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GOLDSEA | IDENTITY

SACRED SEXUALITY
Our quest to look serious and sophisticated shouldn't make us lose sight of what's really important.

et's get real for a moment. I mean, just between you, me and this dropcap. When you were in your teens, before reality took its inevitable toll, what did you yearn to be, I mean really, in your heart of hearts -- a dashing (or beautiful), incredibly sexy world-class playboy (or femme fatale) lusted after by an international assortment of the most incredibly beautiful members of the opposite sex? Or a doctor/lawyer/insurance chief?
"Any population unable to promote its own sexuality vigorously and winningly will become a sexual colony to another population better able to do so."
     Can't remember a time when you dreamed of the former? Immediately stop reading and go fill out a multi-part form or something. This is meant to be read by those with a pulse.
     If you're strung out by money worries, a hostile environment, or poor health, sex is likely to be the last thing on your mind. If, on the other hand, you've built up an assortment pack of safe investments on three continents with more coming in every day than you could possibly spend, you have a good chunk of leisure time and are bursting with vitality, your thoughts inevitably turn to your sexuality and the constellation of fun activities that goes with indulging it.
     Sexuality represents the payload, the flowering, of any warm-blooded creature, human or lesser species. It comes into its own only when the other, more immediate necessities of survival have been seen to.
     That's why images that evoke sexuality are so universally appealing. Wholly aside from the fact that sex is the biological mechanism for procreation -- which in itself is ample justification for celebrating it -- its intimate association with wealth, power, health and well-earned leisure make it synonymous with success on the most basic human level.
     Any population unable to promote its own sexuality vigorously and winningly will become a sexual colony to another population better able to do so.
     Notwithstanding small-scale regional wars that will continue to erupt until the end of time, in today's world, the success of a people as an ethnic group depends primarily on making membership in the group desirable to its own young. And, as we know, nothing is more appealing to young people undergoing an identity crisis than images of healthy sexuality.
     In this regard Asian Americans as a group have been at a severe disadvantage vis-a-vis the American population at large. Asian American youth, even those with an innate sense of pride in our identity, face the decision of either trying to lose themselves in the mainstream -- which is neither healthy nor entirely possible -- or coping with widespread images of Asians as sexual exotics available to all comers, in the case of Asian women, or sexual non-entities, in the case of Asian men. We know that there is no truth to either image, but our young don't know that. Many will make lifetime decisions based on a one-sided presentation gleaned from the mass media of the disadvantages of Asian sexuality.




     What makes the situation worse is that some Asian Americans have decided to abdicate their own sexuality in the hope of becoming less of a threat to the white population. If they become sexual non-entities, they figure, there will be that much less for racists and chauvinists to attack. Such Asians are the most vocal opponents of depictions of Asian sexuality, including those contained here.
     Since the beginning we have celebrated Asian sexuality and will continue to do so as our sacred duty. --T. Kagy

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