sticky rice

sticky rice (usually uncountable, plural sticky rices)

1. A variety of short-grain rice popular in South and East Asia, known for its stickiness when cooked.
2. (gay slang, somewhat derogatory) An (East) Asian man who is mostly attracted to other Asian men.
   • 1990 January 27, Jack Lo, Karin Aguilar-San Juan, Jacquelyn Ching Black, “Asian cultures, sexuality and class: sorting it all out”, in Gay Community News, volume 17, number 27, page 11:

     I think they are changing now, too, though, because you see groups and groups of them in bars, all Asian, together. It’s amazing. So my market is much more expanded. I’m “sticky rice” [Asians who like Asians].

   • 1996, Elaine H. Kim, Eui-Young Yu, chapter 8, in East to America: Korean American life stories, The New York Press, page 87:

     During my "sticky rice" phase, I explored what it meant to be queer and Asian in contemporary America. We had terms for everyone: if you were rice (gay and Asian) and you liked white men, then you were a snow queen or a potato queen. White men who liked you were called rice queens. Every ethnicity had a term, usually related to food.

   • 2014, Nguyen Tan Hoang, chapter 4, in A view from the bottom: Asian American Masculinity and Sexual Representation, Duke University Press, pages 160-161:

     At the beginning of “Lesson I,” the “Occupations” dramatization introduces us to the three protagonists who will accompany us on our Cantonese language excursions. The first is a bleached-blond young Asian man who announces in Cantonese, “I am a potato queen, which is someone who likes to do it with white men” (figure 4.2). The second, a dark-haired white French Canadian, states, “I am a rice queen, which is someone who likes to do it with Asian men” (figure 4.3). The third, another young Asian man, tells us, “I mostly do it with white guys, so that makes me a potato queen, but now I like Asians too, so maybe I’m sticky rice” (figure 4.4).

• glutinous rice