Clinical Approach

APA's guideline to counsel LGBT clients include the following statement;

Guideline 9. Psychologists are encouraged to recognize the particular life issues or challenges experienced by lesbian, gay, and bisexual members of racial and ethnic minorities that are related to multiple and often conflicting cultural norms, values, and beliefs (American Psychological Association, 2009).

However, simple recognition of the life issues and challenged experienced by people with multiple minorities is not sufficient to provide a clinical help to the clients when the therapists have no background knowledge on what other men who identify as gay and Asian go through in this country. In this blog, I have discussed about the dual identity issues. gay Asian men's masculinity issues. dating and mating. and coming out to family issues. The common factor that affects all these issues is the marginalized status of men who identify as gay and Asian, who are discriminated from other Asian Americans for being gay and from the LGBT community for being Asian.

Narrative Therapy to Understand
In this situation, a narrative therapy is always a good idea to know better about what the client has experienced as a man who identifies as both gay and Asian. As shown in the section "What is 'gay' and 'Asian'?" each person identifies with their dual minority identities in a different way, because his life story inevitably differs from that of others. Although I talked about gay Asian masculinity, not all gay/Asian men want to be masculine, nor not all gay/Asian men want to date white/gay men. Listening to his life story is the way to understanding where he is coming from.

Finding the Support
Of course, there is no way that therapists can have a perfect knowledge for every single minority's issues. However, they can provide the clients with resources where the clients can find information they need. Unless the client is in a major metropolitan area with a big Asian American population, such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, Atlanta or New York city, it is difficult to find a local support group for men who identify as both gay and Asian. We are, however, blessed in a time of the Internet, and providing internet resources to your client can help them reassured that they are not alone, and there has been decades of research done on men who identify as both gay and Asian in America.


American Psychological Association. (2009). Guidelines for Psychotherapy with Lesbian, Gay, & Bisexual Clients. 2009-01-08. from http://www.apa.org/pi/lgbc/guidelines.html. retrieved on 2009-04-15