Just last year, when a person very close to me admitted she was struggling with depression, my initial internal reaction was disbelief. This can’t be true, I thought. My next thought was mortification for feeling this way. Why was it that I, a socially conscious person who believes strongly in mental health advocacy, immediately felt incredulity? I had to be honest with … [Read more...]
Asian and Asexual: How I Came To Own My Asexuality While Fighting Cultural Stereotypes
As an Asian American woman who exists on the asexual spectrum, I navigate a tricky space when it comes to sexuality. On one hand, I experience hypersexualization and fetishization based on Orientalist assumptions about Asian women. On the other, I come from a culture of sexual conservatism, where families don’t speak about sex but the expectation of abstinence is always … [Read more...]
10 Depictions of Asian Culture That Uphold Racist Sexual Violence
Last week, I published an article, Not Your ‘Geisha Doll:’ We Need to Talk About & Not Around Racist Sexual Violence, describing my experience with racist sexual violence. Today, I'd like to explain how stereotypes we commonly see of Asian cultures and people perpetuate this type of violence and uphold white supremacy. By the time I was twenty years old, I lost count of … [Read more...]
