In talking about my goals, I used yesterday’s post to talk more about my family. I mentioned how I have come to terms with my parents (sort of) by thinking of them as not my parents (read the post). It’s helped me smooth out a lot of the frustration I have felt towards them, which I consider a win. Look. It’s better than what our relationship has been in the past, and I know that it’s not going to change. I talked about how neither of my parents have changed much in all the time I’ve known them, so why would they start now?
What does that have to do with my goals? The dysfunction in my family has often made me feel like what I did didn’t matter, especially as an AFAB person. My birth gender was emphasized so heavily, and I was deducted so many points just for having the misfortune of being born a girl. My parents were both so heavy on gender essentialiism, I hated being a girl by the time I was cognizant that it was a thing.
One of my sharpest memories of my childhood is that by the time I was seven, I was praying every night to a god I didn’t really believe in that he would make me a boy. not because I felt like a boy or because I thought I was a boy (I didn’t on either), but because I had internalized that it was awful to be a girl. Every morning, I woke up deeply disappointedc that I was still a girl. Like, crushingly disappointed.
At some point in my early twenties, I became aware of gender and race. And I became a raging feminist/pro-Asian person. I also became aware that I was attracted to women as well as men (*binary at the time. This was the early nineties before nonbinary, genderqueer, agender, etc., became part of the social consciousness), but I put that on a shelf because I did not want to deal with that as well as race and gender.
This all comes into play when I write. When I write, all of that comes out in every word. Sometimes, those on the right will snark about how ‘woke’ those on the left are.
Side note: I never understood how that became a negative, but it’s just a well-worn path for them. Take something that is a positive (being aware of other cultures, personal identities, etc.,) and make it a flaw or something to sneer at. Even the word itself, ‘woke’, uttered an a derogatory epithet is baffling to me. Along with being called ‘PC’. Who wouldn’t want to be aware that other ways of living are out there? (That’s a rhetorical question.)
It’s darkly funny to me when they bleat about ‘woke’ media and say it’s only to _______ (piss them off, show how woke we are, and other bullshit). It doesn’t seem to ever occur to them that what they call woke, PC, and such is just life to some of us.
I’m Asian. Visibly so. I have been since I was born. I can’t escape what I look like–well, not without a lot of work. I’m also visibly AFAB. I have tits for days, yo. Liek, a serious rack. I got a tattoo on my left tit because I figured if people were going to stare at my boobs, I might as well give them something to look at.
Now, let’s add that I’m bi, areligious, and fat, and, yeah. I can’t just blend into the background. More to the point, I no longer want to. I started writing fiction because I did not see anyone like me in fiction–anywhere. When I was in my twenties, it was just Asian women in general. This was before the explosion of beleagured first gen Asian American who are abused by men, working in laundries, and really, have no reason to live.
That wasn’t me, by the way. I’m second gen, and my parents never worked in a laundry or a restaurant. They were poor when I was a baby until the time I hit high school, probably, and then we become very middle class (some might say upper class). Plus, my parents came here for grad school, not as refugees or migrants. So, yeah, all the Amy Tan-like clones didn’t speak to me.
Then, I was looking for Asian queer women, and, wow. There were very few of those. A dearth, you might say. Now, I would add genderfluid/genderqueer/agender, and I’m sure there are even less of them. Us. Whatever. Areligious is not as hard, by the way. I’m grateful for that.
I made up a rule for myself that I will nont consume any more pop media that doesn’t have at least one nonmale/queer person. Or rather, I won’t give money to them. Or, in the case of books, movies, and TV, read/watch.
When I was in college, I got in an argument with a white guy when I stated that I was only reading books by Asian women. He said it was just as discriminatory as someone who never read PoC. I said to him, “I’ll bet you any amount of money that I have read more dead white guys than you have POC authors.” I was being generous, you see. I gave him people of color rather than Asian women, and I said it with 100% confidence.
I still think that today. I have no interest in supporting people who only consume white people media. When I watched Knives Out, I called it rich white people’s nonsense on Twitter, and I feel that even more today. We are in the Year 20256. If someone rattles off their top ten of anything, and it doesn’t include even one piece of art created by a non cishetwhitemale, well, they’re not a serious person to me. And they are definitely not someone I want to give money to.
To yank this post back to the topic of writing: When I write, I’m going to put me into my words. Why wouldn’t I? This isn’t me trying to be woke or virtue signaling–this is me being me. That’s the thing that they don’t get–there are people who are actually PoC, queer, genderqueer, areligious, etc. We’re not being those things AT them, but the fact that it pisses them off is an undeniable bonus.
Well, at least it was a bonus until *gestures at the world around me*.
I write for me, first and foremost. I write the things I wish I had seen at any point in my life, but hadn’t. Be the change you want to see and all that. My writing wouldn’t be what it is if I chose to excise my personality out of it.
When I was in grad school for writing, my ‘thesis’ was writing a bunch of short stories around one topic. The topic I chose was death. One of my short stories was about an Asian American woman who, after watching a spate of men in San Francisco get away with murdering women in gruesome ways decides to take matters into her own hands. She kills them in the same way they kill their victims after seducing them.
My advisor told me that I should make her white so people wouldn’t focus on her race. I refused because I had no interest in playing the game of only writing positive portrayals of a minority group. To me, that was just as racist as only portraying a minority in a negative light. It was still relying on stereotypes and not treating them as real people.
That’s all for today. More later.