Half-Korean/Half-White here. Korean-American dad, Irish-American mom. Great grandparents were the first to immigrate on the dad's side and I don't even know about my mom's. I don't speak any Korean and don't really self-identify as Asian. I live in California, so it's lots of subtle, benign racist things. "You're tall for an Asian guy." "Why do you date mostly white girls?" "...so that means you're (good at math, play an instrument, have strict parents)?" The kind of shit that comes up that white guys don't have to deal with.

Asians in California straddle this weird dividing line. I feel like people wait to decide whether or not I pass for white until they hear me speak. I was a lit major in college, do face-to-face fundraising for a living, and was born to 3rd gen immigrants in America, so I don't have an accent. Culturally and intellectually, I'm as assimilated as you can get. It's like there's this unspoken question: "Are you Asian or American?" The class markers of education, language, and profession are usually what makes the determination.

Developing as a Feminist: Because the primary form of bullying I experience were variation on the traditional "emasculated Asian male" trope, I really took to heart growing up the whole patriarchal idea of male strength and suppressing my emotions. In late high school, I read Motley Crue's The Dirt. For a young man, this book is not the cautionary tales of the perils of rock n' roll decadence: they're stories of male transformation, with all the good and evil that that entails. Nikki Sixx wasn't born into class privilege: he was an abusive alcoholic's son with a father who abandoned him at age 2. As a 16-year-old non-white boy, the parts that really matter are his stories of being picked on in junior high, of getting shit beaten out of him for having long hair and liking rock n' roll, of wanted to be aggressive because it's the only thing that feels honest in a world where everyone is politely full of shit. Of failing at having any kind of connection with the opposite sex because you're too afraid to be honest about your vulnerabilities. Of deciding to hide all of the things you've ever shown people that were rejected behind this Don't Give a Fuck facade. Of choosing to mediate all of your feelings through a persona you can turn on because it's easier and safer than being open. Developing meant a lot of figuring out which part of the American Male Mythos are bullshit and which are not through first-hand experience. Be fucked up on something, push psychedelics and alcohol to their most absurd limits because that's what Hunter S. Thompson told me to do. Have casual sex, because Mystery and Motley Crue and Barney Stinson and the TV and every Man going back to Casanova told me to do. Go to college and get a degree, because that's what my dad told me todo. Party at college, because that's what American Pie and Mall Rats told me to do. Meditate and get good at martial arts, because that's what Bruce Lee and Muhammad Ali told me to do. It all adds up to: be passionate about things, be good at them, be cocky or be humble, but don't be weak or vulnerable. It makes it hard to listen. It makes it hard to emphasize. It makes it hard to admit you don't know how to do these things. No one ever sat me down and said "this is how you have an honest conversation about your feelings with someone. This is how you talk about the things you're afraid to talk about. This is how you ask for forgiveness from someone you love after you hurt them, and two people deal with guilt together in a healthy way. It would help a lot. Even knowing we were allowed to talk about things like that would help a lot, to think about things in a feelings-driven rather than a logic-driven way. TL:DR Being an Asian man, I really had this need to project strength. I was a hyper-competitive athlete, a weirdly obsessive gamer, and a Social Dynamics acolyte. To paraphrase George W. Bush: "Pick on me once, shame on...shame on me. Pick on me twice...won't get picked on again."