Saimun Wang (he/they) is a queer gaming streamer and writer (and hopefully also a writing streamer soon!) I asked him about themself and their content, as well as content he’s been enjoying recently. You can check Saimun out at the links at the end of the interview.
- What queer terminology do you use for yourself publicly? Do not feel pressured to come out as anything in your answer. Please only disclose whatever you’re comfortable with.
- Queer and Asexual, to public outside of Twitter. To my family, I am just asexual. On Twitter, people generally know I’m trans and genderqueer, but generally outside of Twitter, only certain friends know of my gender identities.
- What non-queer demographic terminology do you use for yourself? Again, please only disclose whatever you’re comfortable with.
- Chinese, Vietnamese, Cambodian // Asian, East Asian, Southeast Asian, AAPI
- What projects are you involved in?
- Streaming, my society and culture editorial site called Lucid Lotus Media
- What non-creative hobbies do you enjoy?
- Academic research in philosophy and vast cultures of the world, binge-watching some favorite shows on repeat
- What does the queer community needs to do better about understanding, accepting, and supporting?
- Address the racism that does happen in the queer community. Usually the racism exists in microaggressions and reinforcing stereotypes about other races and ethnic people, and I feel like part of queer discourse should be about navigating how to break those racist stereotypes and minimizing the use of microaggressions.
- Along with that, even though the Queer community has done a lot to help transform and grow cultures and society, the LBGTQIA2+ community also needs to recognize that other ethnic cultures that they are not a part of are not for their own aesthetic, at least not without recognizing where the clothing and language that they use to express their queer identities come from. Work on actually appreciating the ethnic cultures instead of appropriating them.
- Additionally, there needs to be less gatekeeping within the community. A bunch of the asexual people I was once connected to on Facebook faced so much gatekeeping of not being “queer enough.” Personally, I faced identity erasure multiple times from the LGBTQIA2+ community. So much work needs to be done.
- What are you excited about going forward? Can be anything from creative projects, personal or professional milestones, etc.
- I’m really excited to keep streaming and to keep on it with my editorial site, as well as look into all of these academic disciplines that I’ve been wanting to research but have not yet to give myself time away from academia to recover from burnout. I also have my college thesis that I am not pursuing officially through them anymore but I want to complete on my own. I am really excited to see how all of these, streaming, editorial hope journalism, and academic research of my own, will all connect with each other in some way!
- Are there any pets or plants in your life?
- Sadly, no 🙁
- What content / content creators have you been enjoying recently? This could be anything from books, to podcasts, to tutorial videos, etc. Anything you want other people to know about.
- CCs: Chaos Crypt, Atmos Fierce, KimiDoesThings, Iza_mazing, mxplumbee, I watch Sykkuno on YouTube now instead of his Twitch streams because it’s just easier to consume his content in that way.
- Content: I am reading a book written by a friend currently and I haven’t read it in like two weeks but I do like it so far. If music counts as content, I have been listening to my childhood Cantopop/Mandopop artist, Sammi Cheng, a lot, and I have been re-learning bits and pieces of my native language of Cantonese through that.
- What is your favorite thing about yourself?
- My huge heart and my unwillingness to let go of hope.
Saimun Wang can be found on Twitter and Twitch and on his beacons page.
Lucid Lotus Media can be found on Twitter and on its own website.
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