My name is Sang, my pronouns are he/him. I speak English and Teochew Chinese.

I’m Chinese-Cambodian. My family came to Australia in the eighties as refugees from the Cambodian war. We made our way to Thailand, and eventually to Australia.

I grew up here. I came to Australia when I was very, very young and we grew up in the outer suburbs of Melbourne. Back then there weren’t as many Chinese people or Asian people in my school. In my primary school, there was probably four or five. There was myself and my siblings and there were some others. And I was actually related to one. One of them was my cousin actually.

I didn’t have a lot of role models when I was growing up. I have to be honest, we probably faced a little bit of racism as we grew up. It was the time of when Pauline Hanson was becoming particularly prominent. So, there was a time when we didn’t feel we belonged in this country and it made us, I guess, try and fit in. It made us really feel like our place in this country was based on our ability to do that.

When I was growing up, there wasn’t a lot of representation in terms of being queer and being Asian. And so obviously for me, it felt like there was a bit of stigma in relation to the Asian community from being gay or being part of the queer community. What I saw was that the people who were more accepting were white or Western. To some extent, I felt like I had to walk away from my Asian-ness to be able to join a community that embraced my queerness or my gayness.

When talking about mental health with my mum, it’s quite difficult because I think my Teochew, the dialect that I speak to her in, is actually not very good. So, I’m actually not able to have a kind nuanced discussion with her about these things, which makes me very sad. It’s not even just talking about my mental health. It’s also talking about my life as a queer man or as gay man. I don’t think I have the vocabulary in Teochew to share those types of experiences with her.

Being queer is obviously not part of her lived experience. But, what I’ve tried to do is to bring a bit more of those two disparate worlds together, my queer friends, gay world, whatever you want to call it, and my family.

Being able to bring those together allows my mum and my family to understand this other world that I’m part of a bit more. To share with them my lived experience where they can meet people and understand, and that there are people who live this way. I guess I hope to maybe remove some of the stigma and also some of the fear of not knowing.

I think growing up with a lack of queer Asian representation I thought that the model of desirability was definitely a certain way that tended to be white, to be muscular and not what I was – being Asian, and being queer.

I definitely think there is racism that is perpetuated to some extent on gay dating apps, if you’re on there, and in the media. I do think there was some internalised racism that I had to process. I didn’t necessarily feel like I was the pinnacle of being attractive because of that. It’s taken me a while to really negotiate that space.

I feel really great about who I am now. I’ve come to a place where I not only accept but really celebrate who I am. Trying to navigate that space between being Asian and being gay, I think I’ve come to realise all the amazing things that have come from that. I think I appreciate where I fit in within the community as well.

My personal journey has involved my mental health being not-so-good at one stage and it’s something that I’ve had to go see a healthcare provider to actually speak about.

Growing up I’ve always thought that thinking about my mind has been something that I’ve had to ‘deal with’ on my own. But, I’ve realised that there are definitely things that you can find, other people to help you, and they might give you a lot insight to help with those things.

There are definitely things that trigger me not understanding that I’m not doing so well with my mental health. Motivation I think is something that I definitely look out for but I try to overcome a lot of these through things like making sure I see people. I think sport is a big part of what I do. I’m part of an LGBTIQ badminton club and being able to go there and play sport, and also play in an environment that doesn’t involve alcohol.

I think a lot of the time when queer people come together or gay people come together there tends to be a lot of drinking or there tends to be a lot of alcohol involved, and this can obviously lead to excessive drinking. I think for me it’s great to be part of a community and in an environment where you’re not just linked through that shared, I guess, community, where it wasn’t just about hooking up or trying to sleep with other people. It was just really for me a great opportunity to go and meet a whole lot of new people that I didn’t know. Also people that I could gradually get to know over time as well.

It was such a structured environment and I could go there every week and eventually I could get to know people. It’s also a really multicultural club and so there’s people from lots of places in the world, particularly Asia. Badminton is very popular in Asia. It’s really allowed me to reconnect with my queerness and combine that with my Asian-ness as well and be able to see lots of examples of how to be Asian and how to be queer or gay or whatever the spectrum might be.

If someone was experiencing negative mental health within the Chinese-Cambodian community and if they were queer, what I’d suggest is, I think it’s really important to find community. I think it’s really important to find the people who actually, I guess, understand you and that could be people who have a shared lived experience. I guess what a lot of people call their chosen family. I know that obviously you’ve got your blood family but then they don’t necessarily understand, I guess, the experiences that you’ve had, specifically those related to being someone queer. I definitely suggest you talk to someone.

I think it’s really important to be able to have people in your life that you trust and that you can actually share things with. Then ultimately I think it’s really important to have a great relationship with your GP or your healthcare provider so that you can have those honest discussions where there’s no stigma around any of those things, and you can get the help that you need if it comes to that.