Dear Diary,

It’s June. In New York, that means Pride Month – which also means that the tank tops are out in full force. (If you live in Hell’s Kitchen, the tank tops have probably been out since February.)

For me, June is also a time of reckoning: What do I have to show after surviving all those winter nights, when I told myself I’d go to the gym but instead ended up binge-watching a show while eating half a pint (okay fine, a whole pint) of ice cream?

This is the time of year when people start snapchatting their latest weigh-in on the bathroom scale. It’s when meal prep goes to a whole new level and people start talking about the 47 different restrictions on what they can eat at certain times of the day on certain days of the week before and after a certain kind of workout.

Okay, I’m exaggerating. (Or at least I hope I’m exaggerating.) But this is what June feels like to me, as a 5-foot-10, 150-pound Asian dude who sort of just eats what he wants to eat and tries to ride his bike at least once a day. I like to tell myself that I’m a grounded person, that I don’t need external validation, and that I have my priorities set out in a healthy way. But the pressure to conform, to change, to be seen as more desirable, is real.

I see muscle-bound men all around me – on Instagram, on billboards, and in every gay bar in Hell’s Kitchen. And you know what? I admire people who have the drive and strength of commitment to literally change their lifestyles and their bodies, whether for health, for looks, or for both.

But for Asian American men, it’s a little more complicated than that. In American culture, we’ve been emasculated politically and socially. As part of the “model minority,” we’re known to keep our heads down and to be deferential. We’re rarely portrayed as hunky or sexy on television. Instead, we’re nerdy, we’re quirky, and maybe we get to be someone’s sidekick. In gay spaces, we’re effeminate, we’re submissive, and we’re almost always bottoms.

In that context, it can seem like radical, subversive work for a gay Asian guy to break through those stereotypes and prove that we can also be dominant, muscular, and desirable in a “mainstream” way.

That’s when I too start to get caught up in a gym frenzy: I want so badly to disprove everyone who thinks that all Asian men are submissive twinks. I want to show all the small-minded gays who seek out Asian men in expectation of an easy hookup that their assumptions are wrong. I want to turn the tables on the people who have grabbed at me as I walk past them in the club, and who are unable to comprehend why I don’t reciprocate their attention.

And that means not being skinny. That means that I have to bulk up and look the part of a normatively masculine and dominant you-had-better-not-mess-with-me man.

But that’s the dilemma: As Asian American men, we may think that we are exploding stereotypes by embodying the very norms of masculinity that cultural and political standards say we cannot attain. In doing so, however, we’re actually helping validate and perpetuate those same toxic standards as legitimate metrics by which to judge ourselves and others.

And so, while some guys negate the stereotype of effeminate Asian men by way of their bulked-up bodies and masculine appearances, the rest of us are left in that category of people who still haven’t managed to cross the finish line. Despite our best efforts to decolonize our desire and empower ourselves as people of color, we continue to allow the ideals of white, Western masculinity in America to define our senses of self-worth and our perceptions of others.

Don’t get me wrong: I appreciate and respect my gay Asian friends who put in the physical, mental, and emotional work to be healthy and to look a certain way. That effort is proof of a serious level of commitment, diligence, and discipline.

But overcoming stereotypes of Asian emasculation is not about proving that we too can achieve “mainstream” notions of masculinity and desirability.

It’s about reclaiming and uplifting our identities and our bodies – including the feminine and the quirky and the nerdy and the submissive aspects of who we might be – as traits that we are proud of and that we celebrate, instead of as things that we try to erase.

It’s about allowing ourselves and others to explore and experiment – in how we dress, in how we talk, in how we walk – outside the narrative of toxic masculinity that we are constantly exposed to, and that we are told we must play along with in order to finally be seen as men.

It’s about supporting our trans and gender non-conforming (TGNC) community members in dismantling transmisogyny, which manifests in violence and daily discrimination against trans women and femme TGNC people.

It’s about getting over our fear of the feminine.

I’m not a muscular gay guy whose collection of tank tops nicely features his biceps and pecs. I have a quirky laugh and when I get excited talking about something, my hand gestures become more dramatic and the pitch of my voice goes higher. I’ve been growing my hair out for almost a year now. On some days, I dress more “feminine”; on other days, I go more neutral or “masculine”; and on weekends, I wear sweatpants.

My self-love, and my pride in who I am – fully, openly, and unabashedly – is the radical act of survival and existence that I bring with me to Pride this year. See you there.



Patrick Lee

Patrick serves on the GAPIMNY steering committee as Community Chair, and he is currently helping plan the first National Conference for LGBTQ Korean Americans. (You can find out more about the conference here.) He’s also excited to march in Pride this year with Poongmul Movement Builders, a Korean drumming group for LGBTQ people of color and allies.