‘Identifying one’s difference should be a journey of self-discovery’

The year I decided to come out as Chinese, I already had some experience of coming out, but as gay. Wanting to build on the new freedom I felt as an “out” and fully realised homosexual man, I thought I could lift another of my debilitating suppressions.

I had always cringed over the question of my heritage. I was often identified as Chinese against my will. My features, the standout ones, I inherited from my Chinese father: straight, black hair, mono-lidded eyes and skin that tans to dark olive. But I longed for more of my mother’s Scottish heritage. I grew up in a regional Queensland town where racism was a dormant coal, primed to be stoked by politicians like Pauline Hanson. It was self-preservation to want to be more like Mum and less like Dad.

Why wasn’t there room for both my Chinese dad and Scottish mum in the lifeboat of my pride?Credit: Yaroslav Danylchenko / Stocksy U

By comparison, I didn’t think my homosexuality was that easy to spot. I acted straight for years, using my loutish North Queensland accent as a prop. I adopted an encrypted language that I believed the straight world couldn’t decode. Secret signs that helped me connect with my gay community safely. A look. A knowing nod. A way of dressing. I felt like an insider for once. Cool, edgy and at times superior. I mostly shrugged off my gay shame.

One day, I went to hear the Australian photographer William Yang speak about reclaiming his Chinese heritage. Inspired by his line, “I came out as Chinese,” I told my boyfriend that I was planning a second coming out. But he was of British heritage and couldn’t relate. Was I trying to be exotic or doing cosplay? He didn’t understand that talking about being Chinese all the time was just my way of redressing an imbalance. Making up for a childhood I believed I had half-lived.

Eventually, I started to notice racial microaggressions creeping into the jokes of our gay friends. They’d complain about Asian drivers. They’d mistake one Asian television star for another. They’d laugh at my boyfriend, diagnosing him with yellow fever. At our favourite Chinese restaurant, they deferred to me to order, as if I knew by genetic memory what was good to eat.

When my boyfriend and I eventually broke up and I was “mingling” with singles again, I discovered that “No Asians” was some kind of special order on gay dating apps, like asking for gluten-free in a restaurant.

Writer Steve MinOn: “What I would really like is for people to get beyond asking me about my heritage at all.”Credit: Chris Crawford

It seemed the insider status I was given by my gay community didn’t extend to my Chinese heritage. If I were to come out as Chinese, I needed to find a different subset to hang with. Perhaps I could surround myself with Chinese or Asian gays. They call that immersion.

To test this theory, I travelled to Japan and lost myself in Tokyo’s sea of black hair. It almost worked for me. I felt disappeared, but in a good way, as if I fitted in. And as a bonus, I could buy clothes off the rack, designed for the shorter Asian stature. When I got home, I opened my subset to include Brisbane’s Asian gay set. In an effort to connect, I found myself telling white jokes as if I wasn’t half white myself.

Not quite immediately, but eventually, I understood the inconsistency of that. What the hell was I doing? I was suppressing half of my heritage again, but this time the Scottish side. There was guilt building. Why wasn’t there room for both Dad and Mum in the lifeboat of my pride?

Authors will tell you the best way to disentangle a stumper is to write about it. So, I laid down the beginnings of a novel about a mixed-race family who were just like mine. The story, I hoped, would help articulate the liminal space I existed in, between races and cultures. I depicted my protagonist as a walking corpse because in that form he could defy his nature, be two things at once. In his case, alive and dead. It was a subversive idea, but I had to write him that way, as a multidimensional being – because that’s who I was.

When I finished the novel, I understood a little better what I had been struggling to articulate. Not my Chinese or Scottish heritage. Not the two races in their silos. I was looking for a way to explain how I was part of each, and both. I should have been coming out as a mixed-race person. It’s no small group to belong to. We exist in every town and city, in every state of the country, though we’re rarely counted.

Unfortunately, it takes a long and in-depth conversation to get all that out at a party, and I’m aware that Australians prefer to talk in terms of teams. Whose side are you on, Steve? What do you identify as? When you tell people about your background, they go looking for physical evidence.

The best I can do in that circumstance is try not to flinch while they inspect my face, my hair, my eyes. But what I would really like is for people to get beyond asking me about my heritage at all. Because asking is “othering”. It means you’ve identified me as different. And identifying one’s difference should be a journey of self-discovery. Not you telling me about my identity. Let me define it for myself.

First Name Second Name (UQP) by Steve MinOn, is out now.

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