Cheryl Chow, Seattle's API leader comes out!

Cheryl Chow being 66 years now is still making waves in the community.  What great news to wake up to. After thinking about my own coming out process and realizing at the Brandi Carlile (another local Seattle lesbian) concert a few nights ago that it has been 10 years since my coming out to myself. Now with political leader Cheryl Chow, who has been a well regarded and spokesperson for the API community, has come out  - its a big deal.

"The State of Gay and Transgender Communities of Color"

A recent report came out about "The State of Gay and Transgender Communities of Color" from the Center of American Progress.  So much "progress" that "the term 'gay' is used as an umbrella term for people who identify as lesbian, gay, or bisexual."  Really?  C'mon its like saying "man" is the umbrella term for both men, womyn, children, all human kind.  I'm just saying. 


Anyway, here are some findings they reported specific to Asian Lesbians:

• "Asian Pacific Islander lesbian couples have a poverty rate of 11.8 percent, Native American lesbian couples have a poverty rate of 13.7 percent, Hispanic lesbian couples have a poverty rate of 19.1 percent, Black lesbian couples have a poverty rate of 21.1 percent. This is all in contrast to white lesbian couples, which have poverty rates of only 4.3 percent."
• "Asian American lesbians are more likely than their straight Asian American counterparts to have experienced a one-year depressive episode."

Then they had some findings that were about "gay asians" which could possibly include asian lesbians, since they did say gay is supposed to include us. Here are those just in case:

• "...gay Asian Pacific Islander adults are the demographic most likely to suffer from psychological distress."
• "Gay Asian Americans are nearly six times more likely to be infected with HIV than their straight Asian American counterparts."
• "21 percent of Asian American gay respondents reported abusing alcohol—all rates much higher than their straight counterparts."

In Defense of Linsanity, Heterosexism Goes Unaddressed

It's been years since we've stopped watching NBA basketball. It was useless to try with the Seattle Sonics being such a crappy team, so much that we ended up selling them. It was made much more sense for us to follow the WNBA's Seattle Storm. They actually bring home our state championships. Go Storm!

So we never heard of Jeremy Lin until a friend asked what we thought about the Linsanity hype. We did a quick online search and sure enough there were all of these articles about how Jeremy Lin was this hot new Asian American basketball player. And there was a lot of coverage about the inappropriate comment Fox news columnist Jason Whitlock made after a win Lin's team had against the LA Lakers:

“Some lucky lady in NYC is gonna feel a couple of inches of pain tonight.”

The Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA) quickly responded, demanding an apology for the obviously racist comment, which subsequently resulted in an apology from Whitlock. They have also published a media advisory which includes:

“ME LOVE YOU LIN TIME”: Avoid. This is a lazy pun on the athlete’s name and alludes to the broken English of a Hollywood caricature from the 1980s.

What we at LesbeAsian wanna know is:

What about the heterosexist nature of Whitlock's comment and the 1980s movie quote?

Not surprisingly this went unnoticed and unaddressed. It was imperative to come to the defense of Lin's penis, but nobody cared about the fact that Whitlock's comment also references some woman getting "pain" from being fucked by Lin. Disgusting. And apparently the original "love you long time" Full Metal Jacket movie quote was just offensive because of the broken English portrayal. Never mind the geisha white male serving role that caricature embodies.

So although we applaud the AAJA in demanding an apology in regards to the racist comment by the columnist, we are disappointed that the sexism in the comment was not also acknowledged. It is a narrow and limiting perspective. Asian American also includes womyn. No matter the size of one's penis, it is not okay for the media to perpetuate rape culture messaging. When the sexism is overlooked, you are also condoning it. AAJA we hope you do better next time in representing Asian Americans - which includes womyn - when you speak out against injustices like the comment made about Jeremy Lin.