Peril is a new Asian-Australian website designed to build a critical mass of Asian-Australian art and cultural concerns. Our ambition is to have two core issues a year on the site with a forum board for people to chat and comment. Why Peril? From the so called Yellow Peril that labelled the wave of Chinese immigration in the 19th century. We are perilious and take risks but not in the way that the Pauline Hansons of the world think!

We are also calling for contributions for issue two - and the theme is “Heroes”. The closing date for submissions is September 1 2006.

I don’t know any white person who would look at a white nerd and think, ‘why do white people have to be such nerds?’

For a time, I resented my parents for not encouraging me to do sport. My brothers had both taken judo lessons (cool) and tap-dancing lessons (not cool). My oldest brother, also gay (but more on that later), disliked sports and headed in other directions: macramé, a collection of African violets, goldfish, and various other crafts projects. My middle brother, the straight one, became the goal-tender for the school ice-hockey team, and could also play tennis, throw a baseball and ski with competency.

In the relationship between Asian and nerd identities, the flipside to the Asian nerd stereotype is the appropriation of Asian popular culture by nerd subcultures in the west. Such is the case in otaku subculture, in which participants obsess over anime and manga, and Japanese culture in general. A subset of this community interact online using specialised forum software called imageboards, in which communication revolves around the posting of images.