It's that time of year again. The time of year in which suicide rates are highest. (Did you know that? The highest suicide rates are in May while the lowest rates are in December.) But I'll get to this in a second.

One of my professors is a pretty strict behaviorist. He maintains that all problems can be attributed to either "too much of something" or "not enough of something," frequently both. Bored? Too much time on your hands, not enough to do. Fight too much? Maybe it's too much yelling and not enough listening. Want a boyfriend/girlfriend but don't have one? Maybe you're not meeting enough people. Or you're too focused on someone else but not on yourself. Or even vice versa. Etc. It sounds rather basic, but it's a useful concept for the problem-solving part when you're trying to figure out what to do.

The same professor today says that a lot of the milder mental health issues--anger mismanagement, panic attacks, bulimia, depression, for example--can be attributed to lack of assertion. People are spending too much time ruminating over something but aren't spending enough time problem-solving. Or, more specifically, too much time is spent ruminating instead of just asking for what you need.

This is where assertion comes in.

Maybe I've just been getting tired of datinandrelatin. It's just the same old story, really: somebody is getting mixed messages about something and they want to know what their love interest/friend/family member is really thinking. And almost every comment to these posts are, "Talk to them." But lots of times, the poster feels scared about talking to them. Sometimes it's legitimate (e.g. abusive situations), but most of the time, people will respond to reasonable requests. And you won't always get what you want, but you can certainly get it more often when you ask than when you just sit around and hope things will change for the better by itself.

Sometimes you get what you need when you ask for it in a reasonable way. Sometimes you don't get it, but then you're forced to ask yourself why you're in a situation where you're not getting what you need.

Here's an example. Once, I was upset at MF for not spending enough time with me. He had just started law school, and we were 3 timezones apart. I felt really guilty about asking him to call me more often or spend more time with me on the phone, because I had heard stories about the first year of law school and how it can be a relationship killer. I felt bad about trying to exert more pressure on him. But the longer I put off talking to him about it, the more frustrated and upset I got. Finally, I couldn't take it anymore, so I sat down with him on a night where he did have time, and I told him that things needed to change. He's been a lot better about setting aside talk time with me almost every night now, and on the especially busy nights, he's been able to let me know, and I have a much easier time letting him have that space than I used to. Thanks to asking and some other important factors, it worked out great. But it wouldn't have happened if I didn't ask.

But what would've happened if he said he couldn't give me that extra time? I had a pre-set answer to that, too. "If I'm going to have a boyfriend, I need him to be able to spend this minimum amount of time with me. If you can't do this now, get back to me when you're done with law school if you want to work things out." I wouldn't have gotten him to spend more time with me then, but I would've taken myself out of a stuck situation, waiting for some guy who just wasn't going to give me what I needed. And honestly, would I really want to have stayed with someone who didn't even want to make some time for me, even just a bit? Nah, pass, kthxbye.

Oh wait, I said I would get to the suicide rate thing, right? Well, I was gonna lead that into depression. The paradox of (clinical) depression is that the person starts to isolate themselves from the things and people they used to like. And it's really challenging to get out of that isolation; when you haven't been social in so long, it's damn scary to try and reconnect with people you haven't kept up with. But that social reconnection is exactly what you need. And you have to ask for it. It might take several attempts before you click with someone, but without even attempting, 1 out of 20 attempts is still so much better than 0 out of 0.

Ultimately, you gotta start by deciding that you deserve better. Once you get that down, it's easier to build up the courage to ask.

I sometimes come across very interesting news items in my work, items that are totally unrelated to my research firm's work. Today, I came across this article from News.com which invariably led me to the Columbine game, an RPG based on the Columbine shootings which puts the player in the role of one of the shooters.

(I briefly considered posting the Google video trailer to the RPG, but I didn't want that on my LJ. However, if you're curious about seeing it, it's on the Columbine game's site.)

I'm still deeply disturbed by the VTech shootings, so when I saw this Columbine game, my initial reaction was--not surprisingly--shock and disgust. Maybe even a little angry. But overall, I was curious. Why did the creator make this game? Could he have really been a sick, twisted freak as people were saying?

From the artist's statements, it seems like the game was meant to provide further insight about Columbine. This makes sense to me in some level, because from a purely game-oriented perspective, the RPG doesn't look like it's entertaining as a shooter game. As to what kind of deeper psychological insights the game hopes to provide, I'm not sure. One could say that by putting the player in the role of the shooters, one would better understand how the shooters themselves were victims as well. Or maybe it's the hours invested in playing the game that makes you think about the event more, making you cognitively sensitive about Columbine. Or maybe it's by basing the game on a real-life tragedy that we reconsider the impact of video games. I don't really know. You could take this in a lot of different directions, but I don't think I'd want to play the game myself to find out.

The artist argues that had he chosen to make a film instead a game, reactions would've been different, more permissive. He defends his chosen medium saying that the interactivity of the medium engages the player more deeply into the subject matter. But I think this only applies to a certain kind of audience, maybe a player who's already trying to understand more about Columbine. Any social message would be lost on someone who was playing for the sake of the game.

Today I read an article from one of my textbook about Twixters. More on that to come.

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Okay, honestly, I just wanted to make my timestamp to make today's entry quota. But now that I've done that, I can update about Twixters.

It used to be that, back in the "olden days," a person went from childhood to adolescence to adulthood. Now it seems that there's a whole 'nother phase inserted between adolescence and adulthood. Some who've studied this age group call it "youthhood" or "adultescence" (both of which I think sound pretty silly and neither of them very catchy). The article refers to the 20-somethings in this stage as "twixters."

Everybody knows a few of them - full-grown men and women who still live with their parents, who dress and talk and party as they did in their teens, hopping from job to job and date to date, having fun but seemingly going nowhere.

I'm probably one of these people. Reader, you probably are, too. Some of us like it, and some of us don't. But it's not just a fad or trend so much as... something bigger.

The author of this article makes some interesting arguments about the formation of twixters and twixter culture. At first, it might sound like twixters are just avoiding the responsibilities of adulthood, but it doesn't explain the ones who are trying hard to "grow up" and just can't get there yet. A big factor is the shifting nature of colleges/universities. It's not unusual nowadays for people to spend more than 4 years as undergraduates (reasons of which I'll get into later); this extended time in university just adds on to the expensive bill graduates have to pay at the end. That coupled with rising school costs means huge college debts that makes it take much longer (and more difficult) to attain financial independence. There's also the idea that university studies don't adequately prepare you for the working world unless you're planning for some kind of career path in academia. There are some arguments against this, like the development of writing skills, but I generally agree with this statement; much of college is about jumping through hoops, and you usually don't learn important skills like conflict-resolution or negotiation in classrooms. So the pragmatic skills start to come in and develop after college, after gaining valuable life experience in the workplace, and this contributes to pushing off the "adulthood" stage a bit.

There's a lot more to go through, like how we're the product of the 60's generation, the idealistic generation that pursued bliss and wanted to change the world. Or how we're in a world with "overwhelming choice: there are 40 kinds of coffee beans at Whole Foods Market, 205 channels on DirecTV, 15 million personal ads on Match.com, and 800,000 jobs on Monster.com," and even tons of different areas of studies, so we want to experiment more and try them all. Or how marketers have a vested interest in keeping twixters in their parents' home so that they'll spend "disposable income" on consumables. And, most interestingly, how family creation is affected, with twixters putting off weddings and having children, becoming more promiscuous as a generation (or at least being more vocal about it).

Is there anything wrong with being a twixter? Maybe not. I guess I couldn't blame anyone for wanting to stay a twixter; you get all the privileges of adulthood without half the responsibilities of one. Adulthood either needs more perks or needs to be redefined for twixters to transition.

I'm reading a chapter from my Cultures textbook that goes into mistrust between The White Man and The Minority. (Capitalizations and emphasis mine.) I just finished reading the section about monoculturalism and how unintentional racism is hidden behind colorblindness. Well, there's more to it than that.

I read the section about beliefs in superiority and inferiority as being major components of racism, and admittingly, I thought, "Bullshit. Nobody *really* believes that their race is better than others, do they?" And I caught myself. It's not only that there are people out there who DO think their race is better than others, but I could be one of those people.

I thought back to a conversation I had about a year and a half ago with MF about culture. I felt that being American could easily dilute and overpower one's culture, but he felt that being American just added another dimension to one's cultural richness. I guess I didn't see at the time that we embodied our own beliefs; I'm the Vietnamese American, and he's the Vietnamese-American.

Yes, I'm aware that it seems like I typed the same descriptor for the both of us, but that hyphen makes a huge difference.

"Vietnamese American" acts as an adjective and a noun. The "Vietnamese" is the adjective describing the operative noun, "American." Ultimately, I'm an American who happens to have Vietnamese characteristics.

"Vietnamese-American" acts as two connected nouns. MF is a Vietnamese. He is also an American. He has managed to successfully balance elements of Vietnamese and American culture without diluting the richness of either.

So what does this have to do with unintentional racism?

As a Vietnamese American without the hyphen, I've rejected a large part of my ethnic culture, and it's not because I wanted to fit in with the white kids; I just felt for a long time that I didn't have a place with the Vietnamese kids. And oftentimes I still feel that way. I think this is related somehow to the superior/inferior cultures belief, that perhaps I had defaulted to American values because it seemed like a better choice. In reality, did I really have to choose? Why couldn't I just keep both? Is it really because I think American values are "better" or easier to adopt?

And where does all this cultural guilt come from? Wow!

I don't really feel like American values are superior to Vietnamese ones, but I do think I ought to be aware of my attitude about biculturalism. "Counselor, know thyself," they say in my classes. So maybe deep down, I'm a bit racist. (Maybe? Probably?)


P.S. Teeheehee, when he finishes law school and I finish grad school, we'll both be working towards people calling us "counselor"! </nerdiness>

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Edit: Lecture in class today glossed over this issue a little bit. It could be internalized racism. Hmm.

The Bay Area and LA have had an informal "rivalry" that's sort of infused into their respective cultures. 

When I'm in LA, I don't hear all that many complaints against the Bay, but in the Bay, there always remains the contention that LA culture is materialistic and shallow.  No one seems to criticize the Bay for its own intellectual eliticism.

Both the Bay and LA are all about image.  LA's image is a lot more glitzy, giving the impression of bling, stardom, "diva-ishness" behavior.  The Bay's image is more about intellect, made transparent by its worship of NPR, book stores, and political rants on street corners, stop signs, and Craigs List (which itself is an epitome of substance/content over style).

I was born and raised in LA, and I moved to the Bay hoping for something different.  In that regard, I'm not disappointed; the two areas ARE different.  But to Bay Area residents who condemn LA for its materialism, please consider LA's rich, cultural offerings.  We've got great art museums (the Getty and LACMA, for instance), decent beaches, excellent ethnic cuisine offerings (just like the Bay!), a good nightlife, some great bands that started out here, and impressive universities to shape LA culture.  Yes, we get shitty rush hours, horrible drivers, and "evil" corporate culture, but so does the Bay!

Eh, that's the end of my brief rant.  I'm going to sleep now.

Today, theferrett links to an interesting gay marriage analysis, written from a libertarian's POV.  It's an intelligently-written essay that's not about whether homosexuality is right or wrong, and it focuses more on institutions and policy effects.  Even though the author asserts that s/he is not taking a side, it's the strongest argument I've read from gay marriage critics.

Just thought a few of you would be interested.

My sociology background makes it difficult to withhold the "feminist" comments sometimes.  Some weeks ago, I went to the Cheesecake Factory with my coworker/friend (who happens to be male) and commented that I was sure the server would bring him the check, not me.  "Any server would," I insisted.  "It's customary to believe that if a male and female are dining together, the male will probably pay."  Perhaps our server overheard us, because when she brought us the check, she placed it squarely on the middle of the table... the "neutral zone."

On our next outing, the same male friend and I went to Black Angus right after work for their Happy Hour.  I mentioned to him that I was thinking about writing a novel, and we were discussing certain ideas and themes that could be incorporated in the story.

"I think that perhaps--check, please--somebody in the story has to be a newcomer of a sort, so that the reader can be aquainted to the story the same time this newcomer does," I said. "And--"

I stopped in mid-sentence.  The bartender placed the check squarely on his side, even though I was the one who asked for the check.

Male Friend* and I looked at each other knowingly.  Then we both laughed. 

"I'll get the check," he said.




* I keep referring to him as "Male Friend" because he's the sort of person who changes people's names in real-life stories he'd tell me.  He probably wants the same type of privacy, so I'll respect that.  Maybe in future entries, I'll refer to him as "MF" (Male Friend?  Man Friend?).

I always wondered what the big deal was about putting the toilet seat down.  If anything, females should be lucky if males put the toilet seat up at all when they take a leak.  As long as guys take steps to not pee on what I'm going to sit on, I'm willing to meet them halfway and put the toilet seat back down when it's my turn to go.

Now I realize that it's more of an appearance deal.  It just looks nicer when the toilet seat is down.

Still, when it comes down to it, I'd rather they just keep lifting the seat than not.

Sometimes, I'll encounter an advertisement with a pretty Asian woman in it, and I start the same stream of thought about advertising over again.

"Out there in the world somewhere, someone is protesting that this ad objectifies Asian women.

"And in a similar advertisement with a white woman, someone is protesting that white women are the standards of beauty in America, 'but we should show more diverse forms of beauty, like more images of Asian women!'

"And out there, someone is protesting that advertising with just women is only reinforcing heteronormativity, and that we should include more men in advertising to balance out the number of sexual eye candy.

"And elsewhere, someone is protesting that all these ads only show pencil-thin male and female models.  'There should be more normal-looking people in the media!'"

It makes me start to think that the "socially-ideal" ad has to be one that doesn't feature any visuals of people.  (I wonder how this would apply to radio programs. I mean, even robotic voices have gender. Stephen Hawkins still sounds like a guy.)

So... as a young Asian female, what could my new default user icon of a dancing black man mean?!

"Out there in the world somewhere, someone is protesting that if a woman danced like that in her panties, it'd be considered sexually inappropriate.  'How unfair it is that this guy can do it and be considered comical!'"

Whoever's out there protesting over the social meanings of this icon, stop it.  :P 

Just be cool and let my icon dance offbeat to Basement Jaxx.

"So," I ask Lyndsey, my roommate, "do you and Andy have plans for Valentine's?"

"No," she says.  "He doesn't believe in Valentine's Day."

This happens a lot more with Christmas than any other holiday, this "I refuse to celebrate this on the grounds that it's gotten too commercial" mood.  And that makes sense, because Valentine's is a little more exclusive; everyone's supposed to get a gift for Christmas, but only lovers get gifts for Valentine's.  (Reality, of course, dictates something a just little different, but the social dynamics generally apply.) 

However, this "too commercial" mood is getting more prevalent with Valentine's Day.  In particular, boyfriends and husbands are prone to feeling this way, fighting against the social pressure to flatter their lover.

Well, you know what?

I think the commercialism reason is a weak excuse and a bunch of bullarky for not celebrating any holiday.

People, holidays are supposed to be fun.  If you're not enjoying it, it's not because there's something inherently wrong with the holiday.  So what if corporations are making profits from it?  You're looking at only $one$ way to celebrate. 

If you've got a lover but don't want to celebrate because it's "too commercial," why not do something that's NOT commercial and DOESN'T involve buying presents?  When's the last time you really told your sweetheart you cherished them?  If you don't have a lover, when's the last time you wrote an anonymous love letter to someone you had a huge crush on? 

A refusal to celebrate a holiday is basically a refusal to make people you love feel good. 

Okay, I hear you, I hear you.  "I don't want to feel like I have to do it and would rather do it when it's not expected."

That's a legitimate concern, but honestly, I think without holidays like this, people would really just forget or take forever to do something special for loved ones.  If you've been in a 2+ year relationship, you might know what I mean.  Relationships eventually hit a plateau.  Partners will forget, and it's not intentional.  Life just takes over, and before you know it, you and your partner work full-time, deal with too much academic work, or have a rough time with your kids.  Valentine's Day is just a reminder for you to say, "I love you," in a big way.

If not Valentine's, I'm sure you'll have plenty of entries in your Friends List throughout the year that will say, "Always tell your loved ones you love them!" 

I'd just rather have Valentine's do the reminding than wait until someone faces a tragic accident or death.  Those kinds of reminders invoke a sad, desperate fear in an "I love you."

"Would you please order this time?" he asked me.

I raised my eyebrow and asked why, even though I knew the answer.

This was significant in two respects.  First, he was almost always the one to make the order when we went out to eat, even if it was take-out.  If we both ordered, I would order my own dish, and he would order his and the sides we would both share.  He would not ordinarily have made this request for me to order.  Second, and this was what motivated the first point, we were eating at a Vietnamese restaurant.  He wanted me to order in Vietnamese.

"I hardly ever get to hear you speak Vietnamese," he responded.  "And when you speak it, it's like your voice changes so that it's low and quiet."

This was true.  I was always embarrassed of my "western accent" and hated broadcasting it to the world whenever possible, even if the listener wasn't Vietnamese.

"Also, it's good practice," he continued.  "It's always good to speak your language.  And you can read it, too."

"Yeah, but it doesn't mean I understand what I'm reading."

"But at least you can read it!  I can't read my language."

"That's because it's Chinese, silly." 

The waitress walked up and asked in her broken English, "What would you like to order?"  In my equally broken Vietnamese, I ordered a bowl of pho for him and a bowl of buon bo hue for myself, as well as some thai iced tea, soybean milk, and egg rolls.

"Good job," he said to me after she left.  "See?  That wasn't so bad."  I sat there, trying to steady my nerves. 

It's an embarassment to me when I encounter Vietnamese speakers and have them find that I can't speak the language.  But my broken Vietnamese is somehow even more of an embarassment, and I end up preferring to have people think I speak only English than only fragmented, mispronounced parts of a language.  Vietnamese was worst because I was working negatively against expectations.  Had it been any other language (Spanish, Chinese, Yiddish), people would be impressed, even if it was in a broken accent with funny grammar.

I don't really know how to deal with my unresolved issues with "Vietnameseness," but I would imagine it would have to do with reaching out to a different set of Vietnamese people, or a different part of Vietnamese culture I haven't witnessed yet. 

There will be ample opportunity for that.  After all, Tet will come soon, and I may be visiting Vietnam for the first time to see my uncle get married...

------------------
* If people were required to order different ethnic foods in the native tongue, I would make sure to have friends for as many languages as possible. And over time, I would learn the "languages of ordering" from each friend. That would be cool, wouldn't it? To order Mexican food in Spanish (with the proper accent), or Indian food in Indian? And Ethiopian food in... Ethiopian? We'd reserve ordering in English for Denny's (and places like it) and fast food joints.

In Simone De Beauvoir, I have found an articulation of all my personal fears of relationships.

"The truth is that for man she is an amusement, a pleasure, a company, an inessential boon; he is for her the meaning, the justification of her existence. The exchange, therefore, is not of two items of equal value.

"This inequality will be especially brought out in the fact that the time they spend together... does not have the same value for both partners. During the evening the lover spends with his mistress he could be doing something of advantage to his career, seeing friends, cultivating business relationships, seeking recreation; for a man normally integrated in society, time is a positive value: money, reputation, pleasure. For the idle, bored woman, on the contrary, it is a burden she wishes to get rid of; when she succeeds in killing time, it is a benefit to her: the man's presence is pure profit. In a liaison what most clearly interests the man, in many cases, is the sexual benefit he gets from it: if need be, he can be content to spend no more time with his mistress than is required for the sexual act; but--with exceptions--what she, on her part, wants to kill is the excess time she has on her hands; and--like the greengrocer who will not sell potatoes unless the customer will take turnips also--she will not yield her body unless her lover will take hours of conversation and 'going out' into the bargain. A balance is reached if, on the whole, the cost does not seem too high to the man, and this depends, of course, on the strength of his desire and the importance he gives to what is to be sacrificed. But if the woman demands--offers--too much time, she becomes wholly intrusive, like the river overflowing its banks, and the man will prefer to have nothing rather than too much. Then she reduces her demands; but very often the balance is reached at the cost of a double tension: she feels that the man has 'had' her at a bargain, and he thinks her price is too high.... He always has 'other things to do' with his time; whereas she has time to kill; and he considers much of the time she gives him not as a gift but as a burden.

"As a rule, he consents to assume the burden because he knows very well that he is on the privileged side, he has a bad conscience; and if he is of reasonable good will he tries to compensate for the inequality by being generous. He prides himself on his compassion, however, and at the first clash he treats the woman as ungrateful and thinks, with some irritation: 'I'm too good for her.' She feels she is behaving like a beggar when she is convinced of the high value of her gifts, and that humiliates her."

I am confused as to how De Beauvoir suggests to resolve this issue. My interpretation is that she says women must be seen as equals, almost naturally in a society, and if women are severed of their dependence on men, such a situation would be considerably less likely to occur. But she makes no immediate suggestion. She only implies that if women treat their time the same way men treat their time, then balance would be achieved. What of the reverse: what if men were to treat their time the same way women treat their time?

Question.

How did you learn about sex as a kid?



My parents borrowed a cartoon from the local library. I don't remember much from the cartoon now, except maybe for the sperm character in speedos swimming in an Olympic-sized pool to a skirt-wearing egg waiting on the other side. And other scenes in the video, but that's the basic gist of it.

Off to LA I go!

I decided to enroll in my least favorite seminar, Studying Gender in the Field. Involved is a semester-long research topic by the student, in which we select a place to observe people and observe how gender plays a role.

Our first fieldnotes are due tomorrow, and I have not selected anyplace yet.

I've decided to do my first fieldnotes about my bus ride home (maybe also to school if I need more material), but I would like to pick a better place that's more interesting.

Actually, I wanted to do a project on how gender plays a role in online communities, but I just can't see how to go about observing that just yet. I also think there are a fair number of people online who withhold information regarding their gender or sex, so it might be even more difficult to see how gender operates when that bit of information is obscured. Course, if I managed to find a way (or if someone has a good suggestion!), doing fieldnotes would be a hell of a lot easier.

Other (offline) suggestions: restaurants, campus clubs/organizations, workplace (if I could find a job), a church I'm not familiar with, the BART...

Save me and make a suggestion. Please.

A lot of interesting discussion lately from LJ coming from the blog_sociology community that I love and adore, and if you're interested in the sociology of blogging and bloggers, join! Read about someone's rant on why the Internet should only be allowed for public entries, or what people's examples of a well-written entry are. Or, a short post that had been locked for members, but I thought it should have been public because it's interesting:

"i am curious if the whole process of friending people was called something else completely neutral, like subscribing to someone's journal, would you still feel obligated to subscribe back? i have a theory that it is the weight of the word "friend" that makes people feel guilty about not "friending" people back. what do you think? (does this make sense?)" (I don't know if the writer wanted to remain anonymous, but you can find out if you join blog_sociology!)

</end plug>

I took a nap and had this violent nightmare about an hour ago. At first, I dreamt I was being beaten and kicked by someone I couldn't see, though I could tell it was a guy. Then I was a spectator from a few feet away, watching the same guy kicking and beating another guy senseless until he was unconscious. More guys came in and joined in the beating. "Why are they doing this?" I asked a faceless spectator next to me. "Because they want to piss in his mouth and not have him swallow it," Faceless replied.

I turned and watched in horror as the now-unconscious guy was propped up in a sitting position with his mouth hanging open, the abusers pissing into his mouth.

So many violent nightmares. My theory is that since I'm not getting my daily dose of exposure to violence on TV (as I usually don't watch any TV), my brain is making up for it so I don't go on some withdrawal mode. Poop.

To those who have been leaving comments and such for the past week or so, I'm sorry I haven't been able to get back to most of you. It's been stressful this past month, and yet I feel like there's so much I can write in here and ought to when I get the chance (which is likely to be winter break). I'm sorry I couldn't get back to you sooner, Brad. (But to be honest, I'm not very interesting in person. :P)

In other news, my hamster's escaped twice from her cage in the past couple of weeks. I bought a new cage and hope it'll fare much better. Gotta see how to keep her warm, though. The cotton fluff doesn't seem to be enough.

Oh, and I don't like turkey very much. I like steak as Thanksgiving fare. The Korean bbq kind, not the American kind of steak. Those huge looking slabs of T-bone steaks is what I think of when I think of American steak.

One more thing that I did want to note before I head out.

I don't think I've felt more racially self-aware than I am now. I almost don't want to credit my Race class for it since so little was covered on Asian Americans, but the final paper that's due Thursday did allow for a lot of introspection to occur. I think the other part of my newfound self-awareness also comes from dating a non-Asian guy. It must be true what they say, then, that identity comes from understanding the "other," and my understanding of being Asian comes from getting a better sense of what it means to be non-Asian. At the same time, however, I also feel a lot of shared cultural similarities with Jack. This, I believe, is where the "American" part enters ("American" being a term I use very loosely in this case).

People always talk about only mixed people feeling a mixed sense of identity, the people who are Hapas or mestizos or whatnot. I'm assumed to be 100% Vietnamese, but I certainly don't feel that 100%. I prefer that people simply call me "Phuong" instead of some other English name or in the proper Vietnamese pronunciation of the name. Just "Phuong" which rhymes with "thong." It is neither an American name nor a Vietnamese name. It is its own identity.

"So what's this new guy's name?"
"Jack."
"Doesn't sound like an Asian guy."
"No. He's part white, part Latino."
"Figures he'd be white."
"What do you mean?"
"You're too Americanized."

I was almost taken aback by Yu-Hung's comment. That, combined with the content from Slaying the Dragon, I started feeling self-conscious, even a little defensive, for a couple of reasons.

One, I hate using the term "American" to describe myself as I dislike what patriotism seems to mean in this country. I am most definitely "westernized," but not "Americanized." Most Americans, of course, can't tell the difference because they're brought up to think the U.S. is the hegemonic powerhouse of the world. And contrary to popular belief, it's not and hasn't been since post-WW2. That, and Canada and Mexico are also American countries, so for the U.S. to lay claim to the title "American" is silly. 'Course, I wouldn't know what else to call U.S. residents. But I digress. I just hate calling myself "American."

Nor do I like calling myself "Vietnamese" so much. I don't have anything against the country the way I do with the United States. I'm just way too disconnected from Vietnam. It's almost like calling me Chinese, except that I'm much more fascinated with Chinese culture. Perhaps calling me Russian would be a better parallel.

I just can't help but wince at all the labels that could possibly be attributed to my ethnicity/race/nationality: "American," "Vietnamese," "Vietnamese-American," "Asian," "Asian American." The last one is a more comfortable fit as a label, but generally not much better.

On the one hand, I could say labels are stupid and don't really matter, but that'd be a total lie. If the U.S. (or other countries, for that matter) don't put so much emphasis on racial labels, it wouldn't matter so much to me. Identities are built when groups are formed... but where is my group? And if I have none, what "outsider" label am I to use?

I had a conversation with this man on the BART on Halloween, but more later.

"In the larger world... we are generally seen in terms of our roles. A professor may see us... as students; a used-car salesman relates to us as potential buyers; a politician views us as voters. Only among our intimates are we seen on a personal level, as Maria or Will. Before marriage, our friends are our intimates.... Our partners are the ones... with whom we are most intimate. With our partners we disclose ourselves most completely, share our hopes, rear our children, grow old."

(The Marriage and Family Experience: Intimate Relationships in a Changing Society, 8th edition... my psych textbook.)