Happy Pride Month!

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, there have been significant efforts to debunk Asian American stereotypes such as raising awareness about the model minority myth and combating anti-Asian hate. Although education is increasing, many of these resources often focus on a narrow portrayal of Asian American identity, and neglect to highlight how other identities come into play.

As we welcome in Pride Month this June, we’re keen to explore the different identities that can intersect with being Asian American, and how they shape our experience of society, community, and ourselves. This is important not only for the 700k Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) adults living in the United States, but also for everyone as allies.

Why are we writing about this at Anise? Well, our mission is to empower everyone to live an authentic and flourishing life, by providing culturally competent mental health care that acknowledges your multifaceted nature. That means it’s always top of mind for us to consider not only your ethnicity, but also your sexuality, gender, ability, religion, socio-economic status, and more. Our mental health clinicians run workshops and training sessions that help you explore and understand your own intersectionality, and we’d like to share some of their insights with our community.

What is Intersectionality?

Intersectionality is a valuable framework for evaluating how different parts of yourself intersect, culminating in a unique experience that may include different forms of discrimination and privilege, particularly in marginalized individuals.

The term was coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw in her paper "Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics”. The term pinpoints the way that many of us possess multiple, overlapping social identities that influence the ways we experience prejudice and/or oppression.

Photo credit: Why Intersectionality Matters at Work

Why is Intersectionality Important?

Intersectionality is crucial in developing a comprehensive, holistic understanding of one another, by recognising that our identities cannot be compartmentalized. Rather, they intersect, interact, and shape the way we exist in society.

The concept helps us, for example, understand the experience of someone who is both Asian and LGBTQ. They may experience not only a degree of racism, and a degree of homophobia, but a dynamic interaction of the two. Their traditional Asian family might hold certain beliefs on queerness that affect them; meanwhile the queer community may lack Asian representation and acceptance. Essentially, intersectionality highlights that the way we are treated in society. It is not simply the sum of our various identities, but also how they interact with one another.

By taking this into account, we can offer more effective support and care in mental health. We’ll show you how you can turn awareness into action by using intersectionality as a framework.

How intersectionality can help improve your mental health

Intersectionality is not only a useful framework for understanding others, but also for contextualizing your own experience, and in turn discovering new avenues for finding healing. Recognizing and embracing your intersectional identities can be empowering. It allows you to draw strength from your diverse experiences and perspectives. Reflecting on your experience of intersectionality can:

Enhance your empathy towards others
Broaden your perspective of the world
Develop your own resilience
Provide professional strengths by highlighting your adaptability and flexibility
Inspire creativity by embracing your multifaceted identity
Improve your leadership skills by fostering more inclusive environments
Make you more innovative by thinking laterally about innovative solutions and ideas
Empower you to enact chance in your community

Three ways you can feel better through the lens of intersectionality

Develop awareness of your stressors

Recognizing the different aspects of your identity and how they interact can make you more aware of the stressors that you face and how they impact your mental health. Consider the various spaces you occupy in society due to your race, gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, or anything else that feels relevant to you. Can you recognise the specific challenges and pressures that come with each? Could you identify ways that they overlap and inform one another?

Through this evaluation and awareness, you may find the root cause of certain stressors that have perplexed you in the past. This can then help you take specific steps to find relief and seek support tailored to your experience.

2. Become your most authentic self and flourishing

Intersectionality encourages you to embrace your uniqueness and celebrate the various different parts of you. Rather than segregating them, it invites you to bring them together into your individual identity. This self-acceptance can allow you to step into the most authentic version of yourself and express yourself fully across all areas of life.

By embracing the multitudes you embody, you are better able to form meaningful connections with others, find a sense of community and dissolve some of the tension you may face trying to box yourself into different labels. This sense of freedom and acceptance can foster a sense of fulfillment that improves your mental health and promotes resilience.

3. Alleviate Bicultural Stress

If you feel that you exist within various different communities, you may experience what’s known as bicultural stress – a degree of tension and difficulty that arises due to conflicting cultural expectations. For example, your heritage culture as an Asian American may expect you to behave a certain way, meanwhile living in the United States demands that you behave differently. The same could be the case for the conflict between your sexuality, your gender, your class, and various other parts of your identity. Bicultural stress can cause internal conflict and anxiety.

Understanding your intersectional identity offers you a chance to reconcile your various cultural demands through validating the importance of all parts of you, and finding a way to create your own way of living that honors and respects the various cultural groups you’re a part of. Rather than expecting yourself to switch on and off according to which community you’re engaging with, you can reduce that strain and create a harmonious sense of self that marries your various cultural influences.

How does intersectionality show up in the Asian American community?

Our racial identity is just one aspect of who we are. Admittedly, it is a visible aspect and not one that we can easily change. That said, it also co-exists with other identity traits. Here are examples of other identity characteristics that interact with one’s Asian American identity.

Gender

AAPI communities often perpetuate strong gender norms that influence expectations around marriage, childcare, career, and physical appearance. For example, Asian American women may experience distinct forms of discrimination such as hypersexualisation or being perceived as meek or submissive due to cultural conditioning around being agreeable and pleasant.

Equally, your family may have strong demands of you such as marriage and building a family at a certain age, meanwhile the Western culture you live in encourages you to prioritize your career, therefore delaying familial considerations until latere. You might find yourself asking, “when do I have time to date when I’m also trying to succeed in school, work, and my own personal happiness?”

In fact, if you’re over the age of 30, unmarried and Chinese, you may face the “sheng nu” stigma of being a “leftover woman.” TikTok influencer Candise Lin explains in this short and eye-opening video the phrases associated with men and women who are over the age of 30, unmarried, and Chinese:

Pictured left: Candise sharing the Mandarin phrases that women are called when they are unmarried by 30. Pictured right: one example of the Mandarin phrase that men are called when they are unmarried by 30 (in Cantonese, they are called “quality real estate”).

Sexuality

As a queer Asian American, you could find that the cultural expectations you face from your family and your community are at odds with how you would like to express yourself or live your life. Many Asian American holidays emphasize the importance of coming together as a family, such as folding dumplings together on Lunar New Year. However, people who are LGBTQ and Asian Americans might not find home safe or family members comforting, because they experience a degree of homophobia at home. You could feel accepted and liberated within your “chosen family” or friends and social sphere, yet feel the need to conceal parts of yourself with your parents or grandparents.

Simultaneously, you may find that you have a unique experience in the queer community, where you might not see as much Asian representation, or feel pressure to express your queerness the same way as your peers. You may not feel comfortable expressing your sexuality in the same way, though, having been raised with more traditional values.

That said, there is hope. Many courageous public figures are speaking openly about the nuances of being Asian, queer and even more. For example, digital creator Frederic Chen debuts glamorous makeup tutorials while weaving in light social-political commentary, and comedian Joel Kim Booster makes jokes during his stand-up shows about being adopted. Former “Try Guy” Eugene Lee Yang made a groundbreaking music video that he wrote, directed and choreographed called “I’m Gay,” which has been streamed over 23M times across media platforms and was his way of coming out authentically.

Pictured above: a scene from Eugene Lee Yang’s video “I’m Gay,” which he explains here.

Other activists such as Julie Vu, Chella Man, and Jamie Pandit are honest about being transgender, show how their mind and bodies are impacted by gender-affirming surgery, and speak-out about domestic violence towards the trans Asian community. In fact, there’s an entire wikipedia page dedicated to highlighting American LGBTQ people of Asian descent. You can also deepen your knowledge Pride Month by following these 10 queer South Asian instagram accounts or learning more about these LGBTQ Asian celebrities.

Pictured above: Julie Vu from her YouTube video “A Transformative Decade.”

Pictured Above: Chella Man making history as the first trans masc face of YSL beauty

Faith/Religion

Challenges regarding sexuality can be compounded by their intersection with faith/religion. The Pew Research Center estimates that approximately 59% of the Korean American community is Christian. A queer Korean American might find themselves juggling the interplay of their sexuality with both their cultural heritage and their family's religious beliefs and expectations about love and marriage.

Equally, much of the Asian continent practices Islam, especially across Indonesia, Malaysia, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Asian American Muslims are more likely to say they have been stopped at a security checkpoint because of their race and symbols of faith. In particular, Sikhs experienced significant backlash after 9/11 leading to a surge in religiously-motivated hate crimes.You could find that you experience a racial form of prejudice but also a religious one in the form of islamophobia. Or perhaps, your religious identity is invalidated due to people’s lack of education around “what a muslim person looks like”. All in all, there are several ways that religion can interact with the other parts of your identity.

Socio-Economic Class

Not all Asian Americans experience discrimination or marginalization in the same way. Issues related to education, healthcare, and job opportunities can be hugely exacerbated due to economic disparities within the community. A low-income Asian American family could struggle to afford tuition for their children, impacting their upward mobility in society and perpetuating a cycle of poverty.

Combined with the pressures of the model minority myth, this could lead Asian Americans of a lower socio-economic class to feel ostracized and judged, as they have less access to opportunities to “prove” their worth and fulfill the demands of Asian Americans to contribute to society through highly-intellectual pursuits.

Education & Immigration Status

Similarly, immigration status can in fact override many other factors of an individual’s identity. For example, a first-generation immigrant from India who is highly educated and qualified, could still face job discrimination or underemployment due to accent bias, or difficulties having their credentials recognized. This can hugely impact an individual’s sense of security and belonging in the U.S.

It can cause what is known as “brain waste” aka not using your skills to your full potential, leading to a reduced sense of self-worth as well as poorer mental health.

Mixed Asians

As a mixed Asian, whether your parents come from two different countries or you’re half white and half Asian, you will likely face complex identity challenges and internal struggles with belonging and acceptance. A sense of cultural dislocation is common, feeling like you don’t quite belong in either culture. You may even experience doubt or rejection from both sides, being neither “Asian enough” nor “White enough” to feel fully embraced by either community.

These ideas can translate into subtle microaggressions such as remarks that bring into question your identity or the legitimacy of your claim to either culture. These could be statements like “You don’t look Asian” or “Where are you really from?”.

In addition to your experience in broader society, you could also face conflicting pressures at home, attempting to balance different cultural norms or values from each parent, attempting to prove yourself, feeling the need to choose one over the other, or feeling a sense of guilt or shame if you identify more with a certain side.

How to Understand Your Intersectional Identities

Our highly-qualified Anise clinicians have put together a worksheet to help you map out your intersectional identities and reflect on how they influence your life.This is a valuable tool for understanding yourself and leveraging your unique strengths.

Our 3-step process for embracing your own intersectionality

Mapping: Reflect on the different possible identities that you associate with.List the different aspects of your identity (race, gender, sexuality, etc.).
Proximity: Plot these different identities according to how closely you associate with them and how relevant they feel
Sources: Consider the driving forces behind your experience of these identities, the main ones being Self, Social, and Institutional.

You can find the full worksheet here.

By exploring intersectionality, we can better understand and support the diverse experiences within the Asian American community. Use this understanding to advocate for yourself and seek out inclusive therapy that recognizes your full identity. At Anise, we provide culturally competent care delivered by specialists who have been trained to understand intersectionality and how it may impact you.

Read this Intersectionality Resource Guide and Toolkit

Published by UN Women and the UN Partnership on the Rights of People with Disabilities (UNPRPD), this comprehensive document can help professionals, policymakers, and members of civil society learn how to embed culturally-informed practices that acknowledge intersectionality into one’s professional and personal life.

Host a Clinician-Led Event to Explore Your Own Intersectionality

Feeling overwhelmed and don’t know where to start? Want a licensed mental health professional to help you navigate this nuanced yet important conversation?

You can book a workshop with Anise Health for your company, volunteer organization, or employer by visiting our Partners Page here. Our workshops will cover practical tools, review techniques, use evidence-based research to explain the science behind these recommendations, and offer concrete next steps that you can take to understand yourself and your peers better.

Understanding Intersectionality in Asian American Communities – A Guide