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I identify as a He or Him. Growing up, my parents raised me like a stereotypical straight male. My parents wanted me to lift weights, play sports (like basketball and baseball), and just do whatever they thought a male should do. They did not want me to deviate from what they thought a person born with my features should do. For example, I did not really want to play sports in high school but I wanted to join the cheerleading squad. My parents did not let me do this since they thought it would not be a good look on me since that is typically a team that females would join. Also in my high school, there were not a lot of males on the cheerleading squad. In the class reading "Boyhood, Organized Sports, and the Construction of Masculinities" by Michael A. Messner, it says, "When many of the men in this study said that during childhood they played sports because 'it's just what everyone did,' they of course meant that is what boys did" (127). This relates to me since my parents also had the same idea of gender roles that boys are supposed to play sports like basketball and baseball, girls are meant to be the cheerleaders, and they are there to support the males.

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This was a Covid-19 test that I took during the peek times of Covid-19.

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Growing up Asian, there were many roles, responsibilities, and expectations that I had. Being Asian is not something I can hide because of my skin tone and how I look. When I grew up I always felt safe within my community, but when Covid-19 happened, I did not feel as safe with all the Asian hate crimes going around. There were many Asian elderly that got attacked in my community. This made me worried about my own family. In the class reading, "The Perils of 'People of Color" by E. Tammy Kim, it says, "But during the perilous time of covid-19 and now the uprising for Black lives, the literal and figurative terms of cross-race solidarity have come to extreme flux" (2). This relates to me since growing up as a person of color, it did not feel right that all of a sudden during an epidemic, it felt like many people did not accept us anymore.

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This photo was taken in Thailand where there is a giant Buddha drawn on a mountainside. 

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Peace and good luck are symbolized by the Buddha. I went to many temples growing up and they taught these values that praying to the Buddha will help with. This can be seen as a protection to help our daily lives. This also teaches us how we should act as males and females. Buddhism teaches that men should have certain values and should act a certain way. I feel like my parents tried to make me value these values as much as they do, but it is hard when my sexuality gets in the way of their strict religion.

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This photo was taken at the boba store that I used to work at in high school. 

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My parents grew up where the women stays in the house and took care of the kids and cooks and the man would be the money maker of the family. These were the gender roles in the family, so my dad wanted to teach me these values. They made my get a job in high school to teach me that as a man, I need to be the one making the money and to teach me the value of money. These gender roles are seen in many Asian households that I still now see. I felt that this way of thinking is not right. Women should not be forced to do that if they do not want to, and if a man wants to be in the kitchen it should not be looked down upon. Even in my own family, I rarely see any men in the kitchen cooking.

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Photo taken at a restaurant during Pride Week

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I identify as a bisexual male. As a bisexual male, this sexuality can be seen as a big part of my identity and the way I act. This goes against many aspects of the way that I grew up since I grew up in a household where heteronormality is the only way that is accepted. My parents did not like that I was bisexual at first, but they grew to accept that I am different from them. In the class reading "Night to His Day: The Social Construction of Gender" by Judith Lorber, it says, "Gender is such a familiar part of daily life that is usually takes a deliberate disruption of our expectations of how women and men are supposed to act to pay attention to how it is produced" (54). This quote relates to me since my parents tried to raise me a certain way that I would follow social normative strictures where I am a straight male who is strong for a family, but that is not how I see myself now. I feel like I do not really fall into the socially normative ways since I have some masculine and feminine features in the way that I act since I am bisexual.