Charlie Cho (they/them) is based in Toronto. We met in the fall of 2021 to talk about test driving pronouns, language barriers with parents, and realizing that we’re not white.
Raised by the Internet
I’ve always been chronically online, raised by the Internet. In my real life, I didn’t know anybody who was queer.
I was on Tumblr in high school, and encountered a lot of queer content. It never occurred to me that I could be gay, because back then, “gay” was an insult. Then I found out you could be gay. On Tumblr, there were regular people being queer, and the more I saw of that I realized I could be, in theory, queer in some way.
I’ve always been chronically online, raised by the Internet.
Charlie Cho
I’ve always thought I was non-binary or gender neutral. But that didn’t mean anything to me back then and I didn’t do anything with that knowledge for a long time. It was the same with my sexuality; I never took it seriously.
After Tumblr, it was Reddit, then Twitter, and now TikTok. I think it’s pretty flawed, finding that kind of community on the internet, but not in real life. The internet not the same as real life sources, but it’s frustrating because I don’t know where to go in real life.
Test Driving Pronouns
I started using they/them pronouns a year or two ago. I did it in stages. I started in choir because we use name tags where you can write your pronouns. I figured I’d demo them there, because with a name tag, I didn’t have to explain it.
After a while, I was like, oh, this feels kind of good. So I asked some of my queer friends if they could use they/them pronouns for me. They already used them for other people, so I didn’t have to teach them anything.
But my other friends, I still haven’t gotten the courage to ask them to use they/them pronouns. It’s an insecurity thing; it feels awkward to ask. I would have to be the one to correct them, and I don’t feel like doing that all the time.
With my family, I’m coming to terms with letting them use she/her for me. I’ve seen posts online where people use different pronouns in different contexts. So I think in the context of my family, I’ll always be a girl. And that’s fine, I think.
Photo Credit: Eileen Liu
Coming Out to Family
I’m not out to my parents at all. With sexuality, they might get it; but with gender, it would be too abstract a concept. They’ll be like, “so you’re a boy,” and I’ll be like, “no,” and they’ll be like, “so you’re a girl then.” They’ve never considered something other than those two options and I’ve never talked to them about it. I don’t think I will; I don’t want to do that work.
But I do want to come out to them soon-ish. My girlfriend and I are very serious. We want to move in together and maybe have kids one day. I’d really like my family to be a part of that. I think they’d be able to handle it. It helps that my mom knows an Asian woman who is married to another Asian woman in her friend group.
Science by Default
I was a straight A student. My parents wanted me to go into science and become a doctor, and I let myself be pressured into that. I figured, it’s not a bad life path. If I’m smart at science, I should do it. Then it became a sunk cost fallacy and I kept going. I liked science, and I thought maybe I’d grow to love it. But I didn’t.
The current great shame of my life is that I did a masters in science and I’m not going to do anything with it. I’m actively planning to not use it. It feels like I failed my parents. They worked so hard to let me get this far, but I’m not going to use the degree.
The current great shame of my life is that I did a masters in science and I’m not going to do anything with it.
Charlie Cho
Now, I understand that my parents just want me to be happy. They were worried about my future. They wanted me to be successful, so I could be rich and therefore, happy. But as they’ve gotten older, they’ve mellowed out a bit. They’ve stripped away some of their anxiety and really do just want me to be happy.
Science is a Capitalist System
The science system is really flawed. I think it’s a consequence of being a capitalist system. We get our funding from writing grants, and proving that this research is meaningful in some way. But to prove it’s meaningful is basically trying to prove that it’s profitable. It has to be profitable to be justified.
It’s also absolutely terrible to be a grad student. They use you as cheap labor; they underpay you, and overwork you. It’s like that with most science jobs, and I don’t want that. I like science, but not enough to suffer in order do it.
I don’t regret doing science. It was an awful experience, but it changed so much about me that I wouldn’t be who I am without it.
From Science to Art
Ideally, I would be doing something creative, either art or writing in some form. I like having creative outlets, but I haven’t been practicing much, because I’ve always thought of myself as a science person. Then there’s the whole “Asian parents think becoming an artist is their worst nightmare.” I thought that didn’t affect me. But simply by knowing that my parents and society think that way, I couldn’t conceive of myself as an artist or creative type.
There’s also the struggle of doing art just for myself. For a while, I got caught up in being an artist as a dream job. I felt like I had to learn how to make art that’s appealing to other people, so I can make it into a career. It’s a weird divide. I enjoy doing art, but would I enjoy art as a job?
I enjoy doing art, but would I enjoy art as a job?
Charlie Cho
Either way, it’s never going to happen if I don’t try. So I’ve been trying to make art a habit. I have all these ambitions to start a blog about camping and having an Instagram account. But I’m just going to chill a bit and do stuff for me. We’ll see what comes out of that.
In the meantime, I just want a job that pays a decent amount, but doesn’t make me sad. I would like nice coworkers, and vacation, and all that. So arguably, it’s very ambitious.
Photo Credit: Eileen Liu
Finding Community
I went to McMaster University for undergrad. There was a Queer Students’ Community Centre. It was a community place in the student centre where people could come and hung out. I very boldly decided that I’d volunteer there. I figured, I’m in university now and nobody knows me here. I did that for a while, but I didn’t fit in and I was very socially awkward.
I was really insecure about my identity back then. I thought that because I’d never dated a girl at the time, I didn’t belong there. It was also a very white space, so subconsciously, that put me off too. I didn’t make any queer friends during that time, but at least primed me to try again later.
Things didn’t get real for me until I joined a choir, Singing Out. I wanted to find some sort of community and I thought choir would be fun. I googled gay choir and Singing Out came up.
The choir was my first exposure to queer adults, which was great. It was a really supportive bunch of people, and I started making queer friends that weren’t my high school friends. Suddenly, I had actual community.
Choir was my first exposure to queer adults. Suddenly, I had actual community.
Charlie Cho
I’m roommates with one of my friends from choir. I’ve met a bunch of her friends, so my queer circles are expanding. It’s really nice. That’s also how I met my girlfriend.
This is my first queer relationship. My sexuality wasn’t very real to me before. I dated men and I wasn’t a part of a queer community, so I never had to face my own queerness. But being in a queer relationship makes it very real.
I’m discovering all this internalized homophobia and transphobia I have. There’s shame and other things I thought I’d gotten over, but now all these feeling are coming up. My girlfriend and I talk about it a lot, because my girlfriend is trans. There are a lot of intersections that we understand about each other, and I really love that.
Coming to Canada
I don’t know the details very well, because my mom has always been so modest. She doesn’t want to talk about how my family came to Canada.
What I know is that my mom came over with my dad in ‘93 or something. At that point, they had two kids in China—my sisters are twins. They wanted to move here and give my sisters a better life, a good education, and all that.
After they came over, my mom immediately got pregnant with me. Right around the time when I was born, my dad got tired of living in Canada. I think it was really hard on him because he was an immigrant and blah, blah, blah, there was a lot of drama. They divorced, and my dad went back to China. So my mom has been here with the three kids, alone, since ‘94-ish.
My mom never went to university. She supported three kids on a waitress salary.
Charlie Cho
My mom never went to university. She worked her whole life as a waitress, which is totally bonkers to me, thinking about it now. She supported three kids on a waitress salary. My sisters had to start working really young, just to help support the family. They’ve always been stressed, surviving. It feels like my family is eternally living with a scarcity mindset. I don’t think I can change that for them, even though I wish I could.
That said, my mom, in her retirement, has been flourishing. She joined a taichi club and a ping pong club, and made a ton of friends. She’s secretly very charismatic, although she would never say so about herself. She’s found a strong, stable community and she even has a boyfriend now. It’s good to see her relaxing after so many years of working really, really hard.
Family History
I’d like to know more about my mom’s history, but she’s so hard to get personal details out of. It might be a part of immigrating and the mildly traumatic memories she’s never processed. She grew up in an interesting time, during the Cultural Revolution and Mao. I don’t know much about that stuff, but I know it’s complex. She must have some lived experience of it, but I have no idea how to ask about those things. All three of them—my mom and my sisters—are very tight-lipped about the past. It’s fraught—not something you’d bring up at dinner.
Growing up, it was my sisters—who are fifteen years older than me—who raised me with my mom. As a kid, I didn’t realize how weird it was that my sisters were that much older than me. We aren’t super close, because I see them more as parental figures than my siblings.
All three of them—my mom and my sisters—are very tight-lipped about the past. It’s fraught—not something you’d bring up at dinner.
Charlie Cho
They’re in their 40s now. They’re not married and they sound like they never want to get married. They’re twins and they have a really tight bond. They’re each other’s primary person in life—like they only want and need each other.
My whole family is Cantonese, from Guangzhou, Guangdong. But I’m the Canadian.
There’s a language barrier between me and my mom. Her English is so-so and my Cantonese is very bad. My sisters are a bridge between us. They have good English, Mandarin and Cantonese; they’re very Chinese, whereas I’m very westernized.
But I’m trying to get better at Chinese; I even bought a Learn to Read and Write Chinese book. I’m trying to speak Cantonese more with my Mom. I’ll ask her about China or Chinese things. I wasn’t very curious before. Or rather, I saw Chinese culture as less than Western culture, which is so sad.
Photo Credit: Eileen Liu
I’m Not White
I went to high school in Scarborough. It was a small school and mostly Asian. All the friends I had growing up, even into university, were all non-white. But I hated being Chinese.
As a kid, I watched a lot of TV. Every protagonist on TV was white and I thought I would grow up and do stuff like them. But then, I realized I’m not white. It sounds so stupid, but I realized that people see me differently, and I couldn’t have the things I saw white people on TV having.
I feel it in the way white people talk to each other. They might be strangers, but they trust each other and they meet each other with a level of respect. But when white people approach me, it’s different. For a long time, I thought I was being paranoid. But now, I realize that’s a real feeling.
I used to date a Sri Lankan guy. He was dark-skinned and into white-centric hobbies, like camping. He realized later that he unconsciously liked those things because he wanted to be like white people. It was as if, on a deep level, he wanted something they have, but he couldn’t figure out what it was. That made it click for me: I was rejecting my Chinese-ness because I thought I needed to be like white people in order to be successful, to be happy.
Where are the Queer Asians?
It was only when I got older and started going downtown for work that I realized, there’s a lot of white people in Toronto. Still, when I go to other places in Canada, I’m reminded that Toronto is a very diverse place. It doesn’t get more diverse than this, and it’s not even that diverse. It’s only through choir that I’ve actually become friends with white people.
My choir is queer, but very white; I’ve never been in such a concentratedly white space before. It’s a weird experience. I’ve come to realize that being white and gay is not enough for someone to connect with me or other POC queers. Because intersectionalities. I never understood how much I understood it, that other people weren’t privy to this knowledge. I was like, “Oh, we don’t all live like this.”
All my Asian friends are very straight. They’re really enmeshed in straight culture, and there’s a lot of casual homophobia and transphobia. So basically, I have white queer friends, then I have Asian, straight culture friends. I want something in the middle, something in between that.
Photo Credit: Eileen Liu
Getting Back to Basics
I got into camping because of my ex-partner. Originally, I went camping alone, doing backcountry and wilderness camping. People were like, “you’re such a wimp, how did you do that?” But I needed to prove to myself that I could do. And I can. It’s very empowering.
Part of the appeal is getting back to a basic understanding of living. You hike in and you don’t see anybody. It’s busy when you get to camp, collecting wood, making dinner, setting up tents, staying warm, looking at the stars. In the city, there are all these distractions and things to worry about. But when I’m camping, it’s the ultimate reversal of that. Suddenly, interpersonal dramas don’t matter anymore and there’s a feeling of connecting with everything. It’s an interesting perspective, to get out of your own life. It’s a rare feeling.
Part of the appeal is getting back to a basic understanding of living. Suddenly, interpersonal dramas don’t matter anymore.
Charlie Cho
I like going to Algonquin and Georgian Bay. I had a lot of good experiences doing that alone. Then I met my girlfriend and we’ve started camping together, which is really nice. And now that there’s two of us, we can do even more extreme stuff, like portaging.
Camping is like build your own adventure. You can plan something on the easier side, or you can plan a route where you have to go really far, really fast. My girlfriend and I tried pushing ourselves this year. We did a really long trip—long, as in distance. By the end of it, it felt really good, but we don’t need to do that again. We know we can do it, but next time, we’ll be more relaxed.
Photo Credit: Eileen Liu
Music for Myself
I don’t think of myself as a musical person, but I’m pretty into it. My mom wanted me to learn piano, partly to live vicariously through me because she never got to learn an instrument. I did piano as a kid until I complained about it so much that my mom let me stop taking classes. But now, when I go to choir, I can read the sheet music, which feels familiar and nice.
In high school, I was a band kid. I found community there and I really liked making music with other people. I never liked playing alone, which is what I struggled with when it came to piano.
I had shame about stopping piano lessons and my mom bothers me about it sometimes, because it was a waste of money. But I did learn the piano—isn’t that good enough, even if it’s just for me? I recently bought a piano. I haven’t had one since high school. It’s nice to be playing again, but I won’t play for other people. For now I’m trying to play piano for myself.
Feature image by Eileen Liu. This interview was supported by Community One Foundation.
