Queer Women in Urban China: An Ethnography

Description

Lala (lesbian) and gay communities in mainland China have emerged rapidly in the 21st century. Alongside new freedoms and modernizing reforms, and with mainstream media and society increasingly tolerant, lalas still experience immense family and social pressures to a degree that this book argues is deeply gendered. The first anthropological study to examine everyday lala lives, intimacies, and communities in China, the chapters explore changing articulations of sexual subjectivity, gendered T-P (tomboy-wife) roles, family and kinship, same-sex weddings, lala-gay contract marriages, and community activism. Engebretsen analyzes lala strategies of complicit transgressions to balance surface respectability and undeclared same-sex desires, why "being normal" emerges a deep aspiration and sign of respectability, and why openly lived homosexuality and public activism often are not. Queer Women in Urban China develops a critical ethnographic analysis through the conceptual lens of "different normativities," tracing the paradoxes and intricacies of the desire for normal life alongside aspirations for recognition, equality, and freedom, and argues that dominant paradigms fixed on categories, identities, and the absolute value of public visibility are ill-equipped to fully understand these complexities. This book complements existing perspectives on sexual and gender diversity, contemporary China, and the politics and theories of justice, recognition, and similitude in global times. Cover......Page 1 Title......Page 6 Copyright......Page 7 Dedication......Page 8 Contents......Page 12 List of Figures......Page 14 Note on Terminology and Language......Page 16 Acknowledgments......Page 18 1 Queer Women in Urban China: An Introduction......Page 22 2 'A Special Self': New Sexual Subjectivities......Page 52 3 Is Face More Important than Happiness? Negotiating Family and Kinship......Page 78 4 'Come and Join Our Wedding!': The Symbolic Politics of Lala Marriages......Page 101 5 Convenient Resistance?: Lala-Gay Contract Marriages......Page 125 6 'Our Lala Space': Community Development and Social Activism......Page 145 7 Conclusion: 'Queers, Keep up the Good Work!'......Page 172 Selected Chinese Glossary......Page 186 Notes......Page 190 Bibliography......Page 200 Index......Page 210