Underneath my yellow skin

Tag Archives: gatekeeping

Standing tall against gatekeeping and mindless traditions, part four

Posted on by • 0 Comments

Let’s talk more about traditions and why I’m against them. In the last post, I veered sharply into waxing poetic about K because she just gets me. I marvel that in  our thirty-plus years of friendship, we’ve only vigorously argued twice. And it was for like five minutes each time. I don’t have to suppress myself when I’m around her, which is so damn refreshing.

It surprised me that we hit it off so well because quite frankly, I’m not used to that. I can make the small talk and act all polite and shit. I can make people feel like I’m their bestie when I have no interest in them whatsoever. I get the charisma from my father and the push to be the social lubricant from my mother. That sounds gross, but I don’t know quite how to put it.

Asian people put a lot of stock in face. Saving it and allowing others to save it, to be precise. There was such a heavy emphasis on face in my family, and I thought it crossed into secrecy. In other words, it went beyond what was standard and normal in Taiwanese culture and crossed into dysfunction.

My parents had a very byzantine unspoken maze of rules that they just assumed I (and my brother) would know. My mother made it quite clear what she expeced in some ways (such as me being the perfect doll daughter tha she so dreamed of), but had so many unspoken expectations that I only discoverd as I tripped over them. And  not because she would speak up about it after I bumped into them, but becauseof her negative reaction. Yes, I still had to decipher her response, but I knew it was negative. I could feel the disdain/upset/disapproval radiating from her when she was unhappy with me (which seemed to be all the time).

I was a miserable kid, and I first started wanting to die when I turned seven. Not coincidentally, that was the same time when I first realized I was going to die. I remember when I was a tweener, someone told me to enjoy that time because it was the best time of someone’s life. i remember thinking, “If this is the best it gets, then I might as well die now.” I was miserble all the time and in constant emotional pain.

Every step I took out of the norm was hard, but it was ultimately a relief. The big one I’ve talked about several times was realizing I didn’t have to have children. This was when I was twenty, and I can’t emphasize how much of a weight that lifted off my shoulders. It’s one hell of a realization to make at that age, too.


Continue Reading

I ain’t got time for that, part three

Posted on by • 0 Comments

I’m back to talk more about gatekeeping, traditions, and whatever else happens to be on my mind. In yesterday’s post, I talked about how once your eyes are open to something, it’s really hard to close them again.

I sometimes wondered if there was a way I could have been normal. I think about my life, and, nah. It just wasn’t in the cards for me. As young as age seven, I knew there was somtething different about me. At the time, I thought it was that my brain was broken. I felt like I never got the manual for how to be a human being. Not even a normal human being, but a human being at all. I was talking about it with A, saying I felt like an alien. She was the one who encouraged me to take an online autism test because she heard a lot from me that resonated with her (she’s autistic).

I once mentioned to K when we were in our early thirties that sometimes, I wished I could have been normal. She sighed deeply and said, “You would not have wanted that life.” She was right, but it didn’t stop me from wishing for it now and again. Not often and not for long, but when I was deep in my depression and things looked bleak.

Yeah, life would have been easier if I could have been normal. I stand by that. If I had wanted to have the married life and kids. To care about fashion and, hell, I don’t know. Cooking? Now I’m just being catty. But I could not be any less feminine if I tried. And, believe me, I have. Well, ok, if you want to go by physical attributes, I could cut my hair off and do something with my boobs. The former is reasonable; the latter is not (because I like my boobs).

K is right, though, in that I would not have wanted that life. I would have hated that life. In our conversation last night, we were talking about having kids. She has one who is now working their first post-college job. Wow. How time really flies. I mentioned how I had said to one of my Taiji classmates that I would have been a bad mother. He immediately countered me and said he thought I would have been a great mom.

K said that in our society, it was so taboo to say you’d be a bad mother (specifically. Men get a free pass on this one. Maybe not as much these days, but certainly thirty years ago, there wasn’t nearly as much pressure on men to be fathers), it was pretty messed up to not listen when someone said they would be one (a bad mother). It brought tears to my eyes, though I did not tell her that.

She has the ability to make me feel seen in a way that no one else does. Sometimes, I wonder if I’m too much for her to handle, but she’s very good with strong personalities. And, it’s not like she’s the shy and retiring type herself.

You know how you meet someone you can talk to at any time and it seems like you had just talked minutes before? That’s our relationship. It doesn’t matter if it’s a day or a year. She is in my heart, and I know I ‘m in hers. We tell each other things we would not share with others, and she is the sister I’ve always wished I had.

I had no chance, really. There was nothing ‘right’ about me, and I gave up trying sometime in my late twenties. I mean, I had given up before then, but that’s when I became conscious that I really couldn’t be normal, no matter how much I try. It should have been freeing. Instead, it sunk me deeper in the depths of depression, self-loathing, and despair.

Fast-forward to me in my fifties. Not only do I know I’m not normal, I no longer have any desire to be. I know I can’t be, not even as I mask to the best of my abilities. See, I can say the platitudes necessary to pass as a normie for short periods of time. I can mask very well. I seem very empathetic, and I can get someone’s life story in five minutes, whether I want it or not.

In fact, K and I were commiserating about not liking to take Lyfts or Ubers because we get the life stories of the drivers. When she mentioned it, I couldn’t believe my ears because I thought I was the only one. We also bitched about how so many drivers burn incense as they drive. I’m allergic to every scent under the sun, and she said that she was allergic to many smells as well.

As I said, she just gets me. It’s something I really tappreciate about her, and I am so grateful to have her in my life. We met each other serendipitously (at work), and it was only because she was very persistent that we stayed friends when I left the nonprofit we worked at.

About a year into our friendship, she asked me if I wanted to be friends. I never called her, and she said she didn’t mind doing the calling–she just wanted to make sure she wasn’t bothering me. I hastily told her I was so grateful that she called me, and I was glad we were besties. I just didn’t want to intrude because at that time in my life, I felt that I was an imposition on everyone. That’s the power of being constantly put down as a child and told that I was worthless. Not told explicitly, but implied all over the place.

Once we got that settled, our friendship blossomed. We’ve been by each other’s side for over thirty years, which amazes and delights me. She really is my soulmate, and there’s a reason I call our relationship a queertonic one. She’s fine with it, and she loves the idea of the two of us heckling others in a old folks’ home when we’re in our eighties.

 

 

 

Gatekeeping’s gotta go

Posted on by • 0 Comments

I’m mad that libertarian has been coopted to mean narcissistic asshole who doesn’t give a shit about his (and it’s definitely a ‘his’) fellow man. I used to say I was liberttarian in my ideals, but I never wanted to be associated with the term itself. Now, however, I stay as far away from the word as possible. Too many assholes have warped it into something other than letting people be themselvves as long as no one is hurting anyone else (deliberately and with malicious intent. As defined by me).

I’m grumpy. Why? Because I was reading a thread about professional norms and one of the ways it devolved was someone proudly declaring that they were a coffee snob. Coffee was only to be drank (drunk?) black, damn it. End of. Like, she wrote that with her full chest. She’s not the only one, by the way. I’ve read and heard that so many times.

Same with tea. Those funny Brits who like to think they invented tea stand by putting milk in their tea. Which, fine! If you want to drink tea with milk, go for it. Asian people have milk tea, too, but it’s a specialty and not for daily dinking. Well, at least before Taiwanese people invented boba tea, which is now everywhere.

Apparently, if you dare try to order tea without milk in Britain, you will be exiled with prejudice. Never mind that the people they stole tea from did not drink it that way. Again, I have no issue with people drinking their tea that way–until they say it’s the only way/the proper way to drink tea. Then I have to laugh in their face as a person of Asian descent. Oh, and as someone who is lactose intolerant, no thank you very much.

But, wow, do people have so many opinions about how food should be eaten, what music is good or bad, how video games should be played, and so much more. I’m particularly irked about food, though, because I have  struggled all my life with food and eating. It’s hard not to as a human being. I was going to say in American society, but it’s not limited to America. It’s just a different flavor of toxic negativity than it may be in other countries.

I mean honestly, who. the. fuck. cares? If you’re not the one eating it, then keep your eyes on your own plate.

I really can’t get why people are so–yes, I can. It’s a way to sort people as in or out as are so many of our other societal norms. Like choosing a sports team or something like that. For a ot of people, being in the in-group is a comfort. Or at the very least, having hard and clear rules. It’s comforting, I guess.

For me, I find rules and laws to be restrictive and almost punitive if there is not a good reason for them. Like,  I can get with not driving forward on red because that’s a safety issue. Not stealing other people’s shit? Yeah, that makes sense to me, too.


Continue Reading

Gatekeeping in FromSoft games, part two

Posted on by • 0 Comments

In the last post, I was talking about gatekeeping in FromSoft games. I left off by bringing up the ongoing debate in the RKG Discord/Patreon about the *sigh* use of summons. I sigh because it’s boring as fuck. It’s pretty much as simple as if you don’t like that the boys use them, then, BYEEEEEEEE!

Look. There are hundreds if not thousands of Let’s Plays that do it with no summons. Believe me. I’m watching one right now. And there are plenty with people who dual-wield, no shield as well. If this is what you want, there is an embarassment of riches from which to choose. If someone chooses to watch RKG, I would think it’s mostly for the bants. The way they interact is the reason most people watch. It’s why I watch–well one of the top reasons. I also love that Rory’s brain is wired differently, so he often comes up  with zany ways to tackle bosses. And, he’s often his own worst enemy. There is–ok.

Let me explain. There is a new mechanic in the game that is the Flask of Wondrous Physick. In it, you can put two tears. You will be able to find tears around the world. There are maybe twenty of them? They are usually at the base of an Erdtree, and you have to fight an Erdtree Avatar to get the tear. The tears do everything from give you an extra flask (either red or blue) to more endurance to unlimited blue (mana) for a set amount of time. And more. I usually have the extra health flask and the unlimited mana for a set amount of time combo.

There is a tear that explodes when you drink the flask. Once Rory found this tear, he was enamored with it. Krupa explained that some people used it and called it the Homeward Boom (there is no Homeward Bone, an item that brings you back to the last bonfire at which you rested) because people would take it at the end of a boss fight, kill the boss and themselves, and end up back at the Site of Grace.

Of course, Rory had to do it. And messed it up more than once. Fortunately, he gave it up after using it on three or so bosses. But it was hilarious to see him pull it out! This is why I watch, to be honest. I love seeing what Rory comes up with in that brain of his. In the video below (and I started it at roughly the right spot), Rory was using it against the Putrid Avatar. Also, I forgot he was into the whip at this point. Ah, good times. He took the Homeward Boom flask with maybe three hits left on the Putrid Avatar, but was too far away. He missed, then went in to whip the Putrid Avatar (instead of using the twinblade, which is what he’d been using up until then). He whipped it twice and had one hit left when he swung the whip and the Putrid Avatar jumped up, landed on him, and Scarlet Rotted him to death.


Continue Reading

Gatekeeping in FromSoft games

Posted on by • 0 Comments

I am pretty tired of the topic of gatekeeping, but I need to talk about it as a FromSoft fan. There are two reasons I’m specifically bringing it up now, and I’ll try to get to both. The first is *sigh* the isuse of accessibility options in games. You would think that in the year of our bullshit, 2024, that people would not give a shit about something that did not affect them. In this specific case, it’s the new Dragon Age game having the option to not die. In Elden Ring, it’s the request for a pause button. In both cases, you don’t have to engage with it at all if you don’t like it. I mean, you never have to touch the ‘no death’ option in the former, and you never have to pause the game in the latter.

But, apparently, it’s too big of an ask to even have them in the games. Stephanie Sterling talks about it in her latest video. She also covers the shit that Alanah Pearce got in her video for discussing accessibility options in gaming (I’ve included the latter video below. I watched it before seeing that Sterling had talked about it in her current video.)

Pearce is passionate about accesibility in gaming. She has madeher own gaming awards show because of that passion. It’s part of her day job (accessibility consulting), and it’s personal. The video in which she was talking about it as pertaining to gaming was about Elden Ring. I like that she goes off on tangents because that is how my brain works. She doesn’t necessarily tie them together, which is also something I relate to.

Anyway. The point I want to talk about is putting a pause option into Elden Ring. To me, it seems like a small ask, especially for an offline game. Yes, you can play online, but you can also play it offline–and there is no fucking reason you should not be able to stop. People talk about the ebb and flow of combat, which, yes, but also, no.

What I mean is that if you (general you) feel you need to not stop during a boss fight, for example, you don’t have to! That’s the beauty of playing a game–you can ignore things like the pause button if you don’t want to use it! Pearce was trying to talk about a complex issue–how disability can be situational or time-constrained, and not just chronic, and she used the example of being a parent.


Continue Reading

Gatekeeping is bullshit, part four

Posted on by • 0 Comments

The boys are back in town! RKG boys, that is. Retry Elden Ring, Season/Series 2 premiered today–and they gave us producers an additional episode. They premiered it at 1 p.m. my time, which meant I had to skip the first half hour because I had Taiji. Once I hopped into the Discord, it was so cool to watch with the gang. I watched the begininng of the first episode after it ended and now I’m watching the second episode.

In the last post, I was talking about the small minority of very vocal voices in the RKG community who want to dictate how Rory plays.

Anyway. Here’s the thing about gatekeeping–it’s just bullshit. The older I get, the more I’m just so over it. I don’t want to even acknowledge they have a point because they don’t. I have always been of the mindset that if it’s in the game, it’s fair play. Even if it’s a cheese strat, so what?

I have never understood and I will never understand why people are so salty about how other people play the games. Well, I do know why, but I simply don’t agree. I also don’t think that just because someone pays money for content (Patreon), they got to dictate the play. I am well aware that I’m being a bit hypocritical because I so emphatically want him to be able to use the spirit summons–but only whenever he wants to. There have been times when he’s chosen not to do it and have been times when he just forgets he can.

But in general, I say let him play how he wants to play. To me, I chose to be a patreon because I enjoy their content. I appreciate Rory for who he is, even when he annoys the hell out of me. Even when he annoys the hell out of me? I like that he’s chaotic and all over the map. I like that he stubbornly clings to something that is no longer serving him. I like that he has excellent twitch responses that sometimes makes him overreact to the circumstance. I like that he has a childlike wonder for some of the things he’s seen in the games.

That’s what I don’t understand. Why would you pay money to a content creator and then try to change the way they operate? If you enjoy what they do, would you not want them to do more of it?

If I were to steram a From game, it would be with many caveats. One, it would not be on a first playthrough. I just would not and could not do it. I’m already stressed the first time through because I am so bad at these games. Rory is so much better at these games than I am, it’s hard not to be jealous because they are pretty much all I play. Or rather, I always have a From game on the go. And I still suck at them. I know it’s because of my hidden disabilities, but I get frustrated because my love for the games does not make me any better at them.


Continue Reading

Gatekeeping, brutally frank (part five)

Posted on by • 0 Comments

At the end of the last post, I was musing about being on the inside or the outside and why people don’t like outsiders. I got tired and abruptly ended the post so I wanted to expand on it in this one.

For a lot of people (especially cishet white guys), there’s an over-identifitcation with the pop culture they like. I see it all the time. Making definitive statements about what they like as if it’s fact. I’ve even seen them declare that something is ‘objectively’ this or that when it’s literally just their opinion. I marvel at the enormous amount of privilege it takes to think that way. Not only do they just assume their opinions are the norm–they don’t evev have enough self-awareness to think for a nanosecond that this might not be true.

“I think The Beatles are the greatest group of all time” versus “The Beatles are the greatest group of all time.” Many people say the latter when they mean the former, but don’t realize there’s a difference.

I would like to go through a day with that much obliviousness and certainty in my own opinions. Instead, I am painfully aware that most of my opinions are thought of as trash. Back when I started reading mysteries, they were put on their own shelf under mysteries because how dare they think they might be put amongst the literary fiction? Needlsess to say, that was quite some time ago. Now, murder is considered literature (or at least not sectioned off), and no one bats an eye if you read mysteries.

Pop culture is meaningless, right? It’s just fluffy goodness (or badness) that appeals to the masses. Except. What gets considered good or bad pop culture? Over the years, it’s been shown that things that girls/young women like, for example, get dismissed as terrible. Boy bands, Twilight, and Barbies are all examples of this. It makes sense, really, as women’s pop culture is also dismissed more readily then men’s. Women will consume pop culture aimed at men, but not vice-versa.

Let’s add to that nonnbinary, genderqueer, agender, and all the other genders. There’s no way in hell cis het white men are going to get anywhere near any of that. I have talked to other queer people about how cis het white men are almost like another species. There are downsides to this, obviously, but, dang. That undeserved confidence, though. It makes me simultaneously shake my head ruefully and envy them.

I wish I had half the confidence. Even though I have more self-esteem now than I did before my medical crisis, I  still keep many of my opinions to myself. I just…am tired. I am not one or two deviations from the norm–I’m about four or five. And not in a fun way or a cute way. I am no manic pixie girlfriend, and I am very low energy. Plus, I no longer call myself a woman, so there’s that, too.


Continue Reading

Down with gatekeeping, part four

Posted on by • 0 Comments

In the last post about gatekeeping, I went on a wild tangent about my mother and how she did not accept any part of my being so I stopped telling her anything of importance. It relates to gatekeeping because when I was in my early thirties, I finally realized that I would never be what she wanted me to be. Bear with me because this is related to gatekeeping–at least in my brain.

Every time I told her something personal about me, I expected more support than I got. Which, to be clear, was no support. Jvery major announcement I made to her was met with negativity. And, since I was a slow learner, I kept telling my mother things I really should have kept to myself.

They include: Being bi; getting my first tattoo (I have four now, including one to cover my shitty first one); losing my religion (I never reallly told my mother untilc she would not shut up about her God and I blurted out, “I don’t give a fuck about your God!” Do not recommend; not wanting children; not wanting to get married; and studying Taiji. You would think the last one would be innocuous, but she said, “That will let the devil dance on your spine.” Which sounds intriguing, btw, but I have no idea why she said that. She tried to defend it, but it made no sense at all. It hurt just like her reaction to me telling her I was bi hurt. Oh, I don’t think I said–after saying that I had always been so boy crazy, the next thing she said was, “What’s next, animals?”

By the way, I don’t understand that at all. Why is the go-to for homophobes animals? I don’t understand the logic of thinking cross-species interaction is even on the table, let alone the first thing to cross your mind–well, technically second, but still.

Nowadays, I’m not keen about the word ‘bi’, but it’s still the best of the insufficient words. The current thought behind bi is ‘people who are like me and people who aren’t’ in terms of gender. So, for me, that means agender and every other gender. I have considered and rejected pansexual, omnisexual, and anything else of that ilk. I’m a plainspoken person, though very verbose, so I like every day vernacular.

I tried to use queer for a while, but people just assume that means gay. This is is the issue with many of the labels, by the way. POC means black even though supposedly, it’s person of color. Same with BIPOC. It all means black because other colors don’t exist.


Continue Reading

Gatekeeping has got to go, part three

Posted on by • 0 Comments

In the last post, I talked about how an ex dumped me because I was honest about my opinion of Pulp Fiction. After he dumped me, we remained friends. Well, let me be honest. I wanted to get back together with him–why, I do not know–

Actually, I do. It’s because my mother hammered it into my head since I was very young that a girl’s sole purpose was to, in order, A) get a man. And, yes, specifically a man. That was made excruciatingly clear when I came out to her as bisexual. She’s a psychologist and had been very accepting of my cousin when he came out to her as gay. That was a few days before I came out to her.

When I came out to her, she reacted very badly. She made a face that I have now come to think of as sucking on lemons.  It’s her reaction when she’s upset about something. Or disgusted. Or any other negative feeling. She will not flat-out say that she doesn’t like something (that’s cultural, too), but she will make it very clear to anyone paying attention. I can read her like a book. Every pause, every sigh, every flinch–I know what she means by them.

The first thing she said to me when I told her I was bi (and, by the way, I learned over time never to tell her anything important) was, “But you’ve always been so boy crazy!” Which doesn’t really matter in the context of being bisexual. I answered, “I still am. I’m just girl crazy as well.” Not a great answer for many reasons including limiting myself to the binary, but it was the best I could come up with at the time. Now, I would tell her that it had nothing to do with being bisexual. Acutally, I wouldn’t have told her in the first place because, frankly, it’s none of her business.

I think it was Captain Awward who said that reasons are for reasonable people. If she did not come up with it, she at least says it regularly. I completely agree. We want to be kind to the people in our lives, yes, but we also need to be clear-eyed about the people in our lives. From the time I was a tiny child, my mother made it clear that I was supposed to be a clone of her. Even though she was miserable beacuse she had made choices that her mother had coerced her to make. Not physically, but verbally and emotionally.

I was so fucked up for the first three decades of my life beacuse I was so sure I was a complete and abject failure for not living up to my mother’s standards. Once I realized that it was ok to not want what she had (and resented having), it made life much easier. But, it also made it harder because I had so much rage at my mother for pushing her shit on me. And I had to find a way to detach from her without it tearing me apart.

I realized that the only way for me to deal with her was to not think of her as my mother. If I viewed her in that category, then the anger flowed through me. Along with the pain, disappointment, and the buried sadness. If I just thought of her as a deeply flawed old woman who was in the final part of her journey and who was never going to change, one who had been given a bad hand and never tried to make it better, one who at age eighty had to struggle with a husband with ever-worsening dementia, I could find a modicum of compassion for her.


Continue Reading

Gatekeeping has got to go, part two

Posted on by • 0 Comments

I want to talk more about gatekeeping. In the last post, I started with pop culture and then quickly went deep. It’s all related, but I want to try to keep this post light. We’ll see how well I adhere to that.

I started the last post talking about someone gatekeeping coffee. “If you can’t drink coffee black, then you’re not a real fan.” The woman who said it was not joking, though she said it in a jovial tone. And I have to think, why does it matter how someone else enjoys their coffee? And who made hre the arbiter of what made a true coffee fan?

Seriously. How did it affect her enjoyment of coffee if someone gasp liked to put cream and sugar in their coffee?

As a queer freak, I am by default ‘not how things are done’. Throw in Asian, agender, areligious, and a bunch of other minority qualifiers, and I should just be banned from polite society. Seriously. Why the hell does it matter to someone if someone else likes pineapple on their pizza or not? Or anchovies? Or that I don’t like pepperoni and vastly prefer sausage? Pepperoni is way too salty for me. Much like bacon, which I also don’t like. I also think Spam is fine, though it would not be my first choice of meat.

Other things I’ve taken flak for because I did not like them: The Beatles, The Big Lebowski, Pulp Fiction, The Titanic, The Rolling Stones. Things I don’t like, but never talk about: Star Wars, Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad, Se7en, The Simpsons.

I will be transparent and say I have only seen one episode of Game of Thrones (The Red Wedding) and one episode of Breaking Bad (the penultimate one), but I loathed both of the shows with all my heart. I don’t think I would have liked either of them even if I had started from the start because I don’t care for ultra-violent media.

Here’s the reason why. Well, one reason. My brain can’t differentiate between fake violence and real violence. Even though I know it’s not real, I still react as if it is. There are scenes I’ve seen in movies that have stayed with me for decades and still upset me when I think about them now.

Anyway. Powers doesn’t like The Beatles. Someone in the comments said that he didn’t trust anyone’s taste in music who did not like The Beatles. I think the commenter was joking, but I’ve heard many versions of that comment said in all seriousness about all kinds of things.


Continue Reading