The Japanese American Service Committee ( JASC ) Legacy Center hosted a Memories of Now seminar series presentationNIKKEI QUEER: A workshop on making our spaces LGBTQ affirmingAug. 18 at the JASC headquarters on Clark Street.
JASC CEO Michael Takada spoke about the history of the organization that started as the Chicago Resettlers Committee 70 years ago this month. Takada explained that the committee was formed to help Japanese Americans coming from the internment camps with professional services, referrals and information about the city at large.
Workshop leaders included Anne ( who prefers not to use her last name ), a queer Yonsei/Nisei social worker in mental health services in Chicago and member of Invisible to Invincible: Asian Pacific Islander Pride of Chicago ( i2i ); JJ Ueunten, a genderqueer Yonsei Okinawan and Japanese-American who organizes with i2i and the Chicago Dyke March Collective; and Andrew Leong, a Shin-nisei of mixed Chinese and Japanese heritage, assistant professor of English and Japanese literature at Northwestern University and author of an upcoming book on same-sex and mixed-race desires titled Shut the Door: Japanese-American Fictions of Exclusion and Desire.
Following the introductions, Anne noted that LGBTQ people are everywhere and that part of building Japanese-American communities includes recognizing that LGBTQ Japanese-Americans are a part of that community.
Ueunten said this workshop is just the beginning of the dialogue around recognizing and interrupting homophobia and transphobia as well as gaining a greater understanding of the expansive concepts of sexuality and gender. They ( Ueunten's preferred pronoun ) explained that the goal of the workshop was to give allies a starting place to discuss these issues as well as the tools and foundation to do so. Ueunten also spoke about the intentions for the space, including respecting people's pronouns and noticing the ways one experiences privilege.
Anne said that when talking about gender and sexuality, LGBTQ people are the most impacted by these constructs in terms of violence and oppression. Anne also touched on the theme of allyship.
Leong provided the group with a list of Japanese-American LGBTQ resources encompassing works of fiction, memoires and personal narratives, websites, edited collections and academic books and articles.
"Scientific racism and the scientific classification of homosexuality and gender dysphoria as deviant were emerging at the same time as the Eugenics movement of the late-19th and early-20th [centuries]," said Leong.
He noted that the integration of Japanese-Americans was tinged with European-American racist notions of who they were as a group of people.
Ueunten led a pair exercise in which attendees were tasked with sharing something about their gender and/or sexual orientation with another attendee. This included questions about one's early memory of being told something due to their gender, describing their gender and something about oneself that falls outside of the box of what their sexual orientation is supposed to be.
One attendee noted that the Quakers spoke out against the internment camps during World War II. Another attendee spoke about the calls from some in the Japanese-American community against the targeting of Muslims after 9/11 because they recognized the parallels between targeting Muslims now to the targeting of Japanese immigrants and Japanese-Americans, including forcing them into internment camps, after the Japanese military attacked Pearl Harbor.
Ueunten told the audience about dominant and subordinate groups both within and outside of the LGBTQ community. They explained that cissexism is the belief that being cisgender is the only "natural" path in life and cisgender people have more of a right to jobs, education, a romantic life, autonomy over their bodies and access to public restrooms that corresponds with their gender identity. Ueunten also talked about the definition of heterosexism which is the same as cissexism other than replacing gender identity with sexual orientation.
Anne noted that people often struggle with not wanting to cause conflict/be confrontational in situations where oppression is happening and it takes practice to unlearn that/act differently. She explained that it's about communicating directly and thoughtfully with people who are most directly impacted about what they need/want.
Lastly, attendees were given reference materials focusing on LGBTQ terms and definitions, and GLAAD tips for allies of transgender people and interventions for heterosexism, cissexism, homophobia and transphobia to enhance what they learned during the workshop.
Workshop co-sponsors included JASC, i2i, the Chicago Japanese American Historical Society and the Japanese American Citizens League: Chicago Chapter.
See JASC-chicago.org for more information.