Why gay people carry the burden of China’s one-child policy

I gatecrashed another Chinese lecture today, this time about queer/lesbian theory. I was surprised to find that even in that class, of mature, thoughtful, generally female post-grad students, who no doubt have more liberal attitudes than your average Chinese – well even they were very unaccustomed to and felt uncomfortable with gay people/ culture/ rights – with gayness in general.

I tried to forgive them for this, and remember that this country is back by about 30 or so years when it comes to the acceptance of homosexuality. (I believe it was only de-illegalised a few years ago. There are no laws to protect homosexuals from discrimination.)

I think they were a little shocked by my ‘liberal’ attitudes towards homosexuality, plus sexual orientation and gender identities. As I said to them, I come from one of the most multicultural cities in the world, where women have the same rights as men, and has one of the biggest homosexual communities in the world. A homosexual community that isn’t just “tolerated” but is, on the whole, celebrated and has and continues to influence the wider city culture in a big way.

My city is dynamic, open, with lots of different ideas, cultures, subcultures, ways of life, and looking at the world, mixing altogether. And for me, my identity roles: as a woman, as a Chinese Australian, as a (generally) straight person, as a professional, as a hipsterllectual, as someone participating in online communities that know no physical borders, and many others – these are very unstable, mutating, complicated, sometimes indistinct from their so-called binary opposite.

Whereas my initial impressions from China has been that it is a country coming out of a very long period of having been closed. Compared to Australia, there is little multiculturalism (you are clearly classified as either a mainland Chinese born and bred local, or a foreigner) and very traditional identity roles, which are only slowly being chipped away at. Here, it’s very clear that if you’re born with a certain body (male/ female) what you’re meant to do. And so long as you do it, you’ll be fine.

(Too bad if you feel inclinations otherwise.)

I thought perhaps I was being too harsh, but then the tutor leader, also the dean of the department, spoke up. She said when she spent some time studying in Australia, she found the experience to be extremely disorientating, because it seemed like nothing was fixed. It was a challenge, and in some respects began to question herself.

An interesting China-specific gay issue was passed onto me by my gay Spanish friend here. He told me of his gay, Chinese housemate, who at 30 was at the receiving end of increasing pressure from his parents to marry. In truth, he didn’t mind being with women, but marriage was out of the question because it’d mean he’d have to stop having sex with men! Like most gay and lesbian people in this country, he hadn’t come out to his parents.

And he, like almost all the young urban-born Chinese, was an only child. Which meant there was an even greater pressure on him to marry, procreate, and thereby continue the family line.