Lyle

The date is July 18, 2018. It’s a gorgeous sunny day and the corporate queers (myself + husband included) are flocking to the rooftop patio of the 745 Thurlow building to partake in some fancy cocktails served alongside some tasty bites, and even tastier shirtless servers and bartending staff. When it comes to raising money for HIV/AIDs based charities, in this instance the Dr. Peters Aids Foundation, a healthy dose of alcohol and overt masculinity helps to loosen those purse strings. I met Lyle serving cocktails at the Absolute Pride Cocktail Bar, and I was immediately struck by his unmistakable beauty, surpassed only by his intelligence. I was so impressed with his confidence that I emailed the centre, who passed my contact information onto the local Davie Street establishment where he served and danced. To my astonishment, he emailed me just a few days later and a photoshoot was booked. In the time leading up to this encounter, I wondered how great it would be to capture him in motion. As someone who is rhythmically challenged, I desired to find an engaging means to celebrate this man’s dancing talents. For this particular individual, I see dance as a critical component to the knowledge that Lyle shares with the people he encounters. I set out to capture this person in movement in the hopes it will form a narrative for his being. With fast beats and strobe lights flashing, Lyle gets to work on the studio floor, pushing the shutter and processing speed of my DSLR to its limits.

Fetishizing Being

As a gay asian man, Lyle is no stranger to the many forms of racism that is experienced in our modern North American context. In this work, I express the duality of racism often directed to asian members of our gay community. Since the beginning of online hook-ups and dating, yeah, dating… [insert sarcastic tone here] websites and mobile apps have plagued the gay social networking scene with a litany of prejudice-based criteria to search and select your ideal fuck. Up until just recently, you could screen your applicants by Race, Age, Weight, Height, Tribe (which is a great way to code a number of traits into one tagged category of being… you gotta love how efficient us fags are), Position, Health Status etc. And I say just recently because the removal of race based screening tools have existed up until the summer of 2020, but rest assured, you are well within your abilities to continue screening on all other categories.

To state that the mechanics of racial screening is complex, is a gross understatement with respect to the truly harmful implications these tools have on our ability to create safe and inclusive spaces for everyone. These screening tools are used to ensure that those racial preferences do not occupy any real-estate on the infamous grid of debauchery. But just to be on the safe side, it remains common practice, to clearly indicate your racial preferences in the body of the profile text. So if you really wanted to communicate how disinterested you are in a person based on the color of their skin, you’ve got options! As a personal anecdote, I recall clearly a day when I was hanging out with my pal (who happens to be half Japanese and half White) who told me that he was messaging with someone he fancied, only to be told by the individual “FUCK OFF, NO ASIANS” upon the disclosure of his face to this unknown online party. This memory, and the unease I felt at the time, flooded back when chatting with Lyle leading up to the photoshoot. Sadly, its an all too common reality for many marginalized members of our queer community.

The first piece of work in the Diptych attempts to capture this racial bias against our beautiful asian community. To exemplify this point, it did not require much effort to find a snippet from someones Grindr account to articulate these sentiments. It reads “Nope… I’m not racist, OK! It’s a preference.” The reality for many gay men trying to find some companionship in this world, early attempts by many are deemed futile due to the gatekeepers of racial profiling. When the ideals remain reinforced as the Caucasian corporate queer man - ie no fats, no fems, no asians…. Fetishizing our Non-Asianess… you simply don’t stand a chance.

On the flip side, there are those who seek out Asian men and use racial screening as a means to “hunt” for the next tight asian hole to fill. The emphasis here is the predatory nature of objectification and de-personification. In this case, one contributor to Vice Magazine wrote in 2017 on the implications of racial fetishization, and it’s impact on the sense of being and self-worth. The author dares to question whether the racial fetishists actually loves him for the person that he is, or for the racial archetype that he represents, which in turn, serves to satisfy a one-sided fantasy? For me, the artist, it raises questions that bring into question how to define the boundaries of healthy sexual attraction, kink and fetish, versus the darker side of predatory objectification. Fetishes, to be clear, are not to be vilified, but when does a beautiful expression of ones being and attraction to another man become problematic, and in some instances, dangerous?

I can’t possibly do this topic justice without writing a second masters thesis (future PhD dissertation topic???), but let’s take a step back to meditate for a moment on why we may have arrived at this point. I see the gay community leaning toward this rhetoric of preference for a number of reasons. And in case you need a lesson in male arousal, contrary to other radical beliefs, men do not will their dick hard, nor is there a switch that tells them when to get and to not get an erection. It is very much a chemical reaction in the body responding to various stimuli that either has the effect of arousal, or the effect of flaccidity. So another way to put it, I am not in control of who I am attracted to and who will arouse my senses. So building on this notion of arousal and the lack of control, the argument that many will use in support of articulating “preference” is: gay men can say they are not attracted to women without fear of being told they're sexist, so why can’t I be clear about the ethnicity that I am attracted to - like being gay, my attraction to different ethnicities is out of my control?

So for arguments sakes, let me situate my response as such: society is much more comfortable talking about sexuality and recognizing - respecting - an individuals sexuality than we are talking about race and what is racism in sexual attraction. Secondly, many gay men identify as marginalized and therefore cannot see themselves of being discriminatory themselves, so its not racism, its clarity. But here is the rub: it’s one thing to recognize for yourself who you are attracted to, it’s another to put that out there in a manner that negates the being of a person who has not grown up with the privileges bestowed on the centering of whiteness.

The intention may be clarity, the impact is negation of being.