While a gay YouTuber in the US asks his fans to donate money to an anti-LGBT bullying charity, YouTube Japan is filled with homophobic content like "let's go inside a gay bathhouse" and stuff. In this video I invite Kody, born in Japan and currently residing in the UK, to talk with me about the differences between YouTube Japan and YouTube US/UK. (more…)
I have always been sick of the born-this-way rhetoric that mainstream gay activism has so proudly spread all over the U.S. I don't have anything against those who were born gay or born whatever, but feeling that one was born gay and saying so are two different things. (more…)
This piece of writing was submitted to the Office for LGBTQ Student Affairs at the University of Chicago as part of their OUTober: Coming Out Stories Project. The original text can be found in the project website under "Masaki." (more…)
When I first got that name, “gay,” I felt jubilant. I accepted the name and told people that I was gay. Since I was also bisexual from time to time, I sometimes called myself a “part-time bisexual.” At that time, I lived in the country where I was recognized as racial minority, which already made me “different.” So, through gayness, I thought I could become part of mainstream culture. I put myself out to the public as gay, rather than Asian. That was my assimilation tactics. (more…)
At Below the Belt, Someone (I'm sorry but I can't find their name) posted an entry on class divisions and the invisible working-class in queer community. Granted, economic disparity within queer community, or at least gay community, isn't really represented in the media or quite existent in our urban-washed cultural consciousness, and that's a problem, no doubt. I, however, do not necessarily find it attractive to have scientific data covering those who do not fit with the stereotypic gay image. (more…)
People say, "happiness is all that matters," "it's fine as long as you're happy," "I just want you to be happy," "you gotta make yourself happy," and all that shit. Don't get me wrong, I know what they mean. They're nice people, probably the nicest kind of human beings. But it just annoys me when they say such things as if we had to be happy to gain freedom. I feel the same kind of aversion towards the Be-Who-You-Are discourse. Why can't we just have the right to pretend like something else AND be free? Look, I'm not happy. I don't like who I am. And that's fine. Period. (more…)