i live in Hong Kong/China most of the time and I experience stigma there all the time. I'm usually there during the summer months and its too hot to wear anything other than shorts. Being Asian and fluent in the local dialect means that I get treated as the local triad all the time. This is one of the reason why I still havn't put any art on my arms. Having any sign of being tattoo means being deny at every single job except for construction and other hard labour jobs. Even having a tiny tattoo means that one cannnot take up any governmental jobs. I even have to "hide" my 2g earlobe when i'm tutoring little kids. it sucks being different in a society that stress and depends on conformity, non of my family member except my parents knows that i'm inked.
I find that people tend to be more polite to me when i have ink showing especially if they want me to do something, however if i want to be taken seriously i have to cover up.
Luckily I'm only here few months of the year, the rest of the time i live in the quite liberal canucks land. Havn't really experience have negative reaction to my ink in canada but I have the other problem of being discriminate cause i look really young....
