Latest / The Vietnamese with Kenneth Nguyen / 441 - Fetish or Preference? What's the Difference and Why Does it Matter? Kaila Yu

Transcript

441 - Fetish or Preference? What's the Difference and Why Does it Matter? Kaila Yu · The Vietnamese with Kenneth Nguyen

0:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Today I have a special guest, Kyla Yu.
0:03
[SPEAKER_01]: She's the author of fetishized, reckoning with yellow fever, feminism, and beauty.
0:09
[SPEAKER_01]: Welcome to the Vietnamese podcast Kyla.
0:12
[SPEAKER_02]: Hi, thanks for having me.
0:13
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, we had just talked about me picking up this book and agreeing to this idea of
0:23
[SPEAKER_01]: ABGs and the nineties and all of these things that the Asian American experience you write about.
0:30
[SPEAKER_01]: I grew up in this period.
0:31
[SPEAKER_01]: You write a lot about the experiences that I went through.
0:33
[SPEAKER_01]: I thought I knew what went on and I thought I had a really good grasp of processing those years
0:42
[SPEAKER_01]: But in actuality, it's one of those things that deeper you dig into a subject matter, the less you actually know.
0:51
[SPEAKER_01]: So I look forward to really getting into these topics today.
0:55
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's crazy.
0:56
[SPEAKER_02]: As I've been talking about this topic, which I have deeply researched, I'm still like going down these rabbit holes of like somebody told me the other day that Okinawan's military base is still continuing to kind of
1:13
[SPEAKER_02]: objectify the local women.
1:15
[SPEAKER_02]: And I found out just as June, twenty twenty five.
1:18
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, a Marine or like a military American military guy was convicted of rape of.
1:23
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, good not one woman like last month.
1:26
[SPEAKER_02]: So things are still happening that we don't need to hear about.
1:31
[SPEAKER_01]: I was seventeen when I spent the year in Okinawa as a Marine.
1:36
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, okay.
1:37
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, right.
1:38
[SPEAKER_02]: Fascinating.
1:39
[SPEAKER_02]: So you had firsthand.
1:41
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh my god, I would love to actually talk to you about that because you observed this, right?
1:48
[SPEAKER_01]: And whatever you're writing in these chapters is like mind blowing because I'm like, this is I'm the male counterpart of what you experience and actually was working on a memoir for the last five years, but from from the other side, not from the white fetish side.
2:05
[SPEAKER_01]: And then male Asian emasculated side, right?
2:09
[SPEAKER_01]: So you read about all these things.
2:10
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm like, obviously my my my my piece would be structured very differently, but I'm like this that's that's why I'm I was still looking forward to to this interview today.
2:22
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm very excited to get into this stuff and you know, you talk about it from a very different you know, let's let's get to this idea of
2:32
[SPEAKER_01]: When we think about embarking on a journey like this, there's a lot of work that goes into what inspired you to finally write something like this.
2:44
[SPEAKER_02]: It was so accidental.
2:46
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I had finished my career in entertainment and I had segue into a travel writer and then I was very happily working as a travel writer and then the pandemic hit.
3:00
[SPEAKER_02]: So all my gigs and all my work was canceled.
3:05
[SPEAKER_02]: And I social media has been such an important part of my career all through the beginning of one social media started.
3:14
[SPEAKER_02]: But I never had time to learn TikTok and I really wanted to because I knew that there was like, you know, even as a writer, it really benefits your work and like get to take in more seriously if you have a following.
3:27
[SPEAKER_02]: So I ended up trying to learn TikTok during the pandemic and I
3:32
[SPEAKER_02]: spent an entire year just posting five videos a day trying everything.
3:39
[SPEAKER_02]: Food content recipe content travel content to write content and none of it really hit until I started posting about the two thousands Asian American experience.
3:50
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, nobody was really posting about that and I was expert during that, you know, like I was just very present during that time.
3:58
[SPEAKER_02]: So I started doing that for a year and was really reflecting back on my career because I was posting about it and then the Atlanta spa shootings happened.
4:07
[SPEAKER_02]: So then, you know, the whole Asian community was reflecting back on how the media was making us invisible again by saying it was not racially or sexually motivated.
4:20
[SPEAKER_02]: when every Asian women knew it to be both like just in our core.
4:24
[SPEAKER_02]: And then I started to reflect back on how I kind of corded fetishization and objectification when I was younger.
4:31
[SPEAKER_02]: And that ultimately inspired our article that like eventually inspired the book.
4:37
[SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, I never had any intention of writing a memoir.
4:42
[SPEAKER_01]: One of the biggest
4:46
[SPEAKER_01]: questions that you pose, is it a fetish or is it a preference?
4:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh my God.
4:54
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, this is something that I think about a lot because I think a lot of Asian men are into white women as an ultimate goal, right?
5:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, but when I'm reading your book, it's obviously a really good breakdown of the historical side of the reverse of white men, of fetishizing Asian women.
5:21
[SPEAKER_01]: And you go through
5:23
[SPEAKER_01]: meticulous detail the research you bring in academics you there's so much good footnotes and and a lot of pop content too which is you know Miss Saigon and memoirs of Gisha all of these IPs that we we never really thought about up until I loved yeah yeah
5:47
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, we all love it.
5:48
[SPEAKER_01]: We all think that oh my god.
5:49
[SPEAKER_01]: There's representation.
5:51
[SPEAKER_02]: There's agents like whatever will take it.
5:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, um, you get into all of these things.
6:00
[SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, I think when I thought about the thumbnail of this episode, I thought
6:06
[SPEAKER_01]: fetish or preference.
6:07
[SPEAKER_01]: That's basically how I think about our conversation today.
6:13
[SPEAKER_01]: But let's lead off on that.
6:14
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's make that, can you kind of guide me through that distinction of when you think things are a fetish or when you think they're a preference?
6:26
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and I want to start off by saying because a lot of individual men get mad when I post videos about fetishization and I'm not policing individual choices.
6:37
[SPEAKER_02]: My problem is with the power structure, which I believe the patriarchy is harmful to both men and women.
6:44
[SPEAKER_02]: So, and also, it is
6:47
[SPEAKER_02]: Very new ones like preference or fetish like I can't say blanket statement you have a fetish You know, I mean like you know inside whether you do it's an individual you know Decision but one way to tell is like Are you objectifying women treating them as disposable having a very specific expectations of their behavior?
7:11
[SPEAKER_02]: and just going through them, you know?
7:15
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, my very good example is the character from White Lotus, who basically says he goes to find himself by going to Thailand and sleeping with as many Asian women as possible.
7:28
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, literally using them as a tool.
7:31
[SPEAKER_02]: So I would say most men probably don't fall under that.
7:36
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like probably a really vocal minority that are these Asian fetishes.
7:41
[SPEAKER_02]: I'll give another example.
7:42
[SPEAKER_02]: There's this viral video of this like, like, sixty year old white man that went viral on TikTok and he was giving advice to passport bros or whatever.
7:53
[SPEAKER_02]: And he was like,
7:54
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, you can go to Asia and like get this finance woman and like much hotter than you could get here.
8:02
[SPEAKER_02]: And she's going to leave you inevitably in three or four years, but no worries, you'll get another one.
8:09
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's like kind of a illustration of it.
8:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's very clear.
8:13
[SPEAKER_01]: But I also have family in the south and in the east coast that, you know, there's not a lot of Asian men around.
8:19
[SPEAKER_01]: So they date white men.
8:20
[SPEAKER_01]: And I hang out with them and there are, there's love, you know, a deep love.
8:27
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that there's a respect for my family.
8:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Otherwise I would speak up.
8:31
[SPEAKER_01]: But there's also this blind
8:35
[SPEAKER_01]: sort of contextually when they make fun of Asian people, like the white guys, and that is when it gets to be a little bit, you know, temperature rises inside of me, but I have to call him and to hang a little bit.
8:48
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, it's very sad too, because for like, there are plenty of white
8:53
[SPEAKER_02]: And Asian female couples that are just true love.
8:57
[SPEAKER_02]: But like I have example of a married friend that I have a white guy.
9:01
[SPEAKER_02]: He's married to a Asian woman.
9:02
[SPEAKER_02]: First Asian woman he ever dated.
9:04
[SPEAKER_02]: He just fell in love with her.
9:06
[SPEAKER_02]: But he gets these comments about Asian fetishism.
9:09
[SPEAKER_02]: And he's like, I've never even dated in Asian before.
9:12
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's like unfortunate that like just a good man's gonna get put under the umbrella.
9:18
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
9:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and that definitely happens.
9:21
[SPEAKER_01]: You see that with a good white man being with a really wonderful, you know, Vietnamese or Asian, you know, woman.
9:29
[SPEAKER_01]: And it works out.
9:30
[SPEAKER_01]: It's fine.
9:31
[SPEAKER_01]: It checks out that
9:35
[SPEAKER_01]: distinction, however, still lingers, I think in our consciousness, and there's a street to unpack.
9:41
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think, yeah, I think that one of the big questions that I wanted to know after understanding the difference between fetish and preference, and you break it down very well, you just summarize that right now, but you break it down really well in your book, which I think audience members, we all have to pick up.
10:00
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a really good read.
10:01
[SPEAKER_01]: And
10:05
[SPEAKER_01]: going back to this idea.
10:08
[SPEAKER_01]: The lines are so blurred in terms of this way of looking at it.
10:17
[SPEAKER_01]: People who are quote unquote anti-woke could just say, look, we just like Asian women, what's the big deal?
10:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Like why do we have to think so deeply about that?
10:29
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's the question I want to pose to you.
10:31
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, why do people like you and I care about this so much that we have to put on a podcast?
10:36
[SPEAKER_01]: I have my reason, but I would love to hear, why is it so important that we talk about this?
10:41
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, it's the same thing as saying like, when somebody who's not of color says, I don't see color.
10:47
[SPEAKER_02]: It's because you don't have to.
10:49
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, like I see color every day, that's my life.
10:54
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's not like I'm choosing to look at color.
10:56
[SPEAKER_02]: Like that's something I have to consider since I was a little kid.
11:01
[SPEAKER_02]: And everyone should question their choices.
11:04
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, you shouldn't be evaluating yourself.
11:07
[SPEAKER_02]: I've evaluated, like, I've gotten cosmetic surgeries.
11:10
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, what was a reason?
11:12
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, I don't regret some of them, but would I have made those choices under different influences?
11:19
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, probably, but I've analyzed these choices, and I'm aware, you know?
11:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
11:25
[SPEAKER_01]: And the amount of sort of available context for the everyday person is not in your face.
11:36
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not readily available.
11:38
[SPEAKER_01]: You have to, again, like what you said, you have to like be forced to live in this idea of color to understand like where you're coming from.
11:48
[SPEAKER_01]: But when you're looking at it from
11:51
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, from a distance, you don't really see it.
11:53
[SPEAKER_01]: You don't really see the pain that these people are going through.
11:59
[SPEAKER_01]: You don't really get to experience the feelings and emotions that are happening.
12:05
[SPEAKER_01]: But then again, it's almost like when you write about the pain and I often think about like the pain of being Vietnamese and growing up Vietnamese,
12:14
[SPEAKER_01]: But a lot of my counterparts and maybe Mississippi or Tennessee, who are Vietnamese or Asian-American, they don't go through this.
12:22
[SPEAKER_01]: They don't feel this.
12:23
[SPEAKER_01]: So it is like, are we so far on, and I don't consider this woke, but aware.
12:32
[SPEAKER_01]: But we so aware that it impedes on our ability to date a white woman for me at this point.
12:42
[SPEAKER_02]: I feel like you can see each person as a multi-faceted individual.
12:51
[SPEAKER_02]: For example, I do, if I'm dating a non-Asian, I do ask, like, what was your ex-nessity?
12:59
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's unfortunate that every Asian woman needs to ask that.
13:04
[SPEAKER_02]: And it doesn't necessarily matter to everyone, but I don't want to be the fourth Asian woman you dated in a row that's weird to me.
13:13
[SPEAKER_02]: It's just like, if you looked at all my exes and they were like, all,
13:20
[SPEAKER_02]: Australian and exactly the same work something would be weird.
13:25
[SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, obviously I don't have to ask a Asian guy that question because it's not a, it's just different.
13:32
[SPEAKER_02]: Like Asian guys can't fetishize.
13:34
[SPEAKER_02]: There's not the colonial history.
13:36
[SPEAKER_02]: Not that I'm going to take Asian men off the hook because there's a history in East Asia and South East Asian countries of oppression of women there.
13:46
[SPEAKER_02]: But Asian American men aren't doing that.
13:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, they're not.
13:52
[SPEAKER_01]: But they're doing fetish in a different way.
13:55
[SPEAKER_01]: They're fetishizing white women in a very different way.
13:59
[SPEAKER_01]: And that hasn't, that is not talked about much.
14:02
[SPEAKER_02]: But it's not talked about much and the policing of Asian women dating white men is vicious.
14:11
[SPEAKER_02]: Like they will launch coordinated attacks against
14:15
[SPEAKER_02]: famous Asian women who have white lovers or boyfriends or husbands, which is problematic because it's also like, I don't think Asian women should ever denigrate Asian men in their choices.
14:29
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, if they decide to date white, they don't need to say like, oh, I don't like to date Asian men because they look like my brother or whatever they like to say.
14:35
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't believe they should say that.
14:38
[SPEAKER_02]: But also Asian women don't owe their bodies to anyone.
14:41
[SPEAKER_02]: And we're perfectly free to choose to date whoever we want.
14:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's a hundred percent.
14:49
[SPEAKER_01]: There isn't issue, I think, for the most part, and I am guilty of this.
14:53
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that when Asian women or any woman date Asian men, I think probably Asian men dating Asian women,
15:02
[SPEAKER_01]: There's an expectation that the old country's tradition, no matter how removed you are, I was born in America in the early, the first wave of Vietnamese coming.
15:12
[SPEAKER_01]: No matter how removed you are, there's still some bullshit that's lodged in your brain about traditional roles.
15:19
[SPEAKER_01]: No matter how liberal and progressive you are like me, it's still in there.
15:24
[SPEAKER_01]: And if we're not doing our work to expunge this to really get it off of our mental record, it sits there.
15:33
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's why it's a lot easier for Asian women to date outside of the race.
15:42
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and it is also sometimes internalized racism, which sounds so horrible, but it's not.
15:50
[SPEAKER_02]: It's just like you grow in a country where the white man is a hero of every movie and like the quarterback and every like team thing.
15:58
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's just like, and then conversely, Asian men will always growing up was like in revenge of the nerd or something, or in like, sixteen candles.
16:07
[SPEAKER_02]: So of course you're
16:09
[SPEAKER_02]: so influenced by this.
16:11
[SPEAKER_02]: And now you can see the flip side, which is that K-pop is out and now I'm done with a bunch of white women in love with Creeeman because it's just representation like whatever the media is selling us.
16:23
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's so fascinating, isn't it?
16:26
[SPEAKER_01]: To see, I mean, I'm definitely affected and I'm grateful for what BTA for my life.
16:35
[SPEAKER_01]: The shift is mind-blowing, you know?
16:38
[SPEAKER_01]: Especially if you're on these dating apps, I remember being on dating apps way before I was married and the difficulty when the first dating apps like Match.com was out.
16:50
[SPEAKER_01]: It was very difficult to kind of figure this out.
16:52
[SPEAKER_01]: It was all about the writing, and you had to really, but today, as an Asian man on the dating apps, it's a much easier process.
17:02
[SPEAKER_01]: But you can also see the profiles of these white women that they like in the anime.
17:16
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, they're liking anime.
17:18
[SPEAKER_01]: There's all this kpop.
17:19
[SPEAKER_01]: There's all these cage dramas.
17:20
[SPEAKER_01]: You can see them all listed.
17:22
[SPEAKER_01]: It is just phenomenal to see.
17:24
[SPEAKER_01]: And the pictures they're taking at like anime conventions.
17:26
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh my god.
17:29
[SPEAKER_02]: So they're just kind of like the white men.
17:32
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, but there's no colonialists background of white women.
17:36
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, in that way.
17:40
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a fascinating time that we live in, but I think it's important to really think about and talk about the things that you talk about.
17:49
[SPEAKER_01]: One thing I wanted to talk about was agency.
17:52
[SPEAKER_01]: This idea that women Kimberly K. Huang, somebody you quoted in the book has spoken about this.
17:59
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think a little bit is controversial.
18:02
[SPEAKER_01]: The idea, and it shouldn't be controversial.
18:04
[SPEAKER_01]: It should be very, like women should have
18:08
[SPEAKER_01]: agency, they should have a decision, the ability to if they want to be an important model, if they want to do porn, if they want to do things that whatever they want, they should have governance over their own physical or mental existence, right?
18:27
[SPEAKER_01]: But we are so locked in, I think today in
18:33
[SPEAKER_01]: conservative values that we are struggling to figure out how much do we let the individual woman handle their decisions and how much does a state or the rest of the white man population control this?
18:53
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I think they should have no say.
18:56
[SPEAKER_02]: But also like, as in, I never also want to judge a woman for making choices to be a sex worker like whatever get into pornography or even just be a pin-up model or even just be a sexy girl on Instagram.
19:15
[SPEAKER_02]: The only problem is that whenever you question a twenty year old about these choices, they're gonna say,
19:23
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm empowered.
19:24
[SPEAKER_02]: I said that.
19:25
[SPEAKER_02]: But now, decades later, I realized I was just kind of playing into the patriarchy, like almost getting tricked by it.
19:36
[SPEAKER_02]: And I don't want to blanket stating that either because somebody might participate in these careers and come out very empowered.
19:45
[SPEAKER_02]: Like for me, it wasn't a healthy choice and it wasn't authentic choice personally.
19:51
[SPEAKER_01]: But how do I have a daughter?
19:52
[SPEAKER_01]: She's eight.
19:53
[SPEAKER_01]: How do I, I'm reading at the whole, your book the whole time and I'm like, I'm flip flopping.
19:58
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm like, okay, empower, give her this information.
20:01
[SPEAKER_01]: No, no, no, no, I have to guide this quietly.
20:04
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm trying to navigate through raising my daughter to
20:10
[SPEAKER_01]: this wild world that we're living in.
20:13
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that one false step, one false move can really put her in a hurtful situation that she might not recover from.
20:26
[SPEAKER_02]: I kind of have like not a easy solution to this, but like
20:32
[SPEAKER_02]: I just felt very unloved from a very young age.
20:35
[SPEAKER_02]: And my parents loved me unconditionally, by the way, but Asian parents do not, of that generation to not show love in any kind of traditional way.
20:45
[SPEAKER_02]: I just felt unloved because I was like, like, always saying, oh, you're not good enough.
20:49
[SPEAKER_02]: And like this, you know, comparing you to this and that, or my parents never told me, I love you until like, maybe recently.
20:56
[SPEAKER_02]: I feel like if a young woman just,
21:01
[SPEAKER_02]: is told she's loved and beautiful by her father and she feels love that would not completely make her like I think I would have made different choices if I just felt loved.
21:17
[SPEAKER_01]: You wrote about that in the chapter Daddy.
21:21
[SPEAKER_01]: and I was reading that you were I think trying to give him a hug or something like that or there was something I think with your father and he pushed you away and he said that's inappropriate or some more gave you that signal that it's inappropriate from that point of reading that
21:38
[SPEAKER_01]: For me, I changed the way I deal with my daughter.
21:41
[SPEAKER_01]: And I could see literally the reaction that she has towards me from the day I made the decision that if she's running up to me and I might be busy editing or I'm doing work, I have to take time.
21:56
[SPEAKER_01]: and be present and give her a big hug and kiss her and tell her I love you and you mean so much to me.
22:02
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's what I've been doing and I could see her just coming over at my workstation and hugging me and not even needing that.
22:10
[SPEAKER_01]: But like, I think the presence, the mindfulness of reading that passage for me changed the way I am dealing with my daughter.
22:21
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, wow.
22:22
[SPEAKER_02]: I love that.
22:23
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
22:23
[SPEAKER_02]: Little girls should just feel loved and cherished and beautiful.
22:27
[SPEAKER_02]: And then after that, I think they make healthier choices from that place.
22:32
[SPEAKER_01]: As Kid Rock says, you're only job as a dad.
22:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Keep her off the pole.
22:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Have you heard of that?
22:42
[SPEAKER_02]: No.
22:44
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a good one, yeah.
22:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
22:46
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, and I always heard that way before I had kids and a daughter, but
22:51
[SPEAKER_01]: That is not instructive enough.
23:00
[SPEAKER_01]: The way to do it is what you're saying.
23:01
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not a magic bullet, but it definitely helps guide, what is it girl dads?
23:10
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm a girl.
23:11
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, daddy issues is like a real term that exists, right?
23:16
[SPEAKER_02]: For women searching for validation, they didn't get from their father.
23:20
[SPEAKER_02]: And it might be from toxic men.
23:21
[SPEAKER_02]: It might be how I did it for male gaze.
23:25
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a real thing.
23:28
[SPEAKER_01]: And do you feel today that after writing the book, do you feel and probably therapy and all that?
23:35
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you feel like that experience of going through all of that?
23:41
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, you're you're you're free from it.
23:44
[SPEAKER_01]: You're you're outside of the, um, discomfort now of it.
23:50
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I think I'll be healing it from it from the for the rest of my life, but I also feel like I have
23:57
[SPEAKER_02]: like an exponential amount of self-love as compared to them.
24:01
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think that's a lifetime practice for everybody.
24:03
[SPEAKER_02]: There's an infinite amount of love that you can give to yourself.
24:06
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think we need to be taught that we can also love ourselves.
24:11
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not something we're taught as human beings.
24:13
[SPEAKER_02]: And we're always searching for love for our parents or whatever.
24:16
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's great.
24:17
[SPEAKER_02]: And we should be getting that.
24:19
[SPEAKER_02]: But we also need to learn to love ourselves.
24:22
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and that's hard.
24:23
[SPEAKER_01]: I think as Asian people, that's hard.
24:26
[SPEAKER_01]: The children of my mother is Taiwanese as well.
24:31
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's a culture that's very different from Vietnamese.
24:34
[SPEAKER_01]: I think, and I'm just generalizing here.
24:36
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just different.
24:37
[SPEAKER_01]: The communication is far less than on the Vietnamese side.
24:42
[SPEAKER_01]: And on the Vietnamese side, it's already less.
24:44
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like people.
24:46
[SPEAKER_01]: We do not like to talk to our kids.
24:49
[SPEAKER_01]: It's uncomfortable.
24:51
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a very uncomfortable place.
24:53
[SPEAKER_01]: But it produces this detached sense of the kid.
24:59
[SPEAKER_01]: They're not anchored to anything that's sort of stable.
25:04
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that going forward, as I'm reading your book, I'm thinking,
25:11
[SPEAKER_01]: But what is the way out if we're here now, right?
25:15
[SPEAKER_01]: We're like in our forties and you know, some of us like me crossing into our fifties soon, what is the, what, what kind of things do we kind of need to kind of think about in terms of our, our wellness?
25:30
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I'm reading this book that is changing my life now and I read a lot of these self-help books, but like
25:37
[SPEAKER_02]: It's called love yourself like your life depends on it and it's just about building a mental loop that automatically says I love myself and that's like whenever something bad happens when you have any fear that's the automatic thought you have and it trained you to think that way.
25:56
[SPEAKER_02]: And slowly you begin to see your life change into someone who unconditionally loves themselves.
26:03
[SPEAKER_02]: So I would recommend that book.
26:05
[SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, you know, like therapy, I think it's beneficial to everybody.
26:11
[SPEAKER_02]: And reflecting back on your life's choices and patterns, which I ended up doing in recovery, but I think that's valuable for everyone.
26:21
[SPEAKER_01]: But when the moments are so fun and you're going through all of this, and this is maybe addressed to the young audience, this question is for the young audiences who are going through raves right now, you know, partying and you know, going to Vegas and living it up, but there's consequences on that back end, right?
26:42
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, what do we say to the young folks that are kind of going through this detached feeling with their parents and their thinking that they're being empowered by, you know, doing certain things that they probably wouldn't have the freedom to do in the old country?
27:00
[SPEAKER_02]: It's hard because you know, as somebody in their twenties, they should get to have fun and go wild and make mistakes and live their life.
27:08
[SPEAKER_02]: There's some part of that.
27:10
[SPEAKER_02]: I think like I personally took it too far, but there's a healthy amount of that that is part of just growing up.
27:17
[SPEAKER_02]: But I think a lot of it has to do with just conversations, like having safe people that you can talk
27:25
[SPEAKER_02]: freely about about all your fears and your like worst secrets.
27:29
[SPEAKER_02]: I didn't have that.
27:32
[SPEAKER_02]: But I think if I had somebody I trusted a safe space.
27:37
[SPEAKER_02]: And a lot of us aren't willing to have these conversations in front of our friends because we want to look a certain way.
27:43
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, you want them to know your feeling shame about this or that.
27:48
[SPEAKER_02]: But I think the conversations help us process a lot of these emotions that are stuck
27:53
[SPEAKER_02]: and you keep stuffing these emotions underneath drugs and like escapism.
27:58
[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, I think it's conversations.
28:01
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I'm reading your book and I'm like, oh my god, you've gone through these dopamine hits throughout your entire life up until you've probably gotten to recovery and all that.
28:13
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm thinking those are very fun and happy moments.
28:17
[SPEAKER_01]: But at the same time, I'm like,
28:20
[SPEAKER_01]: What kind of fun or happy moments are you experiencing today with all of that information and data and dopamine experience?
28:32
[SPEAKER_01]: What at this point in your life makes you happy and present and content?
28:40
[SPEAKER_02]: I think it really becomes down to the simple things like gratitude is also important practice I think like I've done the whole gratitude lists and all of those like daily gratitude lists.
28:54
[SPEAKER_02]: Where do you send it to a group of friends and everybody sends their list?
28:58
[SPEAKER_02]: I think that's a helpful practice, but I just love simple things like eating a delicious meal or traveling to a tropical destination or getting underwater or playing with my cat to being innocent.
29:14
[SPEAKER_02]: You have to be able to enjoy the simple things because the dopamine hits aren't happening five times a day or even monthly.
29:24
[SPEAKER_01]: And I ask that because your book is packed with adventure.
29:29
[SPEAKER_01]: But not in a, in a, oh my god, I had all this fun and look at me writing style.
29:34
[SPEAKER_01]: That's not what I'm talking about.
29:36
[SPEAKER_01]: You walk us through a lot of dark dark moments and you break down a lot of this stuff.
29:43
[SPEAKER_01]: But at the same time, it, you know, because I lived through those years and I, I remember how fun it was to, you, what did you, did you write about the green triangles?
29:52
[SPEAKER_02]: The first time I did ecstasy.
29:57
[SPEAKER_02]: felt like love.
29:58
[SPEAKER_02]: Like it felt like everything I was missing, I was pure and whole and it felt like God.
30:05
[SPEAKER_02]: I had never had a connection with God but like that's what it felt like and I wanted more of it.
30:13
[SPEAKER_01]: I would do like twelve a night was great.
30:16
[SPEAKER_02]: Does that even work anyway?
30:19
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
30:20
[SPEAKER_02]: It only like works like even after like the second one, the third one doesn't do anything.
30:25
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a law of diminishing returns.
30:29
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's very disappointing.
30:32
[SPEAKER_01]: But I think at the time, like I didn't know about it, and I didn't smoke weed, but weed would have done the trick, right?
30:38
[SPEAKER_01]: Like it would have just like brought it.
30:41
[SPEAKER_01]: And I like to talk about this topic of drugs because I think I just theorize there's no data in my brain or that I've read.
30:51
[SPEAKER_01]: And it totally, I feel like when the, the gains,
30:59
[SPEAKER_01]: The gangs of Orange County in the six to six was raging in the mid- nineties, but it all died down.
31:08
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm sure there was like, yeah, are they still there?
31:12
[SPEAKER_01]: No, no.
31:13
[SPEAKER_02]: I just figured I just wasn't hanging around them anymore.
31:17
[SPEAKER_01]: My theory is when X to C came out.
31:20
[SPEAKER_01]: All the gang members were hugging it out.
31:24
[SPEAKER_02]: I remember that.
31:24
[SPEAKER_02]: I remember seeing the guys in the wife beaters like all being nice to everybody.
31:28
[SPEAKER_02]: Totally.
31:31
[SPEAKER_01]: You're like, wait a minute.
31:32
[SPEAKER_01]: These are gangsters and they were like, oh, hang it out.
31:35
[SPEAKER_01]: No, I'll tie it up.
31:36
[SPEAKER_02]: That was hilarious.
31:39
[SPEAKER_02]: They were there.
31:40
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, they were a very present and they were very happy.
31:42
[SPEAKER_01]: They were very happy.
31:43
[SPEAKER_01]: They were very, you know, everything just kind of like die down and kind of the gangs went away and maybe I think there was police coordination as well that jumped in and really helped out.
31:57
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I honestly don't regret my time with XCC.
32:00
[SPEAKER_02]: I had pretty pure fun with that.
32:03
[SPEAKER_02]: It was the only problem was that it was a gateway into like a worst drugs.
32:07
[SPEAKER_02]: But that period when I first rave for the first year, like I actually really enjoyed that time.
32:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
32:15
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I want to ask you about the ABG scene.
32:18
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's always a fun thing to talk about because it's a snapshot of the Vietnamese culture.
32:23
[SPEAKER_01]: And I know you're not Vietnamese, but you lived around that time.
32:26
[SPEAKER_01]: And for a lot of us that don't know, it's Asian baby girls is what the reference refers to.
32:35
[SPEAKER_01]: But I want to hear from your
32:37
[SPEAKER_01]: from your experience, what that was like living through those times with, and you brought a really good point in the book.
32:45
[SPEAKER_01]: You said that it's attributed to like Korean, Chinese, Japanese, look, but really, it's the Laosian Cambodian Vietnamese, aka the Jungle Asians.
32:58
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I hate to use that word, but
33:01
[SPEAKER_01]: I've been called that, and I can use that word because I'm Vietnamese, but would you kind of make a reference to that?
33:06
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't want to hear that kind of breakdown.
33:08
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, they didn't even originate it.
33:10
[SPEAKER_02]: They appropriated it kind of from Toulos.
33:13
[SPEAKER_02]: Like that whole look was by adjacent to like the Mexican gangs.
33:18
[SPEAKER_02]: But we didn't.
33:20
[SPEAKER_02]: The ABG term only came up, I think, in the last ten years or more.
33:25
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, we didn't know we were AVGs at the time.
33:29
[SPEAKER_02]: But, um, when I was first introduced to it, I was like probably fifteen.
33:33
[SPEAKER_02]: I was hanging around all white people and then I met this cool ass Korean girl who like really pretended to be gangster and she had all these watching friends.
33:42
[SPEAKER_02]: But she had that look, the straight, uh, blonde hair with a little bit of like, blow dried up here and, um, super skinny eyeliner and, um,
33:54
[SPEAKER_02]: the dark lips with a dark brown lipstick on the outside.
33:58
[SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, you can see that the chola's at our school had that very same look, but we didn't like make that connection really at the time.
34:09
[SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, a lot of the watching gangsters were, I guess, affiliated with or rivals against the Asian boys.
34:18
[SPEAKER_02]: So I feel like that's maybe how somehow filtered to the East Asians eventually.
34:25
[SPEAKER_02]: But then after that, like, the import models really popularize that look unconsciously.
34:31
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't think anybody was like recognizing that during the time.
34:34
[SPEAKER_01]: It elevated that look.
34:37
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
34:37
[SPEAKER_01]: It elevated the ABG look.
34:39
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I just made it a little more mainstream, I guess.
34:44
[SPEAKER_01]: And when I think about the ABG look, I think it's more baggy jeans, baggy t-shirts, a little bit, and then, but when you think about the kind of the transference over to the input models, it's more like more skin and just, it shows more of the body that we're talking with.
35:03
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's ironic that the term ABG evolve recently as a description to the grows in that era.
35:14
[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't realize that.
35:17
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I don't know how that came about like who decided.
35:20
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, it said that it originated in the subtle Asian trade group, but nobody knows for sure where their term came from and why it like covered this very specific period of time.
35:32
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
35:34
[SPEAKER_02]: But now it's like
35:37
[SPEAKER_02]: It's kind of a kind of similar to valley girls, right?
35:41
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a little bit of a dig because valley girls are ditzy and like dumb and blondes.
35:46
[SPEAKER_02]: And then Asian baby girls are kind of like, oh, they're like sexy, maybe loose.
35:52
[SPEAKER_02]: They're due drugs.
35:54
[SPEAKER_02]: They like to go raving and they like to drive date guys with hot cars and like drink, boba and smoke jewels.
36:03
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.
36:04
[SPEAKER_01]: You make me think of the Instagram post memes of the ABG starter kit.
36:10
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
36:10
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
36:12
[SPEAKER_01]: You just mentioned all that.
36:15
[SPEAKER_01]: It's crazy to think that when I think back to import models or
36:21
[SPEAKER_01]: even just pin up models of the fifties of Coke, Coca-Cola, pin up models.
36:26
[SPEAKER_01]: There's this idea that there's a person inside of every one of those.
36:29
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a thinking woman inside of it.
36:32
[SPEAKER_01]: And you wrote in the book, over the course of my career, I wondered if my fans and I'm just paraphrasing at this point know that I had dreams basically, right?
36:39
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, there's a person who has dreams.
36:43
[SPEAKER_01]: But what I wanted to find out is, do we as a public, the public have an obligation to care
36:50
[SPEAKER_01]: about your dreams?
36:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Or should we think about your dreams?
36:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Because your choice and honestly, the privilege of being that beautiful is not sort of, it's not happening in my awareness, right?
37:05
[SPEAKER_01]: As a young man or as the public who's gawking at you, where does that responsibility, where is that, is there a line in the sand?
37:14
[SPEAKER_01]: Like what you we think as young man or whoever looking up at the model?
37:19
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I don't think they have any obligation to do so, but I would just say, in comparison, when somebody is in love with a movie star, usually they want to know everything about them.
37:33
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, what books do they like to read?
37:36
[SPEAKER_02]: There's just not that same desire by a man who's a fan of a woman, because it's purely aesthetic, usually.
37:45
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's not necessarily there, because I marketed myself that way, right?
37:50
[SPEAKER_02]: But it's different from somebody who's a fan of a musician.
37:56
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that makes sense.
37:59
[SPEAKER_01]: But at the same time, I want to address that that there's an exchange, perhaps.
38:07
[SPEAKER_01]: And moving forward into time.
38:12
[SPEAKER_01]: And as we are becoming all more aware,
38:16
[SPEAKER_01]: of breaking maybe that fourth wall that there's a person on the other side, you know, how do we as a public, am I overthinking this, you know, I think about it.
38:29
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, well, I'm there to enjoy what I'm seeing because the performer has put on this performance.
38:36
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, maybe she, well, I now know that you have these dreams of
38:43
[SPEAKER_01]: being seen or, but there's a trade off, you know, whether it's time or money or dignity that we're exchanging here for the work and for the performance.
38:56
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's something that tears me up because I want my daughter to one day be a performer and, you know, I'm torn about like, where does that kind of, that that line is drawn in the sand?
39:10
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I think it's a very different time because it's such a pair of social, you know, there's a lot of pairs of social relationships between the audience and the performers because back then it was much more separated.
39:22
[SPEAKER_02]: There wasn't as much communication.
39:24
[SPEAKER_02]: But now with social media platforms, everyone can like share their points of views and like get really deep and granular about like their hopes and dreams.
39:34
[SPEAKER_02]: And it may be up to the performer to be sharing this information
39:39
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I might not have shared very much because I was like trying to promote something very specific.
39:45
[SPEAKER_01]: I have a few more questions, but where can we find the book and when can we find the book?
39:54
[SPEAKER_02]: So the book is out on August, nineteenth.
39:58
[SPEAKER_02]: And you could find it anywhere at all bookstores, but support your independent bookstores.
40:04
[SPEAKER_02]: And also I'll be doing a signing at the Barnes and Noble's The Grove at August, nineteenth with it was Margaret Chau, but she couldn't make it anymore because of her filming schedule.
40:16
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's now going to be AJ and Alyssa Raphael, who are some super
40:21
[SPEAKER_02]: talented old school, YouTuber musicians, some sort of excited about that discussion.
40:26
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, awesome.
40:28
[SPEAKER_01]: And I love the growth.
40:28
[SPEAKER_01]: That's an amazing place.
40:30
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
40:31
[SPEAKER_01]: You bring up such cherished, like a snapshot in time for me, Motley Crew and Guns of Roses.
40:40
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so good.
40:42
[SPEAKER_01]: And Pam Anderson.
40:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and today we see Pam in a completely different light and hers, you know, I don't know if it's like actually hooking up with Limneson or I don't know what that deal is, but I hope so.
40:57
[SPEAKER_02]: I love that.
40:58
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I hope they're together.
41:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah.
41:01
[SPEAKER_01]: But this idea of, you know, this bombshell, this vixen, like Pam Anderson, turning it around and just going completely natural.
41:13
[SPEAKER_01]: I am here for it and I love it.
41:14
[SPEAKER_01]: But at the same time, at the same time, it's also a privilege that she can do that because... Yeah.
41:22
[SPEAKER_02]: She's beautiful.
41:23
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
41:23
[SPEAKER_02]: But I love what I'm seeing.
41:26
[SPEAKER_02]: Like the Pamela Anderson thing makes me deeply happy.
41:30
[SPEAKER_02]: because we destroyed her in the two thousand.
41:35
[SPEAKER_02]: She had a very precious tape with her love of her life stolen.
41:39
[SPEAKER_02]: And basically, the male lawyers or whatever that are using against her said, you're in playboy.
41:46
[SPEAKER_02]: So what's the problem?
41:48
[SPEAKER_02]: you know, like them having inner course and everybody getting to watch it for free.
41:53
[SPEAKER_02]: And they won, you know, on that and it destroyed her career.
41:56
[SPEAKER_02]: She never came back from it.
41:58
[SPEAKER_02]: So I'm so excited to see that now she's getting like a renaissance basis basically.
42:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, what, what are you a bold and courageous
42:09
[SPEAKER_01]: woman to go out in public and I mean, I shouldn't even be calling her bold and courageous, right?
42:15
[SPEAKER_01]: It's again, it goes back to agency.
42:18
[SPEAKER_01]: But at the same time, there's a lot of strength in Pamela Anderson going out without makeup and looking very natural and it doesn't seem like she's getting more work done.
42:28
[SPEAKER_01]: I think she's just kind of put the bricks on all of that.
42:32
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I don't know what to call it.
42:34
[SPEAKER_01]: Is it admirable, admirable, more respectable, because this idea of agency still needs to play its part.
42:44
[SPEAKER_02]: It's very courageous.
42:45
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, I've done a lot of self work and I'm not walking around, you know, to a big event without makeup.
42:54
[SPEAKER_02]: I still, like, I recognize the male gaze and the patriarchy, but there is like,
43:03
[SPEAKER_02]: We're taught like put on a fresh coat of lipstick and you can like take on the world.
43:08
[SPEAKER_02]: So I still fall under those learnings that I haven't unraveled completely.
43:15
[SPEAKER_02]: So I think what she's doing is incredibly courageous and I hope it inspires more of it.
43:21
[SPEAKER_01]: There's parallels for that, I think, from women's boldness encouraged to do that, to actually being a real Asian American and taking and stripping down the pretensions that we have to carry to be white adjacent.
43:45
[SPEAKER_01]: choices we make in art, the choices we make as in our personal lives, being around white people, being able to eat chicken feet and being loud about that in our post or whatever, right?
43:58
[SPEAKER_01]: Like there are things that we don't dare do because we don't want to be so naked around our white friends.
44:09
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that that's why this topic is such a
44:13
[SPEAKER_01]: a beautiful thing to me because it takes a lot of courage to I think just as a human being to to strip down and and bear it all.
44:24
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, if we could all do that, first of all, there would be so much more compassion and understanding.
44:29
[SPEAKER_02]: I just feel like if we could just take time to like hear each other's stories and be, it's just not always safe to tell your story.
44:38
[SPEAKER_02]: That's a problem, you know, like tell everybody to be honest.
44:41
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not necessarily
44:45
[SPEAKER_02]: safe or to say your story on a, I have a alligator thick skin.
44:51
[SPEAKER_02]: So I'm okay with all the criticism that for sure will be coming, but not everybody had to go through what I did to have that.
45:00
[SPEAKER_02]: So I think maybe just like in your safe circles, having places that you're safe to be yourself authentically and share.
45:07
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you, you definitely put it all out there.
45:10
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was just blown away by
45:14
[SPEAKER_01]: by what you wrote and the rawness of feeling, of expressing the feelings that you had.
45:22
[SPEAKER_01]: And I hope that this is a sort of a beacon to Asian Americans and women no matter what color, what stripe or anything you come from.
45:33
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I just, you know,
45:38
[SPEAKER_02]: I am a feminist, which isn't maybe a popular thing to say these days because there's been such a negative connotation, but it does not take anything away from men for me to be a feminist.
45:49
[SPEAKER_02]: There's this idea that if we get powers, we have to take it away from men.
45:54
[SPEAKER_02]: We should be working together and men should want equality for themselves and for us.
45:59
[SPEAKER_02]: I think it's beneficial to all of society.
46:02
[SPEAKER_01]: I have a question that
46:08
[SPEAKER_01]: that happened to me recently.
46:11
[SPEAKER_01]: And it seems to be a recurring theme every now and then.
46:15
[SPEAKER_01]: This idea back in the day, like let's just say old country and Italy, when women walk by, beautiful women walk by, the guys would whistle, the guys would like say things.
46:24
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's just a playful banter between men and women on the streets bordering harassment.
46:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's let's call it what it is.
46:33
[SPEAKER_01]: And now.
46:35
[SPEAKER_01]: If we are amongst the group of guy friends, two or three of us, and we're making comments, and one guy says, hey, hey, hey, hey, like I expect better of you.
46:48
[SPEAKER_01]: But at what point does this gawking, this natural insistence on commenting on how hot a woman or a man is?
47:00
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, where do we draw the line?
47:04
[SPEAKER_01]: You know,
47:06
[SPEAKER_01]: if the woman is not hearing it or if she's hearing it, that bravado that comes from men.
47:11
[SPEAKER_01]: I think some women do miss it, but then some really aware men are also turned off by other guys that are doing that in their crew.
47:21
[SPEAKER_01]: So as somebody who's really did a lot of introspection about the male gaze and all this, where do you stand on all of this sort of raw energy that's coming out from, from men today?
47:34
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know if there's an easy answer to that.
47:37
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't think there's anything wrong with appreciating beauty, but usually the men aren't saying like, oh wow, she is so beautiful.
47:45
[SPEAKER_02]: It's usually like very sexually tense, right?
47:48
[SPEAKER_02]: And the idea is like, oh, I want to fuck her.
47:51
[SPEAKER_02]: I think there's maybe the distinction.
47:53
[SPEAKER_02]: There's a way to admire with respect, and that should still be allowed.
47:58
[SPEAKER_01]: And let me stop me right there.
48:00
[SPEAKER_01]: So if you're in it and I'm just putting it out there.
48:03
[SPEAKER_01]: If you're in a group of guys and the guys are like, oh, I would love to fuck her, right?
48:09
[SPEAKER_01]: There's some reality there that is raw.
48:17
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, ocean boom, a writer in the Vietnamese diaspora.
48:22
[SPEAKER_01]: He writes and talks about this idea that American men talks about the idea of sex in very militaristic, you know, a violent ways.
48:34
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's smash that.
48:36
[SPEAKER_01]: It lets hit that.
48:37
[SPEAKER_01]: Did you pound, you know, I can pound that.
48:39
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, yeah.
48:41
[SPEAKER_01]: I get that.
48:42
[SPEAKER_01]: That's where I would be like, okay, but if I'm, and I'm not advocating this, I'm just really questioning this idea of like if I'm standing with my friends, I'm like,
48:51
[SPEAKER_01]: That would love to fuck her, right?
48:54
[SPEAKER_01]: That is something that is sexually tingeed and it's full of dynamite, but it's also the truth of like my visceral feeling that I have for that woman.
49:06
[SPEAKER_01]: And again, I say it with respect.
49:08
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm like, hey guys, respect me.
49:10
[SPEAKER_01]: So we're gonna draw the line with our communication anymore.
49:15
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know the answer to that.
49:16
[SPEAKER_02]: I think you should be able to be honest.
49:18
[SPEAKER_02]: And maybe you have that conversation with your guys and don't let the woman here because that can be jarring and objectifying.
49:27
[SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, I don't know an easy answer to that.
49:35
[SPEAKER_01]: And you know, people say it all the time, when women objectify us, bring it on.
49:40
[SPEAKER_02]: I get my men love it because women, women generally don't say like, oh, I want to fuck that guy.
49:46
[SPEAKER_02]: They're like, oh, he's like a really hot or something, but they're, they're not thinking of sex immediately.
49:51
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's very hard for me to speak on this because I don't think like a man.
49:56
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't think of sex constant.
49:58
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, like, I just, I,
50:01
[SPEAKER_02]: have no understanding of how men are kind of sexes driving a lot of decisions.
50:08
[SPEAKER_02]: So I'm told.
50:13
[SPEAKER_02]: If there's a way for you to express yourself and it's not like
50:19
[SPEAKER_02]: see it is kind of objectifying a woman you're saying like oh I just want to fuck her you know I don't know that I don't know that you don't have to go off of right as long and you're so visual everything's visual um oh I'd love to get you to say oh she's really hot not a need to say oh I want to fuck her
50:37
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you can.
50:39
[SPEAKER_01]: You definitely can and you should keep it at that because when I think about somebody saying that about my daughter, that's when the problem, you know, that's a problem.
50:48
[SPEAKER_01]: But at the same time, I don't want to discount
50:51
[SPEAKER_01]: what men have felt and communicated with each other for hundreds of years.
50:56
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, this is gone on and maybe the time to evolve is now and that's why we're talking about this.
51:01
[SPEAKER_02]: Do men only think this way because society has socialized them and expectations for them to be this way?
51:10
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know.
51:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think that there's a lot of truth in that because there are classy men that don't do that, that don't engage in that behavior.
51:18
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
51:19
[SPEAKER_02]: I think it's like almost like guys want to be like one of the boys.
51:23
[SPEAKER_02]: So they might amp that up just to be cool, you know, because they drew our key.
51:27
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
51:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Kala, it was so fun talking about your book today of fetishize or remind the audience comes out August, and you can get them on the virtual online bookstores, but please, if you can, neighborhood, mom and pop bookstores to pick up the book.
51:50
[SPEAKER_01]: You have any last closing things to say?
51:54
[SPEAKER_02]: No, no, just had a great conversation.
51:56
[SPEAKER_02]: I think we really dug into a lot of things.
52:00
[SPEAKER_02]: I just hope that everybody can open late speak and listen to different sides, you know, without judging.
52:06
[SPEAKER_02]: Because we're at this point so quick and polarized to not even want to listen or discuss to people with different opinions.
52:16
[SPEAKER_02]: This is for liberals too.
52:18
[SPEAKER_02]: We need to be more open-minded.
52:21
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, we do.
52:22
[SPEAKER_01]: We do.
52:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Carla, thank you so much.
52:24
[SPEAKER_00]: I appreciate you.
52:26
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.
52:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for listening to the Vietnamese with Kenneth Wyn.
52:29
[SPEAKER_00]: Special thanks to Brittany Tran, to Jane Wyn, Catherine Wyn, Tina Fam, Sydney Jamie, and Crystal Tran.
52:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Please find us on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok at the Vietnamese Podcast.