Asians and Friends of Dorothy: Language, Gender, and the Construction of Gay Asian American Community

Founding members of Asians and Friends – Chicago (AFC) were faced with a confounding problem in 1984. The Asian American Movement had begun in 1968 in California, and the Gay Liberation Movement in 1969 at Stonewall. Yet, it took until the mid-1980s for Chicagoans to form the city's first gay and Asian social group. Why had there been this delay? And how could a group whose membership was at times over 60% non-Asian create a welcoming environment for gay Asian men in the Midwest? I address these questions by modeling a novel historical linguistic method, which integrates sociolinguistic theory into archival research. Comparing metalinguistic commentary across prominent gay and/or Asian American political publications reveals a growing acceptance towards non-normative gender performances from the 1960s to mid-1990s. Early Asian American Movement rhetoric had pitted Asian pride against stereotypically-gay linguistic practices, thereby alienating its queer members. But later gay Asian groups like AFC reconciled feminine-coded speech with an anti-Orientalist agenda. By analyzing metalanguage, we see how one small, mixed-race community made room for overtly gay speech practices within the bounds of acceptable Asian American behavior. Asian men were not by default effeminate, but neither was effeminacy strictly anti-Asian.