this post was submitted on 07 Dec 2024
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I'm a Han Chinese who grew up partially in China and in Australia. While I avoided a bunch of expectations for certain forms of classic Western masculinity because I am an inscrutable removed, other aspects were unavoidable. It wasn't a faux pas to not play footy or whatever, and it was probably expected that I was more academically inclined over playing contact sports.
Half my family are CPC revolutionaries and cadres. The other half are the peasantry that we fought for, regardless of how money hungry and reactionary.
A lot of conflicting ideas of what I should be, from 老百姓 from the country, Western liberalism and hardline Communists have been... Bestowed upon me. I have to be a breadwinner, I have to service the people, I have to be stoic (or at the very least not beheld by emotion), I have to find a high paying profession, I have to be a protector, I have to produce an offspring, I have to consider the greater good, I have to be assertive, I have to change or suppress myself to get women. As the only male heir from the one child policy, it's a lot.
A (white) girlfriend once asked me how I was feeling after a particularly gruelling double shift where smarter workers than I walked off the job. I didn't answer immediately. Should I be reserved because it was nothing compared to someone that walked the Long March? Or someone who immigrated to a different continent to seek a better life? Or the Platonic ideal of a masculine man? I replied "I will be fine", which was an honest response. A bad day doesn't mean I won't overcome it. My grandfather became the man of the house at the age of 13 because his father was killed by Japanese, his mother couldn't work because her feet were bound because it was the style. We were living on land stolen after a genocide. My Sous chef worked 19 hours to my 16 and a bit. Our bills were paid. There was food on the table. There was a roof over our heads. There were no bombs or snipers aiming for us. I genuinely meant what I said. I will be fine. I was 22. Now that I've learned to communicate better, after learning that your gender, racial and class identity aren't as separate as you'd think, I probably would have answered differently. I could have communicated better.
My hardships didn't stem from being a cisgender male. Nor would being trans or gay make it better. The world isn't kind to the proletariat. It's why I'm a communist. Your identity plays a role, it's why I didn't fall into stupidpol.
Who knows, I may have been able to speak about my emotions properly before I was 30.
Thanks for writing this up. I'm also chinese diaspora, but with a slightly different experience than you because I was both born and raised in the good ol us of a. I'm still completely unsure of my roots, but I do know my grandfather was a revolutionary before he passed. I'm just sad I was too young to ever talk to him about my experiences when I was back in china. I can definitely relate to these social pressures, and especially the social pressures that happen at the intersection of being from an asian culture in a western environment. Get good grades, get into a good college, i've heard that my entire life and now that i've done it, get a good internship, get a good job... and the pressures to conform never stop. I don't have too much to say, but thank you for writing this, it really resonated with me.