Permission
to want.
Affirming sex therapy for gay, queer, trans, and gender diverse Asian Americans with a gay, Korean American AASECT Certified Sex Therapist who knows these scripts from the inside. Permission to want, to feel good, and to let pleasure be yours — no fetish, no erasure, and no translating your experience for someone who doesn't get it.
“Your culture isn't the problem. Your desire isn't the problem. The stories written about both of them are.”
Psychologist Dr. Jenny T. Wang's book Permission to Come Home frames healing for Asian Americans as a return to belonging and freedom — not an escape from where we came from. That idea is at the heart of this work: coming home to your culture, your queerness, your body, and your pleasure at the same time.
Too much for home.
Not enough for the apps.
- “We don't talk about that.”
- “Don't bring shame on the family.”
- “Study hard. Marry well.”
- “Keep your feelings to yourself.”
- “No fats, no fems, no Asians.”
- “Sorry, just not into Asians.”
- “I've always had a thing for Asian guys.”
- “You're cute — for an Asian.”
Many queer Asian Americans grow up between two cultures that each ask us to hide something. At home, sex may never have been spoken about at all. Queerness can feel like a betrayal of the family, and our worth was often measured in achievement, obedience, and not making trouble. Then we step into gay spaces and find a culture that too often treats Asian bodies as either invisible or exotic.
In Permission to Come Home, Dr. Jenny T. Wang writes about the stigma many Asian Americans carry around caring for our own mental health, and she builds her book around a series of permissions — to feel rage, to question, to set boundaries, to play. Many of us were never handed those permissions growing up. I'd add two more to the list: permission to want, and permission to enjoy it. Desire is wanting something. Pleasure is actually letting yourself feel good once it's there — and for a lot of us, that second part is the harder one.
Whatever brought you here — a profile that said “no Asians,” a partner who only wanted the fantasy, a family you love but can't talk to, or a body that seems to belong to everyone's expectations but yours — you deserve a space where you don't have to explain why it hurts.
The myths
written about us.
Most of the stories about Asian sexuality weren't written by us. They came from Hollywood, porn, the apps, and generations of racism — and many of us absorbed them without ever choosing to. These are the ones I see most.
For decades, film and TV cast Asian men as sexless sidekicks, nerds, or punchlines — almost never the romantic lead or the object of desire. That image didn't stay on screen. It shapes who gets swiped on, who gets assumed to be a top or a bottom, and how many Asian men learn to see their own bodies.
Your desire is real, your body is desirable, your pleasure matters, and you get to take up space in your own sex life.
“No Asians” didn't come from nowhere, and calling it “just a preference” doesn't make it land any softer. When rejection is this consistent, many of us start to believe it — ranking ourselves at the bottom of a racial hierarchy of desirability, chasing whiteness as proof we're wanted, or pulling away from dating altogether.
Sexual racism is real, and it is not a verdict on your worth. We work on untangling what you were told from what's true.
Then there's the flip side: the guy who only dates Asians and expects you to be submissive, docile, exotic, always the bottom. Trans and gender diverse Asian folx often get the sharpest version of this — hypersexualized and reduced to a fantasy. It can feel like attention. It can also feel like disappearing.
And when you're cast as someone else's fantasy, your own pleasure usually gets written out of the script. Being desired as a stereotype isn't the same as being desired as yourself. In therapy, we learn to tell the difference, ask for the second one, and make sure you're getting something out of the sex you're having.
Here's a trap I see often. Asian folx with little or no sexual desire worry that admitting it confirms the stereotype, so they push themselves into sex they don't want. Others perform hypersexuality to prove the stereotype wrong. In Ace, journalist Angela Chen explores how racial stereotypes shape who feels able to claim asexuality — and how white the visible ace community has been as a result.
You don't owe anyone a sex life that disproves racism. Low desire, no desire, and high desire are all valid places to start.
In many of our families, sex was never discussed — often not out of cruelty, but out of silence passed down through generations, migration, and survival. That silence can harden into shame that follows you into the bedroom.
You can honor your family and still have a voice about your own body. Those aren't opposites.
Many of us grew up in families that sacrificed so much that enjoyment started to feel like a luxury — something you get after the grades, the degree, the job, the approval. That math follows us into sex. Pleasure becomes something to postpone, perform for a partner, or feel guilty about afterward.
Pleasure isn't a reward for being good enough. It's part of being human. You don't have to earn it, justify it, or wait until everyone else is taken care of.
All of your desire —
or none of it.
In Ace, Angela Chen gives a name to something most of us feel but rarely put into words: compulsory sexuality — the cultural assumption that everyone wants sex, that wanting it is the mark of a healthy adult, and that anyone who doesn't must be broken.
For queer Asian Americans, compulsory sexuality collides with racism from two directions. Desexualizing stereotypes say we don't want enough. Fetishizing ones say we exist to be wanted. Either way, someone else is setting the terms.
Here, you set them. Whether you're ace, gray-ace, demisexual, kinky, highly sexual, still figuring it out, or somewhere in between, we start from what's true for you — not from what would make a better rebuttal to a stereotype.
That includes how you define pleasure. For some folx it's sex. For others it's touch, closeness, sensation, romance, rest, or simply feeling at home in their own skin. All of it counts, and none of it has to look like anyone else's.
Coming home
to all of you.
As a gay Korean American sex therapist, I won't ask you to choose between your culture and your queerness — or to translate your family for me before we can get to work.
My approach draws on Asian American psychology and queer-affirming sex therapy, including the work of Dr. Jenny T. Wang and Angela Chen. The goal isn't to leave your culture behind. It's to find a version of home — in your body, your relationships, and your sex life — where every part of you is welcome.
Start with your whole story
Family, migration, generation, language, faith, adoption, mixed-race identity, coming out (or not). Your sexuality didn't develop in a vacuum, and your therapy shouldn't either.
Practice the permissions you never got
Borrowing from Dr. Wang's framework, we practice giving yourself permission to feel anger, question family rules, set boundaries, and play — and to want things for yourself, and enjoy them, without guilt.
Separate your desire from their gaze
We look at how fetishization, rejection, and racial hierarchies of desirability have shaped who you're drawn to, what you'll accept, and how you see yourself — without shaming any of your desires.
Let yourself feel good
We shift the focus from how you look, how you perform, or what a partner wants to how things actually feel to you. Through private at-home practices like mindful self-pleasure and slowing down to notice sensation, you get to know your own pleasure — without an audience and without guilt.
Make room for your whole range
Ace, low desire, high desire, kink, monogamy, open relationships — nothing here needs fixing. We clarify what you actually want, not what culture says you should want.
Bring it back to your relationships
Asking for what feels good, communicating your needs, navigating race in interracial relationships, and setting boundaries with family on your own terms. Partners are welcome to join sessions when it fits.
What folx
usually ask.
Who is this for?
Gay, bi, queer, trans, nonbinary, and gender diverse folx of Asian descent — East, Southeast, and South Asian, mixed-race folx, and transracial adoptees included. First-generation, second-generation, or further along, you belong here.
Do I have to be out to my family?
No. Whether, when, and how you come out is yours to decide. Many clients are out in some parts of their lives and not others, and we work with exactly where you are.
My partner isn't Asian. Can we work on race in our relationship?
Yes. Race shows up in desire, power, family dynamics, and everyday comments in interracial relationships. Couples and partners therapy is a place to talk about it openly, without either of you being cast as the villain.
I think I might be asexual. Do you work with that?
Yes. Asexuality is an orientation, not a disorder or a symptom to treat. We can explore your experience without pressure to land on a label — and without pressure to want more sex than you do.
What happens in sessions? Is there any touch?
Sex therapy is talk therapy over secure telehealth. There is never physical touch or nudity in session. Any exercises happen privately on your own time, and we talk through them together.
Do you accept insurance?
I'm in-network with Cigna. For other plans, I'm an out-of-network provider and can provide superbills for potential reimbursement.
“You were never too much, and you were never not enough. You deserve to be wanted as your whole self, and to feel good in your own body — on your own terms.”
Ready to come home
to yourself?
Free 15-minute consult · No commitment · Telehealth in CA, WA, NY & OR