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Asian Pacific Islanders for Human Rights (APIHR)
Asian Pacific Islanders for Human Rights (APIHR) has established 'Ohana House, the nation's first API LGBTIQ center. APIHR works to advance the human rights of the Pan Asian/Pacific Islander lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersexual, queer and questioning (LGBTIQ) community.
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Lotus LA
A cool social group for Asian lesbians/bisexuals in the Los Angeles area.
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New Articles
hello..
hey hey..i am new at this...but it seems awesome sooo far...:P well i hope to get to know alot of peoples in here?!?!haha ok byes..
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hello..
hey hey..i am new at this...but it seems awesome sooo far...:P well i hope to get to know alot of peoples in here?!?!haha ok byes..
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*hEllO*
*taSte oF qUeEr miNnEsotA*...
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Butch / Femme test
Add up your points and find your "label" (yeah, we all know how that is). Remember, this is strictly for the fun of it. Mine btw was -50 "Stone-Femme", which was no surprise.
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Emergence of Queer Vietnamese America by Gina Masequesmay
Posted by techy on Saturday, August 02, 2003 2:05 PM
This is a coming out story written by a friend of mine, and thought I'll share it with you.
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Emergence of Queer Vietnamese America
Gina Masequesmay
My colleague, Teresa, and I had just watched Girls Like Us, a
documentary about the lives of four teenage girls in South
Philadelphia’s blue-collar district. These girls started out with
aspirations of attending college or at least of finishing high school
and finding a job, but by the end of the film, half of the girls had to defer their dreams due to unexpected pregnancy and clashes with their family and boyfriends on gender expectations. Teresa asked of my reaction, and I responded, "Thank goddess I’m a lesbian! If I were straight, I would probably end up like one of these girls."
This conversation led me to think about how differently my
lesbian/bisexual/transgender ("queer" for short) Vietnamese friends and I experience life from our straight, Vietnamese female counterparts. Monique Wittig’s contention that the "myth of woman" reinforces patriarchy whereas the "lesbian" category fits outside patriarchy resonated strongly in this instance. Not identifying with "compulsory heterosexuality" and patriarchy is a mixed blessing that some of us queers have used to our advantage. This insight stimulated me to write about Vietnamese American queer experiences in response to the heterosexist literature on immigrant adaptation.
Recent studies on immigrant adaptation have demonstrated that the
context of reception (e.g., government policies, economic viability of the local economy) is a significant factor in how immigrants are
incorporated into the host society. Particularly important is the
role of the ethnic community in providing social capital for immigrants who lack physical and/or human capital to survive and thrive in America. Studies that focus on social capital emphasize that besides potential access to material resources, emotional and cultural resources that ethnic networks provide play a significant role in facilitating immigrant adaptation. Despite the multitude of studies on Vietnamese immigrants in the past twenty-seven years, only a few have addressed the lives of queer Vietnamese. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is two-fold. First, I explore the lives of otherwise invisible and marginalized Vietnamese queer immigrants. Second, I aim "to queer" immigrant studies by
demonstrating that sexuality, like race, class and gender, is another
interdependent variable that needs to be considered in understanding
the process of immigrant adaptation. As Chrys Ingraham suggests, what feminists have argued as gendered processes in society are specifically "heterogendered" processes. That is, when girls are socialized to become young women, they are specifically socialized to become heterosexual young women.
This paper is based on data from my five years (1996 to 2001) of
ethnographic research (participant-observation and interviews) on a
social support network of Vietnamese lesbians, bisexual women, and
female-to-male transgenders in California called "Ô-Môi". I use data from my study of Ô-Môi to show how sexuality interplays with race, class, and gender to configure different patterns of immigrant
adaptation for queer Vietnamese, as the group provides an interesting
example of how queer immigrants organize our own queer-ethnic networks for social support in the process of psychological and interpersonal development and adjustment. This support network differs from the support in the U.S. queer mainstream and in the Vietnamese American mainstream. I explore how Ô-Môi facilitates queer Vietnamese in the process of becoming not just queer Americans or ethnic Americans but queer ethnic Americans. By discussing different adaptation patterns of
Ô-Môi members, the environment which led to the formation of Ô-Môi, and
the unique role the group plays in the lives of its queer Vietnamese
members, I hope to normalize our experiences by adding our stories to
the spectrum of immigrant struggles and triumphs.
Three Cases of Coming Out
Recent research has begun to focus on the different experiences of male and female immigrants. Because boys and girls are socialized
differently, it is important to not assume a common childhood
experience for immigrant children. Similarly, within the group of female immigrant children, we should not assume that there is a uniform way in which girls grow up to become women. Gay and lesbian literature suggests
that heterogender socialization affects the development process differently
for queer females versus straight females. Here, I document three
types of coming out experiences of Vietnamese immigrant females.
Filial Daughters and Late Bloomers
Michelle was oblivious to her sexual orientation and feelings of sexual
attraction all the way until the end of college. She identified as
lesbian but explained that she grew up asexual. Not being exposed to
lesbianism and never having an interest in boys, she was "the good
daughter," focusing on school and family obligations and not worrying
her parents about "boy matters." She states,
Maybe being an immigrant struggling with poverty and being surrounded
by violence tunneled my vision to practical economic and social survival
issues [so] that the leisure of contemplating other ways of living
never crossed my mind. In any case, not being interested in boys saved me
from many anxieties.
Michelle recalled that when she was thinking of going to college, her
aunt introduced her to a friend’s daughter who was already in college.
The purpose was for Michelle to obtain advice and information about
college from this young woman, Lan. When Lan told Michelle of options
that Lan could pursue after college, Lan included graduate school.
When Lan informed her mother and Michelle’s aunt that she was thinking of
obtaining a master’s degree, they were quick to caution Lan about the
correlation between higher education and un-marriage ability for women.
Michelle recalled,
According to my aunt and Lan’s mother, men would want to marry women of
their equal or less, not women who are more accomplished than they.
Obtaining a bachelor degree is expected to gain decent employment, and
it is to help one find a compatible spouse. In contrast, to work for a
higher degree than a bachelor’s degree is to minimize one’s chance of
finding a compatible spouse. Lan assured them that a master’s degree
was her ultimate educational goal. After that, she planned to settle
down and start a family. This statement comforted her mother and my
aunt. It was also the concluding message for me from that visit.
Fortunately for me, however, being interested in boys, wanting to get
married and wanting to have children of my own were never my concerns
and priorities. It did not bother me that I might become
un-marriageable by pursuing a higher degree. It was never my fantasy
to have Prince Charming sweep me off my feet and to improve my livelihood.
Growing up poor and witnessing her mother and sisters juggling with
their "unreliable husbands" taught Michelle that she can only rely on
herself to move out of impoverished conditions. Her only way out was
education, and she went all the way to obtain a Ph.D. In short,
Michelle’s non-heterosexuality and class struggle protected her from
heterosexist, patriarchal pressures. For her to succeed in the
educational path, however, she had to continue being an asexual and
filial daughter. It was not until she graduated from college, found a
job and was living on her own that she had time to explore her
sexuality.
Other women who came from strict family backgrounds had similar
experiences to Michelle’s. They conformed to being the good, filial
daughter. Some were oblivious or dismissive of boys’ interests.
Others repressed their sexual affinity toward women until later in life (in
their thirties) when they had the economic and/or social freedom to
explore their desire. Some women even married and had children before
they realized that "something is not right." They were not happy with
their husbands and became amorously attracted to their female friends.
It was at this juncture that they began to search for others like
themselves. Thereupon, they found Ô-Môi to validate their otherwise
isolated and incongruous desire.
A Gendered Childhood and Adolescence
In contrast to Michelle’s story of being oblivious about her sexual
preference, other members in Ô-Môi knew from a very young age that they
were different, and this difference became a struggle in trying to fit
in with everyone else. David, a female-to-male transgender, could
trace his experience of feeling different when he was six. It was then that
he played with his brother, and they swore to be "blood brothers." He
remembered vividly, "I’m not going to be a blood sister, I said, I was
going to be a blood brother." But everyone around him told him he was
a girl. Despite these negations, David was convinced he was a boy, "I
know I’m a boy, I was just in the wrong body." At the time he did not
know the terms "transsexual" or "transgender." It was not until he was
sixteen and watched Donahue that he learned the terms and identified
himself as "transgender." I asked if he thought he was gay before
that.
[W]hen I became attracted to women, okay, that was when I was
wondering, I said, "Am I gay?" But then I said I must be a really twisted gay
because I don’t want to be identified as a woman. So I was wondering
if I would categorize under "gay" but within the gay there are subs, there
are different gays, and that’s what I thought, that must be where I
fell under because. . .I am female and I like female, so, I must be gay.
But I never said I must be a lesbian. I never said that word because
that’s where I’m different where I’m not happy being the part.
David described how he hated wearing the girl’s uniform, a jumper, to
his Catholic school:
[W]hen I would wear it, I always have a jacket and I would wrap it
around my waist. And the minute I stepped out of that school ground, I
would take it off, that jumper. I would walk home in my shorts,
always.
For David, everyday gendered rituals were a setback to his male
identification. It became more poignant when he reached puberty.
[W]hen I was a kid, I always know I should have been a boy, so I kept
thinking, if I didn’t have the period then, something is wrong with me
physically, okay, like a defect then it would explain why I think the
way I do. But it didn’t, everything was in its natural biological
female course. And so that just depressed me in the sense that I’m
thinking, oh, great, you know, was I crazy or mentally disturbed. .
.because. . .physically. . . everything was where it supposed to be. .
.that’s when I thought it was a tomboyish thing and that I would grow
out of it, but I didn’t. There was a period where I was thinking that
I must be mentally disturbed.
Having to face the body that he hated every day made life difficult at
its most mundane level. David recalled how going to private school was
a torturous experience.
[W]hen you’re at home you don’t have to think so much about it, but
when I was at school, that’s where it distinguished between, if you’re a boy
or a girl. . . I always hated it. . . . I wanted to be put in a public
school, you know, because I could wear pants.
David got his wish to wear pants when he lied about graduating from
eighth grade to enroll in a public high school. Resisting hegemonic
femininity was not easy, however, even at public school. David would
get into fights for dressing and acting like a boy. At the age of
seventeen, when David learned about transgenderism on Donahue, it
helped to validate his feeling about himself. However, David was Catholic,
and when he became romantically interested in his female friends, he was
sure he was facing eternal damnation. David went through years of
depression and suicidal ideations. Fortunately, constant family
obligations held him back from attempting suicide. He was too busy
helping out his siblings and could not find time to end his life. It
was then that he met the group Ô-Môi and decided to join because Ô-Môi
was supportive of transgenders whereas many other queer organizations
were not. David also knew about other transgender groups, but he opted
for Ô-Môi because the other groups were predominantly white. David did
not have positive interactions with white people whom he saw as
culturally insensitive to his needs.
"A Second Time Coming Out"
Unlike David and Michelle who grew up in the U.S. and came out through
their absorption of American culture via school and the media,
Thanh-Nga grew up in Viet Nam, and her experience with same-sex attraction was
much more platonic and less guilt-ridden than David’s. She describes
her coming out experience in the U.S. as a second time of coming out:
To my family, to the world. It was like a second time coming out for
me. Because when I was in Viet Nam, I had a relationship, but I didn’t
know that was a lesbian relationship. I thought, oh, I just had this
special feeling toward this one particular person, and then I have my
attraction towards girls that I didn’t know. I mean I thought it was
just, neat. [laughing] I was odd or something. I didn’t have a role
model to say it’s okay you’re a lesbian, you know. . . . I didn’t know
why I had to write five pages of love letters everyday. [laughing]. .
.I kept writing. I forgot what I was writing about, but I don’t know
why I would have these infatuations. . . . [I asked if it was ever
sexual, and she responded:] Uh, we never got there. I mean I think
back then, sex was something like, I didn’t know what that means, you
know. I didn’t have, I didn’t see people kissing on the street, so I
just know I have this special feeling for this one person.
When Thanh-Nga immigrated to the U.S. at the age of eighteen, she
blocked out those memories.
I was in the midst of escaping from Viet Nam and coming here. Oh, my
god, you have to adjust, and I totally forgot that part of my life. I
completely forgot. I totally blanked out. I just knew that I had to
survive; I have to acculturate in this country. That’s including
having boyfriends. And you know, all my, uh, I hung out with these Vietnamese
women in my high school, and they all like boys and so, "oh, I guess I
should have a boyfriend, too." But, it never felt [laughing] really
comfortable for me. It’s just something because I wanted to be with my
friends, so to have boyfriends, and all of us can hang out together
[laughing].
It took Thanh-Nga another twelve years when she took a class that dealt
with Asian American lesbians that she made connection to her past.
I think they talk about lesbians, lesbianism in the other courses, too,
but I paid no attention to it because I’m not [laughing] Black or
Native American. But in Asian American Studies, they had a woman who came
over, she’s a lesbian, Pilipina lesbian [laughing], came and showed her
slides of her wedding to her wife. She talked about the relationship
and then she brought in two young girls, women, who were in
relationships, who were married, they had rings and stuff. So they
talked about their relationship and it was at that moment, it’s like a
light switch! I was looking at her like, "Ahh! I remember these
feelings!" [laughing] I cannot believe it. I was like "Oh, MY GOD!
I cannot believe it, I know, I know what they’re talking about." It was
so exciting. . .I just went, "Wow! Now I know who I am."
Thanh-Nga’s sexuality became clear when she was able to relate with the
lesbian Pilipinas in her class. Because of that connection, Thanh-Nga
continued to make connections with other queer Asian lesbians. When
she found out that there was a Vietnamese queer network, she quickly joined
and became active in organizing its many group activities. Thanh-Nga
explained how she came out to her family:
I came out on my third year of college, I was thirty. So, it’s a good
age to come out because I don’t have family pressure. You know, like
you’re too old to get married [laughing] and you’re still young
[enough] to do more things but the family pretty much kinda leaves you alone.
When you’re thirty and not living at home. When you’re coming out,
it’s just so perfect for me because I was like, I was so clear.
Passing the putative age of marriage ability, being financially
independent, and living on her own made it easier for Thanh-Nga to come
out to her family. This rings true for other Ô-Môi members in their
thirties and above. Their families do not ask them anymore about
marriage or boyfriends. There seems to be an implicit "don’t ask,
don’t tell" agreement, where their families would welcome their partners as
their "good friends" without ever confronting the issue of their
daughters/sisters/nieces being queer.
Ties with one’s family and oftentimes one’s ethnic community can play
important roles in facilitating the immigration adaptation. However,
as we see from these three cases, family obligations and restrictions and
living in an ethnic enclave can also impede these queer females’ coming
out processes. At the beginning stages for many queer Vietnamese
females, focusing on school and being the filial child protected them
from having to confront their non-heterosexuality because the family
structure expects them to remain asexual. In some cases, some of these
young females benefited from the homosocial form of friendships that
they were encouraged to have. For others who felt that they were in
the wrong body or that they should not have homoerotic feelings for their
female friends, coming out to oneself was a very isolating experience.
Although protected and supported by their family and ethnic community
from the larger racist society, many gay, lesbian, bisexual and
transgender immigrants do not feel "completely at home." For many
Vietnamese queers, it becomes imperative to find a supportive group
that will accept differing gender identification and/or sexual preference.
Given the prevalence of homophobia and heterosexism in the Vietnamese
community, finding a support group is a second stage of coming to terms
with oneself and of "coming home." I discuss next how Ô-Môi came into
being.
Creating Our Own Community
"Ô-môi" is a tropical fruit in Viet Nam, and because of how it is
consumed, it is also a slang term for lesbians. This slang term was
popularly used to refer to lesbians in the late 1960s to mid 1970s in
Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City), Viet Nam. About twenty years after the
fall of Saigon and the mass exodus of Vietnamese to the U.S., the term
"ô-môi" re-emerged in Southern California as the name for a newly found
support network of Vietnamese lesbians, bisexual women, and
female-to-male transgenders. In the summer of 1995, a group of
Vietnamese American queer females decided to adopt the Vietnamese slang
word "Ô-Môi" as the name for their volunteer support group. Following
the U.S. tradition in politics of reclaiming history, this group of
queer females reclaimed not only a Vietnamese history that included
queers, but also a cultural heritage that is specifically Vietnamese,
thus dispelling the myth that homosexuality is a Western phenomenon or
that Vietnamese queers are non-existent.
Originally, Ô-Môi was conceived as a queer Vietnamese women’s group, a
sister organization to the Gay Vietnamese Alliance (GVA), a gay male
Vietnamese group, because the founding members were friends with the
founders of GVA. Both founding members wanted a separate women’s group
because they saw queer men and queer women as having different issues
and concerns. The women also did not want to deal with the sexism from
the men. When two members of this emerging group came out as
transgender, however, the group decided to include transgenders in its
membership. This inclusion raised subsequent problems for the group in
terms of its common bond as a women’s group when it now included
transgenders who identify as "straight men." Nonetheless, the group
was able to establish their commonality as marginalized queer female
Vietnamese attracted to women.
Since its inception, Ô-Môi has from three to forty members
participating in any one event or meeting. Activities range from planning meetings,
to rap group meetings, movie outings, dinner or lunch, potlucks,
clubbing, camping trips, fundraising banquets, and marching and
participating in the Pride Parade and Pride Festival. Depending on
members’ interests, initiatives, schedules and resources, Ô-Môi
fluctuates from periods of high activities to one activity a year.
Although members live throughout Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino,
Riverside, San Diego and Ventura counties, the majority reside in Los
Angeles and Orange counties; hence, activities concentrate in these two
regions. For meetings, the venue is usually a member’s house. For
other queer related activities like clubbing, the venues tend to be in
the West Hollywood, Long Beach and Silver Lake areas. During the past
five years, Ô-Môi has no longer held regular planning meetings and rap
group meetings. Instead, "meetings" occur on the Internet via an Ô-Môi
listserv. Unlike previous recruitment and maintenance of membership
via word of mouth, Ô-Môi’s recruitment now occurs online where women from
other states can also partake in the e-mail list forum.
Currently, the majority of members are lesbians, only 15 percent
identify as bisexual and three are transgenders. Eighty-four percent
are college-educated, 80 percent are students or employed professionals
in their mid-twenties to mid-thirties moving from their immigrant
working-class background towards a middle-class status. However, there
is a significant 9 percent who are in the lower manual and service
sectors and 3 percent are immigrant entrepreneurs. Because of their
occupations, time and financial limitations, these 12 percent are
struggling to stay involved with group activities that often require
time and money that they do not have.
The Contexts of the Emergence of Ô-Môi
To understand how Ô-Môi emerged, we need to first understand how Little
Saigon, "the capital of Vietnamese America," emerged and what the
context of the mainstream queer community was.
Emergence of a (Straight) Vietnamese American Community
Before 1975, there were only about a thousand Vietnamese residing in
the U.S., most of them as students, workers, and diplomats. There was no
Vietnamese American community anywhere in the U.S. then. However, the
aftermath of the "Vietnam War" brought in continuous waves of
Vietnamese refugees and immigrants to the U.S. Gradually, Vietnamese American
enclaves emerged across the nation, concentrating in major metropolitan
areas; the largest enclave is in Little Saigon in Orange County,
California, where the Vietnamese population is 135,548 or 12 percent of
the entire U.S. Vietnamese population.
When the first wave of 1975 Vietnamese refugees arrived in the U.S.,
the government’s plan was to disperse the Vietnamese people across the
nation to not overburden any one community and to prevent ethnic
ghettos. However, the immigrants’ desire to be with their own kind and
to rebuild "home" spurred secondary migration to spark the development
of ethnic enclaves. Orange County, located near Camp Pendleton where
refugees were processed before being allowed to integrate into U.S.
society, became an obvious space for Vietnamese refugee concentration.
It became the prime location for resettlement and community development
also because of its warmer weather, economic opportunities, a nearby
Chinatown in Los Angeles, a generous welfare system, and cheaper
housing than in Los Angeles. As stores and restaurants developed and expanded
to accommodate the special needs of this new, English-limited
Vietnamese population, they attracted more newly arrived refugees. By the late
1980s, Little Saigon became a magnet for thousands of Vietnamese to
visit or resettle. Today, Little Saigon exists as the largest
Vietnamese community outside Viet Nam. Like other Asian ethnic
enclaves, Little Saigon emerged in response to the needs of its
members. Facing racism and hostility from the host society, the
Vietnamese community acts as a buffer for its members in cultural
maintenance and as an adaptation facilitator in practical resource
assistance and valuable information relay. At a glance, Little Saigon
seems to be self-sufficient in providing a host of services to its
members, from financial to legal, to medical, to religious, to
recreational and political. Yet, when one scans through the list of
Vietnamese associations in the Vietnamese phonebook, not one is for
queer Vietnamese (as of 2001). This is not to reflect the
non-existence of queer Vietnamese, but to show that the heterosexist and/or
homophobic ethnic community, as well as internalized homophobia, prevents informal
queer networks from going public. Recently, however, these queer
organizations have come out to reflect the specific needs of a sector
of the Vietnamese population that has the critical mass to make the
founding and continuation of these queer Vietnamese organizations
possible.
The Culturally Insensitive, White Queer Mainstream
Parallel to the absence of Vietnamese queer organizations listed in
Vietnamese American phonebooks, no listing of queer Vietnamese
organizations in mainstream gay/lesbian phonebooks exists. For many of
the Vietnamese and Asian queer women and female-to-male transgenders I
interviewed, to attend a mainstream queer organization is to attend a
white queer organization. When they first attempt to contact queer
organizations to seek support, they find that the support often
excludes their race and ethnic concerns. As Ngoc-Trang puts it:
I know a lot other group support but, like for Caucasian or some other
group, they very much Americanized, they don’t think about culture that
really form a person. The culture, especially Asian culture, it’s very
tight. You know, they have a family tie, in culture very tight, and
they feel obligated with their root.
She continues to say that Ô-Môi is the pioneer to bridge the gap
between the homophobic, straight Vietnamese community and the queer, "white"
(meaning "culturally insensitive" community.
Ô-Môi members feel that having the same ethnic cultural background
means a better understanding and sympathy regarding family issues. Phi-Anh
explains, "I wanted some support because I know I can’t really open up
to my parents, my family and friends. You guys were a resource for
me."
As co-ethnics, members can understand each others’ plights in trying to
acculturate to American society and at the same time trying to maintain
one’s cultural practices and values. Most members explain that they
participate in Ô-Môi because they do not have to explain themselves
culturally. White queers do not understand the familial obligations of
Vietnamese culture and expect Vietnamese queers to be more independent.
Kim-Tuyet elaborates,
Well, you guys kinda know the Vietnamese background. . . so you
understand and have sympathy for me if I can’t go out late or stuff
that my parents don’t want me to say or do. [I asked if she had to explain
to non-Vietnamese friends, and she answered yes.] Well, they’ll tell
me "it’s your life, why don’t you control it rather than let your parents
control it." And I don’t want to have to go through that.
Similarly, Ben elucidates, "In an Asian queer group, people understand
where I come from when I talk about family problems. With the general
white, queer group, I would have to spend a significant amount of time
just explaining myself. So, I prefer being with others like me."
In short, the position of Vietnamese queers as a sexual and ethnic
minority has led to a unique set of ethnic and queer needs and
politics, which Ô-Môi was founded to support. One of the three co-founders of
Ô-Môi states:
I wanted to be part of a network of women, especially women who
challenged mainstream white America [on racism] as well as Vietnamese
America [on heterosexism and homophobia]. And I wanted a space just
for us, where we didn’t have to worry about accommodating
whites/males/straight people. I wanted to be a part of a group of
queer Vietnamese women [and FTM] who were creating a community that would
validate, empower, and support each other.
Types of Support
"Support" comes in many different forms. I discuss here the types of
support Ô-Môi provides for its members.
Affirmation by Mere Presence
The rare and often negative glimpses of lesbians and the invisibility
of Asian lesbians in mainstream media impress upon the public the idea
that we do not exist or are unhappy deviants. Seeing another Asian lesbian
face is a crucial point of relating and revelation. The presence of
other queer Vietnamese keeps members from feeling isolated and alone.
Hoa-Trinh describes this feeling:
Just being together. Just being there. Just existing is enough
reason. Just being in the same room even though there are no official
functions. You know, concrete evidence that someone, outside of my
brain, is like myself. They exist and they feel that towards me, and I
feel that towards them. And all those positive energies get shared.
And then you can feel you have a reason to exist, or that you can
relate to something outside of yourself. And relating to all Ô-Môi members
outside of myself brings me back to myself. So, it comes full circle;
it’s a cycle. Yeah, shared existence.
The presence of other Vietnamese queers validates one’s experiences and
dissolves the alienating experience one originally had of being an
oddity or deviant, especially where homosexuality is perceived as a
Western disease. It helps to normalize one’s feelings because now
there are others like oneself.
Ethnic Bonding and Validation
The Vietnamese queer women and transgender men in Ô-Môi were not
content with just any queer support organization, they wanted it to be
specifically Vietnamese-focused because of their unique experiences as
refugees. As an ethnic group in exile, many Vietnamese feel an even
greater need to hold onto their culture because they have "no homeland
left" in which to practice their customs and traditions. Many Ô-Môi
members expressed that they preferred Ô-Môi to Los Angeles Asian
Pacific Islander Sisters (LAAPIS), an Asian panethnic queer women’s group,
because Ô-Môi speaks to their need for affirmation as Vietnamese. As
David puts it:
I came here when I was four but yet whenever I hear stories and things
going on in Vietnam, it is very strong for me. Like when I hear
Vietnamese people telling about their stories, I actually get watery
eyes. I actually feel, I feel for them, even though I don’t know them.
I didn’t even have to go through any of that experience but I just
knowing, I just feel a bond so that’s the one thing that hooks me.
Another member, Trinh, further explains that joining Ô-Môi was
important for her because she needed a space that confirms both her ethnicity and
her queer identity. To her, they are inseparable:
I grew up Vietnamese, I eat Vietnamese food, I listen to Vietnamese
music, my parents are Vietnamese, my group celebrates Vietnamese
holidays. I read about Vietnam ALL the time, every chance I get so
that I can learn and study where I came from and who I am even though I’m in
America. I can’t identify with McDonald’s and Coke. I can probably
identify with "nuoc mam" [Vietnamese fish sauce].
Both David and Trinh’s sentiments reflect other members’ feelings.
These are the reasons they joined Ô-Môi and what drove them to
distinguish Ô-Môi as separate from other queer organizations.
Authenticating Vietnamese Queerness
Knowing that there are other queer Vietnamese out there provides a
source of affirmation. When My-Le came out to her parents, they told
her that she had become Americanized. In Vietnam, she would not be
gay. As her main source of ethnic authentication, her parents drew a
dichotomy between being Vietnamese and being queer. Hence, My-Le
always felt her Vietnamese and queer worlds were in conflict. Finding Ô-Môi,
however, helped to authenticate her ethnic identity. Ô-Môi helped make
the bridge for her; she can claim both queerness and Vietnamese-ness
because now there are other Vietnamese queers to validate her.
Particularly because her Vietnamese-language proficiency is limited,
My-Le also feels insecure about her Vietnamese identity. But having
met a diverse group of Vietnamese queers with varied Vietnamese
proficiency, My-Le can now see her "inadequacy" as a normal part of the Vietnamese
American experiences.
Language Bonding and Needs
Like other Vietnamese American organizations, Ô-Môi is a reflection of
the growing need and desperation of Vietnamese immigrants and their
descendants to not lose their ethnic culture and language. It is an
assertion by refugee people of their pride in their ethnic heritage and
their nationalism. Many Ô-Môi members have expressed their desire to
reconnect with their culture and relearn their mother tongue as some of
the main reasons why they joined Ô-Môi. Because the majority of
members are not fluent in Vietnamese and only a handful are proficient, those
who know more emerge as experts and become teachers to those who are
earnest to learn Vietnamese culture, language, and history.
For those who do not speak proficient Vietnamese, Ô-Môi becomes an
especially important network for them to relearn Vietnamese. They can
make friends and perhaps find lovers who speak their native tongue that
would make them feel "more Vietnamese." For example, My-Linh shares
with the group that one day she would like to make love in Vietnamese.
Audrey concurs with this desire to be in touch with one’s culture at
this most intimate level. As Hue-Lan puts it:
Because the language is a strong sense of identity. . . . You speak
English, you might be American. You speak Vietnamese, you become more
Vietnamese. Even if I don’t, you know, even if I’m learning Vietnamese
as a first-generation American, every time I speak Vietnamese, I become
more Vietnamese. So, it changes me. I can’t stay the same if I speak
Vietnamese more fluently. Something will change inside. . . .that can
change the way I think and feel about things.
Furthermore, Hue-Lan believes that being able to retain one’s
Vietnamese language proficiency as a queer Vietnamese would mean being able to
validate and assert both an ethnic and queer identity:
It also makes me proud to be queer, too. You know, because I know I’m
Vietnamese and I know I’m queer but I speak English only. So now I am
Vietnamese and I speak Vietnamese language and I am queer, so, in a
way, it’s all coming together, for myself. The moment I say "I," I know who
I am. That’s what it’s done for me.
Speaking Vietnamese and being queer at the same time is a great
symbolic act of liberation for many members who lead double lives, where they
can only be queer around non-Vietnamese queer friends and be Vietnamese and
straight-passing around straight Vietnamese. Ô-Môi provides a space
for them to be both. Being able to speak Vietnamese among queers is one
way of affirming both identities that are marginalized by mainstream
societies.
Ô-Môi’s original members founded the group with a desire to create a
support network and on an assumption that people who are of Vietnamese
heritage, were born female, and orient toward a queer gendered
sexuality do have certain things in common that will bond them as a group.
Sharing ethnic, gender, and sexual similarities, they share similar
life issues, which give them insights in supporting one another’s struggles.
Given the dominant view that stigmatize queer sexuality, many queers
come to acknowledge their homosexual, bisexual, or transgender tendency
in secret and guard that privacy from the heterosexist if not
homophobic world. Often, the only space where they could find support for their
queer sexuality was within a predominantly white queer setting, where,
unfortunately, racism and/or "cultural insensitivity" was prevalent.
Many thirst for support among those who would understand their cultural
background as well as normalize their queer gender/sexuality. They did
not know other queer Vietnamese and finding Ô-Môi was a "big break" and
an opportunity full of promises.
All members whom I interviewed expressed great appreciation for the
existence of Ô-Môi. It became their main source of connection to other
queer Vietnamese whom they would not have had the chance to meet.
Thu-Vân, one of the group co-founders, reported that she started the
group because she wanted to bring people and resources together.
Because she knew a few lesbians but they did not know each other, she
thought it would be a good idea to create a space that gives people an
opportunity to come together. Ô-Môi meetings, gatherings, and
discussions thus serve as a space for queer females of
Vietnamese-heritage to coalesce and bond. No longer isolated, these
women and transgender men are beginning to normalize and assert their
unique experiences as queer Vietnamese. Ô-Môi becomes a space that
validates both their ethnic and queer statuses that the larger U.S.
society, the predominantly white queer community, and the Vietnamese
American community marginalize or render invisible. In this process of
sharing and validating their experiences, they learn the common
experiences of becoming Vietnamese American, of becoming lesbian,
bisexual, or transgender, and of becoming queer Vietnamese American.
The examples provided in this paper suggest that Vietnamese American
lesbians, bisexual women, and female-to-male transgenders have
different struggles in the process of adaptation to the U.S. and that an analysis
of immigrant adaptation that does not consider the variegated genders
and sexualities of immigrants neglects this vibrant subculture and this
segment of the Vietnamese immigrant population. Such analysis would
fail to examine how immigrants who do not conform to the traditional,
heterogendered processes, resist hegemony. It would also fail to see
how this segment of Vietnamese immigrants has learned to build its own
community of support. It would be oblivious to the fact that Ô-Môi and
similar ethnic queer networks provide psychological comfort and
adjustment for its members. In addition, ethnic queer networks play a
vital role in processes of cultural maintenance and transformation by
asserting and normalizing a queer Vietnamese American identity. In
other words, the existence of such queer ethnic organizations indicates
that the route of immigrant adaptation for Vietnamese queers is not to
assimilate to queer mainstream America nor is it to conform to
heterosexist Vietnamese America. The new path for Vietnamese queer
immigrants in the U.S. is to pave its own road by borrowing adaptive
strategies from both worlds. Queer Vietnamese who came out and found
such ethnic queer network as Ô-Môi are learning through their
participation in this network to become Vietnamese American queers or
queer Vietnamese Americans.
Social capital in terms of a queer ethnic network is a specialized type
of social capital that queer ethnic Americans utilize in their
psychological and interpersonal development. Queer ethnic networks
like Ô-Môi provide a space for queer Vietnamese immigrants to adapt in
non-heterosexual and "untraditional" gender ways, while also validating
and supporting their ethnic status. By focusing on the experiences of
queer Vietnamese immigrants, I hope to have demonstrated how the
mainstream ethnic network and processes are heterogendered and that
such networks as Ô-Môi provide an alternative for Vietnamese queer
immigrants. This demonstration also highlights how immigrant lives are
heterosexualized and traditionally gendered and how immigrant studies
that account for a sexuality analysis will be richer in understanding
the diverse immigrant experiences.
The founding and continuation of Ô-Môi indicate that queer ethnic
networks, like other ethnic networks, meet special needs for its
members. In the case of Ô-Môi, this particular Vietnamese queer
network plays a vital role in the processes of social and psychological
adjustment of immigrants by affirming both their ethnic and queer
identity. In doing so, Ô-Môi helps in creating a new, emerging queer
Vietnamese America.
Notes
(put after headnote) I would like to thank Ô-Môi members for their
support in my research. For purposes of confidentiality, pseudonyms
are used for all members.
. Jane C. Wagner and Tina DeFeliciantonio, Girls Like Us, 16 mm, 57
min., Women Make Movies, New York, 1997.
. Monique Wittig, The Straight Mind and Other Essays (Boston: Beacon
Press, 1992).
. Adrienne Rich, "Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence,"
in Henry Abelove, Michele Aina Barale and David M. Halperin, eds., The
Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader (New York: Routledge,1993), 227-254.
. Alejandro Portes and Ruben G. Rumbaut, Immigrant America: A
Portrait (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996); P.D. Starr and A.E.
Roberts, "Community Structure and Vietnamese Refugee Adaptation: The
Significance of Context, International Migration Review 16 (1982),
595-609.
. Min Zhou and Carl L. Bankston III, Growing up American: How
Vietnamese Children Adapt to Life in the United States (New York:
Russell Sage, 1999); Min Zhou and Alejandro Portes, Chinatown: The
Socioeconomic Potential of an Urban Enclave (Philadelphia: Temple
University Press, 1995).
. Part of the mission of Queer Theory is to center sexuality as part
of our analysis of social life. For more, please see Steven Seidman’s
"Introduction," in Steven Seidman, ed., Queer Theory/Sociology
(Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers, 1996), 1-29.
. Chrys Ingraham, "The Heterosexual Imaginary: Feminist Sociology and
Theories of Gender," in Steven Seidman, ed., Queer Theory/Sociology
(Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers, 1996), 168-193.
. "Ô-Môi" is a Vietnamese slang word for lesbian. It is also a name
of a tropical fruit in Viet Nam. The Ô-Môi fruit looks like a huge
tamarind with small compartments where the flesh and nectar are
encased. To eat it, one must part the flesh of each case to suck out
the juice.
. Please see the previous endnote for an explanation. Another
explanation for the usage of this term was that it sounded almost
similar to the French term "homo" as in "homosexuelle." This parallels
the story where the Vietnamese vernacular adopts the term "B.D."
["Bay-day"] from the French word "berdache" to refer to gay men.
. I am referring to just the 1.2-mile business district but also the
network of business clusters and residential concentrations.
. The 2000 U.S. Census tabulates Vietnamese population at 1,122,528.
. Gina Masequesmay, "Little Saigon: An Exploratory Study of an Ethnic
Community," Senior thesis, Pomona College, 1991.
--
Gina Masequesmay, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
CSUN Asian American Studies Dept.
18111 Nordhoff Street
Northridge, CA 91330-8251
Office: 818-677-7219
Fax: 818-677-7094
http://www.csun.edu/~gm61310/
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