Our trans subject editor Xoai Pham speaks to Jayda Shuavarnnasri, Thai-American sexuality educator and resident #SexPositiveAsianAuntie, about sexual violence, myths about polyamory, and what it means to take up space as Asian women.

What are you to do when you are a Vietnamese asexual and aromantic woman who grew up in white, cishet, francophone-dominated Montreal in the 1980s and 1990s?

I don’t want to be caught parading around in last generation’s false sense of security. I’m kicking off Autostraddle’s first Asian Pacific Islander American (APIA) Heritage month by exploring the values my own South Asian and Japanese American parents and grandparents imparted to me, to learn to carry them forward.

I believe my queerness makes my Asian-ness and my adoptee-ness stronger. I am more myself when I hold all these truths together than when I try to compartmentalize them.