Navigating White Male Gaze: Reclaiming “Femme” in a Brown Woman’s Body
by Kshyama
While I openly write about race and gender issues, it’s rare for me to talk about my own queer identity and indeed, to embrace it in public forums. As a somewhat closeted bisexual South Asian woman, I tend to experience marginalization through others’ scrutiny of the most visible markers of my identity. I’m aware that I pass for straight very often and while there is a privilege associated with such passing, I also often feel isolated in supposedly queer-friendly spaces. I recall trying to meet more people in Montreal’s queer village, and I remember crying bitter tears from feeling even more invisible than in heterosexist circles. Lesson: brown women who do not fit Western notions of queer may be invisible in Western queer scenes.
And yet, I embrace my queerness for what it is, or at least I try to. Part of the reason I pass for straight is my typically-feminine presentation. Femininity is often coded as straight in our cissexist, heteronormative society, and as a cisgender woman, it doesn’t take a lot to be read as feminine — a bit of eyeliner, a pair of earrings, some lipstick. My brownness too is coded so often as straight due to the lack of queer brown women in the mainstream. As a result, my queer identity is closeted away under makeup, dresses, and brown woman skin, forcing me into a strange space between invisibility and privilege.
I’m sometimes thankful for this invisibility because if my queerness were mor e visible, the threat of violence and automatic assumptions about my sexual predilections would be additional swamps I’d have to wade through. As it is, I deal with a lot of fetishistic comments from men (particularly white men), which they like to think passes for flirtation; I’ve heard everything from “brown sugar” to “chocolate pussy.” So invisibility helps sometimes, though this is not to say that my life is free of these things — violence, power, and coercion still shape my life and dating experiences.
A few weeks ago, someone I was casually seeing asked me for a threesome. Let’s call him Ken. Ken was very kind in his request, shy about it in a way, and made it clear that he was only asking if I was into the idea. In the back of my mind I wasn’t entirely sure, but I had a nagging suspicion that he and I would no longer meet if I said no. I raised my concerns and we decided to make concrete plans to hang out, whether or not a third party was involved. Not wholly reassured, I asked a close friend of mine, another queer woman of color, if she’d be interested in such a proposition. Let’s call her Kyra. Kyra and I have vaguely flirted in the past, and when I asked her, she gave me a wink.
“Well I’d be down if it was just you, but I’m not feeling the white boy thing these days,” Kyra said. “If your plans don’t work out tonight, you’re welcome to come hang out at the pub.”
Instinctively, I understood Kyra’s hesitation. Countless black and brown women have written about why dating or sleeping with white men has left them feeling empty, vulnerable, used, and exploited — and these are experiences I’ve had as well. Indeed, when I informed Ken a threesome would not be taking place, he canceled our plans for the evening, leaving me disappointed but not surprised.
What happened with Ken typifies about 90 percent of the interactions I’ve had with straight, white, cisgender men, and I’ve learned some lessons in the process: I am a fetish they can indulge, an “experience” they can have. I am generally fuckable, beautiful, and gorgeous, but not loveable or worthy of timely responses, communication, and basic decency. Sex, dating, and everything in between will always be on their terms — never on mine. If I try and make plans, they will generally be rebuffed, most often with silence. And if they make plans and I say no, I will likely never see them again.
Ken and I had spent a week planning to see each other and when he told me he had a bad day and was too tired to come over that night, I knew what he really meant: I’m too tired for you, but if another brown girl was there, my time wouldn’t be wasted. And just like that, I knew I was expendable. I told him I was sorry he had a lousy day. I also told him that at some point, he’d have to pick up the hat he left behind on a previous visit. It had been over a month, and his hat was still with me. He made no attempt to pick it up, despite my polite request making it clear I wanted his stuff out of my place. You see, I’m only allowed to make demands when I know I have nothing to lose — any demands I would have made prior to this would have resulted in Ken ghosting me. It has been my experience that when I’ve made demands of white men, asserted my needs carefully and clearly, my needs have always been “too much.” The price of affection for me has nearly always been objectification — and objects can’t really make demands. It was only when I was sure I no longer wanted to see him did I feel able to voice a simple demand: “pick up your hat, Ken.”
Kai Cheng Thom writes about jealousy, envy, desirability, and how sex and pleasure are so often denied to people of color — and how that denial is compounded by additional factors, including trans and queer identities of any kind. Telling men that I’m interested in other women leads to them fetishizing me further, as they often insist on inserting their presence into my fantasies about women because they assume threesomes come naturally to those of us who are bisexual. In addition to being hypersexualised, or feeling slotted into white men’s multiple partner fetishes that bi women are consistently subject to, I am often worried about how I may be forced to navigate heterosexist attitudes that assume I am into cis men and cis women, instead of more progressive understandings of bisexuality as being into genders similar and different from my own. Considering that I’m already treated so expendably, owning my bisexuality in public is not something I can really do effectively, or so I felt.
When Ken said no that night, I was disappointed, but unsurprised. So, I decided to take Kyra up on her offer. On the way over to the pub, Ben, Kyra’s friend, had been casually flirting with both of us and this flirtation continued once inside. It was clear, however, that Kyra and I only had eyes for each other. We each had a little to drink and the flirting between us was more obvious, little touches on thighs or shoulders, arms casually draped over chairs, winks and clever double entendres. As we played truth-or-dare Jenga at the pub, I turned and dared her to kiss me. I could see a smile flutter across her lips as she turned to me. Our lips met. It was lovely. And it was loving. I think that was what caught me off guard the most: kissing her felt kind. Kissing her was not a claim. There was still the thrill of someone new, the thrill of a kiss, but there was also kindness and no anxiety about how I would be treated by her.
Immediately the men at our table tried to make advances. Here were two bisexual women openly kissing and showing affection; clearly it had to be for them — they were invited, right? Their eyes were on us: immediately sexualizing, penetrating, and demanding space for themselves. For once, I felt different. I had nothing to prove to these men. Ben ‘dared’ us to go home with him for a threesome, and the atmosphere at the table grew increasingly tense. Finally, a friend spoke up, reminding Ben that people should only do what they are comfortable doing. Kyra and I laughed, and I felt a subtle shift in the environment, in who held power over terms of sex and lust.
This small exchange at a pub enabled me to claim my bisexuality in front of straight, white, cis men — the kind of men I’ve always felt pressured to impress. Kissing Kyra openly, expressing our mutual desire without once considering or flirting with the men at the bar, empowered my queerness. We were two femme WoC who had no desire to invite men to our party and in this bonding moment with Kyra, the superficial charm of these men was magnified. Why had I been yearning to impress men at bars who would never respect me, men who had so little to offer me? Men, whose flirtatious attempts included cheesy pick-up lines about Bollywood that I’d only halfheartedly and rather self-consciously called out in the past, who were apprehensive about their responses? When Eric butchered Aishwarya Rai’s name that night, I remember raising an eyebrow, clever words tumbling from my mouth: “Oh my god, it’s like watching a dog trying to walk on its hind legs!” He blushed the shade of ripe tomatoes — let me never forget how exhilarating it is to cut down men who feel entitled to my body and my personhood after a few shallow words about where I’m from.
At the bar, another brown woman meandered over, and we sat there talking about our experiences in navigating male gaze in India and in the West. I remember the white men sitting around us, looking sullen and angry; they remained quiet. Something else had happened: not only were Kyra and I not interested in a threesome, we had established that we had our choice of sexual experiences that night — and we had chosen each other. Because of our clear choices, we were perceived differently. We were women dominating the conversation. Our interests were suddenly centered. I could see the shift in how we were treated. When femme queer women start to assert and carve out a space that caters to our needs, men behave as if they are cheated out of an opportunity. They sat there sullen, as though the conversation had slipped out from under them. It was as if they not only had nothing worthwhile to contribute, they also knew they didn’t, and their angry faces conveyed their entitlement to every conversation in the bar.
When we tried to step out of the bar to get some air, men asked half-petulantly, half-resentfully, “Wait, you weren’t even going to say bye?” We giggled, told them to “relax” and said we’d be back. Curled up on the curb, we talked, half-drunkenly, about how none of them had ever given a fuck if we’d left a bar before, but suddenly we mattered because we’d dare refuse them by simply choosing each other. It was a victory. I could taste it when she kissed me, in the openness of her smile. Our kisses weren’t conquests over each other. Our kisses didn’t demand to plant flags in each other’s skin. We weren’t notches on headboards. I didn’t know the flavor of respect in a sexual context until that evening. I didn’t know what it meant to feel worthy of respect. I hope to call that sensation to my tongue in the future, let it guide my words when I feel myself trying to win the approval of men who don’t give a damn about me.
Our lips met. It was lovely. And it was loving. For we had chosen each other that night.
ACAS QAY — The Queer Asian Youth Program provides youth-led social spaces, capacity development, and peer support for LGBTQ, questioning, curious and undecided East & Southeast Asian youth in Toronto
ASAAP- The Alliance for South Asian AIDS Prevention (ASAAP) provides HIV/AIDS, sexual health and support services for South Asian communities in the GTA
LGBT Youth Line: Anonymous and confidential texting, chat, and phone support
