A Thousand Cuts: Confronting our Wounds as Queer Asians
Queer Asians, picture this: you walk into a party realizing that the majority of folks are white and you’re hit with a wave of otherness – a lack of belonging. You’re on edge and you start stressing about whether you’re supposed to be there and how you are perceived. You find that some folks are nice and smile at you. Others stare at you with a puzzled look and others look right through you like you’re glass. One of them approaches you and says, “I love Asian bodies. They’re just so smooth.” You leave the party a little disgusted, once again relitigating to yourself whether you’re really that unsexy and unapproachable.
In the coming days, weeks and years, wherever you go on dates and hookups with men, you wonder if they like you for you, or like you because you’re Asian. You might wonder if you’re too Asian, or if you’re not Asian enough. In those moments of connection, you feel both incredibly seen and unseen at the time. You don’t want to lose whatever crumbs of validation you can get, as after all you’re human. Something is better than nothing even though in the process of being heavily objectified, deep down you feel gross and disrespected. So you’re driven by urges to chase after that feeling, date after date, hookup after hookup, but can’t exactly articulate what these urges are. Because each encounter scratches the itch but at the same time also doesn’t quite get rid of it.
And so you do what you would understandably do in response: orient yourself and become adjacent to people, structures and systems that hold privilege and power. You become a version of yourself that isn’t quite you. Someone who is a bit too agreeable in conversations. Someone who downplays some parts of themselves, and then overplays other parts. Someone who capitulates to the needs and requests of others while feeling disconnected from those of your own body - not just with dates but with people in your life: your family, your friends, your boss. Little things in your relationships become trigger points of intense activation, and feeling level-headed and centered in the moment feels near impossible. Your romantic relationship becomes roiled with what appears to be communication issues as you struggle to articulate what you need. One day, you wonder why you always just aren’t good enough. You wonder if you’re just broken or unloveable.
You wonder about all of these things but may have forgotten how they came to be in the first place. Consider that you are not actually broken or deficient. Consider that these feelings of inferiority, hypervigilance and anxiety are not actually you but instead happened to you, as enacted by the throes of racism and oppression.
Not all of our conflicts, obsessions and anxieties are because of racism but it is impossible as a queer person of color to navigate this world decoupled from our race and be immune to the effects of racism. We may simply accept that this is just how life is and move on. Prevailing stigma in many Asian cultures enforces this mentality, as does the cultural silence that is so common amongst Asian families that prioritize preserving their outward reputation (often known as ‘face’). So does the immigrant trope around buckling up and doing what needs to be done with little regard for feelings and emotions.
In order to start healing, we urgently need to recognize the ubiquity and connectedness of racism and its resulting trauma across all domains of our lives. Research over the past several decades has proven that racial trauma, through acts of overt or covert discrimination, can result in symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression and anxiety without there necessarily being a singular traumatic event such as a natural disaster or assault. Racial trauma is a thousand cuts: it’s cumulative and ongoing with no reprieve. We were racially discriminated against before, and we will be racially discriminated against in the future, so as long as there is structural racism. Racial trauma is wide-ranging and global, affecting everything ranging from our self-worth to all our relationships.
Once we begin to acknowledge and connect the dots on the effects of racism across our lives, we open the door for self-compassion and reclaiming our agency. Healing from racial trauma is a journey, not a destination. Some days it feels like great forward progress. Other days it feels like regressing back to square one. As you reflect on your journey, ask yourself: what challenges have you dealt with so far, and what challenges feel raw and untouchable? What experiences in your past have bubbled up as you have been reading? Try to notice these experiences and feelings without judging them and share them with your support network (and your mental health provider). By engaging in this discourse with others going through similar experiences, we build community and coalition with each other to start countering the effects of racism. Let’s stand in solidarity with each other, tell our stories and connect with our deep cultural strengths as we continue our journey towards collective healing and liberation.
Henry Yuen