Conflicting loyalties: challenging white orientalism and homophobia in diasporic communities

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“I recently came out to my parents as queer, not directly using that term but indicating that I’m not heterosexual. My parents are also Christians, my mum doesn’t just think it’s sinful to be sleeping with women but that I have a mental illness and I need ‘treatment’.

Apparently if we didn’t leave China, I would not be queer, it’s a white people thing.”

http://mellowyellow-aotearoa.blogspot.co.nz/2013/05/conflicting-loyalties-challenging white.html

“Do you dance like you’re Chinese?” [Peril - Lia Incognita]

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“You haven’t met the likes of me before, but instead of enlarging or exploding your categories I’m always hovering outside, I’m an exception. But the days have passed where I would wear my exceptionalism as a badge of pride, now I say no, I’m just Chinese. I’m a mass-produced serialised export of the PRC and all those yellow hordes are as exceptional as me, as complicated as me, every one of us is large and contains multitudes. I might be the only one on your radar quoting Walt Whitman but there’s a solid billion of us so I guarantee I’m never the only one doing anything, and no matter how many glittery queer scenesters you see around me, those yellow hordes are my people.”

-Lia Incognita

http://www.peril.com.au/peril/2013/05/02/do-you-dance-like-youre-chinese/