What would a queer version of this diasporic history look like? What would it mean to discuss sexuality as an integral and defining part of this story about governments, wars, capitalism, and migration? How would one go about investigating a queer Korea? And why would this be important? Reclaiming a history in a diasporic homeland is even more complicated for those of us who are queer. Being multiply displaced makes the process more difficult to research and more fraught with needs and desires. How do people construct a homeland that not only includes but might possibly also even embrace their queer selves? Cherrie Moraga describes such a space for queer Chicanos:
âQueer Aztlanâ had been forming in my mind for over three years and began to take concrete shape a year ago in a conversation with poet Ricardo Bracho. We discussed the limitations of âQueer Nation,â whose leather-jacketed, shaved-headed white radicals and accompanying anglo-centricity were an âalien-nationâ to most lesbians and gay men of color. We also spoke of Chicano Nationalism, which never accepted openly gay men and lesbians among its ranks. Ricardo half jokingly concluded, âWhat we need, Cherrie, is a âQueer Aztlan.â Of course. A Chicano homeland that could embrace all its people, including its joterĂa . (147)
[âŚ] I think our efforts to reclaim queerness in the homeland need to avoid some common dangers. First, many claim to pursue this effort in order to reconcile "two worldsâ: the diasporic and the queer. The separation of queer practices and cultural identities is easily labeled as a cultural/ ethnic/racial divide, although even for those who are white, being queer usually means leaving home. Rakesh Rattiâs introduction to A Lotus of Another Color states, âWe stand with one foot in the South Asian society, the other in the gay and lesbian world. It is natural then that we should support one another in sorting out these conflictsâ (14). The language of âtwo worldsâ homogenizes each side, as if there were not multiple and multiply divided South Asian societies and gay and lesbian (and bisexual and transgender and queer) communities. And, as the quote illustrates, this âbinarizationâ usually sets up the worlds as naturally opposing categories, which must inevitably conflict.
The dichotomy easily lends itself to racist and imperialist uses, specifically the idea that Asian, Third World, or people-of-color cultures are âsadlyâ more homophobic than are white Western societies. Not surprisingly, this is related to the idea that these cultures are inherently more patriarchal and sexist. This view of the world casts Other cultures as fixed, monolithic, unchanging, backward, and unreasonable, in contrast to an enlightened, modern, liberal humanist Western civilization with an infinite capacity for rational tolerance. It also assumes that homophobia is a single quantifiable phenomenon, with a range of âmoreâ and âless.â It is clear to me that these are absurd assumptions, perpetuated by a self-serving white Western pretense to superiority. Carmen Vazquez says, âChallenging homophobia in the Latino community is no more and no less a challenge than it is to challenge it in any other ethnic communityâ (54). People in Asia, the Third World, or racial minority communities are not more homophobic, they are differently homophobic, in ways conditioned not only by beliefs, values, and circumstances but also by histories of Western imperialism and U.S. racism.
Towards a Queer Korean American Diasporic History, 1998 by JeeYeun Lee
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