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A View from the Bottom: Asian American Masculinity and Sexual Representation
Rather than using displays of masculinity to counter portrayals of Asian American men as passive and effeminate, Nguyen Tan Hoang develops a concept of bottomhood that opens up political alliances based on risk, vulnerability, and receptiveness.
304 pages, ebook
First published July 29, 2014
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633 people want to read
About the author
Hoang Tan Nguyen
6 followersNguyen Tan Hoang is Assistant Professor of English and Film Studies at Bryn Mawr College. He is the author of A View from the Bottom: Asian American Masculinity and Sexual Representation. He is also a videomaker whose works include K.I.P., Forever Bottom!, PIRATED! and look_im_azn. His videos have been screened at the Museum of Modern Art, The Getty Center, and the Centre Pompidou.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
July 7, 2021
There are a lot of great analyses in this book. Particularly innovative is the Mulveyan reading of porn featuring Asian men. Nguyen argues that porn films presume the impossibility of Asian topness, which determines the camera positions, angling it up towards the Asian top, thus shattering the illusion of realism for the sake of highlighting the apparent anomaly of an Asian in that position. Also convincing is the idea that "dwelling in abject bottomhood" can challenge the "equivalence between topness, masculinity, and subjecthood" (190). I like the idea of asserting receptivity, not for the sake of achieving the radical subjectivity granted to bottoms by queer negative people like Bersani and Edelman, which amounts to a bottom that bottoms like a top; rather, Nguyen searches for a bottom that bottoms like a bottom, and can only find this by embracing the raced and gendered dimensions of such a role. So, in a sense, Nguyen provides and opportunity to make queer negativity more effectively negative.
What is frustrating and unconvincing about this book is that it refuses to own its potential for the negative position. It constantly assures that adopting a view from the bottom provides "a different model of politics that champions the forging of alliances and affinities with others, as we witnessed in the preceding chapters" (191). Of course there's value in projects that aim to forge new political alliances, but is that what his analyses actually provide? It seems to me that they're more geared toward theorizing a way of attaining, maintaining, and asserting a position of receptivity. So why the presumption that that project has political potency?
In order to have political potency, Nguyen would have to diversify his examples. If "the Asian bottom embodies the social, sexual, political, and aesthetic point of view that no one wants to assume" (28), then why does the thrust of his argument center around men? He's trying to have his cake and eat it too: both theorize about the singularity of Asian male bottomness, and insist that a more abstract bottomness has extraordinary political potency. But I'm not getting a clear picture of what that more abstract bottomness would look like, because it's such a man book.
He fails to show awareness that any politics built around the singularity of a man's point of view will never be as potent as one built around a woman's or a trans person's. I think the book should be held to its own apparent investments, and therefore its archive of examples should choose between queer negativity and radical queer politics.
What is frustrating and unconvincing about this book is that it refuses to own its potential for the negative position. It constantly assures that adopting a view from the bottom provides "a different model of politics that champions the forging of alliances and affinities with others, as we witnessed in the preceding chapters" (191). Of course there's value in projects that aim to forge new political alliances, but is that what his analyses actually provide? It seems to me that they're more geared toward theorizing a way of attaining, maintaining, and asserting a position of receptivity. So why the presumption that that project has political potency?
In order to have political potency, Nguyen would have to diversify his examples. If "the Asian bottom embodies the social, sexual, political, and aesthetic point of view that no one wants to assume" (28), then why does the thrust of his argument center around men? He's trying to have his cake and eat it too: both theorize about the singularity of Asian male bottomness, and insist that a more abstract bottomness has extraordinary political potency. But I'm not getting a clear picture of what that more abstract bottomness would look like, because it's such a man book.
He fails to show awareness that any politics built around the singularity of a man's point of view will never be as potent as one built around a woman's or a trans person's. I think the book should be held to its own apparent investments, and therefore its archive of examples should choose between queer negativity and radical queer politics.
April 8, 2015
This is the conversation we need. We can not attack the racial hierarchy in queer male sexuality by remasculinizing and redistributing masculinity. We must examine America's fear of the feminine. We must examine gay culture's fear of the feminine.
Getting older for me has deliciously steered me away from disconnected passivity and, later, overcompensating aggressiveness, into a hungry, connected middle. But steering these seas, especially as an Asian-American, has been a lonely route. This evolution in conversation could provide so much healing to so many people. It's OK to be you. It's OK to explore what you want and what turns you on, and you can do that without judging those desires against this oppressive dominant culture. What if we could say that to ourselves as young kids. It could be so powerful.
"The antiracist rhetoric of Asian American communities and the antihomophobic rhetoric in the mainstream gay and lesbian movement both employ the strategy of remasculinization in order to legitimize themselves and gain acceptance from the dominant culture.
Significantly, their methods of achieving political voice and social visibility are maintained AT THE COST OF MARGINALIZING FEMININITY AND FEMININE EMBODIMENT. By contrast, I argue for a politics of bottomhood that opposes racism and heteronormativity WITHOUT SCAPEGOATING FEMININITY."
(emphasis mine)
Getting older for me has deliciously steered me away from disconnected passivity and, later, overcompensating aggressiveness, into a hungry, connected middle. But steering these seas, especially as an Asian-American, has been a lonely route. This evolution in conversation could provide so much healing to so many people. It's OK to be you. It's OK to explore what you want and what turns you on, and you can do that without judging those desires against this oppressive dominant culture. What if we could say that to ourselves as young kids. It could be so powerful.
"The antiracist rhetoric of Asian American communities and the antihomophobic rhetoric in the mainstream gay and lesbian movement both employ the strategy of remasculinization in order to legitimize themselves and gain acceptance from the dominant culture.
Significantly, their methods of achieving political voice and social visibility are maintained AT THE COST OF MARGINALIZING FEMININITY AND FEMININE EMBODIMENT. By contrast, I argue for a politics of bottomhood that opposes racism and heteronormativity WITHOUT SCAPEGOATING FEMININITY."
(emphasis mine)
November 13, 2023
While many of Nguyen's explorations were interesting —including the origins of top/bottom identities in gay communities, the racialization of bottoming through porn, or the space for alliance formation via shared bottoming identities — some of his arguments were hard to follow (and thus seem to jump in logic) due to his use of numerous pieces of outside text and case studies. He went for quantity over quality (or rather clarity).
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July 25, 2024mind blowing, soooo good
September 23, 2024
Certainly a fun read. Hoang certainly had fun writing this and playing with euphemisms, and I certainly enjoyed reading this. I appeciated the sense of whimsy and play in talking about various men's holes and their capacity to open both their sphincters and new dialogues around masculinity. I found it particularly interesting to read since Hoang's interest in masculinity (asian or otherwise) is fundamentally different from mine, and he has an investment in masculinity in a way that I never will. On numerous occasions dialogues would move to man-ness, and I got lost in that brief shift. Similarly, on numerous occasions stories and descriptions would read as incredibly hot and steamy until mention of sex as a man with a man entered, and once again I was lost. This is clearly a first person book written by a faggy(man) asian bottom about faggy(man) asian bottoms, and the only time that I'm a gay man is when the gay men I occasionally have sex with think that I'm enough of a man for their tastes. The mention of Chen's fag dyke approach to media and punishment and humiliation and cyclical time to revisit and reexperience was one of the few times when everything locked together in my mind.
As much as I enjoyed reading this, I am somewhat unsure of the project at large. In the third chapter Hoang describes Lehman's project of showing the supposedly small asian penis, and how that in doing so to challenge narratives around expected endowment Lehman recenters the penis in definitions of masculinity, albeit a petite one. Similarly, the use of the anus and bottomness seem rather close in terms of the tactic and approach, in that through the centering of the anus and its receptivity as an avenue to redefine masculinity, said receptivity is defined through it's capacity to receive. While hands are often mentioned throughout the book as active sexual organs, mainstream definitions of "bottom/bottoming" among gay men include the penetration of the anus with a penis. The relocation of the identity forming in the capacity to envelop and receive seems to similarly invert definitions in a way that creates masculinity through the anus and its capacity to interact with a penis. This feels similar to Haraways mention that second wave feminism's positioning of the woman as a goddess figure still ties this identity to that of the necessarily related subject.
Hoang clearly doesn't advocate for a mere inversion of masculine identity forming to center around bottomness and empowerment of the bottom given the discussion of Peter fucking Wayne fucking Peter, but the use of the term "bottomness" seems to inevitably tie the project to a phallic penetration despite the concern taken around said move. It is unclear to me if the signifier (bottomness) and the signified (anus, and possibly penis in that the anus relates to and requires a penis) are distinct. I don't have any better structure to offer however, as a larger focus on linking the anus to the mouth and hands seems well within the project, yet to describe this as sidehood (did the term side even exist in 2014 when this book was published?) or versehood honestly sounds pretty fucking stupid. Bottomhood does have a much clearer affect to it, but the ties to the anus's capacity for cock feels difficult to enentangle from that, though I do think that this is something that Hoang aims to do.
The book is almost entirely focused on cis male subjects. This is clear throughout the entirety of the book, and only in the last chapter and the conclusion that mentions of transness and masculinity not tied to cisness appear more explicitly. It does make sense to focus on cis male gaysians since the overlapping poetics of asian and penis and femininity and receptivity are constructed around a cis male subject as one has to be masculine to start with to be feminized, but I think the advocation for a sexuality not defined in and through the penis, even in the negative through the anus' capacity for cock, would read a lot stronger with more study in transexuality and gender navigation. That said this is from 2014 so perhaps I'm just being overly annoying about this detail.
As much as I enjoyed reading this, I am somewhat unsure of the project at large. In the third chapter Hoang describes Lehman's project of showing the supposedly small asian penis, and how that in doing so to challenge narratives around expected endowment Lehman recenters the penis in definitions of masculinity, albeit a petite one. Similarly, the use of the anus and bottomness seem rather close in terms of the tactic and approach, in that through the centering of the anus and its receptivity as an avenue to redefine masculinity, said receptivity is defined through it's capacity to receive. While hands are often mentioned throughout the book as active sexual organs, mainstream definitions of "bottom/bottoming" among gay men include the penetration of the anus with a penis. The relocation of the identity forming in the capacity to envelop and receive seems to similarly invert definitions in a way that creates masculinity through the anus and its capacity to interact with a penis. This feels similar to Haraways mention that second wave feminism's positioning of the woman as a goddess figure still ties this identity to that of the necessarily related subject.
Hoang clearly doesn't advocate for a mere inversion of masculine identity forming to center around bottomness and empowerment of the bottom given the discussion of Peter fucking Wayne fucking Peter, but the use of the term "bottomness" seems to inevitably tie the project to a phallic penetration despite the concern taken around said move. It is unclear to me if the signifier (bottomness) and the signified (anus, and possibly penis in that the anus relates to and requires a penis) are distinct. I don't have any better structure to offer however, as a larger focus on linking the anus to the mouth and hands seems well within the project, yet to describe this as sidehood (did the term side even exist in 2014 when this book was published?) or versehood honestly sounds pretty fucking stupid. Bottomhood does have a much clearer affect to it, but the ties to the anus's capacity for cock feels difficult to enentangle from that, though I do think that this is something that Hoang aims to do.
The book is almost entirely focused on cis male subjects. This is clear throughout the entirety of the book, and only in the last chapter and the conclusion that mentions of transness and masculinity not tied to cisness appear more explicitly. It does make sense to focus on cis male gaysians since the overlapping poetics of asian and penis and femininity and receptivity are constructed around a cis male subject as one has to be masculine to start with to be feminized, but I think the advocation for a sexuality not defined in and through the penis, even in the negative through the anus' capacity for cock, would read a lot stronger with more study in transexuality and gender navigation. That said this is from 2014 so perhaps I'm just being overly annoying about this detail.
September 22, 2017
This book was just so much FUN to read, and was really accessible--Nguyen really makes all his theoretical frames make a lot of sense and doesn't lose the reader with messy language. I have to think a little more about his framework of 'the bottom' and bottomhood as a position, but I really really loved the way he tied it into (and admitted the impact on his framework of) butch/femme dynamics and the powerful things that lesbians have been saying, writing, and doing in their own ways. That concluding chapter especially was super fun to read, though all of them are engaging in their own ways, and I strongly recommend you pick this up if you're interested in queer of color critique of the notion of "the bottom" as a political position!
January 31, 2020
An intriguing premise but the two central themes failed to gel together successfully and the writing style didn’t engage enough for this to be a general read. (The introduction is a very effective reader on bottom identity, for scholarly purposes.) The intervening years since release and the cultural shifts in pornography, sex culture and digital sexualities also render the porn and apps elements of the analysis less relevant than they previously were.
March 24, 2021
The narrative of "A View from the bottom" offers the perception and the formation the social stigma of gay asians in the west. It also tries to reclaim "bottomhood" as positive, espcially Asian bottomhood.
If you are an asian who lives in a western world, "A View from the bottom" can act as a self-love guide.
If you are an asian who lives in a western world, "A View from the bottom" can act as a self-love guide.
April 7, 2025
a quite interesting take on the place of “bottomhood” in gay male culture, specifically for asian gay men. i appreciated the range of objects (porn, movies, and indie documentaries) that nguyen looked at.
fun fact: you can just put full screenshots of porn into your academic books. the more you know.
fun fact: you can just put full screenshots of porn into your academic books. the more you know.
April 12, 2025
A very interesting read that reconsiders the death drive and self-annihilation of bottomhood instead as a producer of reproductive labor that is unmotivated by greed and is less damaging to the natural world.
May 23, 2017
didn't finish...a little too much on the cliche academic discourse
August 5, 2020
good secondary source citations, and pretty good readings of that material, but circular readings of the primary source archive (in rough, proximal terms, "X is a bottom because...X is a bottom.")
August 27, 2014
a book we've all been waiting for
November 13, 2024
Me reading this book : this book reading me
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews