Hi friends! Welcome to this digital archive focused on the Sapphic Asian experience. Here you can find information about what it means to be a Queer person, the conflicts of being Asian and/or Asian American, and ultimately how the intersection of one's identities of being a Sapphic Asian is experienced from fellow Sapphic Asians who resonate with your exploration and experience in navigating all of this.The underlined words are hyperlinked for easy navigation to those sections

Pictured is the Sapphic Flag, with two pink stripes on the top and bottom, symbolizing love, and the center is a violet, a flower that was historically given between women to symbolize their sapphic love. Find out more at this LGBTA Wiki link.

Quick Guide to this Archive

Before you explore this website and all of it's happenings, let's answer some FAQs!So what does "sapphic" even mean? Where does the term come from?
Sapphic has a few similar definitions. Simply defined, sapphic is related to same gender attraction between women - relating itself to lesbians or lesbianism.The term "Sapphic" refers to Sappho, a 7th-century BC Greek poet who was from the island of Lesbos (where we get the term "lesbian") who wrote about her attraction to women. Sappho herself is known for her lyric poetry, which is written to be sung as accompanied by a lyre (a stringed harp instrument). Most of her poetry is lost and little is really known about her life, but she is regarded as a symbol of love, desire, and attraction between women.What's the difference between lesbian and sapphic because they seem the same??
Why is this difference important to point out?
This question is totally fair! I would like to first point out that similar does not equal same. In this case, lesbian and sapphic are similar terms, but are not always synonymous with each other, as the nuanced differences are important to folx.In my personal understanding, folx may be more inclined to use sapphic as it is more gender-inclusive, meaning it includes more than just women and opens the space up to nonbinary people who are attracted to women, in comparison to lesbian or even "women-loving-women", WLW for short. Many nonbinary people, especially those assigned female at birth - such as myself, that are attracted to women (and others) share very similar experiences to cisgender sapphics when it comes to relationship things and life experiences. Essentially, it makes sense to have an umbrella term that unites everyone under this one experience because of this AND seeing the term "sapphic" in a space helps signal to me, as a nonbinary, that this space/person/group accepts my gender identity and makes this space safe for people like me.What is a Sapphic Asian?
For the purposes of my study, I defined a Sapphic Asian as one who is a non-man Asian attracted to other non-men, which includes lesbians (he/him lesbians being welcome), bi/pansexual, non-binary, and gender non-conforming folx - which is pulled from the (ask permission) Facebook group definition.Asian is anyone who has ethic/cultural origins in Asia - with this thought in mind, I made the intention to ensure that I sought out voices from beyond East Asian experiences (mainly those who are Chinese, Japanese, and/or Korean), as although those are valuable perspectives, in the context of Asian discourse they tend to dominate over other groups.

About "Sapphic Asian Stories"

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In this "About" section, you can learn about the Backstory aka the origin story for this digital archive and about Fran, aka me!

Backstory

This project was catalyzed by my acceptance into the Critical Gender Studies Honors cohort. I wanted my Critical Gender Studies honors thesis (for the 2020-2021 academic year at the University of California, San Diego) to be something personal as well as a narrative I felt was missing in my time in higher education so far. It started as a focus on tracking Queer Asian women and nonbinary folx through history in order to make an interactive timeline, write a traditional thesis paper, and then this archive with interviews to represent contemporary history. Here is the link to my initial research plan, and then my Fall presentation (where I introduce my plan for my thesis to the community) as completed in December 2020.However, as UC San Diego is on the quarter system (Fall/Quarter/Spring 10-week quarters vs Fall/Spring 16-week semesters) and this whole year in a pandemic is hella stressful, it became quickly apparent how this topic was way too big for one person and for it to happen all in one year. After some personal reflection along with input from the community (Link screenshots here? - put in resources}, I decided to impulsively shift the focus of my thesis in the Winter of 2021 after LOTS of deliberation and indecisiveness into a full digital archive centered around storytelling with Sapphic Asians in order to understand how one self-reflects on their identity, especially as experienced through higher education and in the Covid-19 pandemic.Learn more about my Thesis in this link

About Fran

Hello friends! I'm so honored that you want to learn more about me.My name is Fran Bautista (they/she series pronouns) and at the time of my thesis (September 2020 - June 2021), I identified as a 4th year undergraduate at UC San Diego in Eleanor Roosevelt College (ERC) as a double major in Global Health and Critical Gender Studies with a double minor in Human Rights & Migration studies and Asian American & Pacific Islander studies - Class of 2021. Some additional identities include: Asian-/Filipin@-American, nonbinary/demigirl, sapphic, demi/pansexual, first-generation college student, Pisces Sun, Virgo Moon, Leo Rising, Chinese Zodiac: Rabbit, SoCal born and raised - San Fernando Valley (818).

thesis Things

Below is all the information relating to where this digital archive started, as an academic honors thesis project for my undergraduate degree. There are 4 main sections: "How I Came to Researching Sapphic Asians", "The Process", "Why Oral History over a Paper", and "The Future".

Each link in this short paragraph above will navigate you to the proper section. All links referenced below the divider will open in another tab

How I Came to Researching Sapphic Asians
After asking the queer community online about my initial idea of tracking and archiving Queer Asian womxn, I had found that this was too big for me to do reasonably in a year and there was mixed responses on term "womxn", which I had to take the time to research and figure out. Then, after lots of thinking, I decided to research this new term, "Sapphic Asian", an identity that I had associated myself with, but was also introduced to during the pandemic. It seemed only right to focus my research on Sapphic Asians around their experiences in higher education and the pandemic since that's where my story as a sapphic Asian also began.Focusing on Sapphic Asians was still a pretty big topic, considering how diverse Sapphic Asians as a community are, but I really wanted to introduce this term into academia as I found myself looking for it in scholarship, and never finding it. I maneuvered through this by choosing to focus my population on those who had experience in higher education (alumni, current undergraduate or graduate students, faculty/staff, and those who had "dropped out"/withdrew). The ultimate goal I set for myself was to create something that can be shared and displayed as this work is “by the community, for the community”. For my own personal growth, I hoped that this project would give me better insight and relationships with those outside of my current orientation, outside of my experiences, and provide safe spaces for support and storytelling. This project is about “making space at the table": in order to centering historically excluded voices, providing an impactful storytelling that resonates with others and expresses our own perspectives.My official research statement is as follows: "I am researching the experiences of Sapphic Asians because I want to introduce the term "Sapphic Asians" into academia and find out how identity formation is self-identified in order to help people understand the intersections between gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and diaspora as well as the importance of inclusion, representation in history, and community building through story-telling."Fun Fact: The title for my thesis, Spice and Sass: Understanding Identity Formation Through Sapphic Asian Stories, actually came from my lovely participants. So many people talked about how they were about to share some "spicy" information and one of the sapphic groups on Facebook is acronymed as SASS, and I was thinking about the phrase "sugar and spice" and it all just clicked together. I definitely wanted my title to be something cool because who wants a nonfun title when this whole project has been a fun ride. So yeah.

The Process
Fall 2020 (September - December 2020)
I started my thesis exploration with my honors cohort of 4 fellow undergraduates under the guidance of Dr. Joe Hankins, the Interim Faculty Director for the Critical Gender Studies department. Together, we learned about research, methodology, and planted the seeds for what would become our yearlong projects.Winter 2021 (January - March 2021)Spring 2021 (April - June 2021)
I recruited my participants by direct messaging people, during late April, who had commented on my initial outreach post for thoughts on my thesis, back in January 2021, following up with an ad and Google Form survey to collect information such as their preferred contact method and screening questions. After I received responses from folx, I then reached out through their preferred method to set up a 15-minute introduction meeting where we get to talk and see if this is a good fit for them as I will be asking for a lot of personal information as well as provide a space for questions. I really liked those introduction meetings as they were very informal and it offered me a chance to voice my passions and care for these people and how I aim to protect their privacy as well as give them a platform.I sent each participant who agreed to this interview a formal email that contained the consent form and the baseline questions I would be asking - so that participants could take the time to look over what they had signed up for and consent accordingly (the email, questions, and consent form can all be found in the "Resources" tab). Then, we conducted the interviews - which were all done through Zoom, with audio recording only! Those were really fun as you'll come to find out as you listen to them. Every single person had something so amazing to share and I was so blessed to be the person collecting these stories. The kind of fun part was getting to transcribe all of these interviews, or rather improve upon the autogenerated transcript provided by Zoom which, by the way, was so wrong a lot of the times. Queer became clear. Asian became agent. Lots of laughs. It was so great hearing all of these stories again! I found myself laughing to myself through them and remembering the emotions from that time. Transcription is tough honestly, but I really wanted to do it all myself as I wanted to treasure and really get to know these stories inside and out.After I finished the transcriptions, I sent a follow up email + preferred method message asking my participants to look over the transcript and let me know if they were happy with it, or if they wanted to omit anything mentioned. I also asked for their feedback on building this website, as I wanted them to be a part of the process as much as possible since this was a part of them too. Lastly, I made the finishing touches to the whole thing and presented this on Friday, June 4th for the final presentation to the community on what became of my project - to which I invited all of my participants to attend as this is as much their space to be honored and loved.

Why an Oral History project over a traditional research paper?
Academic papers are "boring, just tinder for a fire" - is the the short answer. Quite honestly, I have a few reasons. 1)

WAIT! Is this project stopping after your thesis is over?

Short Answer: NO!This project is essentially my love letter to the Sapphic Asian community, most of whom I have met and learned from on Facebook groups. I'm not the most active member in those spaces, but I hope that the love and happiness that I have found with these people is expressed through this project and the stories shared together. It wasn't until my time in college and even the pandemic that I became more confident in my identity, and it was all because of my fellow Sapphic Asians. This project is for all of you who have made me a better person and for all of us looking for that shared community. I hope that you find resonance with the stories shared as much as I did.I honestly feel IN LOVE with storytelling, making this archive, and making my community one person bigger with each and every interview that I will continue this process as a personal project. I hope that this will grow to be a helpful resource for people either looking to learn more about themselves and/or the people in their lives as well as a space for us to connect with each other. If this gains enough love and traction, I might consider building some social media presence and having other people to contribute to this. No idea what the future holds, but I have high hopes and dreams for what I want in the world as I very much needed this information out there when I was younger, and even today - a feeling that I felt echoed with every person I shared stories with. Stay tuned for where this goes!

Interviews

The "Audio File + Transcript" (Google Drive) links referenced in this section will open another tab. The YouTube videos are embedded so will play once clicked on, with the option of playing them in another tab via the "Youtube" button on each video

Listed here are the people who have graciously offered their time, energy, and stories on being a Sapphic Asian. This project would not be the amazing resource that it is without their energies so I thank them so so much until the end of time. For me, these interviews made my community bigger one person at a time!Each interview is in order of when I interviewed each person, with the earliest being at the top as well as the first button starting from left to right (which is Kelso). Below you will find an image that represents them, a synopsis of each conversation with important keywords or "Key Themes", an embedded audio clip that highlights 1-2 minutes of the 1+ hour-long talk, and lastly a button to the Google Drive folder where you can listen to the entire conversation via an audio file + written transcript for reading. Each button is linked to each participant's section as well.

• Kelso
• Bryna
• Ari
• Florence
• Heather
• Kiana

Kelso