Kai Tse
⤏ IN CONVERSATION WITH NATHAN TSE
⤏ PHOTOS BY LINNEA DEL CID
⤏ ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED FEBRUARY 2020
Kai Tse may only be 20 years young, but he has to be one of the most talented 20-year-olds in the world. I know I’m his brother — so I’m biased — but whenever I peek into his room, the illustrator/sculptor/stick-and-poke tattoo artist is always hard at work on some sort of commission or project. Not only is he an amazing artist, but he’s also one of my best friends. Since we were little, we’ve been practically inseparable. All through childhood, we did everything together — from playing video games to visiting other countries. Now that we are grown, I know that I can tell him anything, and I especially appreciate the time that he has spent scolding me about the stupid things that I’ve done. Discussing masculinity with Kai was an awesome time, and I gained so much from what we talked about. I know that the older sibling is traditionally supposed to be a role model, but we aren’t your average siblings in the slightest.
NATHAN: So what do you think it means to be a man today in 2020?
KAI: In 2020, it's hard to have a clear definition. A couple of years ago, in like 2010, it would be pretty easy to answer that question.
N: Yeah, back then everybody just followed stereotypes and believed them 110%. That's all there was.
K: Yeah and I very ignorantly believed that genitalia equaled gender, which is completely not true.
N: Do you think you were ignorant or do you think you were just young?
K: We were taught that.
N: Every adult, every person we looked up to, told us that. I can't remember someone who told us differently. I can't.
K: Fast forward to 2020, and gender has absolutely blown up in everybody's faces. There's a lot of strange nuance to the phrase, "Being a man." I really don't think it's black and white anymore. But that is 100% for the better.
N: Do you think toxic masculinity is still at work today?
K: I had my first experience with “locker-room talk” in my speech class. We were all separated by guys and girls. I was placed with about 20 other guys. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Just because there were no girls around, they felt comfortable saying gross stuff. It’s totally unacceptable, but it’s ingrained in our society and that sort of language is so common. I feel like I was the only one who felt uncomfortable. I feel a lot of other guys were either very complacent or actively taking part in it.
N: I remember when I would experience stuff like this on the baseball team, a handful of guys — and I was included — were uncomfortable with what was being said. We weren't outwardly challenging our teammates, but at least people were aware of how wrong it was.
K: I think toxic masculinity is looked down upon now, but masculinity in general is still celebrated amongst the majority of the male population. Femininity is still really looked down upon for guys. I mean, have you seen masculinity that's not toxic? I feel like I have healthy masculinity.
“There’s a lot of strange nuance to the phrase, ‘Being a man.’ I really don’t think it’s black and white anymore. But that is 100% for the better.”
N: Not in people other than immediate family, no.
K: Well, that's bad. Do you think that's because of the people you associate yourself with?
N: I honestly just think the majority of the male population has no clue. Of course, there are people who are just terrible. But I don’t think most guys are aware of what toxic masculinity is — they’ve never heard of it.
K: That's also because of the communities that you're in. You're a cisgender, heterosexual guy. Being trans and queer, I kind of know not to perpetuate toxic masculinity. The people that you might associate yourself with just don't know that and haven't had that sort of experience. They just know a different kind of masculinity.
N: Yes, they know what masculinity is, but they don't know that there's a really bad side to it. There is a lot of ignorance — people just choosing to not better themselves and be shitty people instead of working on their issues. We owe a lot to Mom and Pops. Their concept of masculinity was okay. Not toxic. Sure, it wasn't perfect, and sure, there are improvements that needed to be made, but they were made as time progressed.
K: Yeah. So you're saying that parents obviously play a large part in a person's masculinity?
N: Yes, totally. You're so impressionable as a child, you literally do not know any better. And where are you getting most of the information? Your parents or whoever raises you. Whoever you're with the most. And if that person is not practicing healthy masculinity or if they're just super, super terrible, then that's going to imprint on you.
K: I think Mom and Pops definitely influenced both of our ideas of masculinity in a positive way. But there have been situations where our dad has, for example, slammed down on the table. That’s not a healthy coping strategy, and it stems from masculinity problems.
N: As siblings, we would band together and be like, "No, this is messed up." Even if Mom would side with Pops, it wouldn't matter because we would know. Like, "Yo, to us this is not okay."
K: If we didn’t have each other, I think I would maybe have gone crazy because Mom does back up Pops.
N: We were each other's reassurance, which is interesting because we were just talking about how much parents influence kids. But maybe —
K: It's also siblings.
N: Having someone else there to experience the same thing with you and actually converse about it afterwards. Do you think you developed a healthy masculinity and that helped illuminate when Pops was doing something bad?
K: A big part of me being able to differentiate what is healthy and what's unhealthy was not being forced to conform to a type of masculinity. In comparison to you, I feel like you were very specifically taught a certain kind of masculinity. Not to cry.
“. . . them being in a conservative, evangelical, Asian church was kind of confusing for them when I came out as bi and trans.”
N: Yeah, men don't cry. They don't get sad.
K: They're not emotional.
N: You have to be the strong one. You're not the one crying. You let people cry on you.
K: Well, if you look at our dad, he's a very typical man.
N: He's a super massive dude.
K: And we're the opposites of him. I'm literally like five-three.
N: People literally look at us and go, "What happened to you?" when they see Pops.
K: So we have a lot to live up to. And I don't really fret him that much when he tries to push on me these weird, masculine habits or “dude behaviors.”
N: You think about his background and how he was when he was a kid and what he was going through and he wasn't thinking about this. He was thinking about what he was going to eat next. But when do you think our parents got better around issues of masculinity?
K: I think it had to do with us. I think it had to do with mostly me.
N: It completely 110% had to do with you.
K: I think when I came out, it threw them for a loop because they have unconditional love for me. They really had to decide if they were going to continue the way they were acting and living. For instance, them being in a conservative, evangelical, Asian church was kind of confusing for them when I came out as bi and trans.
N: How did you think that was going to work out?
K: There’s no playing two sides without hurting me. If Mom stayed, I would’ve been hurt. I had a role in altering their perception of how they interacted with the world and just people in general.
N: They're proof that it's possible to change if you are approached in the correct way.
K: I don't think you can necessarily fix a mindset like that, but you can definitely have a conversation. You can expose them and hope for the best.
N: We can expose them to what is better. They need to change that themselves. They need to take that initiative themselves to change the way that they think.
K: Our parents are a perfect proof of that, of taking the initiative and changing and altering what you think. They were so ingrained in the mindset of all that bad shit. They were in that church for decades.
N: How do you think we can get rid of toxic masculinity? What about a first step?
K: Initiate conversation with people who have been affected by it and guide them. But again, you can only lead a horse to water. Also maybe showing them a kind of masculinity that isn't toxic. Personally, I think my masculinity is healthy enough to be an example to someone. As a college student, I'm stealth, meaning that no one knows I'm trans and everyone just thinks I'm a cisgender guy. It's been really weird, obviously, to go from being perceived as a "girl" for 17 years to a full-ass man.
When you're perceived as a queer woman, there's a certain masculinity that you can get away with. But when you're perceived as a man, there's a certain level of masculinity that you can’t get away with without being perceived as an asshole. So, for awhile, I had to take a step back and think twice about what I say because I'm not perceived as what I used to be perceived as.
Do you think my masculinity had an impact on the way that your masculinity was formed?
“When you’re perceived as a queer woman, there’s a certain masculinity that you can get away with.”
N: I do. Your gender presentation was different and drastically different from what I was experiencing from the people around me in high school. And that really gave me a basis and an anchor to realize, "Oh, shit, this isn't healthy and this is bad and this isn't something that you should be saying, and you've got to change this." But that wouldn't have been possible without a healthy, positive reference. You were that for me.
K: Well, I'm glad that my masculinity has helped form your masculinity.
N: It has pretty much flipped our whole family. Before you came out to us, I don't think it was a thought in any of our minds: me, Mom, or Pops. How did our other family members react? I don't really know about that.
K: I wasn’t the direct person who came out to them. It was Mom and Pops who went to our family members and said that I'm trans and stuff. You would think that my family members who are all first gen would have a strange reaction but I always was a sort of masculine girl, so they saw me as a tomboy for the majority of my life. It was not a crazy surprise, and also their reaction was not what I thought it was going to be at all. Our uncles on our Chinese side were very, very, very cool. They were trying to welcome me into a sort of manhood, I think.
N: They went beyond just tolerance.
K: They showed me acceptance. That you don't necessarily need to understand me to still love me.
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⤏ NATHAN TSE (HE/HIM) IS A 22-YEAR-OLD HALF-KOREAN, HALF-CANTONESE PSYCHOLOGY MAJOR AT CAL POLY POMONA. HE PLANS TO EXPAND HIS EDUCATION TO ENVIRONMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY. NATHAN ENJOYS VIDEO GAMES, PLAYING THE PIANO, HIS DOG KIRBY, AND HIS BLUE TONGUED SKINK COBB.