Fridae

We all live in a myriad of identities, wound up tightly within our sense of ourselves, giving meaning to who we are. I am 24 years old, male, Chinese, Malaysian, Asian, Gay, Queer, College educated, Buddhist, from a Middle Class background, and a writer. All of these identities make sense depending on who is asking. I am racially "Chinese" in Singapore, "Oriental" in the UK, "East Asian" in America, and "t�ngr�n" (唐人) in China. At the age of 24, I am an adult to most 15-year-olds, and a youth to most 40-year-olds. All of these identities are highly contingent on what they are being compared against, and the context in which they may find themselves especially relevant (or not).

Yet, none of my identities can exist apart from one another. My being Chinese alone is meaningless. I am not only Chinese, I grew up in Singapore in the late 20th century, speaking English at home and taught all my major subjects in school in English. I have lived as an immigrant my whole life (being a Malaysian citizen growing up in Singapore), and I was part of a racial majority in Singapore. My parents are of Hakka, Cantonese, and Hokkien background, and spoke Bahasa Melayu growing up in Malaysia. All this affects how I live as a Chinese person in today's world. I only superficially share the same Chinese identity as people from China, or Chinese Americans, or Chinese people growing up in the UK or in South Africa, or Chinese people who speak Hainanese at home, or Chinese people from the Tang Dynasty. And yet, all of us can claim to share a rich cultural heritage of being Chinese, even if we effectively have less in common to carry on a conversation with each other than I would have with my gay Caucasian roommate here in Sydney.

The same is true for the other identities I have listed. How can my experience of being gay possibly be the same as a 50-year-old Jewish man growing up post-war Germany? And yet, we may both call ourselves gay, though the root definition of the word remains only a flimsy description of who we are in our totality. It is helpful and perhaps even necessary to identify similarly, to a point, until our differences start to override our similarities, and we will have to come to terms with and reconcile ourselves in our differences in order to make meaning out of our interactions with each other.

Nevertheless, most of us have an intuitive understanding of what it means to belong to such and such identity group, whether it be about sex, gender, national identity, racial/ethnic identity, sexual orientation, religious affiliation, and so on. In other words, we understand that having an identity means understanding that there are unspoken rules and definitions of what it means to belong, and we either fit or do not fit these definitions. Most of us on fridae.com have heard the idea that lesbians are all angry man-hating feminists, or that gay men are furniture-rearranging flamboyant narcissists, or that Asian men are submissive and white men are lecherous, and so on. Some of us may fit these descriptions to some extent, while some of us do not. And yet it remains, that one image of a group starts to dominate what it means to be part of the group at all. This is what it means to "stereotype" a community.

Stereotypes may have a basis in statistical truth. At the very least, they have a basis on what images of who we are get to dominate the discussion of who we are in the media, our classrooms, conversations with our friends, or at home with our families.

One of the interesting things about this recent debate about disproportionately high rates of African American voters (70 percent) voting YES on Proposition 8 (which has effectively banned same sex marriage in the state of California), is that it unfairly places the burden of responsibility for social justice activism on a single race group, and has unnecessarily bolstered the racism that characterises a lot of American LGBT politics. African Americans, in their experience of legendary American racism, are suddenly expected to just be more educated about ALL forms of oppression, as if black folks are intrinsically just predisposed to greater moral understanding of all oppression, what has been called a "presumption of civic obligation to support other liberal causes." This expectation and presumption has been called "exceptionalism."

The truth, as any of us will know coming from marginalised communities ourselves, is far more complex. Many of us know that gays and lesbians are disproportionately more likely to abuse drugs and alcohol, or to commit suicide, and yet we would abhor if our sexuality was directly correlated with drugs, alcohol, and suicide by straight people. This mentality would lend support to the stereotype of gay people as mentally unstable, because we are gay. For many straight folks, our homosexuality alone is the reason for mental instability. We know better, of course. We understand that the root causes of our community's abuse of drugs and alcohol and mental instability is NOT related to our homosexuality per se, but instead to our oppression, society's lack of acceptance of us, isolation, and a lack of social support.

Similarly, when African American folks suddenly become the target of blame for the passing of Prop 8, one must wonder, what are the root causes of black homophobia? Is it that black people are just inherently more homophobic than any other racial group? Or could it be that society at large, including the wider LGBT movement, has inadequately addressed the concerns that African Americans disproportionately face? For example, racism in education and a corrupt prison industrial complex that incarcerates African American males at rates far higher than comparable crimes by Caucasian American men? If the No on Prop 8 campaign was to significantly send its message across to African American communities, how could this have been better achieved?

One of the banes of the gay and lesbian movement, particularly in the fight against Prop 8, has been to target and demonise Christianity as the root of all homophobia. And yet, this is ultimately a very myopic move for our liberation. Christianity and religious revivalism in America has historically also been the very tool that has vitalised a cohesive African American identity. In other words, when we speak ill of Christianity because of its contemporaries' treatment of homosexuality, we indirectly speak ill of the very religion and spirituality that has been a symbol of many African American people's freedom from literal bondage.

If it is true that Christianity has played a significant part in creating and sustaining all American homophobia (regardless of race), and I am not denying that it has, we must NOT deny that this religion has also brought an IMMENSE amount of relief from suffering, and in fact has helped catalyse monumental changes for historically disenfranchised groups in America as well, including and especially African Americans. This, of course, is not enough. Christianity needs to be reformed if we are to make significant changes in a majority of people's mindsets about homosexuality. And yet, this reform cannot come in the form of a blanket condemnation or even a blindness to the libratory potential that this complex religion has had for entire communities of people including gays and lesbians.

Since the release of information on African American voting patterns regarding Prop 8, there have circulated reports from African American individuals about having been harassed and called racist names by white gays and lesbians. If black people are homophobic, doesn't this equally mean that gays and lesbians are racist? My argument is neither yes nor no, but that to answer this question would be redundant. There are, after all, black gays and lesbians, who are no less black or gay or lesbian than any other black person or gay/lesbian person.

Basically, racism is racism, whether from gays or straights, though as gay Asians, we may experience racism from our gay community differently than from a straight community. Similarly, homophobia is homophobia, and has multiple causes, of which race is but one, and possibly not even the most significant one. It is tempting to think that black people or Asian people or Hispanic people are more homophobic than white people, but this is a misleading charge, even when backed by supposed statistical evidence. Evidently, "we," as non-black gays and lesbians, are prepared to experience homophobia differently from African American voters than from white Mormons. We need to address our community's racism.

As Audre Lorde, a famous African American lesbian feminist has written, "The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house." Not all black people are homophobic, not all Christianity is homophobic, and certainly not all gays and lesbians are racist. If "we," as gays and lesbians, are to request other people's understanding of who we are and why we deserve our needs to be met, we cannot fight homophobia with racism and religious intolerance. We cannot become blind to the cycles of poverty that disproportionately impact communities of colour in the USA. We cannot combat fundamentalist religious dogma with our own brand of violent and anti-spiritual atheism. We cannot close our ears to the needs of people who may have closed their ears to ours.

Malaysia-born and Singapore-bred Shinen Wong is currently getting settled in Sydney, Australia after moving from the United States, having attended college in Hanover, New Hampshire, and working in San Francisco for a year after. In this new fortnightly "Been Queer. Done That" column, Wong will explore gender, sexuality, and queer cultures based on personal anecdotes, sweeping generalisations and his incomprehensible libido.