The Turncoat?
A birthday reflection
Our old posts make us cringe. Based on that wisdom, I dug my whole Twitter timeline from the start. It was opened to join Guardian’s ‘fans network’ for the 2010 FIFA World Cup – I would tweet my reaction to any match, and they would put it up during their live coverage. The newspaper made a nifty profile picture of me with the flag of the Republic of Korea behind me, as I, instead of actual Koreans, represented the voice of millions of Red Devils (how typical).
Then I used it as an extension of Facebook or the like, and if you read anyone’s timeline from the early 2010s, they were usually that boring, with the hashtags and one-liners and the funny (from our side, not theirs) complaints to business accounts.
In 2014 I began my male feminist era and Twitter had taken off as a serious space for political commentary and writers’ forum this year. It was also the year when Facebook, universally, had become the place for the elderly to comment on news, freak out about something, and share their favourite songs from YouTube.
Gamergate drew me into feminism, and I’m always drawn into more feminine culture anyway. Rom-com instead of action. Girl bands instead of rock bands. Hanging out with girls instead of guys. Probably the consequence of having a dozen aunties and went to a formerly all-girls school. In other words, I was raised in the longhouse.
Girlboss feminism came into maturity in the mid-2010s, along with the backlash. I found the niche of drawing the rage against the female Jedi (or technically, the Star Wars protagonist) and the female Ghostbusters and then defending them. On the other hand, there were talks about toxic masculinity and being a good man. I played my part as a good ally to women and the um, LGBTQ+ community.
I seriously believed in the cause, with the hope that this new feminism-driven media and policy would address many issues in Asia: Low trust between men and women. Sexism and misogyny. Violence against women. Radicalism and terrorism.
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I was taken aback by the rudeness of my tweets from the mid-2010s. I cursed unnecessarily and threw the woke keywords a lot: ‘Bigotry’. ‘White supremacy’. ‘Homophobic’. Was I that mad? Did I just ape the blue checks? Was it the consequence of feminist Twitter? You know what happened at that time. No Hillary presidency, followed by the #Resistance, and then the road to anti-whiteness (which had been a thing in both American campuses and Twitter).
I forgot that I published an article titled “Dear White People, Why Are You Ruining the World?”, which naturally drew some backlashes. That’s the closest thing I got to anti-white racism, and ironically, I gained more white friends by Christmas. Maybe that is how it worked in Manhattan or London? Didn’t help that the angry comments coming from white men in Asia (and even a Brit in Denmark who e-mailed me his 4000-word paper on the Great Replacement) instead of, for example, a white woman commenting, “I’m disappointed by your racism,” or at least poasted me on Twitter.
The party went on until the late 2010s, fuelled by the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Nordic mania, women’s football, and that perpetual hope that Trump would fall, or at least Republicans were bumbling idiots you could keep burning. Meanwhile, I was completely fine with Joko Widodo's presidency and remained believed that liberalism and socialism were compatible, and the fear of communism was outdated. In this worldview, there were far right (white supremacists in the West, Islamists in Indonesia, ultranationalists in East Asia) but no far left.
Life was supposed to be great in 2019. Captain Marvel was supposed to be as big as Wonder Woman. My articles were included in an essay collection. I got access to the greatest women’s footballers in Europe. A romance, an online romance could have topped it all.
What a reversal of fortune. Instead, I saw a therapist, and my columns got cancelled not exactly because I was personally cancelled, but because my ‘New Guy’ act had got stale for the next wave of intersectional feminism. On the international relations commentary, I got a complaint from the embassy of Bangladesh but I might have been on China’s blacklist. I went Kate one year before the summer of 2020.
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So many I still don’t know. I don’t know enough about the voices from the other side. The people who didn’t think Trump was the root of all evil. Those who were not comfortable with forced diversity. Those who saw both sides of the argument.
What I know was the assaults, even deadly assaults, on Asian Americans were reported and reviewed only if the attackers were white instead of black. What I know was that Asian journalists and academics insisted that hurt Asians had to give way to black voices. What I know was so many Asians attacking white people online for anything.
I returned to Twitter last year and associated myself with the centre right, and they happen to be white Westerners because believe it or not, there are not enough centrist or conservative Asian writers and journalists on both sides of the Pacific. As if to confirm the stereotype, I’ve found it easier to engage with white writers instead of Asians. Something to ponder.
Some old mutuals have left Twitter or just being inactive. Some threaten to leave now and then but remain active, still playing resistance. To Elon, to Joko Widodo, even to white people. None ever asked me why I’ve changed. Some have unfollowed me years before, others might have muted me, if otherwise, they are very open-minded to my change.
The end of 2023 was indeed the big fracture. If you still could stand them for their opinion on trans or Trump, then their opinion on Israel and Hamas was the deal breaker for most people. Again, I found it easier to unfollow than to get unfollowed.
Until early this year, I wondered if I had become a turncoat, turning back on old friends and beliefs, and trading them for racism, transphobia, white worship, or even fascism. But no, reading old tweets convinced me that principally I don’t change.
Still for the improvement of Asian men. Still for a safe and prosperous world. Still for normalcy. Still for healthy relationships. Still for loving life. Still for a clean, well-lighted longhouse.