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[NQV] SF visit: 8/31/96 (11)


Saturday 8/31/96

(continued)

This is what I have jotted down in my notes with regards to the various
points raised by the three groups which were tabulated on the blackboard
for general discussion:

Coming out:
25 and under:
- no acceptance
- religious/family support
- identity
- financial
- loneliness

25-30:
- with respect to oneself:
- shatter expectations of others
- personal liberation
- true to oneself
- reorientation of one's life
- with respect to others:
- problem of disclosure: degrees of interaction
- family/relatives
- at work

30 and over:
- more comfortable with self
- greater self-confidence
- marriage/family pressure/duties
- job/career security
- financial stability
- peer support

Relationship:
25 and under:
- self-esteem
- meeting people
- liking people that's already taken!
- picky/searching
- having "fun"
- no sense of belonging
- "sugar people"/gold-digging
- trusting others
- oneway relationships
- too much devotion/focus

25-30:
- to have/sustain one
- defining it
- working out differences
- lack of biological bond
- building/sharing something together
- institutional support

30 and over:
- stability in life
- maturity over appearance
- grass is NOT greener on the other side
- positive attitude about health
- building family/"home": house, children, pets
- monogamy: ego has been satisfied

Politics/Community:
25 and under:
- in your face/ACT UP
- precious but tough
- undo the conservatives
- revision of the laws
- equal treatment
- involvement
- to BE vs. to DO
- helping each other love one another
- safe space for Queer Viet community
- radical/rebellious
- take no shit from others
- volunteerism
- keep the spirit
- pressure to "prove oneself" to be taken seriously

25-30:
- recognition of issues with the laws/religion/community
- legalization of marriage
- sodomy law
- religious condemnation
- community support/ social acceptance
- info/awareness/support for young people in school

30 and over:
- visibility/awareness
- achievable goals/reality check
- recognition from other for our rights/existence
- bridging generations
- be role models
- help educate the young
- supporting one another, esp. the young
- networking

Based on the kind of experiences and ideas we shared, it seemed that
my "middling" group won hands-down for being lame!  The handful of
young radicals, however, had a field day in challenging the inertia
of their elders!  The older group by contrast appeared more sober and
concrete in their goals.  But on the whole I found such generational
stereotypes to be misleading (if not divisive) because not everyone
fit nicely and neatly into their age group on each and every issue.
Take my own example (which might not be a good one since I'm too much
of an "outsider among outsiders"), I felt remarkably little in common
concerns with the people in my age group (despite my 20% contribution
to the discussion to it in this workshop!), except in terms of coming
out, since most people have already gone somewhere down that road by
this time.  I felt completely out-of-place with respect to the issue
of relationship (and that's why we couldn't agree on much of anything
to write down here), because I felt particularly left out amidst the
other 4 who were happily coupled and only seemed to have really silly
minor concerns to worry about: it's rather ironic when people were
more worried about the lack of biological bonds (ie. children!) and
institutional support, when those were the least of my worries next
to the challenge of finding/defining a relationship in the first place!
(And while many of the other people who complained about the lack of
institutional support would not even entertain the idea of "flaunting"
their so-called relationship before families/relatives/society to seek
acceptance, I would not hesitate to do so at the earliest chance, if
only to prove the point that "when there's a will there's a way" --
a principle which hadn't so far seem to apply very well to succesfully
finding a suitable boyfriend, alas).  So in this regard, I felt more
closely aligned with the "groping in the dark" (figuratively and NOT
literally, alas) younger group.  With respect to issues of politics/
community, I more or less sat out of the discussion in my group because
I felt rather out-of-sync with their understanding of what the issues
meant in the first place: and since the others were more contented
with identifying particular issues in a reactive manner rather than
seeking an active and broader conception of their role/place in the
politics of community building and community struggle, I felt I had
little to say/add to their laundry list of vague problems which seemed
more applicable to American gays in general rather than Viet queers
in particular.  In that regards, I was much more sympathetic to the
younger radicals, even though I felt most closely aligned with a
more limited/sober/realistic agenda suggested by the older group.
I guess in some way, I was disillusioned by the passive "bourgeois"
concerns of my peers because I had been singularly unsuccessful in
attaining them, and I would therefore tend to admire the idealism of
the younger radicals even as I knew full well that I might go beyond
the older group on the journey toward skepticism, if not altogether
cynicism.  (Geesh, don't I sound like a bitter old man here? :-)
And the ironic thing about it was that during those few days in SF,
for the first time I didn't feel all that self-conscious about my
"perceived shortcomings" in terms of either age, looks, manners,
thinking, and even "charms" :-)  Better self-acceptance/adjustment,
I suppose :-))

(to be continued) 


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