The Consequences of Pitting Race Against Sexual Orientation And Gender Identity

Source: Think Progress

Our guest bloggers are Melissa Dunn, an LGBT Research and Communications intern at the Center for American Progress and Aisha Moodie-Mills, advisor of LGBT Progress’ FIRE Initiativefor racial equality.

Last week’s insensitive rant by Kevin Naff of the Washington Blade which trivialized race-based hate crimes, and the recent revelations of the National Organization for Marriage’s race-baiting tactics, have shed much needed light on the fallacy of the gay versus race debate. Both of these instances, ironically from opposite sides of the ideological spectrum—NOM being a conservative anti-gay organization and the Washington Blade an LGBT publication—promote the same disparaging myth. That gay = white, and that race and sexuality are mutually exclusive and diametrically opposed.

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.

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.