KIM November 15, Which begs the question: why? I sometimes ask that aloud. Nor should we feel obligated to constrain our options to Asian men. But too often, Asians are as guilty as anyone in refusing to see Asian men as sexual partners. What might just seem like a harmless non-preference for people of your own race may really just be the result of internalized self-racism.

Growing up in Vancouver, WA a predominantly white area , I remember feeling a discomfort toward my features. This adjective was supposedly meant as a compliment, but the meaning of that word is "introduced from another country, not native to the place where found. We are not anchored in the same way, making it easy for us to lose our identities or feel lost trying to navigate the intersection between our cultures. This photo project has been on my mind since coming to Los Angeles because I finally lived in a place where there were people who looked like me.

Asian American masculinity has been linked to the model minority myth and a hierarchy of racist stereotypes. I used to believe it myself. Until I moved to Korea when I was 23, visiting for the first time since my adoption at age two, I dated only white women.

You hate Asian men, they insist; you hate your own child. You hate yourself. I save these messages in a folder on my computer to document the abuse. Whenever I upgrade my laptop, I copy them over, little packets of poison I must keep and carry forever. It was a moment when Asian-Americans were celebrating as a community, yet here was a hate message plummeting out of the blue into my inbox.