I Don't Really Care If You Misgender Me

How techno-Orientalism and racialized misogyny queered my life

**Content warning: sexual violence, racism, disordered eating**

“Wait, so, you’re a they them now?” Michael tilted his head inquisitively, his eyes darting awkwardly around the room. “When did that even happen?”

I let out a sigh. It was late in the summer of 2021, and I had already used ‘they’ pronouns for about a year. My sexuality was something I had known since I was just ten years old, madly in love with a Korean girl named June, whom I almost-kissed in the dusty bathroom stalls of our beige and plain NYC middle school. My newfound adoration for girls led to a disidentification with my own girlhood — at eleven, I excitedly changed my display name from ‘Sarah’ to ‘Sam’ on my secret KIK account, where I mingled with other baby queers online and sent them memes about being genderfluid.

So, nearly a decade later, Michael’s question was confusing. Queerness had lived within me for so long that identifying a timeline for my gender fluidity felt impossible. “I don’t know,” I told him carefully. “It’s been a while, I think. I just really like it.” I stood up slowly and avoided eye contact as I left the room. I knew Michael heard the tension in my voice, because he called after me: “I’m just not used to it, cuz you’re a girl.”

I should’ve been pissed, but strangely, I wasn’t. I am a girl… kind of. Femininity is ingrained in me in a way that I deeply cherish. I have a strong matriarchal line through my family — my mother is a proud hustler, strong-willed and resolute, only defeated in intensity by my grandmother, who raised me and my younger sister while my mom was finishing up school and working at the same time. These two indestructible, powerhouse immigrants raised their daughters with enough verve and tenacity to fuel at least five more generations of women. Between mother and daughter, screaming matches and textbooks flying across the room were common occurrences; our home sometimes felt like a battleground. Yet, even in our fights, which would often get physical (like most Asian families), there was somehow still a continued aspect of wild, uninhibited intimacy and belonging. Ann Yuri Uyeda, after attending a conference/discussion group for Asian women at UC Berkeley, wrote: “I remember how natural it is for Asian women to touch each other as a form of communicating intimacy and love; nothing overtly sexual. The women would hug, hold, and kiss each other frequently… It wasn’t a big deal.”¹ Whenever I watch my mother gently brush her mother’s hair and softly rest her head on her shoulder, I’m reminded of the tender and ferocious multiplicity of Chinese womanhood. Matriarchy willed me into existence and showed me an extraordinary love; it taught me to speak my mother tongue and to love that voice deeply. I will always be, and have always been, my mother’s daughter.

In contrast, the West constructs intimacy between women as unnatural. Historically, defining a woman's legal existence as completely bound to her husband was largely done in part to prevent mingling between women (i.e., Coverture Laws²). Combined with U.S. imperialism and its brutal pillaging of Third World women, to exist as both non-white and feminine in the eyes of the West is deemed unacceptable. This violent legacy and its contributions to both American patriarchy and white supremacy may be part of the reason why, despite studying and working at so many PWIs, I’ve always found difficulty in building kinship with white American women. As I grew older, I came to understand gender as a phenomenon that is as socially constructed as race, and not impenetrable to influence by racialization. After all, in non-Western and pre-colonial societies, masculine and feminine roles were more flexible and blurry. Though I’d like to think that my non-conforming identities are biological and that I was somehow born this way, the raw truth is that if I weren’t diasporic, I don’t know if I would still identify as non-binary. Being raised in the United States has permanently disassociated me from womanhood. Perhaps if I were not so Westernized, womanhood would be wide enough to encompass my gender experience.

When I was about 13 years old, our family moved from Queens to the predominantly white suburbs of Long Island. I learned quickly that familial-feminine intimacy was nearly nonexistent outside of my home. My classmates welcomed me, but only as a worker of sorts. They practically begged me to prepare study guides for the whole class and send everyone answers to homework assignments. I was never invited to parties or after-school events, and no one cared about me unless they were cheating off me on a quiz. My white friends refused to call me by my first name and only referred to me using my last name, ‘Ma’. It took me a long time to clock this as mockery. Now I recognize it not only as mockery, but also as an act of degendering. None of my peers questioned my queerness because they never thought of me as a girl anyway, only as Asian. In high school, when I started taking the violin more seriously, I was slapped in the face by the gross generalization of Asian musicians as non-emotional, robotic performers with impeccable technique and little else to offer. As a naturally instinctive and expressive player, many mentors did everything they could to standardize me. I was called ‘wild’ and ‘boyish’, directed to move less, be still, change my sound, and even to lose weight. I was never allowed to be tired or injured, and constantly expected to endure. At the same time, the memeification of Asian musicians as relentless workaholics escalated, largely because of the Internet sensation TwoSetViolin (no shade… maybe a little shade), who viralized a popular caricature named Ling Ling who supposedly practices 40 hours a day³. And so, of course, my high school nickname became either ‘Ma’ or ‘Ling Ling’, and I no longer had any attachment to the femininity of ‘Sarah’.

In every facet of American society I interacted with, I was staring techno-Orientalism in the eye. Coined in 1995 to explain Western anxieties and paranoia over East Asian nations’ military and technological advancements, techno-Orientalism imagines Asians as threateningly futuristic to such a degree that we are othered as non-human robots. The sentiment has rapidly developed in the West alongside technological revolutions in East Asia after the Cold War and the rise of Yellow Peril (fear of the East)⁴. As nations such as China entered global prominence through economic and tech revolutions, so did the depiction of Asians as unfeeling, highly intelligent, robotic, and exploitable producers, especially in cyberpunk new media. Over time, techno-Orientalism queered me discreetly and effectively, racializing me as an eternal worker: non-human, non-sentient, and in turn, non-gendered. I spent my high school years with no hometown friends, my head buried inside books and music scores. I worked hard and efficiently and impressed a lot of violin teachers. When I quietly graduated a year early, no one even noticed.

Tucked away in the suburbs and desperate to affirm my femininity, I naturally distracted myself with random boyfriends. One of these boyfriends was a white man who was later found responsible for sexually assaulting me twice during our situationship. At some point after it ended, I crossed paths with his ex, a sweet and well-intentioned white girl who started messaging me on Facebook. “He [said] you’re better at head than me… and he said ‘because she’s Asian.’” I still remember the burning sensation in my throat and the tightness in my chest. I didn’t know it then, but this was a huge turning point in my sexuality and gender identity. Following this trauma, I disassociated for a while and experienced recurring depressive episodes. I stopped practicing violin completely and trudged through the motions of school as if I were a paid actor. I made a freakish and desperate attempt to regain control over my body through disordered eating. It was during this period that my relationship with my mother and sister suffered the most; I was no longer capable of identifying with the same cultural femininity that my assaulter had exploited and fetishized. The sexualization of Asian women and the technologization of Asian bodies overlap in the objectification of Asian femininity as labor. My body was solely usable for production, especially for sex. In the 2015 film Ex Machina, an emotionless robot named Kyoko was crafted by its creator, Nathan, as a sex slave⁵. Kyoko is not only programmed to serve sushi, dance, and fuck Nathan, but also as completely mute. It cannot speak, nor can it understand English. Kyoko the robot endures his abuse in silence because it’s what she was predestined for.

At some point, I started frantically trying to piece my identity back together. I dyed my hair a million colors, chopped it all off, and then left to attend Oberlin College, the gayest liberal arts college possible. I got a minor in Gender Studies, briefly identified as a lesbian (I’ve since returned to bisexuality), and experimented with they/he pronouns. I explored polyamory, dated girls and theys, and got a bunch of tattoos and piercings. And, of course, I went to therapy. Though in many ways this was all very liberating, most survivors know that a piece of you will always be gone, or at least permanently altered. To this day, after the assaults, even after my Title IX report and his subsequent suspension, I still feel a deep-ridden fear when I’m near the place where it happened. The violence distanced me from my body, and fetishization tore me from my femininity. Sexual assault made my physical self uninhabitable, unlivable, and unreal. If I hadn’t already felt a certain disenchantment with being a woman, this was enough to tear me away from gender completely. In 2014, the National Center for Lesbian Rights reported that in the U.S., 1 in 8 lesbians, at least half of bisexual women, and 64% of trans people will experience sexual violence in their lifetimes⁶. I wonder what the statistic is for non-binary and trans femmes of color. I wonder, also, how many other femmes of color experience instability with their gender identity after racialized sexual assault.

In 2021, the famous violinist Pinchas Zukerman told a female Asian student in a masterclass that “…in Korea [and Japan], they don’t sing”, and after mimicking traditional East Asian music, stated: “That is not singing. Violin is not a machine.”⁷ Though this conversation has run its course, no one ever dissected the techno-Orientalism that fueled his comments. The robotization and dehumanization of East Asians continues to foster the manipulation and invalidation of Asian artists who perform in the West. A few months ago, my string quartet presented a poignant and unique multi-disciplinary concert that stuck with me as a core memory. This was one of those performances where you put your soul on the stage and feel your eyes brimming with tears. But as the only person of color and Asian in my quartet, after the concert, I watched as a white audience member raved about our performance to my colleagues, in awe of their ‘storytelling abilities’, ‘imaginative colors’, and ‘emotional conviction’. When he got to me, I was praised only for my ‘solid intonation’. I offered a tight-lipped smile in return. Music is my lifeblood, but somehow no one can see it. My race is perceived sooner than my sex, and my gender is constructed as a byproduct of my racialization.

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about why I don’t get upset at people like Michael, who misgender me, who don’t care to understand gender identity or transness. It nagged at me that most other enbies I knew were so insistent about their pronouns, while I was ambivalent about my own. But, in all honesty, I think I don’t care that much because none of us actually understands what gender is. Other queers, including other queers of color, will feel differently than I do about the strictness of their pronouns, because we are all shaped by different understandings of these ambiguous yet nuanced constructs. The type of girl that Michael saw me as is not the same as the type of girl my mother believes I am, or the type of girl June wanted to kiss. Queerness is a deeply personal, spiritual, and ever-changing relationship that is shaped by our environments and surroundings. The degendering of techno-Orientalism and the deterioration of my femininity after assault is proof of my constantly evolving gender identity.

I am non-binary, but that doesn’t mean to me what it means for white American queers. For me, my queerness exists because I am Asian, and because I am Asian living in America. My gender is familial intimacy, cultural connection, and surviving a racialized assault. My gender is Kyoko. When I’m at home, my gender is maternal; when I walk out the door, it’s robot. The closest pronouns for that are probably they/them, but I don’t really care if you misgender me. You can call me whatever.

1. Uyeda, Ann Yuri. “The Very Inside: An Anthology of Writing by Asian and Pacific Islander Lesbian and Bisexual Women.” Ed. Sharon Lim-Hing. Toronto: Sister Vision Press, 1994, pp. 352-353. https://doi.org/10.2307/468195

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverture

3. Why the "Ling Ling 40 Hours" Meme is Racist

4. Ashizawa, Kaede. “Technologizing Asia: Uncovering Techno-Orientalism’s Constructions of Asian Futurism.” York University. New Explorations: Studies in Culture and Communication. Vol. 5 No. 1 (2025). https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/nexj

5. https://confluence.gallatin.nyu.edu/context/first-year-writing-seminar/ex-machina-the-directors-decisions

6. https://www.nclrights.org/sexual-assault-in-the-lgbt-community/

7. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/pinchas-zukerman-juilliard-violin-offensive-b1875001.html