Tag Archives: sex

The Importance of the Asian Himbo

I haven’t explicitly blogged about the Asian-American experience in three years, last touching on the topic back in 2019 when I interviewed Bachelor contestant Revian Chang about her experience on the reality dating show. With May being Asian Heritage Month up here in Canada and Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month south of the border, I thought it would be appropriate to return to a subject I’ve explored so often since this blog’s inception. What I didn’t expect was the immense weight that would accompany my decision.

Thinking over the interim in which this site lay dormant I’m reminded of the 2021 Atlanta spa shootings, a horrific incident that struck me so deeply that it wasn’t until an old coworker asked me how I was feeling that I realized I was angry. I think back on a time where it felt like with every passing day was a new story about yet another hate crime being enacted against Asian people, violence born out of xenophobia that studies have shown flourished with the former POTUS’s tweets about the global pandemic.

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Even now, during the month when we as Asian people living in North America should be keeping our heads high, acknowledging our past hardships and present triumphs, we’re reminded only four days in that distrust of Asian Americans has been steadily growing over the past year. 33% of Americans believe that Asian Americans are “more loyal to their country of origin than to the United States.” Countries that many have never even stepped foot in.

The increased difficulty surrounding my existence is directly tied into the dehumanization of my race. The man who shot and killed eight people (six of them being Asian women) was able to do so because he viewed them as temptations before he was able to consider them people. Opposite that mindset, the model minority stereotype that surrounds Asian Americans might seem positive, but it still reduces individuals down to qualities they might not even embody. It’s why a range of representation is so crucial, and the reason the Asian himbo is so important. Continue reading

Why We Shouldn’t Care About the Intersex

The Case for Unisex Bathrooms.”

Faithful followers of this blog may recall that was a post we ran back in November of 2015, dealing with the push for equal bathroom access for transgendered folks. Yours truly made some pretty compelling arguments, and you’d expect the universe to comply with my effervescent fountain of wisdom, yet on February 22nd, the Trump administration announced it would repeal transgendered bathroom protections established by Obama.

So here we are again.

And that’s a little strange, because other than a couple incidents, I don’t recall a sudden wave of sexual assaults taking place after the Obama administration instituted its protections. Maybe it’s like how gay marriage was supposed to bring about the downfall of society, and it just takes a suuuuuuper long time to get started.

Or maybe it’s just a gut reaction to some of the more stupid elements out there. The folks who’d argue that the world should respect their choice to identify as a bottle of mayonnaise:

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Given painfully unironic martyrs like that, it’s not completely baffling why some people would push back against any unusual gender identity. Continue reading

2 Broke Girls, S6E16 “And the Tease Time”: A TV Review

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“When one pair of legs closes, another one opens.”

Or at least that’s what Polish Oprah says. I’d be careful about disagreeing with her, since critics are hanged by the neck until dead. It’s also the tactic that 2 Broke Girls appears to be taking, since I can’t remember a point when both Max and Caroline were in serious romantic relationships at the same time. One may have a brief fling while the other is dating, but that’s about the extent of it.

Larger ensemble comedies have likewise chosen to give select characters the spotlight re: significant others, but in this case the rest of the cast plays second fiddle to the duo at its core. The inability, or unwillingness, of the show’s writers’ room to allow both Max and Caroline date concurrently speaks to their narrow focus. One at a time; wait your turn, please.

To be fair this episode actually closes on the idea that they might be trying to make a change moving forward, so we should probably get to what actually happens-

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The Evolving Feminism of Game of Thrones: Evidence that Viewers Can Change Problematic Television

There are spoilers below, so very many spoilers. Read at your own risk.

I’ve often felt conflicted about Game of Thrones. 

From the beginning, I’ve been irritated with the gratuitous sex and nudity. I understand that this can sometimes be used to move the plot in an effective way (i.e. Cersei’s walk of shame). But, generally speaking, GOT has used naked ladies as window dressing to keep straight male viewers watching. HBO has been notorious for finding any and every opportunity to throw a couple of boobs into any given scene in all of its shows. However, as CollegeHumor points out in their NSFW video below, HBO’s gratuitous nudity only goes one way.

Unfortunately, Game of Thrones’ sex scenes have not only been irritating, some have also been majorly problematic. In the first season Daenerys Targaryen is sold into marriage with warlord Khal Drogo, who rapes her on their wedding night. While their relationship eventually progresses into “love,” this first scene made it impossible for me to ever really view their relationship as a loving one. It made me even more angry when I learned that, in the books, this scene between Daenerys and Drogo was actually consensual. Continue reading

The Power of Twitter Showcased at the Oscars: #OscarsSoWhite, #YesAllWomen, and #AskHerMore

Twitter has changed the way news is reported. The Black Lives Matter movement has been particularly successful in raising awareness for cases of police brutality that generally would have been overlooked by mainstream news channels.

Arguably the second most important aspect of Twitter is its ability to connect celebrities to their fan base. With the prevalence of these two features, it’s hardly surprising that celebrities and celebrity events have become more politicized.

This year’s Academy Awards are a prime example of this overlap between the celebrity world and political struggles that have been highlighted via Twitter. Below, I’ve included a few notable examples of Twitter flexing its muscles at the Oscars

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I’m not going to dwell too much on the circumstances of the #OscarsSoWhite boycott, since Gordon and Evan have already thoroughly explained its context. However, I do want to talk a bit about how the controversy was handled by the Oscars host, Chris Rock.

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Overall, I thought Rock did a great job calling out the Academy without reducing his monologue to a humourless lecture. However, in his article for Salon, Arthur Chu points out that,

Acting like caring about day-to-day violence in the streets and the impact media and culture have on that violence are somehow mutually exclusive — a common, frustrating, tired argument anyone who talks about racism in media will inevitably see dozens of times in the comments section — ignores history.

It ignores the many, many arguments that have been made about how the excuses made for the deaths of Trayvon Martin and Mike Brown frequently come verbatim from untrue stereotypes out of TV and movies, how the only way Darren Wilson’s description of Brown as a “demon” who was “bulking up to get through the bullets” could possibly make sense to anyone is after a lifetime of media portrayals of the scary superhuman black man. It ignores Martin Luther King going out of his way to call Nichelle Nichols and tell her not to quit “Star Trek” because having a black woman on TV who wasn’t a domestic servant mattered. It ignores the ongoing civil rights protests around the Oscars back in the 1960s and ’70s, including Marlon Brando making history as the first and only best actor winner to boycott the ceremony, sending American Indian Movement activist Sacheen Littlefeather to accept the award in his place.

Similarly, several activists have since pointed out the one-dimensionality of calling for more black representation only to appeal to Asian-American stereotypes for a laugh. Continue reading

The Wolves that Live in Skin and Space: A Book Review

wolvesthatliveThe Wolves that Live in Skin and Space is Christopher Zeischegg’s, better known as adult performer Danny Wylde, second novel. It’s also a deeply personal one that he described as “an autobiography horror hybrid” in an interview I conducted with him last month.

Given the first person point of view used throughout and the idea that the events taking place were based on, or were actually, “things that were happening in [his] life at the time” it became impossible for this reader and reviewer not to make his way through the book without mentally hearing the words in Zeischegg’s voice. Upon finishing the final, chilling page I was forced to ask myself the question: Does this novel only succeed given a reader’s connection with Chris himself?

While knowing the author, either as a performer or otherwise, may add another dimension to reading it I ultimately decided that it wasn’t necessary, and may even be unadvised as far as fully experiencing The Wolves that Live in Skin and Space is concerned.
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