Stephanie Hsu won't forget a conversation she had with her father four years ago. She had already been living in New York for seven years after arriving in the city to attend university. Ms Hsu was in love and wanted her parents to meet her partner. The only problem was that the person she would bring back to her parents' home in Georgia was a woman. 'Some friends already knew,' said Ms Hsu. 'But I was having a hard time standing up for myself. I was saying to myself that my dad doesn't even accept me, how can I expect a stranger to accept me?' So she called home. 'We both cried,' she said. 'His first reaction was that he felt sorry for me. He said it's already hard being an immigrant and being a young Asian person in this country and why make life harder for yourself?' Born to a Taiwanese immigrant family, Ms Hsu considers herself lucky compared with many other Asian gays. She's studying for a PhD in English literature at New York University. Tolerance of diversity in academia makes her feel at ease. And even when she was working she was relatively lucky to spend three years at the Museum of Chinese in the Americas, where the employees are more diverse than in most other community-based organisations in Chinatown. But outside of the Asian community, Ms Hsu and her peers are struggling to establish support in US society. Their problems are illustrated in a survey of Asian lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people in the US released recently by the Washington, DC-based National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. The survey - the first of its kind - shows 89 per cent of respondents thought homophobia or transphobia (phobia about transgender people) are problems in the Asian community and 78 per cent think racism against Asians exists in the predominantly white mainstream LGBT community. Overall, 98 per cent of respondents said they had experienced discrimination or harassment based either on their sexual orientation or on their ethnicity. 'Asian and Pacific Islander LGBT community members are suffering double discrimination. And there is the need for not only legislative intervention but community introspection,' said Alain Dang, a policy analyst for the Task Force and the lead author of the survey. Three years ago, Ms Hsu co-founded Q-wave, the only organisation in New York that focuses solely on Asian lesbians. She said when members gathered in numbers in mainstream lesbian bars, lesbians of western backgrounds sometimes asked if they meant to go to Chinatown and got lost on the way. 'Things like these hurt me,' said Ms Hsu. Since the modern gay rights movement in the US began, amid the Stonewall riot in 1969, which followed a police raid on a gay bar in New York, there has been much progress, including the passage of legislation at various levels of state and city governments prohibiting gender discrimination, extending spousal benefits to domestic partners and, in some jurisdictions, offering legal or civil marriages to gay couples. However, compared to the mainstream gay community, the comfort level for Asian gays is far lower, partly due to the traditional Asian cultural mores, in which sex-related topics are taboo, family ties are close and extending the family bloodline to younger generations is seen as an obligation. 'In many ways, the Asian immigrant community preserves the traditional culture better than people in Asia because the older generation often lives in an insulated incubator such as Chinatown and is less likely to be affected by changes in the outside world,' said Alan Chow, an arts promoter in New York's Chinatown and owner of The Web, the only gay bar in New York targeting Asian customers. 'Asian culture is much more family centred. Maintaining face for the family and not being shameful for the family is an issue. There is less of the American sense of individualism. The Asian man might be saying his parents are very concerned about letting the rest of the world know, and the white man would say, 'Why is that your problem? Just come out',' said Weiben Wang, co-chair of the Gay Asian and Pacific Islander Men of New York (GAPIMNY). Mr Wang's father stopped talking to him after he came out 20 years ago. Mr Chow, now in his 50s, knew he was gay when he was a teenager, but he chose to get married and have a son to fulfil his obligation to his parents and didn't resume his real identity until 20 years ago when both parents died. Mr Dang, 30, the author of the survey, hasn't come out to his Vietnamese immigrant parents yet. 'Many of my western friends don't care about what their families think, but I do,' he said. Under this kind of pressure, many Asian gays face greater pressure to live double lives. With friends and in mainstream US society they can be openly gay, but in front of their family and parts of the Asian community they feel greater expectations to live behind a mask. The problem became even more obvious to GAPIMNY when it held a community outreach last year and sent members to Chinatown to hand out fliers to increase gay awareness. Many members who are otherwise active and outspoken didn't want to participate, afraid of being seen by relatives. The identity problem for Asian gay migrants in the US was highlighted when the English-language Details magazine ran a cover story in 2004 about Asian men's physical features and fashion sense with the title, Gay or Asian? There was an uproar, with the general Asian community outraged because it suggested to some that smaller and well dressed Asian men are all gay. For Asian gays it rubbed salt into open wounds. 'We are gay and Asian,' said Mr Wang. 'It's not right that a fashion magazine should make us choose.' The situation is exacerbated by general racism, including stereotyping, against minorities that lingers in the US. 'I remembered standing up in meetings of lesbian and gay groups saying racism is a problem. They were saying we are here to fight homophobia, racism is not our problem,' said Don Kao, an activist who got involved in the gay rights movement in the 70s. 'Of course it was not their problem because they were all white.' These days, diversity has become trendy in some quarters - at least on the surface. Mainstream gay organisations sometimes hold events specifically for their Asian members, but their preconceptions of Asian cultures often make the Asians feel offended. Many Asian LGBT people in New York remember an Asian-themed fund-raising event held by a mainstream organisation several years ago. The invitation included images of China dolls, highlighted snacks such as egg rolls and mentioned a geisha performance. 'I guess it was a trend at that time to do this exotic theme. But it just ended up really perpetuating a lot of stereotyped images held by mainstream LGBT people. It turned me off,' said Mr Dang, who, like many others, refused to attend the event. For Asian gay men, the racism is more tangible. With a smaller stature than the average Caucasian American, they don't fit the stereotype of the athletic, muscled gay man. For a long time, the only places for Asian gay men to socialise were in Asian-focused gay bars. 'If I were to walk into a gay bar in the West Village or Chelsea I won't be able to meet anybody because they won't find Asian men attractive,' said Mr Kao. Now the internet provides more options, but there's still racism. 'There are thousands of gay male internet sites. A lot of people put in their profiles: Not interested in fats, fems or Asians,' said Mr Kao. But Asian gays in the US are upbeat about the progress they see being made. 'Asian gays' visibility has increased a lot. Ten, 15 years ago, it was hardly talked about at all. Now people do think there is such a thing as gay Asian,' said Mr Wang of GAPIMNY. This optimism is reflected in the story of 56-year-old Take Kao. So far, he has raised a daughter with a former male partner, was found to be HIV positive in 1992 and was close to death in 1997. But he's been healthy in the past decade thanks to better Aids drugs and is now in a happy relationship. Mr Kao came out to his family when he was 38 and, although his father has never discussed the subject with him, the 91-year-old elder Mr Kao agreed to talk about his son. 'We don't encourage him. But we love our son. So we have to accept it,' he said.
