I don’t understand people.

[About two days’ with of relatively engaging, interesting chat on Grindr later]

Me: Do you like cuddling?

Him: Of course. Who doesn’t?

Me: Some people don’t. I think they’re lizard people.

Him: haha, lizard people is right.

Me: I also once converted a non-cuddlier into a cuddle fanatic.

Him: hahaha, look at you go!

Me: Would you like to cuddle sometime?

[No reply for several hours]

Me: [in an attempt to not come off as a slut] Or we could go for coffee/drinks first before jumping into bed.

[No reply for several more hours]

[He’s logged in, hasn’t responded]

Me: is that a no?

[Conversation disappears: I’ve been blocked (or he deleted his account, who knows)]

I don’t get it. I thought it was going fine. Did I do something wrong?

Sexual racism encounter #74

On Grindr:

Him: I’m Italian Canadian. What’s your ethnicity?
Me: (hesitantly) I’m Chinese. May I ask how old you are?

Five seconds later, the conversation disappears. I’ve been blocked.

Tinder

A friend of mine was showing me Tinder and how she had more than 800 matches. I admit: I was jealous. There was no way in hell I would ever have 800 conversations on Grindr, not even close to half that. But seeing her matched with some admittedly attractive guys got me hoping that it could also happen to me on Tinder. After all, there were bound to be more guys on Tinder, which meant more potential matches. I wouldn’t have to talk with 50 year old men if I didn’t want to. It sounded great.

Then I realized one crucial thing: she was a Korean woman, desired by many straight men. I was a Chinese gay man, desired, based on experience, by much fewer. Without getting into sexual politics and preferences/requirements and the differences between heteros and homos, I realized being gay and Asian is always going to be an uphill battle no matter the app, dating site, lot otherwise.

I’ve an app exactly like Tinder on my phone but for gay men called Surge. It currently has great reviews in the Play store, so I gave it a try. I swiped right for so many profiles when I first got started, and then waited impatiently for the matches to appear. I got very few in return, to the point where I wondered if something had gone wrong. I had liked countless guys but had matched with a small handful… Which meant that the majority of them had no interest in me. It was a really saddening conclusion.

So wouldn’t Tinder just be the same? They always say it’s better to try because at least you know.

I already know.

Grindr: 2013-2014

Uninstalled Grindr today. The proceeded to eat half a bag of rice chips. Huzzah.

Conversations on Grindr

ME: Would you be up to cuddle sometime then?

HIM: No, thank you.

ME: Ok. Do you ever want to meet or talk again then?

HIM: We can talk, yes. I’m just not looking for anything clingy.

ME: Ok. I will be so detached and distant, you may think I’m a douchebag.

Not cut out for this world

It’s a good line for a suicide note, eh?

I don’t feel like I’m in the right era. I may have blogged about this already, but I constantly feel like I’m living in the wrong time period. In this day and age of cellphones, Internet dating, and Grindr, not to mention things like being friend-zoned, love and relationships are so much more complicated that it used to be. Whatever happened to courting and romancing, fighting for someone’s love? Now it’s playing hard to get and the delicate balance of not texting too much but just enough — I don’t know how to navigate such complicated and frankly, absurd things like this. It’s all too much to monitor and to keep in line, at least for me. I don’t know how everyone else does it. I don’t think I’ll ever understand it and how to date in this world.

Mostly, I feel like I’m a chivalrous knight living in the 21st Century in North America where everyone has Facebook. Maybe I should just give up and become a monk.

What makes the night

Convincing a fellow gay that language like “no Asians” is indeed racist language that has harmful and negative consequences. Yesssssssssssss!

Dear Gay Guys: What “Preferences” Really Are

http://endracismandhomophobia.tumblr.com/post/32576200361/what-does-the-word-preference-actually-mean

There’s something about the “It’s just a preference” defence that really gets under my skin. So many gay men use this as an excuse for their racist and homophobic/femmephobic remarks, as though it exonerates them from all wrongdoing.

It doesn’t.

I’ve been thinking about what this word “preference” actually means.

preference | ˈprɛf(ə)r(ə)ns | noun

a greater liking for one alternative over another or others: her preference for white wine | he chose a clock in preference to a watch.

a thing preferred: nearly 40 per cent named acid house as their musical preference.

from Latin praeferre ‘carry in front’

See, my problem with gays who are using this word to defend their shitty attitudes is that THEY ARE USING IT WRONG! As usual, THEY DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT THE WORD MEANS.

Not surprising, is it?

Preference is the word to use when you like more than one thing, but like one or more of those things more than others on the list. It’s like ice cream. You like chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, cookies & cream. If you didn’t have a choice you’d be happy with any of those flavours. But if there was a choice, you’d prefer chocolate.

A sexual preference is no different. You might find Asian, Black and Latino guys attractive, but your preference, if given the choice, is Asian. Or you may have a preference for really butch masculine men, but also some that are not so masculine do it for you on occasion.

So to say you have a preference, in the spirit of the word, is to say you pretty much have an open mind to a variety of things. Or at least to more than one thing.

Yet, as we all know, there’s a lot of gay men out there who have absolutely no attraction to anything other than WHITE, HYPER-MASCULINISED MEN. And when these guys try to defend themselves using the word “preference”, they are not genuine in the slightest. There’s no preference there at all, and they are hiding behind words they don’t even understand.

The word they are looking for, but refuse to use, is REQUIREMENT.

requirement | rɪˈkwʌɪəm(ə)nt | noun

a thing that is needed or wanted: only one type of window fits the requirements of this building.

a thing that is compulsory; a necessary condition: applicants must satisfy the normal entry requirements.

A thing that is compulsory. A thing that is wanted. COMPULSORY. WANTED.

COMPULSORY WHITENESS. COMPULSORY MASCULINITY.

Why do you think we don’t hear, “It’s just a requirement?” I can tell you why. Because for the everyday gay, that word doesn’t feel so easy to hide behind as preference. Preference sounds so benign, so unobtrusive, so open-minded, so nice.

“Oh no, we’re not trying to tell anyone how they should be, we really believe all the diverse people of the rainbow community are equal, we’re just expressing our personal preferences.”

No, you’re not. You’re demanding whiteness and straight-actingness, to hell with anyone that doesn’t fit your neat little manufactured ideal of hotness. And you’re hiding behind a word that doesn’t apply to you, in order to make yourself feel less like the total arsehole you truly are.

If there was a more balanced representation of requirements in our community, if there were more races and gender-expressions promoted as “hot” over a sustained period of time, rather than just the one version, things wouldn’t be so bad. This really wouldn’t be such an issue. But with the white masculine male promoted as the overwhelming frontrunner in the attraction stakes, these requirements have the stench of “master race” written all over them.

So I say STOP listing your requirements altogether. STOP calling those requirements “preferences”. START removing language you KNOW offends others. If you’ve been conditioned to find only one “type” of man attractive, so be it. But STOP promoting that conditioned attraction as a personal “preference” because it isn’t. Not even slightly. In fact, you have no “preferences” at all, since you have been brainwashed into thinking only one thing is “hot”. And every time you put that one thing on a pedestal, anyone not fitting into your narrow definition of hotness feels like rubbish.

Sexual racism exhausts me

Spent the day asking friends about their views on racism in the gay community and many of them don’t see “NO ASIANS” as a problem. In fact, they think it’s acceptable, which was incredibly infuriating and frustrating. Tried not to get overwhelmed and upset and tried to diffuse the conversations with questions (“Why do you think that?” “How might you feel if someone said, ‘Not into white guys’?”) but then that just lead to more angering words. It’s the end of the day and I’m just exhausted .

Who would’ve thought arguing with people could be so draining. All in a day’s work, I suppose.

 

Dick

A conversation with someone on jack’d:

HIM: Wanna hng out sometime

I check my phone a few hours later and see this message, since I was in class. Immediately upon checking, I receive a new message:

HIM: A no would’ve sufficed

I want to tell him off, something like “Dude, I’ve been busy up until now. Chill the fuck out” but I decide to be nice and try to guilt him.

ME: I was in class all day until now.

HIM: Ok

He doesn’t apologize. Oh well. His profile picture is blank, so I ask, Do you have any pics?

He send me one, without saying anything else. I partly don’t feel like responding at the moment, but mostly I have a lot of stuff to do. I go home, have dinner, eat some food and try to relax after a long day. I don’t message him back until the next morning.

ME: Thanks. Sure I’d be up to hang out. What do you wanna do?

About a minute later–

HIM: Late reply much

Ok. I’m tired of being nice. But I don’t want to be too mean.

ME: Excuse me if I’m not addicted to my phone and that I have a life.

HIM: A life? lol

HIM: Dick

ME: Name-calling, how classy of you. You don’t know me, so don’t pretend you do. If you can’t accept that people don’t always reply to messages immediately, then that’s your problem. I’m sorry you have issues with that. Have a nice day.

And then I hit the block button. Now I’m not sure he got my last message (if he can no longer contact me or see me, is our conversation gone as well?).

I believe I was fairly polite and I took the high-road. What do you think? Am I a dick?