Underneath my yellow skin

Gender-blending and blowing it all up

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In my post from yesterday, I was going to talk about gender and ended up talking about how I was a weirdo in general. Which is fine because it’sr related–somewhat. I also talked about what a disappointment the movie, Knives Out, was for me. I won’t get into all of it, but I will say that I was holding out for the ending to not be what I sussed it out to be the first time the perp walked onto the screen.

I was more offended by the fact that the director made such a big deal about pleading with the reviewers not to reveal the twist, honestly. There wass nothing in the movie that needed to be treated like it was top secret or a work of art. I wasn’t just disappointed in the movie; I actively disliked it. Except for the cast members chewing up the scenery. That was the best part of the whonle movie, even though the script was, ah, weak. (I’m trying to be polite about it.)

My point was that I have weird tastes in almost everything. It doesn’t matter if it’s pop cutlure, beliefs, ideas, or anything else. There is very little that I like that could be considered mainstream. Even if it’s popular, it’s still niche. I’m trying to think of the last thing I liked that was liked by the masses. I would have to say it’s probably Everything Everywhere All at Once, which I loved up until the very last monologue by Michelle Yeoh. Sadly, that last speech made me like the rest of the movie a lot less the more I thought about it (the speech and the movie), but it was highly enjoyable until that moment.

If I were to watch it again, I would probably just end it before the last speech. Let’s just say I felt too much of the pain at the mother’s words to distance myself from them. All that “Asian parents tell you you’re terrible out of love” bullshit is just that. I mean, maybe they feel it’s out of love or it’s being portrayed in that way, but it doesn’t feel like love to be told I’m fat, lazy, and that I nede to find a man (get over being bisexual).

There was way too much pain in hearing that speech, and it really made me not want to watch the rest of the movie again. I know I can watch it up to that point and no further, but that’s not my style. I have a hard time not watching the all of everything (one of my compulsions), and, also, to be honest, that last speech really soured me on the rest of the movie. Why? Because I feel as if the whoole message was negated by it. I mean, I  get that people don’t change that easily and that being unable to talk about your feelings are both real. And that it’s even more difficult for Asian people because of the culture.


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Living in my own bubble (re: gender)

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I have one  more post in me about gender/age, Asian culture, and why I really don’t fit anywhere. Here’s the post I wrote about it yesterday in which I talked about how society likes to say that you should be yourself, but then punishes the people who are way outside those norms. I’m not talking about in criminal/non-legal ways, either. I’m talking about people who are just weird.

Side note: Weird is a word I have used about myself regularly. To me, it’s not a negative–it’s just a statement of fact. It’s the same as ‘fat’ not being negative to me, either. It’s neutral to me, but it’s used in a negative way in American society. In a similar vein, I have reclaimed queer for myself. I know many LGBTQ+ folk don’t like it, but I like it because it means weird in the general sense. I am respectful when I talk about the group in general to use the politer ‘LGBQT+’, but if I’m talking about myself, I’m going to call me queer. That’s just the way it goes.

I will say I find it darkly amusing when I can turn a supposed negative into a positive. Back when I used to be on Twitter, I sometimes had discussions with people about pop culture. I usually wasn’t the one to start it because it’s not my interest, but I was happy to engage when asked for my opinion. I have, shall we say, nontraditional tastes in pop culture. In other words, I did not like what other people liked for the most part. I would espouse that opinion in a respectful way. I rarely said I thought something was shit–I usually phrased it as I did not like something or it wasn’t for me.

Some of the unpopular opinions I espoused: I don’t like The Beatles; I didn’t like The Big Lebowski; I don’t like The Rolling Stones; and to be frank, most of their compatriots. I think one of the last radical opinions I posted was when I was live-tweeting Knives Out (the first one). I cannot stress enough that I was really looking forward to it, and I’m being sincere. I had not been that hyped for a movie in quite some time. I adore Poirot novels, and I love a big cast of villains. In books, anyway.

I will admit I was a bit worried when I saw the trailer beacuse it was hypercuts and flashimages/video slices. That’s not my style at all, and my eyes weren’t fast enough to register what I was seeing. It’s a bias of mine that I think the flashier editing is used to cover up holes–either literal ones in the plot or visually. I was willing to give it the benefit of the doubt, though. Why? I don’t know. Because of all the big stars in it and because i really wanted an ensemble cast mystery movie.


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Wish I may, wish I might (never think about gender again)

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I am so done with gender, but it’s not done with me.

Or rather, this society isn’t done with it. Here is my post about it from yesterday and how I could deal with age-based honorifics (barely), but I just can’t with gender-based ones. I know that this happens in some European countries, too. In fact, I would not be surprised if there were as many if not more countries that do that on the regular than those that don’t.

I don’t like the way this country is going, though. It’s rolling back so many laws that protect queer people, especially trans people. I’m not trans, but I’n under the umbrella of genderfluid/queer. It’s not just the president, though he is doing his level best to destroy this country. It’s more the people who voted for him and what it says about my fellow countrypeople.

Look. I don’t have much faith in them to begin with. I never have ever since I was old enough to know about voting, democracy, and how easily it gets crushed. I have known that the country leans (topples) right and most of the media is owned by Republicans. I know I’m a freak and an outsider, and that my opinion doesn’t matter. I have voted as a Democrat since I was old enough to vote (voted third party once, but that was it), and it doesn’t matter in the least because the other side is determined to rig the race so they will–

Never mind. That’s not what this post is about, really. I mean, it’s related, but it’s not the main point. That would be that I wish gender wasn’t such a big deal in general. I really wish I never had to think of it again, but as long as this country is doing its level best to destroy me and my kin, well, I have no choice but to think of it.

As I’ve said before, I can pass. I can pretend to be a woman or at the very least not protest when others mistake me for one. And it’s not too bad a fit as long as its brief. Anything more than a few minutes, though, and it’ll start making me uncomfortable. I don’t mind lying to people I don’t have any real connection with, but I would rather not with people who matter.

Honestly, I wish I could just say gender does not matter to me and be done with it. I mean it as a truly neutral statement, but I know it would not be read that way. That’s because there are things that cannot be said in a non-snotty way. It’s simiilar to how you can’t say you don’t own/watch (a) televesion without sounding like a snob. Believe me. I know most of the thing sthat make me sound out of touch, but I still get caught now and again.


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When being a weirdo is too much

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In yesterday’s post, I was talking about how I found East Asian culture to be fascinating (if incomprehensible). I was mentioning that  I’ve been watching Korean content, and I’ve been mildly obsessed with the tradition of calling people honorifics based on age and gender. I was talking about it with my mother because it’s similar in Taiwanese culture. She is in her eighties and is called ‘big sister’ by everyone younger than she is. She did mention that her nail person (I think? Maybe it was her hair person. I’m pretty sure it was nails) liked to call her professor even though my mother told her she didn’t have to do it. I suggested it was a way for the nail technician to feel important in front of her client, and my mother indicated she agreed.

I would have a hard time in such a culture more so because of the gender-based honorifics than the age-based ones, though I do not like either. If there was a way to be  called elder without  it being gender-specific, well, I still wouldn’t like it. But I would be less bothered by it than I would be if it had a gender attached to it. In a quick Google search, I can’t find any gender-neutral elder honorifics, sadly. Not that I would ever live in one of those societies, mind.

Look. I am not saying that American society is not rife with sexism and ageism because it certainly fucking is. And it’s getting drastically worse by the day. But. And I’m not saying it’s necessarily a good thing. I can just not talk about it here because it’s not addressed every time you talk to someone. Where I live, we mostly call each other by first names. That’s it.  no honorifics and certainly no gender-based honorifics. Yes, I get called “sir” on the phone which tickles me endlessly and “ma’am” when I go into a store, which, fine whatever. But that’s it.

Though, I will say, that the last time I went to get my license renewed (2024), I could have chosen nonbinary as my gender for the first time. If I was twenty years younger, I would have done it. Maybe. But I just don’t vibe with it, unfortunately. It’s how I am with so many labels–they just don’t feel comfortable. I have reluctantly changed ‘agender’ because it’s the least bad of all the labels. That’s how I always choose labels. Here’s how I describe the label of ‘she/her’ as it pertains to me. It’s like an ill-fitting raincoat. Yeah, it’ll keep the rain out–but poorly, and I’ll be relieved to take it off when I get home.

Honestly, I don’t feel that agender fits that much better, but it’s less bad, I guess. I mean, it is because it’s gender neutral, which is what I prefer. And it’s not denying that gender exists–it’s just not important to me. It’s like I chose ‘areligious’ to describe how I feel about religion–I don’t. I don’t particularly care if god exists or not, and I’ve made my peace with it either way.


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“You’re unique” is a polite way to say I’m weird

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The last time I talked to my mother, I brought up that I was watching Korean content, which meant that I was thinking about how people address each other in Korea. I had to while watching the content because it’s so strong and present. It’s similar in Taiwan, which was why I brought up with my mother. She affirmed that it was still the case. People called her ‘older sister’ and my father ‘older brother’. Unrelated people, I mean.

I’ve known this since I was a kid, by the way. I called all the peers of my parents (in the Taiwanese church) auntie and uncle. We didn’t go as far with the kids to calling each other older brother, younger sister, and such, though. That’s how East Asian cultures do it. Anyone older than you are is an older brother/sister. Anyone younger is a younger brother/sister. Age is very important, and it matters if you’re older even by a day.

I was telling my mother that I had a hard time with it beacuse I just didn’t see why it mattered.

Side note: I have to say that I believe in respecting everyone just because they are a human being. I want to put that out there that I’m not hating on respecting people.

I do have an issue with affording more respect to certain people because of random factors like gender and age. I’m twice as old as the people I’m watching (the Koreans), and they have done more in their years than I have in mine. WAY more. That’s not to say that they deserve more respect, but I don’t see why they should have to call me an honorific (if we ever met, which will never happen) just because I’m older.

My mother laughed and said I was American as the reason I didn’t understand it. I said that wasn’t it beacuse Americans are VERY rigid about gender (especially now. All those terrible laws getting passed in the South around gender. Sigh), though we are less so about age. And we call everyone by their first names (again, maybe not in the South)–at least in social situations.

My mother than said that I was post–she couldn’t remember the word for what she was trying to say.  I finally realized she meant to say postmodern, which was closer, but not quite right, either. I eman, I am postmodern in many ways, but that wasn’t quite right for this situation.

She finally said, “You’re very unique.” Which, yes. I would accept that. I was thinking ‘weird’ myself, which is more apt, but unique is a kinder description of me, I guess. I am pretty unique (I have given up on the strict definition of unique being singular and binary–meaning you’re either unique or you’re not. It’s been qualified for the last few decades, and who am I to fight progress?), which I usually try to tamp down.


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One last post about sleep–and a plan! (Maybe)

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I’m back to talk about sleep one more time. Here is the post from yesterday in which I talked about sleep, the lack thereof, and how hard it is for me to get said sleep. I’m still getting over my unwise decision to try to stay up 72 hours without researching what could happen if I had actually managed it. I mean, sleep deprivation is considered a method of torture for a reason. I will say I think it’s really funny that I was mainlining coffee when Ian messaged me asking if it was dangerous for me to stay awake for that long. I quickly looked it up and realized it was, then went directly to bed. I fell asleep in less than a minute.

I have said it before, and I’ll say it again: caffeine does not affect me. I can drink it up to the point of going to bed, and I’ll still be able to fall asleep. As I just noted. In fact, I don’t know why I drink it in the ‘morning’ except that’s what you’re supposed to do.

I have realized that there is just no quick solution. Nor is there any easy solution. I can’t just snap fingers and suddenly be able to sleep well and at the proper time. It’s wishful thinking. I also can’t simply force myself to go to bed at a better time. I’ve proven that that isn’t going to happen, either.

It’s the worst feeling in the world to sit there watching the clock inch forward, knowing I should be in bed, but not doing anything to actually move towards that goal. It doesn’t help that I’m chanting in my brain that I should be going to bed. The other weird thing is how time seems to draaaaag and then suddenly leaps ahead. Time is weird. It just is.

I think another reason I’m having a hard time is that I’m just tired (no pun intended) of dealing with my sleep. I’ve been doing it all my life, and while it’s gotten slightly better and then got a whole lot better after my medical crisis (before slowly sliding back into bad territory). I am resentful that I’ve put so much effort into it for so little return.

On the third hand, it’s been at pretty disparate times, and I may not have put enough concentrated effort into it. I’m a pretty impatient person in some ways, and me trying to find ways to sleep was one of those ways. I did try so many things, but I don’t know if I gave any of them enough time to stick. The problem was that there were some negative results to many of the options, which made me reluctant to keep trying. For instance:


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I’m all about the (lack of) sleep

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Before I start, let me just link to my post about sleep from yesterday here. I don’t want to stress about it, so here it is. When I was in college, I used to sleep four hours a night and then crash for fifteen hours my first night home. It was as if my body was saying, “Oh, I can sleep now? I’ll show you sleep then!” I’m sure it’s quite common–the body breaknig down when it’s safe to do so. I mean, you HAVE to sleep at some point or the body will rebel.

I bring this up because I woke up at 5:30 p.m. today. I was very disoriented and shocked. That was ten hours of sleep–which does not happen to me unless I’m sick. But I’ve really been skimping on my sleep the past month or so, and this was my body’s way of saying that it needed more.

I did not know why my alarm did not ring because I had set it before I went to bed. Or rather, I turned it on and just assumed it was set correctly because it was the day before. I’m talking about an ancient manual clock that I’ve had for probably three decades. I have no idea how it went from 3 p.m. to 8 p.m.

Side Note: I have this weird thing that I do–I set all my manual clocks in the house (and my car) to different times. I have no idea why or how that started, but I’ve been doing it for decades. So the fact that my alarm clock was set at 8 p.m. meant that it was acttually set for 7:17 p.m. Why? No clue. I’ve been doing it forever, and it’s something I consider a harmless idiosyncrasy.

Side Note to the side note: One could spend their whole life trying to fix their flaws. The list is endless, and there’s always something that can be improved. However, something I learned a while back was that there’s a difference between an indiosyncrasy and a flaw. The latter should be worked on whereas the former is fine. Really, it is. We all have things that make us unique, and many of those things are harmless. My having my manual clocks at different times is one of those things.

Another thing I used to do was if I saw one of my clocks being on the quarter hour, I had to count to twenty-five as quickly as possible. Even as I was doing it, I realized that it was silly and not something I should be doing. My therapist at the time asked me what I thought would happen if I didn’t count. I didn’t know, but I was sure it would be terrible.


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One last (hah) post about sleep

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I have one more post to write about sleep. That’s a lie , of course. I’ll probably dealing with this all my life. Let’s just say I want to write another post especially because I foolishly decided to try staying awake for 72 hours. I had done it before at my then-therapist’s suggestion. I only lasted 62 hours before I succumbed to sleep. This time, I had reached 46 hours and told Ian I was trying for 72 hours. He said, “That sounds dangerous.”

Fortunately, I listened to him and Googled it. Of course it was dangerous–or at least ill-advised. Sleep deprivation was used as a torture method, for fuck’s sake. I thanked him for saying that and told him I’d go right to bed–which I did. Despite having drank around 15 oz of coffee and washed my hair. As I’ve said before, caffeine doesn’t do anything to me.

I woke up to a few messages from Ian asking me to let him know I was ok when I got up. I was going to do that, anyway, and I was touched that he was concerned about me.

I had already done most of my Taiji/Bagua before going to bed so it was an interesting day. I actually felt pretty good. I got roughly six hours of sleep, but it was solid. I did not wake up, which was unusual for me. And I felt pretty invigorated when I woke up. I will not be doing that again. I should have researched it before I tried it, but I was desperate. I put up with something for far too long and then when I do decide to do something about it, I rush in when I should maybe tread cautiously.

I am already up way too late. Ideally, I would like to go from 3 a.m. to 11 a.m. K and I have talked about it in the past. Both of us are night owls (or at least were), but she had to get up at normal people time because she was a teacher. I, on the other hand, worked flexible hours at home, so I could go to bed and get up whenever I wanted. I’m not sure that’s a good thing because maybe if I wsa forced to get up, I would be more inclined to do it on time.

I’m lying. Or at the very least, I’m fooling myself. That was not what happened whenI was on a more rigid schedule. I’m talking about being in college and having classes at certain times. In my first year, I had a 7:45 a.m. class, which was torture to me. I did not go to bed until 3:30or 4 a.m., which meant I got about 3 1/2 hours sleep a night. Which was not even barely enough. Back  then, I was getting an average of five hours a night, which also wasn’t enough–but it was more than 3 1/2.


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Let’s talk more about sleep

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I have started my journey to stay awake for quite some time. Originally, it was going to be 72 hours, but I decided that was unreasonable. I was already so tired, and I didn’t think I could make it 72 hours. I will say the first 24 hours were easy. I got up around 10:30 a.m. yesterday morning because I had Taiji (Zoom) class at noon. Lately, I’m been going to bed anywhere from 5:30 a.m. to 8:30 a.m. so staying up two more hours past the latter limit wasn’t that big a deal.

Oh, and around five in the morning,  I went to shut the curtains, and what did I see outside? A noticeable dusting of snow! In late April! My bestie’s birthday is coming up soon, and her metric for snow is that it has to fall before her birthday to be allowed. I messaged her letting her now that a light dusting just squeaked by her legal limit.

I love joking with her about snow and heat v. cold. She is a hot weather person (though that has changed since she hit menopause), and I am a freezing cold weather person (though that has changed somewhat since I hit menopause). Back when she used to live in Minneapolis, we would go out once a month or so. If it was in the winter, I would be happy as a clam while she was shivering (as we smoked outside. This was after smoking was banned indoors. I do not smoke any longer). She would look at me incredulously and demand to know if my spine was scrunching up.

“Nope!” I would say happily. In my youth, I played the fun (to me) game of seeing how long it would take me in the winter to roll up my window. Usually it was around -5F to 0 degrees. And then another ten degrees lower until I actually turned on the heat. In other words, I really fucking loved the cold.

My bestie, on the other hand, grew up in Miami. She thrived in the heat and humidity, and when we went to the beach in the summer, I would moan and groan like I was being asked to drag myself across the Gobi Desert. My other bestie lived in Raleigh for some years and visiting him in summer was the worst. Even after immediately taking a shower, I would be dripping in sweat once again.Ugh. I’m sweating just thinking of it right now.

How the hell did I–oh yeah. Back to sleep.


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Still sketching out my sleep agenda

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I’m back to talk more about sleep. Here is my post from yesterday in which I did talk about sleep and what I was planning to do (for once! I kind of stuck to the topic). I ended by saying I was planning on staying up for 48 hours, and the minute I typed that, I was so exhausted. I mean, I’m fatigued all the time, but there are spurts of extreme tiredness that lasts a day or two.

There are two ways I can go with this. One is to try the 48 hours staying up and no sleeping route. That is a very hard route. Going down that path would be me trying to keep adding to it and reaching 72 hours. That would be pretty difficult, but I think I could do the 48 hours. Maybe not right now because I’m so tired, but at some point.

The other route is just to sleep whenever I’m about to fall over without regard as to what time it is, which would be easier. I sometimes fall asleep in my chair at my computer, and then I do this weird (and aggravating) thing of sleeping for ten minutes, being awake for ten minutes, sleeping for ten minutes, being awake for ten minutes, and repeat.

I’ve also had it where I was watching a video on my laptop (lying on my couch), and I would have to repeat the same section several times because I kept falling asleep in ten-minute chunks. I was too stubborn to actually take a nap, though, because…my brain is broke? I joke, but not really. I would not say my brain is broken, but I would say that’s the way my brain works.

It’s so frustrating. I’m trying to accept that it’s not me being stubborn or a contrarian. It’s not me deliberately sabotaging myself. It’s how my brain works. That’s not to say that I have to just throw up my hands and say there’s nothing I can do about it, but I do think it would help if I didn’t view it as me being deliberately ‘bad’.

It’s difficult because that’s how I was viewed in my family–and how that kind of behavior is viewed by society in general. There is a narrow range of behavior that is considered acceptable, and woe be to the people who strayed too far outside those lines. These days, there seemed to be a little more tolerance of some divergence, but not much. It’s still a very narrow band of what kind of oddness is acceptable, and it’s rarely much.

I have mentioned the double empathy problem before, which is that it’s hard when autistic people and allistic non-autistic) people talk because of the very different mindset. Usually, it’s up to the autistic person to adapt and try to be ‘normal’ in order to fit into society. And if the autistic person doesn’t mask enough, they are excoriated for being weird, not trying, being rebellious, etc.


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