Glenn Magpantay, Co-Chair of AABANY’s LGBT Committee and Co-Founder and Former Executive Director of the National Queer Asian Pacific Islander Alliance (NQAPIA), was recently featured in a May 20 article in the Philadelphia Gay News. Titled “Queer Asians speak out against discrimination and injustice,” the article featured four leaders in the LGBT Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community, who each discussed the issues individuals who identify as both AAPI and LGBT have to face.
In the article, Glenn spoke about how queer AAPI people are often overlooked. There is a lack of existing queer Asian groups in cities such as Miami and Orlando, and even within the greater LGBT community, AAPIs are not always represented in the public policy agendas of some LGBT organizations. Speaking about the anti-Asian hate and violence during the COVID-19 pandemic, Glenn stated: “[G]ay Asians live at the intersection of a dual identity…The haters — the people who are harassing us, people who yell at us for being coronavirus carriers — they don’t discriminate on whether you’re gay Asian, a trans-Asian, a Korean Asian. It doesn’t matter to them. You just look foreign. You look like you have the COVID virus.” He added: “Our identities as queer Asians have been flattened by the media. How many of [these hate-crime victims] were gay, queer and trans?”
To read the full article, click here.