Here’s to acceptance, our culture, to our culture accepting us all: The struggle of the Asian LGBT community

You are in India, riding through the teeming intersection in the heart of a city, when a few men come knocking at your car. They beg for money. Your driver’s eyes are fixed on the road.  He does not hear or see the people outside.

But you sense discomfort in the rear-view mirror, exposing that perhaps his blunt avoidance of the people outside is a practiced act. He still will not dare look out the window. You wonder why.

Here is why- because the men there are dressed like women. Because the ‘men’ begging outside the window, they are transgender.

They make him uncomfortable.

In almost every corner of the world, being a part of the LGBT community means having to face unfair discrimination from at least some of the rest of society. But in the cities and towns of India, it is not mere discrimination that gays, bisexuals, transgenders, lesbians or other queer individuals face.

It is a sheer refusal of people to meet their eyes and their identity, to acknowledge their existence. People would look away when transgender individuals passed by, as if they were offensive stains in the background and by looking away they could keep dodging the discomfort their presence caused. The way LGBT individuals are treated in Asia cannot be reduced to simply ‘discrimination’. 

In Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, and Burma, same-sex activity is illegal and punishable to the extent of a life sentence in jail. In Malaysia, considered a developing country, men are still whipped for practicing homosexual activity. The implications of these laws are obvious- Asia is ancient and stubbornly backward in its acceptance of marginalized groups- while in the West, they are making more and more progress.

What is not known or visible to people not of Asian origins, however, is the culture that is behind this exhibited ‘backwardness’. This is not a culture that is receptive to negotiation or adaptation. It is a culture that has dominated countless of generations of southern and southeastern Asians before us, based on deeply rooted, conservative traditions that skirt and deny implications of anything ‘drastically’ different- in this case, sexuality-and make it almost impossible to challenge that denial. But people are beginning to break free.

I did not know that homosexuality was a real type of sexual attraction until about two and a half years ago. When a character in the popular series ‘Heroes of Olympus’, by Rick Riordan, was revealed to be gay., I was 14 years old and disgusted. I had not personally known any homosexual people. I just knew that ‘lesbian’ was an insult I was called when my two best friends and I huddled together in the girl’s bathroom to share secrets.

For some time, I have felt anger and frustration at the Asian culture that has carefully bred this engineered ignorance. I feel enraged at the way most of my elders skirt the words ‘gay’ or ‘lesbian’ or ‘transgender’, as if they are scandalizing concepts that the West has fabricated and they deserve no legitimacy or respect. It makes me imagine how I would be treated by the adults in my family if I were lesbian or bisexual. It is unimaginable, really.

But the struggle of ‘coming out’ as a different sexuality to their families is reality for an increasing number of Asian teenagers- often a very terrifying one.

A bisexual male I spoke with, here at Coppell High School, has not yet come out to his parents about his sexuality, and neither does he plan to soon. His parents are from the Philippines- ranked the most gay-friendly Asian country- and he is not that worried about their reaction. Instead, he is worried that his mother will be scared about other people hurting him because of his bisexuality. With his grandparents, however, it is a different story.

“I wouldn’t be able to approach my grandparents and tell them I am bisexual,” he said. “I would die before telling them. I’d be afraid of being a disappointment to them and not living up to their expectations and that’s something that’s common with all Asian families. That’s why Asian children don’t tell their parents how they really feel.”

A friend I have from India, who came out as bisexual just last year, tells me she feels the same way.

“The mere thought of my parents not accepting me is so terrifying,” she said. “If girl-guy relationships are frowned upon in India, you can imagine how badly people would react to same-sex relationships. In the future, unfortunately, I have the feeling that whatever may happen leading up to marriage, in the end I’m going to end up with a guy. But I like to believe that one day in the future I will come out to everyone and they will accept me with pride. That day is just nowhere near.”

It makes me angry with our previous generations that their reservations are the reason my friends and most everyone else from the LGBT community from Asian families have to hide, fearful and oppressed. It makes me want to stand up and jolt this rusted, chaining outlook from their minds.

Yet I reconcile myself with these sentiments because I know that they are not intentional in their virtue. I know that if I had grown up in a world I thought I knew for decades and suddenly such an inherently disagreeing reality came into view, I would automatically scorn it. This culture is what has protected and made Asians feel safe within their known values for centuries. I can not blame this culture. I am a part of it.

 But as more and more teenagers of our generation are ‘coming out’ and braving the conservative rigors of our culture, I feel optimistic about the future that we will make as adults.

An amazing possibility looms- that the current generation of Asian teenagers may become the first generation to accept the ordinariness of people who are not attracted to the opposite sex, of people who do not identify with their gender of birth, of people just sexually different. I believe that we may be the first Asian generation to break away from instinctively rejecting what seems ‘abnormal’.

I believe that, finally, the time is coming that we will be able to look out through the window and feel acceptance for what we see.