ABSTRACT
These mottos are from the First Beijing Lesbian and Gay Cultural Festival, which was organised at the end of 2005. These mottos express the significant progress that Chinese society has made towards lesbian and gay rights, and eagerness in the collective consciousness to further advocate lesbian and gay rights in contemporary China. The festival was to be comprised of films, plays, exhibitions and seminars on homosexuality issues; however, Chinese police shut down the opening reception of the festival, to some degree indicating the government’s attitude toward homosexuality. Followed by the first general education course on lesbian and gay studies offered by Fudan University in 2005 (French 2005), many media outlets seemed to indicate in their coverage that 2005 was considered a year when homosexuals ended their time spent hiding, and the mass media opened up space for
homosexuality issues. In the summer of 2005, CCTV’s News Probe aired a program on Chinese gays titled “In the Name of Life”, with a group of openly self-identified gay men under the spotlight. Even though a gay college student, Da Wei, came out as an HIV-positive gay man, the CCTV commentary indicated that homosexuality had nothing to do with morality and claimed that homosexuality is no longer considered an illness. As the most influential mainstream media in China, CCTV’s attitudes – operating under China’s strict censorship – seemed to express an encouraging voice on behalf of the government toward the hidden homosexual groups, which is different from the message sent via the government’s response to the First Beijing Lesbian and Gay Cultural Festival. Yet opposing voices were still heard, even in 2006. It was not uncommon to find cases of medical doctors continuing to diagnose homosexuality as an illness needing treatment, despite the fact in 2001 the Chinese Psychiatry Association removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders. In an online gay community, there were discussions about a self-proclaimed “professor” in Beijing who considered homosexuality an “evil cult” that should be driven out of China. A famous sociologist specialising in sexuality, Li Yinhe, received many rude comments on her blog where she advocated equal rights for homosexual people in China. Li also proposed a same-sex marriage bill to the National People’s Congress in 2000, 2004 and 2006. Her efforts generated much media attention and stirred up controversy within and also beyond the homosexual community in China. There are still closeted gay couples who look for lesbian couples – and vice versa – through personal ads posted on gay websites, in order to create the outward illusion of a heterosexual relationship in the face of heavy pressure from parents and society. Attitudes towards sexuality and homosexuality in China are changing every year, if not every day. Among those changes, 2006 witnessed the first collegiate gay club (Caihong she, Rainbow Group) established at Sun Yat-Sen University in Guangzhou. As the first legally registered gay student group, the Rainbow Group attracted intensive media attention because other similar lesbian or gay students groups remain informal, unregistered or registered under the protective umbrella of gender equality or other less sensitive themes. This chapter seeks to document and analyse these kinds of recent changes in contemporary China. By focusing on the emergence of gay identity terms and gay space-making, this chapter will examine the language categories which lesbians/gays use to address themselves or are addressed, and the widespread space and communities developed mainly for lesbian and gay groups.
