Yee Xiong - Week 6

In Walter T. Boulden's article, "Gay Hmong: A Multifaceted Clash of Cultures", he illustrates the challenges queer Hmong people face as they "come out" to the Hmong American community. As a Hmong womyn who identifies herself as heterosexual, I am able to clearly understand how difficult it must be for one to come out of the closet and for one to label themselves as anything else other than heterosexual. This article shows a great sense of struggle queer Hmong people face, however, it is missing something that would add a better appeal to it such as the pros to coming out, the author's relationship with each interviewee, the author's stance on his research and what we can do in order to better understand the struggle of queer Hmong people.

I believe that because the Hmong American community has been built upon a patriarchal system, it is important to stay within the system as a male to receive that advantage. One's gender has a lot of political structures and powers to it if one chooses to stay a male--and in that sense, stay a heterosexual male. But once one has come out of the closet and once one is gay, queer, bisexual, and everything else non-heterosexual, his gender is completely thrown out of the picture and he is automatically seen as "less of a man" because of his sexual orientation. This is a problem; when society starts to judge you based off of your sexual orientation, this is a serious problem that needs to be addressed. This hetero-normative society we live in needs to be addressed and acknowledged; this system works the same way racism works and that is to provide an advantage for one certain group over another and if anyone buys into it, they're allowing the system to oppress them. LGBT issues are still quite new in the Hmong American community, but it'll be worth researching into.

A few questions I want to ask you: Some people do not believe queer Hmong people existed in the Hmong community before, (and especially because there hasn't been much research into this) do you believe that this is true? If so, how? And if not, what are some other reasons as to why they wouldn't want to "out" themselves as a queer Hmong person?