I’ll never forget seeing Amanda Lepore at the Slide some years ago, where she was the MC for some amateur "dancing" contest. I think she was wearing stickers. Two of them.
Yeah, Dan Savage is all, duh, reporters are gonna report, but all the mockery from his commentors.. it's kind of mean. Extended immigrant families like his from Taiwan have some powerful family ties and bonds. I've seen it before, my Asian friends' families are rather tight.. to the point of strangling, sometimes. And that's for the straight ones. Besides the immense pressure to succeed, I'm sure Wu had been doing a delicate dance there, and perhaps in the euphoria of his coup let down his guard a bit, didn't think about it.
When I was at (his) art school, it was always the Asian students slaving away til midnight, every night. (I was gone by cocktail hour). Often their tuition was paid by the extended family pooling resources, and expecting extremely hard work and..fealty in return. It's complex, but it's not just yer Uncle Bob hearing it. Anyway, hope this turns out to be a good thing for him- and maybe for the family too. They should be nothing but extremely proud of him.
@Baroness: Really? That educational experience sounds more like my father at MIT in the 60s than Asians at art school today. When I was at RISD, most of the Asians (not Asian American, like myself) came from extremely wealthy families, went to fancy boarding schools, and though most were equally as hard working (except for a handful of Korean girls who would rather shop and giggle in groups) as every other student.
I don't see these familial bonds and pressure as playing a role in his coming out or lack thereof, from my experience (which again, is slightly different as I was born and raised in the U.S., but my extended family is in Taiwan) it's more of the generational and cultural barriers that is the problem. Who wants to explain to their grandma that lived through World War II that her grandson prefers penis? And yeah, they're all nosy as hell too. But I agree, it will probably turn out to be a good thing for him.
@fuzzywhat: I hear you. My experience was twenty years ago, if that makes a difference.. I must say too that MIT is one thing.
To send your kid to ART school at huge expense is another. There's a leap of faith there that perhaps for the kids I knew was added stress. They had more to prove perhaps, fashion is not like engineering, say. The kids I knew weren't wealthy, their immigrant parents often had small businesses in Queens.
I felt great empathy for those kids-were they working in the library til midnight to avoid going home? They never took the time for fun, it seemed. But I'm sure they excelled at whatever they did in their career.
01/27/09
01/27/09
More pics here: [www.manhattanoffender.com]
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01/27/09
When I was at (his) art school, it was always the Asian students slaving away til midnight, every night. (I was gone by cocktail hour). Often their tuition was paid by the extended family pooling resources, and expecting extremely hard work and..fealty in return. It's complex, but it's not just yer Uncle Bob hearing it. Anyway, hope this turns out to be a good thing for him- and maybe for the family too. They should be nothing but extremely proud of him.
01/27/09
I don't see these familial bonds and pressure as playing a role in his coming out or lack thereof, from my experience (which again, is slightly different as I was born and raised in the U.S., but my extended family is in Taiwan) it's more of the generational and cultural barriers that is the problem. Who wants to explain to their grandma that lived through World War II that her grandson prefers penis? And yeah, they're all nosy as hell too. But I agree, it will probably turn out to be a good thing for him.
01/27/09
To send your kid to ART school at huge expense is another. There's a leap of faith there that perhaps for the kids I knew was added stress. They had more to prove perhaps, fashion is not like engineering, say. The kids I knew weren't wealthy, their immigrant parents often had small businesses in Queens.
I felt great empathy for those kids-were they working in the library til midnight to avoid going home? They never took the time for fun, it seemed. But I'm sure they excelled at whatever they did in their career.
01/27/09
Isn't that kind of like revealing that a Rastafarian smokes pot?
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01/27/09
Wu Bang Man?
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01/29/09