The digital equivalent of a scrawled napkin.
I've been asked lately to present in schools in Asia, which is a great opportunity. I love meeting the librarians and the readers who I write my graphic novels for, and the emerging artists lurking the schools.
There are two things I learned about both my capacity and capability as a teacher. Mainly that I am too much of the quiet, introverted English professor typology to deal with large classes. I handle children, teens and young adults just fine, but not in numbers - apparently because I do not have the teacher's voice nor the social battery. I thrive in smaller groups or even better, a personalised mentorship role, which makes sense given my history. It's looking a lot like school workshops are out, but I am always happy to do an author's visit and presentation. And if I am going to a place where students can choose self-select their interests, being art and literature - that's even better!
Anyway this is all fluffy context for the actual thing I want to scrawl on my napkin, which is that inside my author's presentation powerpoint, I have a portrait of myself.
Quite comprehensive. Doesn't seem like anything would stick out, right?
I experienced an odd bit of microaggression because of this drawing, but even that is too harsh a name to describe the incident. Given the Southeast Asian context of the school, and being Southeast Asian myself and aware of censorship as a behaviour of everyday living, the incident was not a surprise to me.
I still felt jarred by it regardless. Maybe it's the brainpoison of having lived in a Western country for so long, and constantly interacting with people in publishing and comics, who tend to be progressive and liberal. Even my friends from Southeast Asia are like this. I've been living comfortably as myself for so long - hey, even my comics are facets and outcomes of this openness. It's not a secret that I am queer/unconventional on some level, and that I have queer/unconventional characters.
So imagine my ??? when the principle of the school wanted to do a meeting with the librarians and me. Apparently the problem was that I have the non-binary flag in my portrait.
They don't have an issue with me being non-binary; what they are concerned about is the students who encounter the concept of the non-binary gender identity through the flag.
Now, I don't know if a kid who doesn't already have the flag colours memorised will go out of their way to research the flag, if they could even pick it out amongst all the clutter on the portrait. I also don't see how presenting my identity in this manner is an issue, since my graphic novels that are normally in school libraries (Seance and Monster Aunt) contain textual queer main characters: Lora is bi, her best friend Bobby is gay, Whimsy is queer, Pineapple Tart is they/them non-binary, Safia and Hebe have sapphic undertones, and Dolos is visibly flamboyantly genderqueer in fashion sensibility. These graphic novels are the reason I was invited to schools, with the implication that some of the students have already or will read it on their own. I don't see why the author themselves being like the characters is anything more than simply a confirmation of reality: an 'oh, makes sense' or 'oh... so the characters are based on lived experience and are not just fictional constructs".
I get the concern, on a fundamentally Southeast Asian level. Queerness has been colonialised out of our history and culture, to the point that it's become criminalised. In Malaysia for example, being part of the LGBTQ+ community will put you at risk of government retribution. In my case, my race protects me from being jailed and punished by the government (Malaysian sociohistory too long to explain), though it won't save me from cultural and social discrimination. There are cases of outright banning and recall of books from bookstores because they are discovered to contain queer themes/characters. Anyway, all that to say: being queer is deviant and considered socially and culturally abnormal. To learn about queerness and to see queerness threatens the status quo of Asian society and values at large. Even if you are fine with queerness, you will always feel the sense of far-off doom: some kind of consequence. Self-censorship of various degrees becomes a coping mechanism, to protect oneself and others.
So the school told me to remove the flag. They don't want their students to go learning about non-binary identities (and by implication, queerness) via the flag on my portrait* without the supervision of trusted adults AKA them. Fine, fair. But something about the wording still haunts me, months later.
The way I was being spoken to, their verbal presentations of what the issue is and their proposed solution, ... those are transparently textbook human resources discrimination-and-harrassment resolution training on display. I would know - I took those courses too as part of my job onboarding, and I totally know why having that training is important. Only, when I was suddenly at the "offending" end (this is also taught in those courses, btw - how to react when you're the offender) and experiencing what is considered a microaggression against my queer identity to the Western world, I was bamboozled. In fact, I actually felt irritated because immediately I understood the Southeast Asian context for why everyone has the issue, but I was impatient by the obscuration via HR fluff for their request to erase my claim of being non-binary. While they were talking and pleading with me to remove the flag, I already removed the flag(s) (there is also an asexuality flag) in real time. A swipe of the pink colour brush. There, done. Why the waffle? Just get on with it.
That whole thing has percolated in my mind for months. It's a very low-stakes representation of the contradiction I have to contend with as a Southeast Asian comics creator who resides in both Southeast Asia and the Western world. I can succeed and be recognised for embracing who I am, I can write about characters who are informed by lived experiences of myself and friends, but I cannot talk about, mention or even be my own identities. I can have queer characters in my books, but I cannot be queer. I also can't talk directly about my queer characters or my own authorial queerness, or there will be a rush to censor. The issue is not so much the existence of queerness, but the speaking aloud and embodying queerness.
No, I am not going to censor myself and my works since it's already out there in the world. *This is why I also don't understand the threat of the flag: googling my name and subsequently reading my graphic novels and webcomics will put you at risk of queer exposure. No content of mine is 100% straight or cis.
Plus I find no shame in being an abberation of the Southeast Asian status quo, cos how else did I end up being the author I am today? I think it's very important that I fully embody the person I am, for the young readers and aspiring artists in the audience who are looking for a way out of the status quo: in life and in love. I know how seeing someone who looks (and more importantly, thinks) like me or a future aspiration of me can be affirming and inspiring. As a child I had these models to guide me towards adulthood, and as an adult, I continue to be inspired by new people I admire.
I still have the version of the portrait without the flags in my powerpoint. Mainly because I am too lazy to have to deal with further incidences of needing to remove the flag again. Anyway, like I said, googling me and going to my website is the bigger and realer threat, and nobody has asked me to censor MY name. So there's that.
