Golden Nugget - Rigidness

A few years ago my friend and I came up with this term "golden nugget" from our days of struggle and search for our "truth" whatever it was during the time. While we were unraveling our truth and learning about ourselves and the world around us, we would come to understand or have sudden "ah ha" moments/epiphanies and we called these insights - golden nuggets.  I thought that it would be nice to share some nuggets with ya'll and I hope that ya'll would do the same, since as LesbeAsians, we often struggle to survive in this world that doesn't always recognize or accept who we are fully.  Not being accepted or recognized as the cool people we are could have damaging effects especially when the rejection is from the people that matter the most - our parents, family, friends.  So these nuggets were/are useful in reminding ourselves to think beyond what we already know and especially that yea we cool, yea we gorgeous, yea we awesome, yea we are just right.  AND its too bad for the world for missing out :)

Here is one nugget (usually its not this long, but I feel like this needs some explaining) -

Faith & Tawny Talks About Cheating

Tune into our latest podcast on the juicy topic of Cheating.  Dun dun dunnnn. Listen HERE.

LesbeAsian Pryde!

Excerpt from the anthology, For Lesbians Only:  "What is lesbian? A lesbian is the rage of all women condensed to the point of explosion. She is the woman who, often beginning at an extremely early age, acts in accordance with her inner compulsion to be more complete and freer human being than her society - perhaps then, but certainly later - cares to allow her.  These needs and actions, over a period of years, bring her into painful conflict with people, situations, the accepted ways of thinking, feeling and behaving, until she is in a state of continual war with everything around her, and usually with herself. She may be fully conscious of the political implications of what for her began as personal necessity, but on some level she has not been able to accept the limitations and oppression laid on her by the most basic role of her society - the female role.  To the extent that she cannot expel the heavy socialization that goes with being female, she can never truly find peace within herself.  For she is caught somewhere between accepting society's view of her - in which she cannot accept herself - and coming to understand what this sexist society has done to her and why it is functional and necessary for it to do so. Those of us who work that through find ourselves on the other side of a tortuous journey through a night that may have been decades long. The perspective gained from the journey, the liberation of self, the inner peace, the real love of self and of all women is something to be shared with all women."  Check out our latest podcast on why LesbeAsian uses the term LESBIAN. <---Click to listen.

*We realize not all Lesbians/Lesbeasians share this political point of view. Not all lesbians are feminists, not all feminists are lesbians.  But we are, LesbeAsian feminists...pho lyfe!  :)

Cultural Celebrations/Family Functions

In this podcast we talk about the difficulty in attending cultural celebrations and family gatherings depending on who knows about our lesbian identity - including whether or not to bring a partner if you are in a relationship. Tune in HERE.

Linsanity eh, but Emily Tay?! Hawtness!

Emily Tay is an ASIAN LESBIAN basketball sensation out of Harvard University. She had various recognitions by the All-Ivy League Women's Basketball and like Lin, was not drafted out of college. Instead she went abroad to play professional international ball.  And before everyone and their mom was talking about Linsanity, Tay was getting publicity for her documentary film, "No Look Pass" that was released last summer 2011.  How awesome is that?!  I'm sure similar to Lin, she had to endure all that racist BS. And on top of that, dealing with homophobia, hiding part of her identity from her parents and just the struggles of cultural expectations from traditional immigrant parents.  She talks about how basketball saved her.  How many sporty Asian dykes out there can relate to this story??  I know I can!  I know because of my ability to play sports, I was able to be confident in myself enough to push through all the racist, homophobic, sexist things that bombarded me growing up.  No Look Pass is an exciting and refreshing portrayal of a lyfe of a LesbeAsian.  Check out the trailer HERE.

Love Yourself. Period.

It's that time of month for Faith. And instead of hating it, she is embracing it. That's right. She is happy to be on her period. Why? Tune in: HERE.

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.

First Recording

It took us almost an hour to record and edit down to only 3 minutes of audio. This is going to take some getting used to. It's weird b/c we can both talk forever, but then when a microphone is on we both got nervous. Even though there was nobody else in the room with us. It was just a warm up recording anyway. The next one should be more interesting.

Listen to our first recording HERE.