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can imagine there was little talk of sex and sexuality. What I did hear terried me, sure I was going to hell if I couldnt make it go away.
intertwined with homophobia, states Mondragon. For Asian men, this includes a history of being painfully emasculated, seen as feminine, and turned into objects reected in the no Asians online prole descriptions, precluding the possibility of any sort of attraction, emotional, or intellectual connections between two gay individuals.
have sex, even hot sex, with another man. This homophobia is a rejecting force that we have internalized and that operates in the psyches of all gay men in different ways... coming out is only the rst step in working with this traumatic reality. We use unconscious psychological defenses such as projection as a way to protect ourselves. The weak effeminate, undesirable Asian is a defensive projection allowing us to deny our own negative feelings and sense of inferiorityIm not the inferior one (denying that I feel this way about myself), they are.
ALL GAY MEN ARE VICTIMS OF THE GREATER RACIST LEGACY OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION LMFT AGON, THOMAS MONDR INTERTWINED WITH HOMOPHOBIA. FOR ASIAN MEN, THIS INCLUDES A Y HISTORY OF BEING PAINFULL S MA THO . EMASCULATED MONDRAGON, LMFT, ON OVERCOMING STEREOTYPES IN THE LGBT COMMUNITY.
3 4 THE F IGH T | APR IL 2013
ccording to a study by the National Gay and Lesbian task Force Policy Institute, over 80% of Gay Asian/Asian Pacic Islander (API) men and women experience discrimination because of their sexual orientation, and likewise because of their racial/ethnic identity; the same percentage reported that Asian/API LGBT people experience racism in the predominantly white LGBT community. In that sense there is at least a triple threat of oppression that LGBT Asian/API individuals can experience with resulting understandable negative effects on self-esteem, functioning, and their ability to nd meaning in their identities as LGBT and Asian. As a gay Asian and Latino man, and as an LGBT afrmative Psychotherapist and instructor in Antioch Universitys LGBT Specialization in clinical psychology, West Hollywood based Thomas Mondragon has had a very unique perspective regarding the topic of racism within the LGBT community. Mondragon grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico and came to Los Angeles after graduating high school to attend university. I grew up with a father who was native Hispanic New Mexican with a family history rooted in Northern New Mexico going back almost 300 years, and with a mother who was from Japan, who moved to the states upon marrying my father, reveals Mondragon. With two parents from very different cultures and languages in a predominantly white heterosexual U.S. culture, as a budding gay boy, I was very aware that I looked different, states Mondragon. While New Mexico had a large Hispanic population, at that time there were hardly any Asian people. I was usually seen as Asian and rarely as Latino. In addition to begin called a sissy, I was subjected to the common teasing and name-calling that many Asian kids hear growing upslant eyes, go back to Chinarooted in conceptions other kids were picking up from the stereotypes prevalent in the media and culture dating back to when Asian immigrants rst came to the U.S. in the 1800s.