Beyond heteronormativity? Gay cruising, closeted experiences and self-disciplining subject in People’s Park, Guangzhou

Qian, Junxi

doi:10.1080/02723638.2016.1139408

Cited by 8 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 39 publications

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“…The use of open public space and homosexual relationships in China has been extensively researched (see Brickell ; Qian ; Valentine ) and studies indicate that norms and rules dictating the use of public space in China are deeply embedded in a wide range of social divisions based on class and social status, and class‐based notions of behaviour. The idea of conducting a homosexual relationship in public has been continuously stigmatized by middle‐class people who perceive it to be an act only conducted by less‐educated and or lower‐class individuals (Qian ). Research also indicates that Chinese LGBT individuals from lower‐ or working‐class backgrounds suffer more than Chinese LGBT individuals from other classes (Ho ).…”

Section: Stigmatized Hidden Identitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Research also indicates that Chinese LGBT individuals from lower‐ or working‐class backgrounds suffer more than Chinese LGBT individuals from other classes (Ho ). This is due to the overwhelming heteronormative cultural underpinning of Chinese culture, and as such, most working class LGBT people will not be open about their identity to parents or friends through fear of stigmatization (Qian ).…”

Section: Stigmatized Hidden Identitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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‘Hidden identities’: perceptions of sexual identity in Beijing

Miles-Johnson

Wang

2017

British Journal of Sociology

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This article draws upon responses given by volunteers who work in the Beijing LGBT Centre regarding perceptions of sexual identity, and how Chinese culture affects hidden or open sexual identities of Chinese lesbian and gay people in this region. The insights gained from those working carefully to create social change offers an important and original contribution to the field of gay and lesbian studies in China. The findings indicate the volunteers at the Beijing LGBT Centre are frustrated by the lack of acceptance of non-heterosexual relationships among Chinese culture and society, and by the disregard of lesbian gay and bisexual (LGB) people by the Chinese government. The findings also illustrate stigmatization of homosexuality in China is enacted in structural terms (such as in the lack of policy, legislation and positive endorsement by governmental and socio-political organizations), public expression (such as negative attitudes, beliefs or reactions towards LGB people) and internalized repression (through fear of stigmatization, and subsequent abuse due to negative societal attitudes and discrimination). Influenced by the Chinese tradition of conforming to group values, the findings from this study show that volunteers at the Beijing LGBT Centre believe LGB people in China are generally hesitant to disclose their sexual identities, and reject the idea that there had been a collective shift in Chinese culture regarding increased acceptance of LGB people. It also finds volunteers at the LGBT Centre in Beijing blame Chinese culture for its lack of acceptance of non-heterosexual relationships, and state stigmatization of homosexuality in China is due to deep-rooted cultural homophobia.

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Section: Stigmatized Hidden Identitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Stigmatized Hidden Identitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Hidden identities’: perceptions of sexual identity in Beijing

Miles-Johnson

Wang

2017

British Journal of Sociology

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“…For example, in Singapore’s ethnically diverse public spaces, social norms and codes of civility ‘become tools of inclusion, and, relationally, exclusion, producing a politicised logic of managing diversity’ (Ye, 2017: 1033; Ye, 2016). Ye’s (2017) rendering of the concept of ‘differential inclusion’ resonates with Qian’s (2017) work on gay cruising in Guangzhou, China. While gay men had the freedom to form a vibrant public cruising culture in a renowned urban park inhabited by diverse user groups, they emphasised the need to self-discipline, keep low-profile, and be less transgressive, so as not to confront the heteronormative coding of the space.…”

Section: Public Space Between Inclusion and Exclusionmentioning

confidence: 92%

“…Bodies, on the one hand, are crucial sites for the construction of cultural discourses and moral norms. To grasp a sense of this idea, one only needs to browse the rich collection of studies on the moral panics and ideological anxieties over sex workers in city streets (Hubbard, 2001, 2004), sexual minorities’ use of public space (Valentine, 1993; Andersson, 2012; Qian, 2017), publicly-veiled Muslim women in secularist contexts (Bowen, 2008; O’Neil, 2008; Gökarıksel, 2009, 2012), and, more recently, breastfeeding in public space (Lane, 2014; Grant, 2016). These various twists and contentions often do not lead to overt and coercive policing, but create ambivalent, elastic and contingent parameters of publicness that bodies nonetheless need to navigate, a process in which identities and subjectivities are relationally and fluidly constituted (Gökarıksel and Secor, 2012, 2015).…”

Section: Public Space As Assemblagementioning

confidence: 99%

Geographies of public space: Variegated publicness, variegated epistemologies

Qian

2018

Progress in Human Geography

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Given the rapid diversification and mutation of public space and public life across the globe, this article theorises epistemologies of publicness that move the research agenda beyond the conceptual straitjacket of presence, accessibility and visibility. It develops three theoretical approaches: public space as situated and lived; public space as assemblage; and public space as a liminal zone between inclusion and exclusion. Signposting more open-ended, flexible, processual, performative and ambivalent conceptions of publicness and public space, this article represents one of the first attempts to systematically map the permutations of new theoretical and conceptual developments in the research of public space.

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“…In line with my broadly relativist approach to culture and identity, I also took care to avoid expectations that participants' lifestyles would accord to the hegemonic models of gay life in the cities of the Global North or that they would be centred around the locales described by other authors working on queer mainland China (e.g., teahouses (Wei 2007), parks (Bao 2018, Jones 2007, Miège 2018, Qian 2017, dancehalls (Bao 2018) and saunas (Zheng 2015)). In fact, due to my general perception of highly stratified norms of socialisation in related communities, it came as no surprise that none of these sites were described by participants in this study as socially important to them.…”

Section: Participants and Methodologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Do “Chinese gays” come out?

Freestone

2023

JLS

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This paper draws on linguistic-ethnographic fieldwork in Chengdu, China to consider the utility of broad labels such as Chinese, Western and gay in accounting for the performance of sexual and cultural identity. I problematise work which takes such notions to be stable and self-evidently referential, arguing instead that identity is much more fluid, emergent and discourse-dependent than conventional understandings tend to imply. I focus on visibility of queer sexual identity partly because it is an especially accessible example of the role of language in identity performance, being most often achieved through verbal interaction. More broadly, however, this focus emerged through my ethnographically informed, discursive-sociocultural approach to my life and research in mainland China during the period 2008–2019. Specifically, I use spoken data from the interviews which formed part of this process to argue that social practice within related ethnic and/or social groups is best understood in terms of the situated use of sociolinguistic tools and the entailed negotiation of pertinent ideological systems. From this perspective, the ostensibly insurmountable ideological pressures that “Chinese gays” are typically seen to face, and which tend to be attributed to a taken-for-granted and monolithic “Chinese culture”, are better interpreted with reference to the complex relationship between language, culture and identity. Thus, I do not assume the right to make broad claims about what Chinese gays do, or to state that they are categorically different from their presumed homogenous Western counterparts. Instead, I discuss what certain individuals say in certain conversations, noting how their performance of identity is often highly individualised, being shaped according to the interactants present and the interactional aims relevant to specific moments of communication.

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Beyond heteronormativity? Gay cruising, closeted experiences and self-disciplining subject in People’s Park, Guangzhou

Cited by 8 publications

References 39 publications

‘Hidden identities’: perceptions of sexual identity in Beijing

‘Hidden identities’: perceptions of sexual identity in Beijing

Geographies of public space: Variegated publicness, variegated epistemologies

Do “Chinese gays” come out?

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