For A Queer Friendlier ECAASU

I spent all of last weekend at my first East Coast Asian American Student Union (ECAASU) conference ever. I had wanted to go for 4 years, but everytime they held a conference, I was either out of the country or had no funding. This year's ECAASU was held at Rutgers Univeristy, and they have a decent sized Asian/Asian-American population. It was the first time for me being in a banquet all filled with Asian American faces. Although there was such a large turnout, I felt a little unnerved by lack of queer sensitivity.

The Gay Asian Pacific Island Men of New York (GAPIMNY) and the South Asian Gay and Lesbian Association (SALGA) did hold a town hall meeting as one of ECAASU's few, if not only, queer centric workshop. Ironically, the workshop listed right underneath it was the heterocentric titled workshop "Male Sexuality Workshop, a workshop geared towards women."
My biggest gripe would have to be with the social mixers that were held. At the mixer I went to, we played a game of Confusion (an icebreaker where one has a list of tasks one asks others to perform as a way to get to know people). In my own opinion, I thought the tasks were non-condusive for getting to know people, and were very heterocentric.

This got me wondering; Why are Asian and Asian American more conservative on the issues of sexuality and homosexuality? I think the first thing that comes to people's mind are conservative Asian families. In my experience, I feel a lot of homophobia is exhbited from Asian American males. I think it may have to do with the Asian American male community becoming hypermasculine in order to combat imasculating stereotypes. Sometimes this results in homophobic tendencies.

Ending on a positive note, I was glad to see Queer friendly keynote speakers and artists. Most notably was Kelly Zen-Yie Tsai, a spoken word artist, in her shout out directed towards queer identified persons.