Through this audiovisual project I engage with the concept of divinity as the transcendental power of demanding pleasure. I seek to examine the overlapping themes of sex, desire, and Asian identity while building community with Asian diaspora/Asian-Australian women and nonbinary femmes. What does pursuing joy look like as we reflect on the recent rise of gendered, anti-Asian violence? How do we, as frequent objects of desire, reclaim the gaze as active subjects? What makes us feel good, or ecstatic? What do we want?
I hope that this piece represents the start of a more expansive and collaborative archive of experience, from which people can draw upon. It is messy, sensual, sad, mundane, glorious, enraging, informative. This work is by no means comprehensive.
I am eternally grateful for my collaborators (Chrystal, Grace, Joy, Lucia, Monisha, Non, and Reina) who have shared their time, spaces, and vulnerabilities with me.
If you have thoughts, questions, or are interested in participating, please reach out to me at dorcastjy@gmail.com with the subject title Love Me Long Time.
Transcriptions have been edited and condensed for clarity.
Photographed at her home in Redfern. Grace works as a storyboard revisionist and was one of my first friends in Sydney.
Grace, 25
She/her
Grace: There have been situations where I have actually felt very conscious of my race in casual sexual relationships, especially when I was younger and I was more open-minded to people. I remember one incident where I was seeing this guy and I was in his family’s house and he was cooking something and then he turned to me and was like, ‘Fried riiii—,’ and I was like, ‘What are you even doing?’ He was making a joke about fried rice? And I was very naïve, I just kind of took it on the chin and didn’t bring it up, whereas now I would. Then I think, within that year, I was seeing this other guy and maybe I mentioned something like, ‘What’s your type usually?’ and he goes, ‘I like Filipino girls.’
Christine (Grace’s friend and housemate): That’s really specific.
G: Yeah very specific and I think in these two instances I kind of clocked it a little bit, but now looking back I’m like, ’Huh!?’ I don’t love those experiences. I don’t love feeling like this Asian person they’re fucking and they’re getting gratification out of it at my expense. And I’m sure they’re decent people but these are definitely very real experiences of being very conscious of my race.
Photographed in their home in Earlwood. I love Chrystal’s shoe collection as it encompasses two distinct cultural aesthetics: Pleaser boots and Nike TNs.
Chrystal, 27
They/them
Chrystal: Being a person of colour, I found that it varies between places and it varies between parts of the sex work industry as well. It was always a really interesting thing for me working at massage parlours because two of my closest friends there were very white, and I’d often find them getting booked more frequently than me, or getting different kinds of clients to me. So that was something that I had to kind of reconcile with myself. It was... Yeah, it was funny to never really want to be fetishised for my heritage, but then being put, well not being put necessarily, but putting myself into an industry where I could capitalise on that and use it to my advantage. But I’m still kind of a weird in-between where I’m not... If a client is looking for an Indian girl, I’m not like the Indian girl that they want, you know? I’m very Western — I don’t sound like they would expect I sound, I have lots of tattoos, I’ve got half my head shaved [laughs]. But I’m also not Western enough for the people who want the shaved head girl with tattoos, so it’s a funny middle ground to be in. Mm.
Dorcas: Yeah, you’re like between capitalising fully on the fetishised ideal but can’t be white the way they perceive an alternative girl.
C: Yeah [laughs].
D: What kind of clients do you get?
C: I get a really...quite a wide range of clients. I don’t often get people of colour as clients. I never get booked by other Indian guys, it’s very, very rare that I do. It’s mainly quite young white guys or businessmen who just like the look of some alternative, edgy looking person of colour. Yeah. It’s pretty varied, it’s pretty varied [laughs]. Yeah, or even older men who just seem really intrigued by me.
D: Do you have a certain type of person that you won’t work with?
C: No, no. Anyone who is respectful and clean is a big one [laughs]. I don’t have any preference when it comes to clients at work. Money is money, you know? [Laughs].
Joy, 41
She/her
Dorcas: Do you remember your first orgasm? [Laughs].
Joy: Oh yeah, hmm, my first orgasm. I think my first orgasm... Firstly let me preface this by saying I think I was quite a late bloomer when it comes to masturbating. The only reason I started masturbating was because my sister, who is two years younger than me, came to me. And she was like, I think she was seven or eight or something, and she came to me one day and she was like, ‘Joy this thing happened when I was in the shower.’ She was explaining to me and it was just the cutest thing. And I looked at her, very matter-of-factly, I said, ‘You just masturbated and that was an orgasm.’ And she was just like, ‘Oh really?’ and I was like, ‘Yeah.’ I think I would’ve been, like, ten. But in my mind I was so worldly. Because I had the answer to my sister’s...well it wasn’t even a question, she was just making a statement. But then in the back of my mind, I was like, ‘I can’t believe she just masturbated and had an orgasm and I haven’t even done that yet,’ ‘Cause it just hadn’t occurred to me to do that yet. I was like, ‘I need to get on top of this, I’m kind of falling behind.’ So then I, very studiously over the next few nights, was like, ‘Let’s get this going! Let’s see how this works.’ I don’t remember exactly when, but it would’ve been during that first week of me trying to catch up in my development. I would’ve been masturbating and then that probably would’ve been my first orgasm then.
D: I just imagine two little girls [laughs] having this conversation.
J: I know, and it was so innocent, my sister was like, ‘Aw you know,’ because my sister and I, we used to always shower together and so when we were kids we’d go shower together and we would keep each other company. One person would shower while the other person — we had a glass shower cubicle — would run on the other side of the glass and do the blowfish and make the other one laugh inside. Or the other one would squirt water at the other one’s face, but then on the other side of the glass. Just little things that kids do, it was just fun. That’s what we did. I remember it would’ve been around this time when — and my sister still tells this story — how I broke her heart. She said normally, [at] shower time, ‘Joy come with me!’ Or, I’m having a shower and she’ll grab her towel [and say], ‘Okay! I’m coming!’ And we’ll wash each other’s hair or whatever. This one day I was going to have a shower and she grabbed her towel and she wanted to come in with me and I said to her, ‘Trina, I don’t think we should shower together anymore because I think I’m growing up.’ And she was just like, ‘What do you mean?’ She said she was heartbroken, she felt so rejected and she couldn’t understand why I was stopping our ritual that we used to do together. So I feel like this was around about that time, because I think she felt maybe I was growing up or whatever. Obviously [she] told me because there was no-one else she could tell, and she was like, ‘I was in the shower, and I did this thing and then I couldn’t stop,’ and blah blah blah. I just love that I was able to say, very matter-of-factly, ‘You just masturbated, and you had an orgasm.’
Photographed in her home in Redfern. Joy owns the Bearded Tit, a bar and iconic queer institution in Sydney.
D: Can I ask you about your pork buns tattoo?
J: I just like them, I like to eat them a lot, you know? I really like to eat a lot, so when I was thinking about what to put on here the list was very long, of all the things. And I settled on pork buns. I didn’t think I would ever regret that because that’s delicious. I was going to put ‘pash rash’.
D: What’s that?
J: Pash rash?
D: Yeah.
J: When you’re a teenager and you kiss someone so much and you kind of get this... You rub, you get a rash around [your lips]. You should Google it. Can you please Google it? Pash rash is hilarious.
Photographed in her apartment in Rosebery. Making dumplings carries cultural significance and is a way she feels connected to her Chinese heritage.
Non, 26
Dorcas: So, was [your mum] just angry that you had decided to have sex? What was the anger? Or was it that you had said ‘no’ at first?
Non: No, well, the ‘no’ I’d said was that I hadn’t had sex with this partner, which was true. But I had had sex prior to me having an official boyfriend, which was the part that she was very upset about. Because it’s like, if you’re dating someone and then you have sex, they can kind of understand that, I guess. Because they put it down to like, ‘Oh young people,’ you know? But having a one night stand, or casual sex is absolutely not okay. They don’t see it as okay. And I guess that’s also part of the slut shaming culture that comes out of a lot of ethnic cultures, you know? And a woman enjoying her own body is not seen as a good thing.
D: Was this conversation in Mandarin?
N: Probably a mix of Mandarin and English. I guess when I talk about sex — the few times I have spoken about sex — with my mum it’s been mostly in English. Mostly because I haven’t learnt the language, like how to talk about sex in Chinese. But I think there are roundabout ways, at times, that I have used Chinese to sort of puzzle my way to saying what I want to say, you know? [Laughs]. Yeah, I don’t know. It’s just very... It’s almost funny to me sometimes how closed-minded a lot of people from my mum’s generation are. They see sex as this tiny thing when in reality it’s so many different things, and it’s not that they don’t want to see the other things — it’s that they don’t think the other things are okay, you know?
Photographed at Clovelly Beach, which has been a healing space for her. The innermost necklace is of the Hindu goddess Durga, the most powerful energy in the universe.
Monisha, 24
She/her
Dorcas: In terms of thinking about sex now — ‘cause you talk about this framing of it as a disgusting thing, or shameful — how do you view it now?
Monisha: For me personally, I feel like it’s a very special thing. It’s a very raw, intimate way of providing pleasure and experiencing pleasure with another consenting human. I don’t think it’s shameful. I’m definitely unlearning a lot of things still, like biases and things like that, like internalised stuff. For me, it’s something I get to share with someone I love, and that’s really special and it’s just another way that we get to connect in a really special way.
D: So, what’s this process of unlearning been?
M: Mm, I think breaking down and questioning a lot of things. I think I used to find it difficult balancing between what I felt was degrading, and not feminist sexual acts, and then not what I actually wanted. I think a big part of that is learning to listen to myself and allowing myself to take up space and having agency to say, ‘This makes me feel good, this doesn’t make me feel good,’ regardless of the associations or ramifications of those feelings, you know? I would just try to separate myself from all of these things to really just look inward and be like, ‘Does this make me feel good? Do I like this? Do I feel respected? Do I feel safe and is my partner consenting to this? Does my partner like this also?’ I guess it’s less about what the external ramifications of these kinds of things are now, and it’s like, ‘Do I like this? Do I feel respected? Do I feel like I have the ability to say no and have that respected as well?’ I think that as soon as I feel any pressure to do anything I immediately just stop, instead of just going along with it, because I think that’s part of reclaiming agency over my body and how I am.
D: Yeah. I feel like learning how to say no — it’s just so hard sometimes.
M: It is. I still really struggle with it. And especially as a woman, as an Asian woman, you know? You’re trained and expected to serve literally everyone else except yourself — everyone comes before you. The needs of everyone else come before you and you’re expected to be at the end of the equation. If at all. So yeah, it’s been really challenging. I still really struggle with it in a lot of aspects of my life, but I think it really helps having a partner who is sensitive and understanding. [Someone who] understands me and is sensitive to both my verbal communication and nonverbal communication, [who] is very supportive and doesn’t put any pressure on me either way. Yeah.
Lucia, 24
She/her
Lucia: My friends use this as a big thing against me because when I’ve hooked up in cars, they’ve only been two cars, but they’ve both been luxury cars and they’re like, ‘Is that your thing?’ ‘Cause it’s been like a Lexus or BMW, and this guy drove a BMW and he had a really nice car. I don’t even care about cars because I take public transport, but my friends are always like, ‘You have standards.’ So yeah, I was sitting there in his car, in my Calvin Kleins, and then he started kissing me and we hooked up. Then I remember that night because we’d talked before about — I joked before with him about — being rough and stuff like that and me taking joy in it. I think it’s because I really like playfulness and I like the idea that I can put someone in a position of power but still trust them to take care of me or listen to me if I need them to. And that it’s not serious either. That if they cause me pain it’s not serious because we’re just having a fun time. So there’s that safety net I guess. Yeah and then I remember when I got out of his car and I went back to my room and I looked in the mirror, I was like, ‘My lip’s bruised! And also, my butt’s still pink.’ Because he really hit me properly. I remember when I was sitting down I was like, ‘Damn this guy hits hard!’ But I was having such a fun time. I think I enjoyed it because I trusted him enough to do that with me. I also had fun because I was in a powerful position at one point, but I relinquished it to him at one point. I also took joy in it because I was like, ‘Well, I’m powerful because I’m desirable in this moment.’ Does that answer your question?
Dorcas: I think it very much answers my question. It’s also really interesting that you put playfulness and power in that relationship because I think that sometimes, some people think that power is very top-down. But in this story obviously there was a switch at some point and trust in there. It just all made sense as you were talking about it.
L: Okay, yeah that’s good.
Photographed at her home and the nearby park in Padstow, where she goes to clear her head.
Reina, 23
She/her
Dorcas: What has been your experience as an Asian woman dating? And how that relates to...
Reina: It’s been ok, but I think there are some things that I find I get a little bit hung up about. I guess, yeah. I’ve had certain instances where... I remember I was seeing someone during uni and we went to this bar. He was outside with his friends chatting and I went in to get the drinks and there was a guy bartending and we just had a chat. I think he thought that I was flirting with him but I just wanted to talk, you know? Then he was like, ‘Oh are you out for a good time,’ or whatever and I was like, ‘Yeah, yeah just hanging out,’ sort of thing and he’s like ‘Yeah you are, you Asian slut.’ I was just like, ‘Okay wow.’ I was alone at the bar and I just laughed it off, and I was just like, ‘Okay I’m just gonna go outside now.’ I chatted to my partner, and he was just like, ‘Oh what?’ It was just this whole thing [that made me feel] like maybe I was overreacting or he didn’t understand. Then there’s been these instances where I really need that support from my partner at the time and it doesn’t happen. I started seeing someone recently — it’s been a while ago now — but we went over to his mate’s place, and his friend’s dog really didn’t like me and just ran away. Then the mate was just like, ‘Oh, maybe the dog’s racist.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, the dog’s racist?’ You know what I mean? And then the guy I was seeing just kind of laughed it off and laughed with it just to make it not awkward. There [were] a few situations with him — this was in Queensland — and I was just like, ‘Aw man, why is it that I feel sorry for being in this body?’ You know what I mean? And the people that I’m seeing are not empowering me, or maybe just staying silent. It’s not that they’re taking the other person’s side or whatever, but yeah. I dunno. Yeah.
D: That sounds like...like I have a reaction to these stories like, ‘Aw, that makes me really angry.’
R: Yeah.
D: In addition to that, the person you’re with — who you trust — is not, either validating [something] as a bad experience and a racist incident, and is either laughing it off or just not understanding.
R: Yeah, and maybe that is from... Most of the people I have seen are Anglo-Australian, so I feel like maybe that’s something that does subconsciously come into that experience. Maybe as much as they want to support [me], it’s just, it’s not part of their experience. So maybe it’s just not going to happen? Yeah.
Photographed near her workplace in Potts Point, where she currently spends most of her time. Reina is a dancer.
Dorcas Tang is a third-generation Chinese-Malaysian artist and photographer currently working on unceded Gadigal land. She seeks to question ideas of belonging, constructions of memory, and cultural identity. Ultimately, she aims to make a mark in history that has deemed her community as forgettable.
Her other work explores the transnational Chinese diaspora spanning from Central America to Southeast Asia. Her most recent projects include Señorita China, an audiovisual project which examines a historical Chinese diaspora beauty pageant in Costa Rica as part of a global phenomenon, which you can view on www.dorcastang.com
Through this audiovisual project I engage with the concept of divinity as the transcendental power of demanding pleasure. I seek to examine the overlapping themes of sex, desire, and Asian identity while building community with Asian diaspora/Asian-Australian women and nonbinary femmes. What does pursuing joy look like as we reflect on the recent rise of gendered, anti-Asian violence? How do we, as frequent objects of desire, reclaim the gaze as active subjects? What makes us feel good, or ecstatic? What do we want?
I hope that this piece represents the start of a more expansive and collaborative archive of experience, from which people can draw upon. It is messy, sensual, sad, mundane, glorious, enraging, informative. This work is by no means comprehensive.
I am eternally grateful for my collaborators (Chrystal, Grace, Joy, Lucia, Monisha, Non, and Reina) who have shared their time, spaces, and vulnerabilities with me.
If you have thoughts, questions, or are interested in participating, please reach out to me at dorcastjy@gmail.com with the subject title Love Me Long Time.
Transcriptions have been edited and condensed for clarity.
Grace, 25
She/her
Grace: There have been situations where I have actually felt very conscious of my race in casual sexual relationships, especially when I was younger and I was more open-minded to people. I remember one incident where I was seeing this guy and I was in his family’s house and he was cooking something and then he turned to me and was like, ‘Fried riiii—,’ and I was like, ‘What are you even doing?’ He was making a joke about fried rice? And I was very naïve, I just kind of took it on the chin and didn’t bring it up, whereas now I would. Then I think, within that year, I was seeing this other guy and maybe I mentioned something like, ‘What’s your type usually?’ and he goes, ‘I like Filipino girls.’
Christine (Grace’s friend and housemate): That’s really specific.
G: Yeah very specific and I think in these two instances I kind of clocked it a little bit, but now looking back I’m like, ’Huh!?’ I don’t love those experiences. I don’t love feeling like this Asian person they’re fucking and they’re getting gratification out of it at my expense. And I’m sure they’re decent people but these are definitely very real experiences of being very conscious of my race.
Photographed at her home in Redfern. Grace works as a storyboard revisionist and was one of my first friends in Sydney.
Chrystal, 27
They/them
Chrystal: Being a person of colour, I found that it varies between places and it varies between parts of the sex work industry as well. It was always a really interesting thing for me working at massage parlours because two of my closest friends there were very white, and I’d often find them getting booked more frequently than me, or getting different kinds of clients to me. So that was something that I had to kind of reconcile with myself. It was... Yeah, it was funny to never really want to be fetishised for my heritage, but then being put, well not being put necessarily, but putting myself into an industry where I could capitalise on that and use it to my advantage. But I’m still kind of a weird in-between where I’m not... If a client is looking for an Indian girl, I’m not like the Indian girl that they want, you know? I’m very Western — I don’t sound like they would expect I sound, I have lots of tattoos, I’ve got half my head shaved [laughs]. But I’m also not Western enough for the people who want the shaved head girl with tattoos, so it’s a funny middle ground to be in. Mm.
Dorcas: Yeah, you’re like between capitalising fully on the fetishised ideal but can’t be white the way they perceive an alternative girl.
C: Yeah [laughs].
Photographed in their home in Earlwood. I love Chrystal’s shoe collection as it encompasses two distinct cultural aesthetics: Pleaser boots and Nike TNs.
D: What kind of clients do you get?
C: I get a really...quite a wide range of clients. I don’t often get people of colour as clients. I never get booked by other Indian guys, it’s very, very rare that I do. It’s mainly quite young white guys or businessmen who just like the look of some alternative, edgy looking person of colour. Yeah. It’s pretty varied, it’s pretty varied [laughs]. Yeah, or even older men who just seem really intrigued by me.
D: Do you have a certain type of person that you won’t work with?
C: No, no. Anyone who is respectful and clean is a big one [laughs]. I don’t have any preference when it comes to clients at work. Money is money, you know? [Laughs].
Joy, 41
She/her
Dorcas: Do you remember your first orgasm? [Laughs].
Joy: Oh yeah, hmm, my first orgasm. I think my first orgasm... Firstly let me preface this by saying I think I was quite a late bloomer when it comes to masturbating. The only reason I started masturbating was because my sister, who is two years younger than me, came to me. And she was like, I think she was seven or eight or something, and she came to me one day and she was like, ‘Joy this thing happened when I was in the shower.’ She was explaining to me and it was just the cutest thing. And I looked at her, very matter-of-factly, I said, ‘You just masturbated and that was an orgasm.’ And she was just like, ‘Oh really?’ and I was like, ‘Yeah.’ I think I would’ve been, like, ten. But in my mind I was so worldly. Because I had the answer to my sister’s...well it wasn’t even a question, she was just making a statement. But then in the back of my mind, I was like, ‘I can’t believe she just masturbated and had an orgasm and I haven’t even done that yet,’ ‘Cause it just hadn’t occurred to me to do that yet. I was like, ‘I need to get on top of this, I’m kind of falling behind.’ So then I, very studiously over the next few nights, was like, ‘Let’s get this going! Let’s see how this works.’ I don’t remember exactly when, but it would’ve been during that first week of me trying to catch up in my development. I would’ve been masturbating and then that probably would’ve been my first orgasm then.
D: I just imagine two little girls [laughs] having this conversation.
J: I know, and it was so innocent, my sister was like, ‘Aw you know,’ because my sister and I, we used to always shower together and so when we were kids we’d go shower together and we would keep each other company. One person would shower while the other person — we had a glass shower cubicle — would run on the other side of the glass and do the blowfish and make the other one laugh inside. Or the other one would squirt water at the other one’s face, but then on the other side of the glass. Just little things that kids do, it was just fun. That’s what we did. I remember it would’ve been around this time when — and my sister still tells this story — how I broke her heart. She said normally, [at] shower time, ‘Joy come with me!’ Or, I’m having a shower and she’ll grab her towel [and say], ‘Okay! I’m coming!’ And we’ll wash each other’s hair or whatever. This one day I was going to have a shower and she grabbed her towel and she wanted to come in with me and I said to her, ‘Trina, I don’t think we should shower together anymore because I think I’m growing up.’ And she was just like, ‘What do you mean?’ She said she was heartbroken, she felt so rejected and she couldn’t understand why I was stopping our ritual that we used to do together. So I feel like this was around about that time, because I think she felt maybe I was growing up or whatever. Obviously [she] told me because there was no-one else she could tell, and she was like, ‘I was in the shower, and I did this thing and then I couldn’t stop,’ and blah blah blah. I just love that I was able to say, very matter-of-factly, ‘You just masturbated, and you had an orgasm.’
Photographed in her home in Redfern. Joy owns the Bearded Tit, a bar and iconic queer institution in Sydney.
D: Can I ask you about your pork buns tattoo?
J: I just like them, I like to eat them a lot, you know? I really like to eat a lot, so when I was thinking about what to put on here the list was very long, of all the things. And I settled on pork buns. I didn’t think I would ever regret that because that’s delicious. I was going to put ‘pash rash’.
D: What’s that?
J: Pash rash?
D: Yeah.
J: When you’re a teenager and you kiss someone so much and you kind of get this... You rub, you get a rash around [your lips]. You should Google it. Can you please Google it? Pash rash is hilarious.
Non, 26
Photographed in her apartment in Rosebery. Making dumplings carries cultural significance and is a way she feels connected to her Chinese heritage.
Dorcas: So, was [your mum] just angry that you had decided to have sex? What was the anger? Or was it that you had said ‘no’ at first?
Non: No, well, the ‘no’ I’d said was that I hadn’t had sex with this partner, which was true. But I had had sex prior to me having an official boyfriend, which was the part that she was very upset about. Because it’s like, if you’re dating someone and then you have sex, they can kind of understand that, I guess. Because they put it down to like, ‘Oh young people,’ you know? But having a one night stand, or casual sex is absolutely not okay. They don’t see it as okay. And I guess that’s also part of the slut shaming culture that comes out of a lot of ethnic cultures, you know? And a woman enjoying her own body is not seen as a good thing.
D: Was this conversation in Mandarin?
N: Probably a mix of Mandarin and English. I guess when I talk about sex — the few times I have spoken about sex — with my mum it’s been mostly in English. Mostly because I haven’t learnt the language, like how to talk about sex in Chinese. But I think there are roundabout ways, at times, that I have used Chinese to sort of puzzle my way to saying what I want to say, you know? [Laughs]. Yeah, I don’t know. It’s just very... It’s almost funny to me sometimes how closed-minded a lot of people from my mum’s generation are. They see sex as this tiny thing when in reality it’s so many different things, and it’s not that they don’t want to see the other things — it’s that they don’t think the other things are okay, you know?
Monisha, 24
She/her
Dorcas: In terms of thinking about sex now — ‘cause you talk about this framing of it as a disgusting thing, or shameful — how do you view it now?
Monisha: For me personally, I feel like it’s a very special thing. It’s a very raw, intimate way of providing pleasure and experiencing pleasure with another consenting human. I don’t think it’s shameful. I’m definitely unlearning a lot of things still, like biases and things like that, like internalised stuff. For me, it’s something I get to share with someone I love, and that’s really special and it’s just another way that we get to connect in a really special way.
D: So, what’s this process of unlearning been?
M: It is. I still really struggle with it. And especially as a woman, as an Asian woman, you know? You’re trained and expected to serve literally everyone else except yourself — everyone comes before you. The needs of everyone else come before you and you’re expected to be at the end of the equation. If at all. So yeah, it’s been really challenging. I still really struggle with it in a lot of aspects of my life, but I think it really helps having a partner who is sensitive and understanding. [Someone who] understands me and is sensitive to both my verbal communication and nonverbal communication, [who] is very supportive and doesn’t put any pressure on me either way. Yeah.
Photographed at Clovelly Beach, which has been a healing space for her. The innermost necklace is of the Hindu goddess Durga, the most powerful energy in the universe.
Lucia, 24
She/her
Lucia: My friends use this as a big thing against me because when I’ve hooked up in cars, they’ve only been two cars, but they’ve both been luxury cars and they’re like, ‘Is that your thing?’ ‘Cause it’s been like a Lexus or BMW, and this guy drove a BMW and he had a really nice car. I don’t even care about cars because I take public transport, but my friends are always like, ‘You have standards.’ So yeah, I was sitting there in his car, in my Calvin Kleins, and then he started kissing me and we hooked up. Then I remember that night because we’d talked before about — I joked before with him about — being rough and stuff like that and me taking joy in it. I think it’s because I really like playfulness and I like the idea that I can put someone in a position of power but still trust them to take care of me or listen to me if I need them to. And that it’s not serious either. That if they cause me pain it’s not serious because we’re just having a fun time. So there’s that safety net I guess. Yeah and then I remember when I got out of his car and I went back to my room and I looked in the mirror, I was like, ‘My lip’s bruised! And also, my butt’s still pink.’ Because he really hit me properly. I remember when I was sitting down I was like, ‘Damn this guy hits hard!’ But I was having such a fun time. I think I enjoyed it because I trusted him enough to do that with me. I also had fun because I was in a powerful position at one point, but I relinquished it to him at one point. I also took joy in it because I was like, ‘Well, I’m powerful because I’m desirable in this moment.’ Does that answer your question?
Dorcas: I think it very much answers my question. It’s also really interesting that you put playfulness and power in that relationship because I think that sometimes, some people think that power is very top-down. But in this story obviously there was a switch at some point and trust in there. It just all made sense as you were talking about it.
L: Okay, yeah that’s good.
Photographed at her home and the nearby park in Padstow, where she goes to clear her head.
Reina, 23
She/her
Photographed near her workplace in Potts Point, where she currently spends most of her time. Reina is a dancer.
Dorcas: What has been your experience as an Asian woman dating? And how that relates to...
Reina: It’s been ok, but I think there are some things that I find I get a little bit hung up about. I guess, yeah. I’ve had certain instances where... I remember I was seeing someone during uni and we went to this bar. He was outside with his friends chatting and I went in to get the drinks and there was a guy bartending and we just had a chat. I think he thought that I was flirting with him but I just wanted to talk, you know? Then he was like, ‘Oh are you out for a good time,’ or whatever and I was like, ‘Yeah, yeah just hanging out,’ sort of thing and he’s like ‘Yeah you are, you Asian slut.’ I was just like, ‘Okay wow.’ I was alone at the bar and I just laughed it off, and I was just like, ‘Okay I’m just gonna go outside now.’ I chatted to my partner, and he was just like, ‘Oh what?’ It was just this whole thing [that made me feel] like maybe I was overreacting or he didn’t understand. Then there’s been these instances where I really need that support from my partner at the time and it doesn’t happen. I started seeing someone recently — it’s been a while ago now — but we went over to his mate’s place, and his friend’s dog really didn’t like me and just ran away. Then the mate was just like, ‘Oh, maybe the dog’s racist.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, the dog’s racist?’ You know what I mean? And then the guy I was seeing just kind of laughed it off and laughed with it just to make it not awkward. There [were] a few situations with him — this was in Queensland — and I was just like, ‘Aw man, why is it that I feel sorry for being in this body?’ You know what I mean? And the people that I’m seeing are not empowering me, or maybe just staying silent. It’s not that they’re taking the other person’s side or whatever, but yeah. I dunno. Yeah.
D: That sounds like...like I have a reaction to these stories like, ‘Aw, that makes me really angry.’
R: Yeah.
D: In addition to that, the person you’re with — who you trust — is not, either validating [something] as a bad experience and a racist incident, and is either laughing it off or just not understanding.
R: Yeah, and maybe that is from... Most of the people I have seen are Anglo-Australian, so I feel like maybe that’s something that does subconsciously come into that experience. Maybe as much as they want to support [me], it’s just, it’s not part of their experience. So maybe it’s just not going to happen? Yeah.
Dorcas Tang is a third-generation Chinese-Malaysian artist and photographer currently working on unceded Gadigal land. She seeks to question ideas of belonging, constructions of memory, and cultural identity. Ultimately, she aims to make a mark in history that has deemed her community as forgettable.
Her other work explores the transnational Chinese diaspora spanning from Central America to Southeast Asia. Her most recent projects include Señorita China, an audiovisual project which examines a historical Chinese diaspora beauty pageant in Costa Rica as part of a global phenomenon, which you can view on www.dorcastang.com
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Runway Journal acknowledges the custodians of the nations our digital platform reaches.
We extend this acknowledgement to all First Nations artists, writers and audiences.
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