Before say anything else, I am a unicorn. Not as in the one who TRPs drool over, but people like me are quite rare. I am trans, immigrant and came from an upper class family. So I am pretty confident when I say that I have some pretty unique first hand insights into masculinity. Seriously, about the only people who think about masculinity & feminity more than the menosphere are trans people, academia notwithstanding.

What prompted me to make this post is pretty simple, I had this racist statement thrown at me : "Asian men and women look alike".

It was said by this lady at my trans group in a roundabout way, but what she meant was clear as the day. Initially I didn't take this too seriously, I am very privileged in the looks department as a trans woman and Ive had this brought up over and over again, that I was some how on cheat mode and how asians are always so petite. Except that wasn't true, I am not petite, I stand 5'9, my mother is 5'7, and my cis cousin is 5'8. I came from a family of rather sizeable women. Something just didnt add up.

So when I got home and kept thinking about it when something clicked. I dont think the woman would have said anything if I were an asian FtM trans. Nobody says asian women look like men and only the other way around.

So this brings me to the point: The feminine asian men trope: It is just a part of the whole oppressive paradigm of white masculinity being the only correct masculinity as blacks masculinity is overly aggressive and asian masculinity being compromised by their racial status.

And that is why you see so much self hatred on the part of visible minorities in the trp, from the Elliot Rodger manifesto to the daily posts where guys boast about how many women they got despite "being non-white". Culturally, white masculine power is centred as the supreme thing, and of course, if you are not white, you cant have it.

You can only begin to undo the mental tie that gives arise the the inferiority / superiority complex endemic to the TRP once you begin to understand how you internalized certain biases against yourself in the first place.

If this post goes well, I want to start a whole series of these things. In a way I am very similar to many of you, ive spend hours upon hours thinking about masculinity, I was a huge misogynist (I actually went out of my way to harass women in high school, i hope you guys didnt do that) , and I ve went through a whole phase of I ought to be cerebral and be detached from personal relationships when I was just running away from the things that I was afraid to hurt me.