I feel nothing I ever do or say or create will be worth preservation. I'm terrified that I'll be remembered as a blandly pleasant decoration who checked all the right boxes and never once did a single thing out of line. I'm scared that I'll never get to forge my own path and I'm scared of being forgotten.
I’ve started to realize how abusive my white ex-bf was and how fucked up he got me. I was 18 when I gave him my virginity. He’s 10 years older than me. For the past two years he was controlling me, taking advantage of me emotionally and sexually. I was so scared that he would leave me that I let him do anything to me. He would love to make me his “little Asian slave.”
im tired of feeling like a toy. like my identity is a toy to be molded by those in power. I am so much more than that asian girl.
I've played into the way the world fetishizes me to be seen in the past and I don't want to feel shame for needing to be seen anymore.
I don't know how to separate my sexual desires from the fetishism I've faced... but I don't want to feel shame for it anymore.
Some twisted dark part of me likes being fetishized. I’m not afraid of it, I enjoy it.
I was disgusted by raceplay at first but I fell in love with a white man and he was really into raceplay. Now I really like it, even though I’m not with that white man anymore. I feel ashamed.
where do I stand outside the male gaze, the white male gaze? Am I defiant enough, edgy enough, pushing against your stereotypes just so that you’re somehow more comfortable with loving me?
we are more than your fetish... so much more.
exhausted of trying to be everything to everyone else and nothing for myself. I don't even know who I am anymore. whoever said to be an asian girl is to be glass but never the mirror - yes, I'm so tired of being the glass for everyone else's mirror yet never getting to look into my own, because I don't even have my own. I'm taking all the glass back and building my own mirror.
being raised in an religious household by immigrant parents who I wanted so hard to please was painful as a gay asian girl - because by just existing I displeased them so much. growing up though I've come not to blame them, because they were just doing the best they could, with what they knew, and how they were raised. and then I see my queerness as a privilege, because growing up in America awarded me the space and curiosity to really explore it on my own - something I fear I couldn't have done if my parents never immigrated - at least not in the way I did.
Everytime someone tells me his ex is Asian I get super weirded out and feel like they're just dating me cuz I'm Asian.
tired of pretending to be someone i'm not just to be accepted in this white hetero world. don't know who i am yet just knew it wasn't this
scared of being loved because scared of being fetishized
feel like i don’t belong because i’m not anything like what america tells an asian girl to be like
I thought it was just me who was fetishized and sexualized. I thought it was cuz of the way I dress, the way I talk, the way I look. I'm so relieved to know it's not just me, and it's not because of me either - but because of the way the world sees me.
i once walked into a store and saw a white man with tons of japanese girls photos plastered all over the changing room.
One day you will learn
That we all bleed the same
And when we do
Nobody should tell us
To wipe the blood off
Our faces
Because it is ours
And it is beautiful
Growing up in the south as an adoptee was hard. Constantly not being Asian enough or not white enough to fit in anywhere but with other adoptees who go through the same struggles as me.
For me it’s hard to be an Asian American adoptee who grew up in the south. I constantly wasn’t white enough for my peers in my school. There also wasn’t much Asian representation on media or in my town so I didn’t get into my culture later one.
To be an Asian woman is to be hyper visible as a sex object and invisible as human all at once
I was adopted and raised by white parents. I spent my childhood trying to figure out what was wrong with me. I’ve always been the only Asian and I knew I was different but I really didn’t understand why of all the hatred I received from both my peers and a
I'm at my first job and my boss is treating me harshly, talking down to me, making me work 2x as hard as everyone else. I'm the one she picks on. I think it's because I'm Asian. I don't want to ignore advice to improve but I fear I'll never be good enough
It took my father passing away for me to learn to love my heritage. I wish I could go back and tell him I loved him and what he passed down to me. I regret it every day.
to be negated over and over again. to be told that the bodily traumas i experience, i am equipped to overcome, due to my inaccessibility of emotions.
to be an asian girl is to be glass but never the mirror
Will this anxiety pass? I wonder if this will ever end, and how to overcome this anxiety I feel
The initial judgement I feel as people stare when I walk into a new room filled with new people causes a lot of anxiety, and I can hear the judgement in people’s voices throughout our initial conversations.
As I am the first generation of my family to be born outside of East Asia, growing up amongst predominantly white Australian communities, I have always been ‘that Asian girl’ or the ‘token Asian girl’.
i’m half white and half filipino and i feel like i have belonged.
I’m half Taiwanese and half Greek. I live in constant fear that men desire me because I’m Asian but their parents will only ever accept me because I’m white.
I hate the gut wrenching feeling after being told by a guy that I’m the first Asian girl that he’s been with and what makes me different from the rest it’s because I’m also half White.
im learning to accept my immigrant parents for who they are... and for the first time understanding them and also grieving what they could not give me. the duality is constant.
Im in the process of connecting with my asian heritage, I'm the first in my family born in another country, the first to not speak tagalog. Always expected to speak then never spoken to. its lonely
I crave my mother food and miss my mother tongue, slipping more away. I'm yearning for everything I was taught to be ashamed of back...
I feel isolated. A bit a shamed that no one can know how I’m really feeling.
sometimes I feel like I don't belong anywhere. then I remember it's cooler to belong to myself.
I hate feeling like my body doesn’t belong to myself.
I feel guilty prioritizing my aspirations over time spent with my beloved parents who are faraway. I love my parents dearly but I also love the freedom and opportunities I've earned so far during my time here.
I was an Asian girl growing up in SE Asia. While living in the US is tough, as an Asian woman, I’d much rather be here than there.
My real name is 박 진 이, not Jeannie Jay, not Jeannie Park.
Kids bullied me for not having an American name. Because I needed a name to be American? But even when I got one, did you see me as American? - Jeannie
I tried everything to run away. I resented being “that Asian girl” my whole life. Whenever anyone referred to me, they almost always prefaced my name with those 3 piercing words: that Asian girl. Whenever anyone else asked, “Who?” I didn’t have a name, I was always “that Asian girl”. Forever exotic, forever foreign, forever other - under America’s spells. Until now. That girl is dead. I’m not that Asian girl. - Jeannie
I’m fighting to come back home to myself. What is home, if not who I was before they told me who to be? - Jeannie
The very foundation of who I am, who I have always been, is who I was before you told me who to be. - Jeannie
To be named as the model minority, to be named as your fetish, to be named as that Asian girl, before I was named as me. What does it mean to be named before you are given the chance to name yourself? How can I rewrite my story, if I can’t rename myself? - Jeannie