Abstract
Intersectionality is abstract, and there are many examples of attempts to put it into practice that fail because it is challenging to talk about how different categories of identity and systems of inequality overlap, infuse each other with meaning, and more. C. Winter Han’s Geisha of a Different Kind is not subject to this critique. Using an impressive collection of ethnographic observations, interviews, and content and discourse analysis of cultural depictions of gay Asian men, Han critically interrogates gay Asian men and the systems of inequality that shape their lives, identities, and interactions.
Han shows how gay Asian men navigate complex intersectional terrain. As a group, gay Asian men may receive a great deal of gender privilege within their ethnic communities. But, as a result of western domination, colonization, and orientalist conceptualizations of Asian men as feminine within the context of the United States, gay Asian men navigate a complex set of dilemmas in the U.S. Han’s great brilliance in this book is to both tear apart the different categories that shape these men’s interactions and their experiences of identity and inequality and show how a consideration of any single category will always leave out important information. It is an impressive illustration of what great intersectional scholarship looks like in practice.
The book starts off with an insightful history of the feminization of Asian men, connecting this with colonization, xenophobia, and orientalist conceptualizations of Asian men. Han documents this complex history of racial and ethnic conflict and colonization. But Han then goes on to illustrate how these historical relationships still frame depictions of Asian men in the United States today as well. Relying on interviews and ethnographic observations, Han shows that depictions of Asian men often work in ways that masculinize the West and continue a long tradition of feminizing the East. For instance, in studying drag shows in Seattle, Han is keen to note the pervasive notion among participants and audiences that “Asian men are just better at looking like real girls” (p.22), as one Asian drag queen put it. Han dissects this belief system, shows how the ideology that supports it is also present among a wide variety of cultural artifacts depicting Asian men in the United States, and shows how racism within the gay community constructs gay Asian men’s identities and shapes their experiences.
Han builds on this chapter with an interesting discourse and content analysis of depictions of gay Asian men in two mainstream gay men’s magazines over a five-year period. These magazines are an interesting data source and bolster Han’s argument that mainstream gay culture is also white. While few and far between, images of Asian men in these publications are often used in ways that construct gay white men as “masculine” and normative. Beyond a question of numbers (a notable finding was the relative invisibility of Asian men in these publications), Han unpacks the images and stories of gay Asian men that are present—all of which work to situate gay Asian men as effeminate foreigners whose complaints about racism within the community get lost alongside satirical presentations like “Gay or Asian?” features.
Next, Han builds on his examination of racism as a structuring element of gay Asian men’s lives, identities, and interactions. He begins with a critique of the discourse of “preference” as it is used to justify racially exclusive sexual desires. Relying on interviews, field notes, and even data from social media websites like Grindr, Han shows how the discourse of “preference” conceals a great deal of racism that is institutionalized. While white gay men are often hesitant to label their preferences as “racist,” Han offers a great deal of evidence to suggest that they coincide with a great deal of racism toward Asian men regardless of how they are intended. Indeed, this is so much the case that one respondent claimed, “I feel more like a minority in the gay community than I do in the Asian community because I’m gay” (p.95). Many of the men in Han’s study desired to either be white or to be accepted by whites—a set of desires that work to gay white men’s collective advantage. Han also discovered a great deal of distancing on the part of gay Asian men eager to situate themselves as “more white” than others.
But Han is also keen to illustrate and examine the ways that gay Asian men resist this stigma. Marginalized for being gay and, within gay culture, for being Asian, gay Asian men face a challenging and complex set of circumstances against which to forge meaningful identities and to challenge systems of power, authority, and control. Often, attempts to embody the feminized and stigmatized stereotypes are examples of gay Asian men’s working within the system. As white men often occupy desirable terrain within the pocket of gay culture Han studied here, many gay Asian men perceive white men interested in Asian men (“rice queens”) as in short supply. Trading on stigmatized stereotypes is perceived as offering some an advantage. Rather than attempting to be completely integrated into the gay mainstream, the men in Han’s study attempt to retain intersectional identities that resist a simple narrative of success or failure.
Han’s ethnography of “Gaysian America” will undoubtedly provoke conversation. He is well versed in research on race, sexuality, and gender and has a nuanced understanding of the colonial roots of the enterprise of ethnography. Geisha of a Different Kind is an important book about how gender, sexual, racial, and national identities are intertwined in ways that make conversations about inequality and change challenging. My only wish for the book would have been a more thorough engagement with work among sociologists of sexualities engaged in similar projects with different populations—Adam Isaiah Green, Anthony Ocampo, and Jane Ward, for instance. Some of what is “new” in this book builds on and could have been framed as extending existing research among sexualities scholars. But the book does break new ground and will certainly provoke those connections and conversations in the future.