous to me–not a land of liberty

Posted on by • 0 Comments

I am deflated, and I don’t reaally have much to say. That’s never stopped me before, though, and it will not stop me now.  I am still angry, frightened, and disgusted, and I don’t know what to do with all these negative emotions. I have never felt accepted by this country, and I don’t feel patriotic at all.

Ever since I first voted, I have been painfully aware of how there is no room in this country for me. Not only because I’m a visible minority (Asian), but also because of my other idenitity markers (areligious, bisexual, and now agender), and bceause of my neurodivergent brain. There is not one way in which I am ‘normal’, and it’s exhausting.

Here is yesterday’s post, which was basically a rant about gender. Well, not a rant so much as a utter exhaustion. I’m just so tired. So fucking tired. And heartsick.

I have been a de facto Democrat since I was eighteen. I was not able to vote the first time I was eligible because I was studying abroad, but I have voted Democrat almost every time in every election since (and independent the one time I did not vote Dem).

Look. As a lifelong Democrat, I know not to get my hopes up. I know the Dems are going to cave and give in. I know they are going to disappoint me again and again. I know they give a shit about me marginally more than Republicans do, but not much at all. In a deeply broken system, there is bad and less bad.

You know one of the reasons I voted for Obama? Because he actually mentioned Asian people and bisexual people. And later, when he was elected, he mentioned nonreligious poeple. And for the first time, I felt seen. Truly seen.

Yes, I know he’s a politician. Yes, I know he’s politically savvy and was just saying what he needed to say in order to get elected. But, you know what? I felt it. And I think he actually meant it (to a certain degree). Just the fact that he thought to say it meant it was actually on his mind–which is more than I can say for 90% of politicians.

Obama was a great president in many ways. And, something I don’t think he gets enough credit for is how great of a campaigner he was. Truly inspirational and revolutionary. One way was in how he dealt with online campaigning (thus locking down the young people’s vote), and another was how he deliberately reached out ot demographics that were typically ignored.


Continue Reading

Labels have limited use, part two

Posted on by • 0 Comments

In yesterday’s post, I was listing all the labels I use that are close enough, but not quite. I acknowledge the need for labels, but I don’t like them. Not in the deceptive ‘no labels, but, really, labels, but no, we won’t call them labels’ way of certain billionaires in this country.

I pretty much listed all the labels that I have used reluctantly. I’m scanning to think if there are others. I will say that I call myself fat without reservation. I am not chubby, zaftig, plump, or fluffy. I am fat, and I have no issues with that. I don’t see it as a bad thing, and I have worked hard to reclaim it. I now see it as neutral, and it amuses me when people rush to assure me that I’m not fat. Yes, I am, and I am not upset about it.

I understand the need for labels, but I think that we have to remember that they are not still shots of a person. They are living, breathing things, and they can change over time. I think that’s another way people can get tripped up–in thinking that identity is static. Or that if one aspect of a person’s identity changes, the prior ones are null and void.

Now, of course, there are times when this is true. Or rather, when a person’s change in identity is permanent and complete. Like me and Christianity. Once I realized what a fraud it was (at least the version I was indoctrinated with), I wanted nothing more to do with it. I have not changed my mind at all about that, and I highly doubt I ever will.

When it comes to my gender identity, though, it’s squishier. I have always known that I’m not very womanly. Many of the things I prefer to do are coded male, as is the way I dress. However, my hair is down to my mid-thighs, and I would grow it longer if I could. I have huge boobs, and I definitely read as female. My voice, on the other hand, is masculine. Deep as fuck, and I constantly get called ‘sir’ on the phone.

In college, I used to cut my hair every four months or so. I would just go to my hair dresser and tell her to do whatever she wanted. She never steered me wrong, and she gave me some great haircuts. One time, I went for a super-short cut (think Rachel Maddow) and wore a long black trenchcoat when I walked around the campus. I got mistaken for a guy from the back, which never bothered me.


Continue Reading

The core of my identity is “fuck it! That’s close enough”

Posted on by • 0 Comments

Let’s talk gender identity. This is something I’ve thought a lot about in the last five years or so. I’ve never felt a burning need to identify with ‘woman’; it was just the easiest way to define myself. It’s the gender/sex I was born into, and it was…fine. At least, if I did not look too closely at it. Once I gave it more than two minutes of thought, though, it all fell apart.

I’m going to be completely frank here. When I think of gender as it relates to myself, I come up empty. I have heard/read people who identify deeply with their gender and how important it is to them. I can accept that it’s a vital core of their identity; I just wish others could accept that about me as well. Meaning, my lack of attachment to my birth gender. And I wish that it weren’t so threatening.

But that’s me in general. I think a lot about many issues. I go deep, research, get obsess, and then I throw up my hands and go, “Fuck! That’s close enough, I guess” because nothing fits exactly.

Let me quickly run down the list.

1. Bisexual. I tried on pansexual and omnisexual (hey, this was thirty years ago), but I did not like either of those. Honestly, my favorite is queer, but people invariably think gay (both gays and straights) when they hear queer. Nowadays, I use bi out of habit, and I think of it is ‘people like me and people not like me’ when it comes to gender, but it’s very much an “eh, it’ll do” label rather than one I embrace or one that fits.

2. Areligious. I used agnostic for awhile. I never liked atheist because that’s way too arrogant and confident for me. I did feel like there is something out there, but my medical crisis showed me that ultimately, it doesn’t matter what it is. My mother and I used to argue about free will versus predeterminism all the time, and I could never wrap my brain around the concept that an all-knowing god allowed us free will. I mean, if He (in her religion, it’s a He) knows what I’m going to do before I do it, then it’s not free will, is it?

I had a friend who was Jewish. She wrote an article about how she believed god was all-loving, but not all-knowing. It was a fascinating article, and while I couldn’t quite accept that, either, it made much more sense than my mother’s version of god.

At some point, I realized that I was tired. And I just did not care if there was a god or not because that god had no affect on my life. If pressed, I would say that I believed there was something that was bigger than all of us, but it’s not something that directs the day-to-day goings on so I just let it be.

I used ‘apathetic’ for some time to describe my religious belief before stumbling on areligious. Once I read up on the latter, I knew that was for me. I just don’t care about religion (for me), and that’s that.


Continue Reading

Vengeance shall be mine

Posted on by • 0 Comments

I’m so fucking furious.

I did not come back to life for this bullshit!

In my past few posts, I’ve been fairly measured about my anger. Yes, I’m angry and talked at length about it, but not in an inflammatory way. I also talked about my sadness and what I’m doing to self-soothe. And, weirdly enough, a lengthy detour into The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie.

Seriously. I can talk for days about Agatha Christie and my love of obsession with Poirot, even though it’s been shoved into the background for some time. I have read every Poirot novel/short story at least twice if not a dozen times. My favorite is The Big Four with Curtain (the last Poirot case) being a very close second. By the way, while I love David Suchet as Poirot (I mean, a lot. So much). He is the quintessential Poirot, and I don’t think we need another (yes, I’m looking at you, Branagh).

Side note: (Yes, really!) The only new Poirot I would want is a young Poirot, played by a Belgian, when he was in the Belgium police force. We have seen Poirot in England enough, especially as portrayed by British dudes.

I have analyzed Poirot novels, talking about what I love and don’t love about it. I have dissected all the isms I’ve seen in the novels (racism, sexism, classism, etc. Not a lot of overt homophobia, but mostly because queerness was not even acknowledged at that time. Short version) because yes, the novels/stories are in a time that is very different than ours, but that does not mean we have to overlook those issues. I can enjoy the stories AND wince at how Chinese people are portrayed, for example. This is one of my biggest issues with The Big Four. One of the big four is a Chinese man, and the descriptions of Chinese people in this novel is…not great, to say the least.

Side note 2: I really hate what they did with the cinematic version of this novel. They took it in a very weird direction, and, yes, I know the cinematic versions don’t need to adhere to the novels, but this one went way overboard. With most of the movies/episodes, they at least stick loosely to how the story was written. This one starts out that way and then devolves into something that is, as the kids say, a hot mess.

You know, it might be time for anohter read-through of the series. I have had a hard time reading in the past several years, and I think this could jumpstart my reading brain again.

Anyway. I’m into vengeance now. Deeply into vengeance. I am so fucking sick and tired of–well–everything. *gestures impotently at the world around me*


Continue Reading

Self-soothing the pain away

Posted on by • 0 Comments

It’s been four days. Four exhaustive days. Here is my post from yesterday on the situation. I am still reeling, and I am not the only one. I am phasing in and out of the outraged/sickened state on the regular. In my private lesson yesterday, we did Push Hands (which I mentioned in yesterday’s post). I mentioned wanting to learn it to my teacher months ago, but it seems more urgent now. She has been teaching it in her classes (the ones I don’t attend), and I’m down to do more.

It’s interesting because when we talked about doing it, I was not sure I would be down with it. I remember how much I hated it the first time around. Though, I will say, there was one time when…ok. There is long power and short power. To drastically simplify it, long power is using your back leg to push off on and short power is using your front leg. There is more to it than that, but that’s the ten-second primer on it. Short power is really hard to do properly. Most people (including me) will ‘pop’ the leg rather than do it smoothly. Just because it short, it does not mean it needs to pop. Popping up diffuses the power rather than just keeping it smooth.

Short power is way harder to do correctly–at least for me. As I said, it was too easy to ‘pop’ rather than do it smoothly, which defeated the purpose. I did my best, but I was so tense the entire time. It’s really weird to bet that close to someone. You’re both in a bow stance with your front toes overlapping (not actually touching, but just all up in each other’s grills), and you have to put your hand all over the other person’s body. Most of us are not doing that on the regular basis with people who are not dear loved ones. At least in Ameriac. That is not a comfortable distance nor something we do to strangers (touch them).

When you are in the proper position, the giver places their hand on the other person’s body. Usually, it starts with the shoulder for Willow One. If I remember correctly, it’s called willow because we’re supposed to move like willow trees. With the most basic Willow, you simply push nine areas of the other person’s body. Shoulders (front and back), chest bone (between the breasts), stomach, back, hips (front and back). You want to push the other person to the point of giving them a gentle stretch. You are not trying to push them out of their stance or hurt them. This is for stretching and flexibility.


Continue Reading

How to self-soothe on a hard, painful day

Posted on by • 0 Comments

We’re fucked.

America is fucked, I mean.

We’ve had (arguably) our good days, but those are behind us now.

The divide is growing day by day, and we should not be a country, anyway. We are fifty different mini-countries, and even within each state, there are vast differences. In Minnesota, for example, the Twin Cities are extremely blue as is the suburb in which I live. There are a sprinkle of other cities that are blue, too, but everywhere else is red. Are red? Not blue, in any case. This is the case in may states around the country.

Trump as a candidate has exposed the lie that is our democratic system. Presidents have very little actual accountability, and they are held in line mostly by social construct and pressure.

I’m so tired. I have said in the past that I did not come back from the dead (twice) to deal with this bullshit. It’s also really hard for me to swallow that a hefty portion of the country I live in wants me dead or to put it more mildly, to disappear. Or for me to change who I am.

I’m incredibly ‘lucky’in that I can hide some of the things about myself that would make me a target and the other ones aren’t as, ah, problematic as some others. Me being Asian? Probably not that dangerous, especially as I was born here. I do get mistaken for Chinese, which can be bad or good, depending. I can let my gender slide and not make it a big deal. I don’t have to deal with my lack of religion being an issue, either. I don’t live in an area that will punish you for that, thankfully.

I can mask, is what I’m sayying. I’m close to not having to care about abortion for myself (going through menopause, and I think I’m at the late stages of it). Yes, I’m trying to find the silver lining in a very dark cloud. The problem is that when I look at the bigger picture, it’s pretty grim. All the sensible Republicans have left the party, and I don’t blame them. The problem is that many of them did not cross the aisle, but just remained in the land of ‘undecided’.

I’m so depressed right now. not just depressed, but also incandescently angry. What the fuck is wrong with this country? That’s partly rhetorical, but it’s also a pain that hits me deep in my solar plexus. I know that I’m an outsider. I know that I’m not wanted. But to have it slapped in my face so brutally was not what I needed nor wanted.

We’ve broken the social contract. You know the one. It’s the contract that says we pretend to get along with each other and not notice (again, pretending) when someone commited a faux pas. I’m not saying those were good times (they weren’t), but tehy were at least tolerable times.


Continue Reading

I’m weird–and damn proud of it, part two

Posted on by • 0 Comments

In yesterday’s post, I was talking about how the Democrats are harping on the Republicans being weird. At first, I thought it was a good move (and I still do), but then it started annoying me. As I mentioned, I have been a weirdo all my life. I have never fit into any group, really, and I got comfortable being on the fringes of society. I embraced ‘weird’ as a descriptor and wore it like a badge of pride.

There was a time when I was defiant about it. Being weird was my cloak and my shield against the brutality of the world. Once I embraced it, I didn’t feel as defensive about it. I was rather proud of being different and staying true to myself.

Side note: On the inside. On the outside, I was constantly adapting and molding myself to societal norms. I am really good at social interactions beacuse I’ve spent so much time making myself that way. It was not an option,o and I have learned it to a fault. I am not displeased about it, to be honest, because it has made my interactions with the gen pub easier in general. I can talk about weather until the cows come home without even breaking a sweat.

In addition, I can read other people’s facial cues and body language to a ridiculous degree. Sometimes, too much so. I jump the gun and freak people out when I react to how they are going to act, even before they do or say anything.

This has been somethnig I’ve been doing all my life–constantly adapting to how others react to me. That’s not unusual in and of itself. Everybody does it to some extent. In my case, though, I felt like I started on square -100. I liked to joke that I was raised by wolves, but it was not far from the truth. My parents had no interest in American culture. Well, more to the point, my father didn’t so my mother was forced not to because of course she had to do whatever my father wanted.

Back to being weird. If I were to shuck off all my masks and just be myself, I would be labeled a huge weirdo. Again, I’m fine with that–on a theoretical level. Meaning, I’m fine with being a weirdo, but I’m not so sure I’m fine with being viewed as a weirdo. Or rather, I don’t want to stick out all the time. I was talking with A about color. She likes to wear bright pastels; I like to wear black. All black, all the time. Right before the pandemic hit, I decided I wanted to branch out a bit. I bought a deep red tunic top with flowers on it, and I planned on buying more colorful clothes. Then the pandemic hit, and I lost all interest in buying clothes. Plus, black goes with everything. There is no matching needed, really.

I would like to try again, I think. There are other colors I like. Deep red; burnt orange; earth brown; racing car green. Deep earth tones, in other words. When I was talking to A about it, I said that I was hiding in the background and wearing color would make me noticed. She said, “Is it always bad to be noticed?” I thought about it, and she was right. It’s not, but I have spent so much of my life trying to hide and not be noticed. I was so used to being not seen even when I was seen tha I didn’t want to be seen–if that makes sense.


Continue Reading

I’m weird–and damn proud of it

Posted on by • 0 Comments

We have to talk about this weird thing. Or rather, I have to talk about it because it’s still bugging me. I get why the Dems have used it as a pejorative for Trump and Vance, but they are more creepy (and infuriating) than weird. At least the weird that was tossed at me consistently throughout my life.

Being Taiwanese in a white-ass suburb of Minnesota in the 80s? Weird.

Being a woman at all in the early 90s? Weird.

Being a woman who did not like ‘womanly’ things in the 90s? VERY weird.

Being bisexual in the early 90s? Weird.

Getting a tattoo in the early 90s? Weird.

Those were all when I was in my early twenties. Add to that not wanting to have children (BIG WEIRD) and not wanting to get married (also weird), then also not wanting to be in a monogamous long-term relationship.

Even the one area in which I’m in a ‘positive’ minority (money), I would be considered weird if anyone knew. I just don’t talk about it, and no one knows that my family has money.

When Harris and Walz started calling Trump and Vance weird, I was into it because it made the latter so unhappy and angry. It really bugged them because they, like most Republicans, like to trumpet loudly about how normal (and manly manly) they are, unlike the effete limosuine liberals from San Francisco who sip their lattes with their pinkies up and drink their milkshakes through a straw.

Granted, it’s hard to do that to Walz because he’s about as Midwestern dad as they come. I saw a clip about how his brother, whom he hasn’t spoken to in decades, ominously said, “Oh the stories I could tell about this guy. He’s not what he seems.” The deep dark secret turned out to be that no one wanted to sit next to him when they were kids in the car on a long ride because he got carsick and would throw up. When he was prodded on it, he said that was it. He added, “I don’t know why pyeople think there’s anything deeper.” Because you were pushing it hard that there were some deep dark secrets, dude!


Continue Reading

Living my life as best I can

Posted on by • 0 Comments

Labels. It’s not the main thing I want to talk about, but it’s important. Why? Because as much as I’d love to be free of labels, it’s not going to happen any time soon. More importantly, as long as we live in a society that thrives on slapping labels on people. We must know who is in and who is out, musn’t we?

(Which is my issue with the Democrats hammering on the ‘weird’ meme. I get it, but I’m still not happy about it.

In my last post, I mentioned that I had some empathy for my mother when she was younger beacuse she basically was a single parent of three children (the third being my father) in a foreign country when she was in her late twenties. She worked forty hours a week (taking the bus back and forth, which was half an hour to forty-five minutes each way, depending on traffic), then came home to cook for my brother and me. My father was never home before ten p.m. because of the affairs he was having. Yes, that was the reason, and my mother barely kept it from me.

In fact, as I have mentioned, she started using me as an emotional support person when I was eleven.

She did all the chores around the house, too. Except for mowing the lawn and a few other ‘manly’ chores (like taking out the garbage). I’m sure she helped with shoveling the snow, though, because we lived in Minnesota. We got a LOT of snow.

It really wasn’t fair.

My mother worked forty-plus hours a week (plus commute), then had to do the cooking, the cleaning, the sewing, and anything else around the house. Plus, my father had all these unspoken rules that my mother (and my brother and I) had to follow. the biggest one was that no one other than my father was allowed to show any negative emotions. If I got upset, angry, or scared at all, I got yelled at.

I distintcly remember when I was a teenager, my father and I had a huge fight. I don’t remember what it was about, but it was loud and angry. On both sides. I ran to my room and slammed the door. A minute later, my father flung open the door and screamed about how I was not allowed to do that in his house.

That was the day I knew that I could never ever have an honest moment with my father. Should I have yelled at him? No. Should I have slammed the door to my room? Also, no. But I was a teenager. Acting out is a very teenaged thing to do. What he should have done, I don’t know. but acting like a more out-of-control teenager in return was not it.


Continue Reading

A mélange, a potpourri, and an olio–but mostly Lil Nas X

Posted on by • 0 Comments

My brain has been jumping all over the place and my sleep has sucked, so this post is going to meander more than usual. I’m going to pull back the curtain a bit on how I write posts. Not on the writing itself because that’s usually just put down whatever is in my brain. No, it’s about how I decide what to write about. Normally, there’s something pressing on my brain and I let that flow from my fingers until I’ve said all I need to say on the subject or until  I lose interest. Sometimes, it’s both, but sometimes it’s one or the other.

In the past few weeks, I’ve been struggling with my concentration for reasons I don’t want to get into. Suffice to say, it’s not as easy to get shit done as it used to be. Most of the time, I just grit my teeth and force myself to write the post. It may not be as long as it normally is or very good, but I get it done, damn it. Today, however, I’m going to write about whatever is on my mind with no attempt at coherency. Here we go.

Lil Nas X. I didn’t know he existed until yesterday when I read something about Satan Shoes, his new kicks. That he’s selling. Oh, and he’s a rapper? Singer? Both? Anyway, there are 666 pairs and they contain drops of human blood. That’s all I knew when I made this tweet:

Continue Reading