Getting intimate with gay Malaysia, and proof that visibility can destroy gaycism
In a week the next issue of Elska will come out, but before it does I wanted to take a last moment to shine a spotlight on gay Malaysia, setting for our current issue, Elska Kuala Lumpur. Moreso, I'd like to use this specifically to highlight some of the messages and emails we've received from readers, discussing what the issue meant to them and how it seemed to erode some of the racism that remains heavy in the LGBTQ community.
The whole reason we decided to feature Kuala Lumpur for our latest issue was due to reader requests. After releasing our Elska Manila issue in 2019, we received a passionate email from a Malaysian guy inviting us to come to his country. When I told him I wasn't sure there'd be enough local interest, he decided to spread the word on his own, leading to over a dozen messages from other Malaysian guys keen for us to come. And so we did.
Then, once the Kuala Lumpur issue came out, a bunch of DMs and letters came in, inviting us to whole range of places — Vietnam, Costa Rica, Indonesia, Lithuania, Greece, Ireland… if only we could do actually travel at the moment! These sorts of messages are always lovely to receive, but the most touching letter to come following Elska Kuala Lumpur's release was from a reader who explained how his feelings toward Asian men had actually changed after reading the issue.
Gaycism is undeniable in LGBTQ communities everywhere. In the same way that 'no fats, no fems, no Asians' is a common sight on apps in Western countries, I learned that a similar 'no fats, no fems, no Indians' was a common phrase on profiles in Malaysia. When you ask people why this goes on, there's never really a satisfying response — people just claim it's 'natural' somehow and then refer to it as 'preference', which is meant to sound somehow less offensive. It seems that 'preference' usually just means that anyone who's noticeably different to oneself and one's society is unattractive, or at best something 'exotic' to tick off a list.
It's easy to see how widespread racism in the queer community is. Just look at apps like Instagram, and then see what types of people and what types of images get the most likes. Even on our account, where we post one image of every single person ever featured in Elska, it's easy to find the sort of posts that get more attention. For example, we put up a truly beautiful picture of one of our KL boys, a somewhat thick Asian lad, and it got hardly any likes; then the next day we posted a rather ordinary white dude against a plain background and it got three times the attention. Oh how I wish Insta would enable users to disable the displaying of likes — it really can cause a lot of anxiety and hurt out there.
Despite what I notice from places like Instagram, I tended to believe that the sales of Elska issues aren't so predictably led by traditional ideals of beauty or by some hierarchy of racial desirability. That's because even though our two top selling issues both focused on Western cities (Reykjavík and Berlin), the third best seller was an Asian city (Taipei), and another (Seoul) wasn't far behind. However, after looking at the stats of our twenty-nine issues so far, I realised something rather upsetting. Our three lowest selling issues all have an Asian person on the cover, with the lowest seller of all being a trans Asian man. Elska Kuala Lumpur, which also has a trans Asian man on the cover, hasn't sold terribly well either, though some of that may be due to Covid-19 (many of the shops that normally stock Elska hadn't reopened yet when the issue was released).
Of course, sales isn't everything, and it's not really what drives me. Rather what gives me the fuel to carry on is hearing that my work means something to people. Indeed some of the letters we received from fans of our KL issue pointed at something very positive, like a change of attitudes experienced by spending time with different types of people, via Elska. It's proof that visibility can destroy racism, that spending time with, listening, looking at, touching other types of people can reveal how beautiful and equal they are.
One reader in particular wrote in to say that he was a long-time Elska fan, and that the KL issue was perhaps his favourite. He explained how drawn in he was by the reading experience, because of the heartfelt stories the men told and because of the intimacy of the images. What's more, he mentioned that he doesn't normally have a 'preference' for Asian or South Asian men but yet here he found them really sexy, perhaps because he'd actually spent such an intimate time with them via the issue. He then added that he's looking to travel to Malaysia as soon as this Covid mess is over.
I'm not going to pretend that I get letters like this every day, but I have received rather a lot of feedback like this. And this is the most beautiful reaction I could hope for from my work. I know I'm not the best editor, the most skilled photographer, or the most experienced graphic designer, but none of that ever really matters to me. I just always wanted to travel and meet different kinds of people, both for fun and because of how these experiences make me a better and more open person. I created Elska to allow others to come along with me, and I'm lucky to still be able to do this, five years and twenty-nine issues on.
Liam Campbell is editor and chief photographer of Elska Magazine, a bi-monthly print publication, each issue made in a different city, and featuring images and stories of a cross-section of local guys.
