All Press is Good Press: Prominent Asian Public Figures and Their Impact on Queer Discourse

In recent years, along with the increased acceptance, inclusion, and legal protection of members of the LGBTQIA+ around the world, members of the LGBTQIA+ in certain parts of the world, including Asia, continue to face an uphill battle in effecting changes in law and social perception of the community. Many parts of Asia have had a long, often positive history of inclusion and even exaltation of gender and sexual minorities in society. This however changed with the advent of Western social and political norms and Abrahamic religions in the region that brought with them different codes of ethics, which, along with colonialism and globalization, saw the existence of gender and sexual minorities criminalized.

However, for better or worse, influential personalities from the region or of Asian descent have helped refocus conversations about rights, acceptance, and the future of legislative reform in some of the countries in the region with little tolerance for the LGBTQIA+ community. Whether through overt support or inadvertent controversy, they continue to shine a spotlight on issues affecting gender and sexual minorities, not only in the region but globally.

Amy Tan’s Gentle Tiger Mom  

As the very first Asian-American to have her book –The Joy Luck Club- made into a movie, bestselling author Amy Tan stands out from the American literati as a writer with a unique perspective. Her books convey the struggles of migrant Asian families, especially from China, who make the transition from the East to the West. Tan’s own mother migrated from China, with her mother, a Shanghai native featuring prominently in her books’ themes.

On June 30, 2014, the day commemorating Lesbian Bisexual Transgender Pride Day, Tan penned an intimate and heartfelt message on Facebook in support of the LGBTQIA+, in which she highlighted her mother’s experiences with the community and her open-minded nature. She recounted how, in the early 1990s, her mother pulled her and her brother aside to ask whether they were Gay despite both being in heterosexual relationships at the time. “Around that time, my mother had been adopted by two men she called “the bachelors,” gay neighbors who lived in the apartment next to hers. She said that you did not have to be related to be part of a bachelor’s family. She also told me all the nice things they did for her every day–which was also sort of dig about things we did not do,” Tan wrote.

Her mother’s treatment of the Gay couple that became her adoptive sons, invited to family gatherings and “bossed them around, telling them what they could and could not eat,” Tan attributed to her mother’s early life in Shanghai “where sexual preferences were not hidden among the cosmopolitan set.” Though societal perceptions of Homosexuality changed after the Cultural Revolution in China, Tan’s mother continued to be “one of the most open people I’ve known-open to all possibilities and all kinds of people. She divided people she met into these categories: selfish, tricky, fake, mean, kind, genuine, thoughtful, and generous.”

Salman Rushdie’s Realism Fiction Take

The world was shocked after Man Booker prize winner and bestselling British-American author, Salman Rushdie, was attacked and stabbed while giving a public lecture at the Chautauqua Institution in Chautauqua, New York, blinding him in one eye. Rushdie, who has long been a polarizing literary figure, is best remembered for a long-standing Fatwa issued in 1989 by the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, after the release of his book The Satanic Verses. Rushdie then went into hiding, living under police protection for close to a decade, as detailed in his autobiography Joseph Anton: A Memoir.  

Born in Mumbai, India, in the same year that India not only gained its independence from the UK, but also the British Raj in the Indian subcontinent was partitioned into three distinct countries – India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh – Rushdie has inculcated much of his Indian heritage into his writing, covering the Indian migrant story, religious issues, and issues around classism and gender politics. His book The Golden House, however, includes issues of gender and sexuality in a different way as a central character in the story struggles with his identity.

In interviews after the release of The Golden House, Rushdie gave his thoughts about his personal experiences with the LGBTQIA+ community both personally and as a storyteller. In response to a question about the juxtaposition between the Western attitudes and those of majority-Muslim countries regarding the LGBT community, Rushdie recounted his experiences growing up in Bombay – now Mumbai – “I grew up in Bombay, where there has always been quite a substantial transgender community, the Hijira. I’ve spent time in that community listening to their stories and hearing the convictions of their lives. That was for me one of the starting points in writing about an increasingly central subject of gender identity these days.”

He also noted that he has witnessed the successful transition of two close friends in the US, “one in each direction, male to female and female to male. Yes, these are people I care about who’ve gone through this process,” as another source of inspiration for his work. In 2017, however, he shared his concerns about the transition of very young people. “To put it crudely, if there’s a boy who likes playing with dolls and wearing pink shirts it shouldn’t necessarily mean that he has to have gender reassignment surgery,” Rushdie said, clarifying that, while he is not hostile to transitioning, he worries about it.

Read More:

• Unity in Diversity: Gay Games to Make Asian Debut in Hong Kong
• Art of Authenticity: Indian Painter and Photographer Shares His Coming Out Journey and Artistic Inspiration
• Slow Start: Japan’s Watered-down LGBTQ Understanding Bill a Step in the Right Direction

Controversy

Michelle Yeoh’s Oscar Win

Known for her role in the 2018 box office triumph Crazy Rich Asians, the first Hollywood film to have an all-Asian cast since The Joy Luck Club three decades prior, and most recently, the critically acclaimed movie Everything Everywhere All at Once which saw her win an Oscar, Malaysian actress Michelle Yeoh is no stranger to the limelight.

Yeoh’s Oscar win, along with overdue praise for her talent and versatility as an actress, has earned her criticism from certain corners of society. Despite the movie covering issues of sexuality in which Yeoh’s character, Evelyn, is confronted with her daughter’s sexuality and same-sex relationship while navigating cultural perceptions, filial piety, and parenthood. In an interview with NPR’s GPB News podcast, Yeoh attempts to unravel the rather complicated relationship between mother and Lesbian daughter in the movie.

“…she wants to talk to her daughter. She wants her to understand that, you know, she accepts the fact that she is gay; she has a white girlfriend. But it’s impossible to communicate that to her father from a previous generation because, in his eyes, Evelyn would have been a total failure. As she is a failure as a daughter, now she is a failure as a mother because she can’t even teach her daughter to be proper,” said Yeoh.

Controversy abounds after Yeoh’s win as her native country of Malaysia still has comparatively harsh anti-Homosexuality laws which carry harsh punishments when enforced. A blog by the name Malaysiansmustknowthetruth pointed out the hypocrisy of Malaysian leaders praising Yeoh’s win in a queer-friendly film, stating “Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, a supposed reformer, has publicly stated that LGBTQ, secularism, and communism will never be recognized in this country – but yet he congratulated Yeoh on her Oscar win for an LGBTQ-friendly film.” This is after a minister called upon the country’s Federal Territories Islamic Department to investigate the woman’s march “because of LGBTQ elements, which he deemed were “efforts to promote or normalize deviant lifestyles which go against Islamic values and human nature.”

Malaysians took to Twitter to express their views on Yeoh’s win. A Twitter user under the handle @ithayla wrote, “If you are Malaysian and anti-LGBTQ, Michelle Yeoh’s win is not for you. If you are Malaysian and criticize feminism, Michelle Yeoh’s win is not for you. If you are Malaysian and support filmmakers being arrested for ‘sensitive issues’, Michelle Yeoh’s win is not for you.” It is hoped that with increased scrutiny of Yeoh’s home country after her momentous Oscar win, and with the changes being witnessed in the region in countries like Singapore and Japan, Malaysia and other South Asian countries with archaic anti-Homosexuality laws will consider repealing them.

Jackie Chan’s Gay Lovechild

Once the second-highest-paid actor in Hollywood, Jackie Chan is no stranger to public scrutiny which intensified in 1999, when the star admitted to carrying on an affair with former Hong Kong beauty queen Elaine Ng, which resulted in the birth of daughter Etta Ng Chok-lam. Seventeen years later, Chan would be in the headlines again after Chok-lam came out as Gay on social media. In an Instagram post, the then-17-year-old wrote, “In case no one got the memo, I’m gay.” While promoting his film The Foreigner, Chan was asked about his daughter coming out, to which he responded: “If she likes it, that’s fine.”

Having been raised in Hong Kong, Chok-lam has publicly criticized her celebrity parents, having reported her mother to the police over a domestic disagreement in 2016, and claiming she had been rendered homeless as she received no financial assistance from her father, then worth $400 million. Though Chok-lam claims to hold no grudge over her father’s absence in her life, she told British media in a 2015 interview that her father “never existed in my life. I will never regard him as a father.”

Shortly after she came out and was reported to be homeless, Chok-lam moved in with friend and Hong Kong-based Canadian social media influencer friend Andi Autumn. Chok-lam and Autumn got married a year later in Toronto, Canada, before returning to Hong Kong. Chan, Chok-lam’s father, is yet to make a public statement regarding his estranged daughter’s same-sex marriage.

_{Photos: Vincentas Liskauskas via Unsplash}