By Efren Bose

For those of us who identify as queer Asian men, San Francisco should be a welcoming place. It’s the only city in the mainland United States where the largest ethnic group is Asian and where you’re able to see a lot of out, happy, queer Asians walking around, not just in the gay neighborhoods, but in many of our ethnic neighborhoods like the Mission, the Sunset, the Tenderloin, the Richmond and Chinatown. 

And yet, for many of us, the city also represents everything that’s wrong with these communities. Faced with racism in the Castro, many of us try to deny our Asianness with perfect, smooth, gym-toned bodies or native-sounding accents, or the insistence that racism doesn’t happen in the Castro, as some Asians have claimed. We pretend we don’t get pissed off when we see someone either seeking us out or rejecting us simply because of our different skin colors, our accents, our inscrutable customs and our supposed long history of anti-queer behavior. If we live in neighborhoods where there are a lot of other Asians, we tone down our behavior, afraid of sticking out, afraid of speaking out against the homophobia in our churches, and in our families’ and neighbors’ behavior, afraid of shaming our reputations and our families’ reputations.

What is probably most damaging are the assumptions that queer Asian men only come from a certain ethnic background, or have a certain amount of money, or have good looks or political savvy. Those of us who aren’t proficient in English or American customs, those of us who are scraping to get by, those of us who don’t look like the Asian clones in the Castro—where do we go? 

While San Francisco is great for being a queer man and for being Asian, is it really all that great being a queer Asian man?  Sure, there are a lot of us here in the city, but we’re all spread out and all so different. A lot of us don’t live in the Castro, either, because of economic pressures, cultural issues or political reasons. Some of us live quietly in the Asian parts of town. Some of us have been in the United States for generations and are well off; others have just immigrated and are living day-to-day. But there’s definitely not the community for queer Asians that other people think there is.

Why is it that so many queer Asian men here feel so alienated? What is seen from the outside as a supposedly well-organized community of queer Asian men has to be seen for what it truly is, fragmented and polarized, with many people with their heads in the sand, and many other people feeling excluded and lost with few alternatives. 
Living in the city as queer and Asian, especially if you’re a guy, you learn really quickly that battle lines seem to be drawn, most noticeably around who you’re attracted to.  Queer Asian men who date other Asian men get drawn into a completely different social scene than those who aren’t as exclusive. There’s a sense of uneasiness if someone seems to go from one side to another, that you’re sleeping with the enemy. It doesn’t help that the social groups that exist for queer Asian men seem to reinforce that image.

Many of my friends who are queer Asian men have told me stories about how they’ve tried to join one social group or another but ended up being rejected because they either didn’t date the required group (Asian men or otherwise), or that they didn’t fit the profile that this group was looking for and were silently but forcefully removed from it. They are often forced to create their own communities outside established social circles, which ends up being a more liberating experience anyway. 

When I started going out with my partner I was surprised with the odd stares we got from other Asian men in the Castro. Most of them had white boyfriends. I’m Filipino and my partner is Chinese. Many people were confused to see two Asian men as a couple. A lot of the white men tended to look at us with lust in their eyes, reminding me of the crude comments that straight men make when they see two lesbians together.

Over the last decade or so, it’s become more common to see Asian men in the Castro as friends and lovers, and not just rivals. While it’s great to see this, I also see a tentativeness, a sense that the Castro is really the only place where many of these men can be open about their partners. It’s possible to find openly gay Asian couples in the predominantly Asian parts of the City, but most of us keep to ourselves, and don’t really advertise that we’re there. 

Many of us who are queer men of color feel forced to make decisions about our allegiances and commitments to the communities that we want to claim as our own.  Some of us play down our sexuality for fear of losing our families and friends who come from the same cultures. On the other extreme, many of us try not to draw attention to our darker skin, to try to blend in with the gay white community.

I can’t be solely a gay man, nor can I solely be a Filipino American. Being a friend to me means accepting me completely, not as a gay man who happens to have darker skin, nor as an Asian American man with an uncomfortable secret. Being part of my community means acknowledging and celebrating our differences, and using those differences to create an understanding and to find commonality.

My partner and I have great, long-lasting friendships with other queer Asian men who’ve gone through similar struggles of trying to fit into a mold that the Queer Asian Men’s community forced us into, and the relief we all felt when we broke out of it. They range the full spectrum of the community: single and partnered; dating exclusively Asian to not caring about their partner’s ethnic background; monogamous and open relationships; bi, gay and trans; etc., but they’re looking for the San Francisco that my partner and I know: open, welcoming, and a place where people can really be themselves without having to pretend they’re something they’re not. 
We have created a community of progressive men and women, mostly people of color, mostly queer, but all of us are people who are experienced enough or open-minded and secure enough in ourselves to look beyond the superficial divisions that separate the queer community and communities of color and we can talk, bitch, laugh, eat, and take a break from everything that’s affecting us, whether it be the racism in the Castro, the homophobia in our ethnic communities, the misogyny, or all the other -isms that plague our lives on a daily basis. 

I wonder about other people out there, people who are trying to fit in, who jump from one place to another, trying to find a community that will accept them. And I wish I could say that those of us who are queer Asian men don’t need to do that, that our community is really all around us. But I can’t. And I’d really like to change that.