daikon* issue #3 Queer/Trans

ISSUE #3 AUTUMN

QUEER / TRANS

*

白蘿蔔 白萝卜 lobak 菜頭 củ cải trắng หัวไชเท้า 무우 大根 मूली ‫مولی‬ mooli

2

all content produced by: Hanna Stephens Isabella Normark Jade Chao Jemma Paek Jess Routley Jun Pang Kay Stephens Erica Lindberg Minying Huang Jess Kumwongpin-Barnes Mal Butler Izzy Capulong Jon Bellebono Saeng-Fah Graham Molly J Sumena Owen Phoebe Ashley-Norman Beany Ashley-Norman April Lin Front and back cover images by Jess Routley

Manifesto

We are a group of self-identifying South East/ East Asian womxn and non-binary people living within a European context. We have created this zine as a platform for Asian voices that are so often underrepresented and undervalued in mainstream political and feminist discourses.

We believe in empowering each other through highlighting the collective frustrations and nuances of our intersectional experiences as a starting point for building a wider platform of solidarity. We aim to share our opinions, celebrate our creativity and build up a stronger collective voice for South East/East Asians.

daikon.co.uk daikon.media@gmail.com

3

Contents

Editor's Note

5

Queer/Trans: A Survey

6

Minying Huang

shuÄ ng

9

Jess Kumwongpin-Barnes

Letter to My Younger Self

Mal Butler

Queerness and Dating Shows 12

Izzy Capulong

On Loving Whilst Filipino

14

Jon Bellebono

My Queer Asian Friends

16

Saeng-Fah Graham

11

Outward Expression in Cohesion with Internal Landscapes 19

Molly J

The Unspoken Thing

27

Erica Lindberg

Fragment

28

+/-

28

Anonymous

Extracts from the first and last messages (the moment I said goodbye) 32

Phoebe Ashley-Norman Beany Ashley-Norman

The South East Asian/MixedRace/Non-binary Experience 34

April Lin

4 Odes to 4 Queers

Bella Normark

Meditations on Femmeness 45

40

Editor's Note For a lot of us, the making of this issue has been of special significance. From the conception of our platform, daikon* has been as much about making a space for our thoughts and creativity with the publication of our zines as it has been about finding friendship, support, and validation in each other. In a way, this issue, which focuses on the experiences and art of queer and trans* diasporic Southeast and East Asians, is a continuation of many of the conversations we’ve had as a group that have continuously helped us make sense of our intersectional experiences of gender, sexuality, racialisation, and cultural identity.

Making this issue has felt like a huge responsibility, both because our experiences are so immensely complex, and deeply personal. For this reason, we have also felt especially grateful to receive so many submissions which represent such different experiences, voices, and creative styles, but which also validate us as a community.

As queer and trans* Southeast and East Asians, we feel incredibly empowered and inspired by your insights, which disrupt the mainstream whitewashing of queer and trans* identity. For this issue, we have received submissions which move beyond binaries, reclaim our ancestors’ intricate understandings of gender and sexuality, and which celebrate our queerness and Asian-ness as sources of power and knowledge, and we feel really heartened to see our community growing and our collective voice getting stronger in such a powerful way!

To the queer and trans* Southeast and East Asians reading this, we want to remind you that daikon* is a platform for you whether or not the theme is explicitly about queer and trans* experience. As queer and trans* people we hold knowledges and experiences worth sharing on most topics between heaven and earth, and our stories are always central to the narrative of the Southeast and East Asian diasporic community as a whole. Until next time, we hope that you’ll find this issue to be a space where we can discuss the complexities and differences of our queer and trans* identities in a way in which doesn’t position them against the norm of whiteness. We hope that you’ll find this issue to be a source of both validation and learning - about yourself and as an ally to other queer and trans* people.

Queer love and solidarity, The daikon* Team

5

For this issue, daikon* put an open call on Tumblr for explorations on the theme of gender and sexuality. Contributors gave responses based on initial prompts: What does queerness mean to you?

How do you navigate being queer/trans/intersex and being Southeast/East Asian?

If there was something you could tell your younger self, what would you say?

6

7

shuāng

warm water and honey: cloying nectar sliding over addled eggs masking the stench of unfilial stab in the back; eddying assassin you set loose in my stomach as if tears can cleanse a girl sick to her stomach with wanton disorder, this new all-the-rage desire to carve herself out from the inside, inexplicably. you’ve always believed in the transformative power of bees so you carry your sorrow (dripping) to term, turn it into drinking balm that burns sweet and salty in my mouth down gullet of time encrusting the places where I am and have been weak with appetite, feverish indecision. mug of heartbreak with its sugar coat, tepid detox, is an everything cure in this house. do you think catching feelings is like catching the common cold? add a slice of lemon or ginger to breathe life back into frigid hands, heart and feet. no man is going to want to be held by ice – what if ice doesn’t want to hold a man? – but the two of them are now in the kitchen wondering if pear soup autumn tonic will stop their daughter from thinking she’s something she’s not… months ago mā wasn’t angry just unbelieving. today mā wraps me in her arms, wanting to bring me to balance, and she smiles her gentle smile as if to say bǎo bèi you don’t know a thing about the world. mā wants to warm my body cool my mind pressing silver ear soft to my lips offering snow pear to quench thirst on a spoon so fucking tender and loving that this girl’s tongue clings to the taste craves home slips up jujube red on kitchen knife comfort discarding the core for hush out of control and unrelentingly vague because wǒ ài nǐ, wǒ ài nǐ, wǒ ài nǐ. too bad our manner of speaking is frozen in the nineties, and I struggle for words, caught in a cradle song mother tongue wove into blood, skin, and bones; is a song I can’t shake, first love song I learned –

second tongues hoary: they tell me to shed this skin they dare call tyranny without soul to my face like separation wouldn’t undo the whole of me like I wouldn’t fall apart come spilling out like viscera like it’s not mine or fierce and worthy of my love but it is, it is.

9

words by Minying art by Hanna

10

Letter to My Younger Self Hello. So. You’re 16 years old, which means you’re thinking about coming out as not-straight. You don’t have the labels yet, you haven’t really found community but I promise, that will come later. Ohhh you’re out to all of the people in your life who kind of matter, the people you’ve dated who have been queer too. They have known about your queerness, have embraced you and your exploration, are doing a little of their own.

Sometimes you think about these people who had to be in the closet with you, who cannot not tell their parents for various reasons. The reason you don’t want to come out is because your beautiful loving hard- working Thai mother is a raging homophobe. You love her, I know. As hard as it is to take, she loves you too. Her phobia is rooted in not-understanding, not really wanting to understand. Which is a hard to take when you know that other, less immediate, members of your family are allies. It’s not about her Thai identity or her cultural ignorance that means she is a homophobe, and now that you understand that you are also not-cis, her transphobia. It’s hard to accept that she will probably never understand. She will never be able to accept you, will not come to your wedding if you ever decide to choose that, will over-value your relationships with men, and will misgender you each and every time.

How can you love someone who cannot love the essential parts of your identity? With difficulty. It’s OK, you now have a whole host of lovely queer friends in your life. You joke about how you have no cis-straight friends. You act both butch and femme, and somedays you feel comfy and accepted. In fact, on the whole you are so so much happier than you are right now. But lingering... You love your mother, she has sacrificed so much for you. She has loved you fiercely in a way you don’t really understand right now. She wants the best for you, and you love her back tentatively, trying to speak her mother-tongue back to her, trying to connect. There are chasms between you, one of which is your queerness, another your different politics. It’s OK to love someone who can’t understand, it will continue to hurt, but it’s OK. You will cry while writing this. You are young at 16, you will be still incredibly young as you write this to your younger self. You know in this moment that you are valid and loved in ways that seem so strange, so impossible but continue to surprise you. You will get here. You will start to heal.

11

words by Jess K-B photo by Saeng-Fah

Queerness and Dating Shows Being brought up in an anglo-thai environment, sexuality had always been predisposed to me as a black or white issue. The fathers sat politely with their drinks in the garden whilst the mothers nattered loudly in the kitchen in Thai.

Overlooking this from childhood to adolescence, I found it fascinating how the older women role models were happier with their counterparts than their husbands, (it was only until later on that I found out a lot of them were, to put it bluntly, mail order marriages). This, unknowingly, influenced my view that women were stronger and happier together.

When I realized I was bisexual, it wasn't anything special. Around college time, I just had funny feelings towards strong alternative women around me. It didn't change how I felt around men - I appreciated both for the unique qualities they could bring to the table.

Unfortunately, both men and women always thought I brought the same stereotypical qualities to their tables.

I may be small, but I'm not fragile.

I may be "cute" but I'm not submissive.

And no, I will never do that "ping pong trick� you saw in Koh Pang Yang.

This took years of introspection to realise; it took years to finally say, "NO." My perspective of loving women was outweighed by the men I could easily obtain in my love life. Then, at age 24, I had the chance to go on a dating show where I would pick one out of 3 men and 3 women for a date, in front of 15 million people, whilst naked. I feel that not many people would do this - there's such a faux-pas within South-East Asian culture around nudity: I've personally never been able to put my finger on it, but I am seeing a new confidence in the youth with their hugely varied body types, and I want to be a part of that.

I picked a beautiful young lady for my date, and even though it didn't work out between us, I was happy that people had seen me for the confident, blunt, dominating and strong anglo-asian woman I had become.

Another small note on the South-East Asian view on queerness: my Thai mother was horrified to hear anything about my bisexuality. This always confused me; from a country of ladyboys and apparent LGBTQ-acceptance, how she could be so disgusted with my own (happy) decision in life? I don't even know if she's watched the show, we never talked about it.

12

words by Mal art by Jade

13

On Loving Whilst Filipino i pick the pepper corns out of my sinigang because i cannot handle the spiciness even though i come from a long line of people who loved the burning on their tongues i pick the words dyke and fag and homo and stick them to my skin like needles in my tita’s pin cushion because i cannot handle lying to myself even though i come from a long line of people whose truth would be my illusion my ate pinches my cheek and tells my mother to watch out because with a face like mine boys will be all over me and i will be breaking their hearts left and right the girl i love squeezes my hand and tells me to be careful getting home because with a pride flag hanging from my shoulders it will paint a rainbow target on my back my mother sees a gay couple on television and in a hushed voice asks me if i know what they are i nod and wonder why she cannot bring herself to say that word that means love to so many i sit next to the girl i love and in a hushed voice she asks me why i never think anything will work out for me and i only shrug because claims of my unrequited love for her cannot find their way out of the bottom of my throat and i wonder what would happen if i grabbed her hand and just held on

14

at new year’s parties my relatives and i shake coins and ask for luck and wishes of prosperity and happiness and filipino grandchildren i shake coins and ask of courage and acceptance and that i may one day kiss my girlfriend at home without having it feel like a goodbye i can’t fully understand tagalog but i can understand is that the word lesbian will be said with more hatred and spite than magkantot or punyeta but i will hang my rainbows on my wall like a war trophy because i fought for the right to and so many women before me have fought for the right to and i will love however i want to love because my love is revolution and i am too vast to only be seen in pieces

15

words by Izzy

My Queer Asian Friends It’s a known fact that the representation of Asian bodies, especially queer, in Western media, politics, art, and most other spheres, is abysmal – we don’t get to have role models and inspirational figures that look like us – the “model minority” is at its best when silent and invisible.

That’s what motivated me to begin this mini archiving photo project, to promote the visibility of our bodies, which are not only beautiful, but intrinsically political.

I’ve spent most of my life not having any other queer Asian people in my life, and therefore feel incredibly blessed to now have some in my life, and to be able to discuss with them our heritage, our upbringing, our food, our trauma, our emotions.

I no longer want us to hate our bodies because of white beauty standards. I no longer want us to hate our mother tongue. I no longer want to accept being fetishized, because that’s the best I can get.

I want us to move past western notions of gender and sexuality. I want us to reject the male-female binary colonialism and white supremacy brought with them. I want us to decolonise our bodies, our desire, our existence.

The queer Asian body is radical simply for existing.

We should nourish this. We should celebrate this. We should love this.

These are some of my queer Asian friends. Please join me in celebrating them.

words and images by Jon 16

17

18

Outward Expression in Cohesion with Internal Landscapes Siamese Sexual Spectrum and Nowhere to come out from

My name, แสงฟ้า is a balanced Thai name, with both a classic boys’ name and girls’ name coming together. My Khun Yai (Maternal Grandma) still primarily calls me Fah, instead of my full Saeng-Fah as that is the girls portion of my name. From the get-go, I was neither one nor the other. As a baby people were constantly mistaking me for a boy even if I was put in dress.

Indeed, I’ve always loved combat trousers and baggy jumpers as well as long swirly skirts. I’ve known since I was a child that I wanted to look good, that my clothes shifted my mood, that my way of being morphed according to what I wore.

By the time my teenage years hit, I was sucked into trying to be cool in an English all girls’ secondary school. Where loving women or even the mere hint of wanting to love women was so deeply dismissed, that when a feeling that can only be described as the delicate smell of an ungraspable, peaceful, ethereal scent of a well-known but un-nameable flower blooming at dusk appeared one day as I was standing in a friend's bedroom. I didn’t have the eyes to recognize what it was.

It took all of my teenage years to recognise that feeling, and to my regret, I’m sure I lost friends along the way because of a lack of understanding. I didn’t have the words nor ever had the chance to have a conversation, in safety, about what I was feeling and how to express myself.

In fact, I would say I missed out on the dawning of my sexual self, eclipsed largely by the culture I was being force-fed. A noxious combination of hyper femme/masculinity, the virgin-whore complex and the staunch marriage culture of the UK, coupled with being a Thai girl who was taught the feminine ways of being: soft, elegant, sitting with my legs to the side, somewhat suppressed. Having heard that women were not to become monks, that the best way for me to become enlightened and collect enough boon (merit) to even be a monk was to birth a male child. All loud and dangerous ideas that could not fit entirely into my way of being no matter how hard I tried to make them ALL fit me.

So it wasn’t until I was 20 that the thought that I could even possibly not be cis and heterosexual hit me. And just like that, the memory came back to me, making all the sense in the world as the awakening of a different possibility of loving. Not to be mistaken, or nullified by any other cultural understanding, this required no teaching to arise.

19

20

And not just a loving of women as well as men, although that was a big revelation, but something I could not yet put my finger on. The notion was still beyond my vocabulary.

Being Thai, Haitian, Scottish, French – my intersections exist beyond “normal” vocabulary and have either been a search to locate or have been entirely up to me – not knowing any other mixes of my kind, to explore, get to know, and settle within the many rivers merging as myself.

Whilst this was incredibly freeing, this ‘plot twist’ troubled me deeply. Would I have to go through the process of coming out to my family, my community…? I only knew that process to be a daunting one, and the testing of waters did not come back positive.

Between my deeply loving but somewhat old school Thai family, Christian Haitian family and staunch English family, I felt sure I would be buffeted and shot down.

Anyway, I didn’t really know what I was coming out as… I needed to find new labels for myself. That’s what you did when you were anything other than heterosexual right?

I tried. I did.

First I said, “I’m bi, I like women as well!” But that didn’t feel right. It didn’t feel full.

Thanks to the internet, I was able to learn that some people are gender-fluid and that struck closer to home so, I tried to say, “Well… I’m bi and I’m gender fluid.” But every time those words came tumbling out my mouth, it felt incredibly stale. I felt itchy.

Talking about my “masculine and feminine self” also felt incongruous.

One day it struck me that I should perhaps ask my mother, a traditional Siamese midwife, whose work governs sex, birth, and death what the great midwives of 12th-15th century Siam thought about gender, since this was my own lineage. Her training of 5 years was all done in the oral tradition, she wrote nothing down, and because it’s also a largely self-led practice, you have to ask if you want to know something. To write down what she told me feels like an incredible sign of our times, to have something so old – unbrokenly spoken from person to person, generation to generation – have to change form in order to continue to shine a light of integrity and choice, of compassion and care... to communicate it feels like a huge honour and a huge responsibility. What I found out made me weep for the incredible cyclical nature of human culture and the undeniable truth of our very nuanced expression.

After months her response is still settling in me. I reckon that’s how oral traditions work on you… They are time-condensed, they are all the words spoken by all the many mouths, the many lives, all streaming through at once, they are the literal stories we tell ourselves and each other to know where we are in the world, they are culture and they are lineage. What I’m trying to get at is that this is special, and I offer this understanding to all to perhaps gain some sense of rootedness and also to once again wonder at the beauty and elegance of past cultures held.

We truly live in degenerate times, we truly live in terrifying times that the human being in their natural expression must be categorically squished and ridiculed.

21

To understand what they thought, we need to know that the Siamese people saw the world to exist in a minimum of 7 dimensions, spanning from the molecular world to the greater cosmos and beyond. These 7 dimensions were considered in day-to-day activities; when planting rice for example, they would consider how they would impact on all the dimensions.

As colonialism was ravaging the world, the Siamese were preparing to resist colonisation by showing they were “civilised” already and didn’t need to adopt the European way of being. For the midwives, a big part of this was their sense of sexual well-being, their practices of birthing, and their connection with the rest of the cosmos. Despite their best efforts, we now know that even if Siam was never obviously colonised, the practices they kept up, the wisdom and their way of life came under external attack, pressures and internal corruption.

Before Siam fell and transitioned to Thailand, an incredible spectrum of understandings of sexuality and gender existed in the community at large. To give signposts, we have the classic female and male on either end of the spectrum. Then, moving towards the centre, we have trans folk, and then gay men on the female side and gay women on the male side, meeting in the middle with androgynous and asexual people. They understood you could be a woman with a slightly more masculine edge, or a man who was gay who was a little more feminine. Or like me, a woman, who is sexually attracted to both men and women, with a slightly stronger leaning towards men and also somewhat androgynous. The spectrum of understanding made room for the distinctions within people and recognised very few of us would land on a sign post. Most of us existed somewhere in between. They considered healthy societies ones that had a mixture of all these people. Those who were not childbearing were essential to hold the community together, and ensure children would have all the attention they needed to grow up viable adults.

A lot of this sounds quite similar to what is emerging from our globalised post-internet culture.

Although, it is important to note that what the Siamese were really looking at and categorizing by, beyond physical expression and interaction were the dimensions you connected to the most. Every area on the spectrum had affinities with different dimensions. Within and beyond the basic 7.

What is unique to this spectrum, as far as I know, is that beyond female and male there is a mother and father gender, essentially bookmarking each end of the spectrum.

Once one becomes a mother or father, one accesses special dimensions. Mothers had the further capacity to access to time outside of time, which made them highly revered as great decision makers, having a perspective that others simply couldn’t access. The capacity for them to make this connection depended on the dimensions they had affinities with; not every mother had the same connection, not every mother would make that a priority. What every mother did have was heightened senses.

This knowing and respect was obscured through the introduction of male-centred ideologies. The midwives say Issarn in Eastern Thailand was the last area this wisdom was really held and lived out. To find this kind of culture these days is unlikely and rare.

22

And like this is coming to you... most likely fragmented. But the history is there, if we know how to look, listen and be patient. Our cultural DNA is strong.

Those fragments can be seen in other places, today, in modern Thailand. An overview of the Thai sexual understanding is outlined in a short Wikipedia post, allowing for a glimpse into 18 distinct ways of Loving + Living. Despite this being ‘common’ knowledge, I was never told this, I just knew that many gay or lesbian couples existed in relative peace. That Thailand was a kind of epicentre for ‘male to female surgeries’ and that there was a ‘tolerance’ and exploitation of trans women. And of course the extreme ‘sex tourism’. Looking back, I watched strong women rule their homes, rule their art, wear fishermen trousers, wear sarongs, wear their hair short, wear their hair long, wear suits.

Marinading in this newfound lost wisdom, I realised that my specific capacity for loving was not articulable in the English language that I speak almost every day, and I didn’t really know all the Thai words to hold me either. This is where outer appearance steps in so well as a medium of communication. Even though my definition of myself is now more articulate, this is not to say I am coming out as anything, I don’t need to. There is nowhere to come out from. I have always been here, my memories and natural tendencies show me that clearly. Naturally arising with no teaching at all, deftly remembered and given a home, softened by cultural legacies. Uplifted and validated by the conversations and experiences I have with others who share their own unknown, unnamable tender feeling. Naturally arising with no teaching at all.

23

words by Saeng-Fah photos by Hanna

24

25

26

I often don’t feel very confident in my queerness – I don’t know how I want to present, what my relationships mean for my identity, or what a queer future would look like for myself. However, this photo makes me look boyish and for now that makes me feel amazing. words by Jess photo by Jake Piers-Mantell

The Unspoken Thing I suppose it's something of honor, really Something sacred and irreparable if broken It's been here longer than me and you both And I believe it will remain long after we're gone.

And I've heard so many of the stories, of course After all, it runs through the veins under my skin I see through its guise of "honor" and "tradition" I can tell by the look in its cold, unfeeling eyes.

I have not yet seen it as most have I've been lucky so far, that's all; It has taken so many of us by our throats And left us weeping alone in the dark.

I just hope that someday the time will come When the others like me can embrace who they are in full When we can all drape the pride flag across our shoulders Along with the flag of our homelands.

words by Molly J 27

Fragment The sense of becoming yet never fully being complete the fact that I am not what I was a second ago is incomprehensible for everyone involved in the process of making a human being feel free

+/I couldn’t remember my own language instead I borrowed someone else’s in the meantime I forgot that it wasn’t mine to take now the fine has increased it increases all the time forgive me I want to say but it’s expensive to live and I have bills to pay not only fines forgive me I want to say in the language I have borrowed so you can say yes when I ask Do you understand what I’m saying?

words and photos by Erica

28

29

30

31

Extracts from the first and last messages (the moment I said goodbye) ‌ You are generous with your mind and heart and you invite people to learn your stories and yourself You have a lot of power and energy in yourself, more than you think you have, and you are willing to spread them You are genuine about your own complexities You are genuine to other people And you are kind Your intelligence are not corrupted by the academia Your intelligence comes from your real contact with the world You have aura You are authentic You are ageless - don't say you are too old! and genderless You transcend boundaries and categories by being yourself You challenge norms but are not indulged in that. You challenge yourself as well You think beyond what only concerns you, and you care for those as well You should be more kind to yourself and you should be proud of yourself You take care of other people, and you let them care about you I am very grateful for this You are not trapped by anything that is imposed on you I appreciate your subtleties and the way you are showing them People like you; I love spending time with you I think I should let you know this. ‌

32

I am writing to say thank you and goodbye. I have learnt a great deal while working here. I am happy too that we were once personal friends. I’m just glad that it’s all coming to an end, and that I can say a goodbye with a personal note.

Thank you for speaking your mind from time to time; I really appreciate it. I am glad to have met you and to have known you, however briefly.

I just hope things could be easier for you. I hope they don’t have to be so hard, and you don't suffer so much.

I hope you truly get what you need and deserve. I am sending you only my best wishes for what you have been going through and whatever you do in future. I wish you not only success but also happiness, strange person. Look after yourself.

All the best, —

by Anonymous 33

pienblaeng, ‘to change’ Sumena Owen created this illustration around the ideas of growing; as a person, and in relation to identity, sexuality, and gender. The piece explores the position of being dual heritage - the conflicted feelings of belonging (or not) to one sole nationality that can give rise to an experience of multiple selves.

The South East Asian/ Mixed-Race/Nonbinary Experience I heard about Daikon’s upcoming issue and immediately thought of my sibling Beany who falls under both the titles SE Asian and non-binary. Bean and I discuss these topics loads informally together but I felt a little nervous asking Bean if they’d like to be involved.

Writing publicly about such personal aspects of yourself can be terrifying but as soon as I asked, Bean was immediately enthusiastic. We both feel any contribution to the better understanding and acceptance of non-binary issues is of infinite importance so decided to co-write the article. The majority of the article is written by me and edited by Bean but the personal story is exclusively Beany’s. We truly hope this piece can be both informative, to those seeking better understanding on these themes, and supportive, to those who identify as LGBTQ+ and/or non-binary. Thank you, Phoebe Ashley-Norman

Identities of those who are mixed race and/or non-binary are irrevocably intertwined.

Both social positions come with a spectral sense of being. Mixed-raceness is never as simple as “half-half”, we do not fall into categories as simple as, for example, ‘Mixed – White and Asian’, as most forms insist we identify as. This ‘fractional splitting’ of a cultural identity does not align with the inherent blood inheritance individuals acquire. True, we may be by blood half White and half Asian – but the feelings which come along with this internal split are leagues of complicity away from a simple halfhalf divide. Sometimes we feel almost entirely one race, sometimes we feel more distanced than Britain is from Malaysia, sometimes we feel a sense of belonging in Chinatown and a sense of foreignness in the Brecon Beacons. This ‘feeling of 34

35

sometimes’ is a constant and often infuriating emotion felt by those who identify as non- binary. The personal release of a gender divide can bring with it a freedom to exist outside of stereotype, a sense of otherness, a fear of attack and abuse, a discovery of self or all these in differing combinations depending on the day, the place, the people and more.

Being mixed-race and being non-binary are comparable in that we are born with genetic determinism directing us into either an evenly fractioned ethnic divide or an assigned gender. The subsequent development of a person is when the deviation from this determined pathway is realised. The main difference in this development is due a difference in identity anchorage.

Mixed-race identity anchorage comes in many forms: family, geographical home, language, food, festivals, the countries we have extended family in, the names we call these family members etc. These anchors and more give us a sense of association or attachment. These anchors also contribute to the social identity we hold, the identity which often brings with it the ‘feeling of sometimes’. Our anchors only hold us to aspects of a culture, there’s a lack of immersion which results into a feeling of exclusion from various cultural aspects of our inheritance.

36

The problem with the mixed-race anchors are that they’re off balance. You’re never going to have equally weighted anchors to both (or all) your cultural backgrounds. Living in a place gives you a sense of home, and unavoidably a sense of foreignness when you return to your other ‘homeland’. The same applies to which side of your family you’re closer to, either emotionally or geographically. We might be able to order our favourite dish in a well-known local restaurant but not know any of the delicacies when exploring our origin country. We might get told that we’ve got nice hair because we’re Asian but then told you’re not a ‘true Asian’ when you get a B in maths.

Thankfully, just by virtue of being mixed-race, we have licence to practise our ‘mixed-raceness’. We have the complete right to find out more about our countries and reconnect with aspects of our culture that our mixed-race childhood meant we missed out on. We only need to claim this right.

photo of Beany Ashley-Norman

The identity anchors for non-binary people are few and far between. Only 0.4% of people in the UK identify as non-binary (UK Census, 2011) so it can be extremely hard for non-binary people to know or even know of someone with the same gender identity as them.

Non-binary people fall within the larger community of transgender as they chose to identify with a gender other than the one they were assigned at birth. The exposure for both of these groups is not enough, especially for non-binary issues. A lot of resources for transgender people are online, especially through YouTube. However, there are very few influential nonbinary people out there creating the content needed.

There are no resources in the education system on transgender issues, let alone non-binary topics of discussion. Understanding between biological sex and gender is minimal and often dismissed when brought up in a classroom environment, allowing little progress to be made. Discovering the fact that your gender does not fit into the norm of the two binary genders of ‘man’ and ‘woman’ can take an individual years; some may never realise that their experience of gender breaks this binary, forcing them to live a life of confusion and discomfort. Luckily, this is a reality that will be seen less and less with the increase of transgender and non-binary issues being highlighted in mainstream media.

37

The following is a personal account given by Beany who is SE Asian/British mixed-race and non-binary: I first started questioning my gender when I found a YouTuber called Alex Bertie online one night. Through watching a lot of the videos on his channel, I came to the conclusion that I too was a transgender man. Soon after, I cut my hair short and told my close friends and family that I was questioning my gender. I knew this was the right thing to do as it felt so good but I was still very confused. I knew I was trans but I wasn’t sure if I was a boy because I knew I didn’t want to be like or be treated like all of the cisgender men around me. I knew I wasn’t a girl but I wasn’t a boy either, so I couldn’t explain what I was experiencing. I was stuck in this complex for a while as I didn’t have the resources to understand what it was that I was feeling. It was only when I branched out into the trans community in real life that I realised I could identify as something other than a ‘boy’ or a ‘girl’. After attending Trans Pride Brighton 2015 and a local trans support group, I discovered that it was okay to be unsure and that a lot of others identified somewhere in between the

38

typical labels of ‘male’ and ‘female’ or as something completely separate from these two identities. This led me to research further into non-binary gender identities and I started to use they/them pronouns and identifying as agender. Whilst attending my trans group, they mention a specific trans group that was for people of colour, including Asian minorities.

Being white passing, I didn’t feel like I could attend this group at the time. Looking back, I know that if I were to ask if I could come they would have welcomed me, but even now I would be hesitant to enter a place specifically for POC. I now fully understand my identity when it comes to gender, although it can be a bit of a mess at times.

photo of Beany's grandmother, and Beany

However, I’ve never understood my identity when I think about it in terms of race. I’ve been born and raised in London my entire life, surrounded by predominantly white peers whilst at school, not knowing any different. I’ve looked more white than Asian for my entire life, having naturally light brown hair with the only strong Asian feature being my nose. I’ve always been frustrated about how white I look compared to my siblings and cousins when we share such similar genetics. I wish I could embrace my South-East Asian culture more. Yes, I’ve always celebrated Chinese New Year and receive angpau on special occasions (and appreciate it very much), but apart from that and the regular trips to our favourite restaurants and Asian supermarkets, I don’t have much more to connect with. I haven’t been to South Asia since I was very little so don’t even remember going. I have no idea of what it is actually like but long to reconnect with so much of my history.

Both gender and race are two very personal aspects of my identity, affecting how others view and treat me accordingly. I have a very complex relationship with both but hope one day to find a balance in every part of my life. I hope to grow more confident in expressing both my gender and my different cultures as I know I will become a happier person.

words by Phoebe and Beany 39

4 Odes to 4 Queers Jasmine: a fluidity i am so lucky to have only dipped my toes in, you tug the gentlest at my heartstrings. this was not meant to be a love poem, but how could it not, when what you give is so much love to a world that is in lack of it. thank you for sharing your vision with me and infinite others. we are so lucky.

George: strength exudes you, a core of molten gold. the universe knows it is appreciative of you, and thanks you for putting your labour into this world. it comes when most needed.

40

41

Kritti: a friend who teaches me more than i would ever know, teaches me about things i already know, teaches me that knowledge is safe in our hands, teaches me that we belong to knowledge, and that knowledge belongs to us. learning about you and from you is a gift i am blessed to receive, thank you for these years, and the ones to come.

Self: granted, you are one of the strongest people i know. but strong and soft are not mutually exclusive, a false truth you are beginning to unlearn. thank you for continuously trying to improve and be a better human, i know it is tiring as fuck, but the world deserves it, and so do you. words and photos by April

photo by Hanna 44

Meditations on Femmeness I am still trying to decouple my femmeness from womanhood.

Femmeness is devalued even in queer spaces, and as an afab femme it is often mistaken for ‘woman’, which adds to my feeling of invalidation.

I am misread not only as a woman, but also as an Asian woman, with all the violent stereotypes that entails and I cannot shake that feeling of unsafety, even if I have tried for the sake of reclaiming womanhood.

Femme, on the other hand, is mine in a way where I don’t have to fight against the power structures which try to own me.

It is mine to break away from that power, to create a power of my own, and for me, femme has nothing to do with womanhood because I see other non-binary people building femme futures with me.

Femme is how I express myself, but it is also the way I find strength in myself, my queerness, and my diasporic identity - knowing that strength is not self-sufficiency, but also vulnerability and mutual support.

Femme is the way I’m trying to unlearn the patriarchal norms which still hold categories of woman and non-binary hostage - how I’m learning to love and care for myself and my community.

words by Bella next page: photo by Saeng-Fah 45

46

47

謝謝 감사합니다

cảm ơn bạn

ขอบคุณ

terima kasih

ありがとう