MISSION
We seek to document the personal experiences of the Queer Asian Pacific American women and transgender community by interweaving visual art, personal narratives, and social justice onto an accessible online platform.
VISION
We seek to strategically influence the digital landscape of information about the Queer APA women and transgender community, while being protectively open source.
WHY
The queer APA women and transgender community is frequently overlooked, ignored, and disregarded by society at large. The cultivation of this project was a direct response to change that dynamic one face, one story, one participant at a time. The Visibility Project is intergenerational and multi-racial. It provides a platform that allows participants to self-identify, share their histories and experiences. The result is a diverse representation of what it means to be Queer and APA that transcends linguistic, cultural, and generational barriers.
LANGUAGE
Identity is an evolution that can take form in appearance, hair, swag, and language. It’s constantly shifting in changing. Dyke has been reclaimed from a derogatory insult to reclamation of sexuality. Queer has moved beyond gender or sexual preferences to a whole political identity. Our language around this work has shifted too.
We choose Asian Pacific American to encompass a broad spectrum of communities that include Marshallese, Native Hawaiian, Gujarati, Vietnamese, Korean, Taiwanese, Hmong, Indo-Caribbean, just to name a few. We acknowledge that not everyone who participates in this work strongly identifies as Asian Pacific American, Asian American, Asian Pacific Islander, or any of the larger umbrella terms that this diverse community is gathered under. Our choice to use APA is to place equitable importance on Asian and Pacific and articulate that these stories revolve around experiences in the United States. We embrace inclusivity and celebrate distinct cultural nuances.
We choose Queer Trans or Q/T to be specifically inclusive of queer transgender, transmasculine, transfeminine, gender nonconforming, genderqueer, pansexual, cisgender women, bisexual women, and asexual. We embrace the broad spectrum of gender and sexuality without creating lists.