04.05.2022 - on personal experience in public spaces
more thoughts on the trans academic experience - gets a little aggressive lmfao
never quite sure how to structure these zonelets posts. on one hand, we've got my more formal written works (see this paper on heightism, this paper on asiatic modernity, and this paper on queerness as it pertains to chineseness.) on the other hand, this segment of my page started out as a place to put some...honestly embarrassing vent posts for that y2k myspace vibe. i'm thinking maybe further down the line, it might be good to sort this out. for now, i'll keep it blended. consider this page a spiritual sequel to my initial ramblings found here.
i'm at a really strange point in my life. for one, i'm graduating this june from college (fingers crossed and whatnot). for two, i'm in some weird middle point of my nonbinary transition where i've started hormones, but will every so often go through a shortage of the stuff (yay, controlled substances!). for three, uh...i'm in my twenties and need to really worry about where to live AGAIN? i dunno, the first two things seem major enough to me. looking back on old photos tonight made me realize just how much my outlook has changed. the BIGGEST thing though is that i have absolutely no clue what my life is supposed to look like from here.
you may be thinking: damn, rocky, a twenty-something year old college grad with no idea of what's coming next? never would've guessed. and i would agree. rather, i am agreeing preemptively with anyone who thinks this is a bit trite. like, okay, i don't know what's going on? why don't i go talk to literally anyone who goes to this place and see if anyone else genuinely has it figured out. but i never really thought i'd get this far. oftentimes, i'm just like high school rocky never prepared for any of the shit college rocky needs to plan for. in fact, that dumbass was preparing for an entirely different wretched future, involving being incredibly housewifely in order to not have to worry about finances. turns out, you can be a trans weirdo and STILL pay for your own life! also turns out i'm decently hireable right now (and let's hope it stays that way cause i got an aging mom who wants to own a home).
on the topic of my mom, though, and transness. or gender. or whatever the hell it is i'm turning myself into and whatever it is i'm studying. i'm growing to feel like i got conned into coming out to my mom. bear with me here. i feel like i did not need my mom to know that, by a very american definition, that i am 'really a boy.' she's got eyes and ears that mostly work, she can hear the testosterone working its way into my voice, see the redistribution of my fat. i do feel like telling her even the barest snippet of my identity journey gave me the push i needed to just start hormones. HOWEVER. i really feel like straight shit over not just being transgender, but being transgender in a white-washed ass way. i'm not saying that it's not...like okay for asian people to be queer the way i am (with the dyed hair and the funky button ups and piercings and eyebrow slits and all these random little markers picked up hodgepodge along the way). but i am realizing that i'm not okay with the fact that other queer asian people don't seem to know what to make of me either. i'm not okay with this thing i'm growing increasingly aware of where white people feel WAY too comfortable sitting next to me in classes and lecture halls while not engaging with me in discussion or whatnot. like...what calculations do you run in your mind? why me. how do i better articulate this feeling? of the dawning realization that the people i've been learning about...have not been learning about me?
i don't know how to feel about the fact that my appearance is not in line with my politics and history in some sense. i feel it most in classes, now that they're back in person. i felt them before, but honestly having the half n half dyed hair has turned me into like. a poison dart frog or something. i was thinking about all this while reading about orature and listening in on discussions about the role of queer identity in rendering bodies of color as fungible (specifically Black bodies mind you so i would like to say that academia has done something for me if only in making me realize where my politics lacked coalitional thinking). i look white in the same way that white people are really comfortable with looking unknowingly asian, like when white girls get praised for makeup trends that started in japan, except my thing is getting compliments on a cryptid totebag i got for christmas. you try explaining anime to your mom and i'll try explaining bigfoot or mothman to mine. i look white in the sense that i look queer-white, i have my fucked up hair and my bizarre sense of fashion that reads like twilight-era kristen stewart and will toledo fan instead of...i don't know streetwear chic or like i'm really into loose basic staples that emulate the latest east asian stars. hell i look white based on the fact that i run the dumbest tumblr blog known to mankind.
but i'm a yellow-brown body in all the ways that really matter, which is to say all the ways that white people don't get and don't even get how MUCH they don't get sometimes. i'm an invisible body until it's time to ask, 'where are you from? no where are you really from?' like that matters. like YOU get to quiz me on my identity. i'll let chinese people go on the offense with me but like HELL am i going to explain diaspora to any random white who decides its time to grace this obviously-other inferior asian with a shred of 'cultural awareness'. i'm yellow-brown because white people STILL think i ought to know every damn thing about my culture like we're a walking monolith. i'm yellow-brown because i don't have the capacity in me to care about white-american problems, which sometimes is really important shit like how texas has fucked up abortion politics, because i'm thinking well i'm never gonna need an abortion i'm a man and i'm also thinking i want to get my aging chinese mom a little yard and a house in HER lifetime so that she can retire and be warm like she needs to be and mostly it's because yellow-brown-red bodies and people are on this crazy thing where we have to walk the fine line of Just American enough in order to catch up in terms of generational wealth and hell, even basic funds for everyday survival. so if you ask me, abortion rights matter yes people who can get pregnant should not be stuck with BEING pregnant but maybe my people didn't make this mess. maybe my people got more pressing issues to fry for a second i don't have the TIME to be abstracting shit in some stupid classroom for DISCUSSION points. 'you should care even if it doesn't affect you' my god i do not wanna let white women dictate standards of emotivity thats how we ended up w shit like ~emotional labor~
yellow-brown body because there's this bizarre continuum of white-blackness in america and it's weird that yellow-brown tries to fit into whiteness. we're not white we're never gonna be white and honestly i don't care about engaging with white people sometimes. i go to college and i hear about places as safe spaces and i see that okay gay people are allowed but where are the asian people? where are the latine people? where are the black people? professor when you say WE white queers, you better not be including me. white queers talking about fuck LA like they're not getting a whole nother LA from the LA i get. white queers talking about oh i only care about this if its gay like yellow-brown love no matter what gender has no value. white queers be like what's this sign say? i'm not your dog and google translate exists. white queer women with the i hate men, like we all have the same vitriolic relationship to our men. not to be not all men, but consider which men make you mad? is it my men? do better!! and you know what, traitorous white-lites like me we need to watch our fucking selves too like as-ams will be like i hate rap music (why?) and i don't care bout racism towars black people (WHY??) and all that. as-ams will be like merging themselves into christian girl autumn levels of assimilation and it is embarrassing. for all that i feel sad that i don't look culturally asian anymore sometimes i'm just like god at least i'm not sucking up to sorority/fraternity styles... also while i'm here now why did we ever let virtue-signaling become a thing we got girls that are lefties with brothers that are the same channers they shit on thru tumblr me and mine included so this is just like open season for complaining about bullshit
so this is where i am now. did i trade in yellow-brownness for this? did i make myself unrecognizable to my loved ones for something unrecognizable to myself? my mom would've understood me as just another really masculine woman. i'm functionally, where it matters, outside the realm of identity politics and shallow consumerist markers, a masculine that still experiences womanhood. coming 'out' meant just another layer of stress, and for what? to be out of a closet into a space where the bounds begin and end in whiteness? where do i go from here? and if you know what i mean and you're on my wavelength...hmu. if not, and honestly especially if you're white and one of your automatic responses is to explain yourself for some of this behavior, go to hell because i am already innudated with white excuses. either make a meaningful argument or go to hell.