Last of Firsts

Queer people are often hailed as trailblazers

Contains spoilers for RuPaul's Drag Race Season 16

Nymphia Wind in 2022.

Growing up in an Indonesian suburb, the only lesbian I knew of was Ellen DeGeneres, and so me and my queer Hong Kong friends were screaming at the TV when Nymphia Wind became the first East Asian winner of RuPaul's Drag Race.

We asked each other if the Taiwanese queen actually beat out the other US contestants. She didn’t emerge from the American drag scene. Instead, she grew up in Asia — like us. To a lot of people in this region, America is akin to the global stage. Who would have guessed that an Asian queer kid could win the drag equivalent of American Idol¹?

A lot has shifted in the last decade. Ten years ago, gay marriage wasn’t even legal yet in the US. The first globally recognizable girl-girl couple, Ellen and her wife Portia, represented only one kind of queer relationship. A tomboy and a femme. Caucasian. My sixteen-year-old self couldn’t relate to them at all. I wasn’t boy-ish like Ellen. I liked dresses and skirts. But if I was the Portia, I wasn’t attracted to Ellen-like girls. Therefore I must not be gay. A universe where two girls could be together had no space for me in it.

As of last Saturday, the coveted Drag Race winner’s circle includes an East Asian. Now people in this part of the world can look at Nymphia Wind² and think that they can be successful like her.

I, too, can have a bright future like her.

No compass, no comrades

Like many other queer people who grew up with the identity being hailed as a sin or a disease, we concealed ourselves but had a survival instinct to get out. I groveled for a scholarship to study in a big international city like Hong Kong. It was only in the masses of this populated city that I realized I might not be straight. But even then, I didn’t see any other queer women. 

There is no guidebook on how to be a queer kid in Asia. So the rhythm of carving my own lane began. Finding LGBTQ+ friends would be easier with a student club for queer kids. There wasn’t one, so I started it. When I worked in a local magazine, I didn’t see any queer colleagues. I wasn’t afraid of being fired - I was only an intern - so I became the first employee to come out. When I joined a multinational company, I didn’t know of any other Asian LGBTQ+ staff in the Hong Kong office. So I took a leadership position in our employee pride network for visibility.

Even though I found the courage to do what was best for me, there wasn't a role model I could look up to. I never knew if I was doing the right thing. I came out to my parents in 2017, the first of my friends to do so. They them, LGBTQ+ is a western concept³. They think it taboo, even contagious. I had to decide every day if I wanted to fight with them, educate them, or ignore them.

My parents’ homophobic quips grew more and more unbearable, so I snapped. I cut my parents out in 2022. My friends were shook. Was that the right thing to do? Nobody could say for sure. Indonesians don’t cut ties with their family - that’s durhaka⁴ behaviour. Some people told me I was in the wrong. I believed I was in the right.

Being the first feels like wading through the forest alone, cutting down branches and side-stepping trees whose roots are blocking my way. No compass, no comrades. My straight therapist asked, “Aren’t you kind of a trailblazer?”. I guess I was, but I wish there would be someone I could follow. She asked if I’m tired and if she can offer anything. I asked her if it’ll ever get less lonely.

Shifting breeze

Seeing Nymphia Wind make her way through to the finale… I realized she must not have had a guidebook either. There were no “best practices” for how Asians could make it on an American TV show, let alone one about an art form that’s rooted in American queer history. Pretty much all Asian contestants flop during the ‘Snatch Game’ challenge, where the queens have to impersonate a character and make the host RuPaul laugh. It’s one of the most popular Drag Race challenges, but I didn’t get it. Why is acting funny? I don’t know if Nymphia got it either. She just had to go through the episode and survive the elimination. She didn’t win that challenge, but she won the competition. My friends and I were so enamoured by her crowning that the next morning, we bought tickets to fly to Taiwan to catch her perform live.

Maybe what’s comforting is to see other queer icons of this same generation blaze the trail too. British couple Rose and Rosie said they didn’t know any other lesbian parents trying to have a baby, so they chose to share their IVF journey on their podcast. YouTuber Shannon Beveridge said when she tries to search “lesbian fashion” on Pinterest, pictures of her show up. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman didn’t have any gay icons in business to look up to growing up because there were no prominent ones.

While wading through the forest is lonely, confusing, and exhausting, I’m comforted that other people are doing the same, and one day we will all reach a clearing and just see each other come in from different directions. All the work this generation of queer people is doing will be seen someday. That those who came before me had to figure out their own guidebook: how to navigate AIDS, gay marriage being illegal, being bullied in school. In a way, the path was set for me to wade through, too. Sure, I’ll have to cut down a few branches, but the ones that came before me already cut down the thorns.

The momentum is building up. Queer icons of Asian heritage began to emerge over the years: Hayley Kiyoko, Eugene Lee Yang, Lilly Singh, and now Nymphia Wind. While queer people have always been around, they were shunned to only exist underground. Ellen DeGeneres’s fame shot her up to be of ‘icon’ status, but she was singular. A lone role model perpetuates a stereotype. A pantheon of queer icons reveal just how multifaceted LGBTQ+ people can be.

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If I look on, kids that will grow up after me will see so many queer icons. They will grow up and see that coming out is not a career death sentence. They no longer think that being gay should be stigmatized. My baby cousins have DM-ed me over the years saying they are in awe of my bravery in the face of their parents’ homophobia. They are cool with my sexuality.

A generational shift is happening, so I will likely be part of the last cohort that has to blindly wade through the forests. Enough momentum has built up for my generation to be the point where hate tips towards love, where ignorance tips towards acceptance, where stigma tips towards embrace.

Thank you

Linart Seprioto

and

Michael Dean

for trailblazing this essay’s final form.

1. RuPaul’s Drag Race is now a global franchise with shows in the UK, Canada, Philippines, Thailand, France, Spain, and more. The American show airs on MTV.

2. Nymphia WINd?

3. Never mind that colonizers stomped our natural genderfluid and sexuality identities out of us. After centuries of accepting the binary identities of men/women and heteronormativity, Asian cultures struggle to understand queer identities.

4. A term referring to a rebellious child who didn’t care for their parents.