one thing most any leftist will say about china despite supporting the country is that they’re a very traditionalist culture, and so LGBTQ issues in particular are a blight on leftist westerner’s otherwise positive view of china.
upon scrolling thru rednote, i think that’s bullshit now. i really don’t think you’re worse off being LGBTQ in china than you are in america. yeah, you can’t get married, but that right is under constant threat of being taken away in the US anyway and let’s be real- it probably will be taken away. meanwhile, china is making progress on that front, the US wants to regress.
i saw multiple LGBTQ people on rednote. i saw a lesbian couple, one of the girls even said “LGBT is completely normal in china now, especially in the cities. even the older generations who might not accept it mind their own business”. can that be said about america? how many queer people here have been accosted by some boomer who couldn’t mind their own business? i saw the gayest fucking dude i’ve ever seen in my life (that’s a compliment). he was also wearing makeup and sassily singing along with destiny’s child. completely comfortable in his skin and with his identity, and while all of the comments and his speaking were in mandarin that i couldn’t understand, you can tell by the vibe it was all positive. meanwhile in progressive america, if you’re a guy who wants to put on makeup and go live on tiktok you’re gonna face all sorts of homophobia and bigotry.
one of the few things western liberals could really say about china, that even those of us who are left wing and pro china thought to be at least somewhat true, appears to just straight up not be true.
XHS is infested with terfs though.
If Rednote is widespread enough in the next few days, the Supreme Court is going to overturn the Tiktok ban instantly. Mark my words.
I was watching this show in the hostel I’m staying at. My Chinese friends explained to me that the show was cancelled after the first episode was aired because the two male leads could be construed as being in a relationship. To be clear there is nothing overtly gay, they are just two attractive men who care about each other and who do not have any female love interests in the show.
When I remarked how ridiculous that was I got push back from two women who told me that it is wrong to expose children to the idea of being gay. I continued to say they were being ridiculous and that China can do better than that.
Huh? Boy Love movies are incredibly popular in China. Mostly by women for some reason.
https://dearstraightpeople.com/2022/08/17/top-chinese-bl-dramas/
They can’t do overtly sexual things, but having to romantic male leads is a hugely popular genre in China.
*Edit: Here’s an even bigger list
Well that flies in the face of what I was told about this show. How strange. They were all fairly adamant as to why the show has been cancelled.
I can’t remember the name of the show, but the premise is that every episode the characters are transported to a world/dimension where they have to solve a puzzle or mystery in order to open a door and get to the next world.
I have some questions on LGBT content in Chinese webcomics, since English-speaking yuri communities always bring this up when they bash China:
1: what exactly happened to Tamen de Gushi? The story I always hear is that the CCP banned the webcomic because they showed the characters kiss.
2: I noticed some Chinese webcomics (specifically Straight Girl Trap and I Got a Girlfriend From a Shooting Star), whenever the characters kiss, would draw white spots/ have convenient light rays covering where the lips touch. For me it feels weird since these stories already have the characters in an official romantic relationship. Why do kisses get covered even when they have no issue showing a same-sex relationship in the same comic?
The App is not really a good standard in gauging the sentiment nor the policies of the whole country.
The understanding of systematic discrimination is abysmal for the common people especially in Guangzhou in my personal experience.
Can you give some details about what the abysmal systemic discrimination is?
Mainland people would often state that systemic discrimination is not a thing since there are 55 recognized minorities which have certain privileges. Two of the most contentious one that Han Chinese people would state are: The one child policy and the fact that minorities need lower scores to pass the standard test to get into universities. However, the first one is not a privilege no more since the One child policy is no longer a thing. As for the lower scores for entry exams, there is a caviat attached to the fact that education is often pegged to there you are born and since the reform and opening up, regions where minorities live are underfunded to the point that if you don’t perform above average in a B-tier high school, your score for entry is going to be affected to the point the free credit you get will not tip the scale on your favour.
One of the most flagrant systematic discrimination is in the rental market in my city. Some local region will often ask landlord to do extra check up on rentors’ background that is not done on local people (aka Han). It is often applied to minorities from special regions (read Xinjiang) or permanent residents (a lot of them in my cities are from Africa). Since my city has a lot of human movement it is a easy market for landlord to pick the rentors, it is often done by picking people who demands the least paperwork needed barring people from having access to rentals (their excuses are most likely a matter of convenience). You can see the effects of this kind of behaviour since there is an area of the city called Little Africa which is de facto a ghetto.
Of course, you can probably drag the landlords in court for discrimination to court and might win (if you have money, level of education and language proficiency), but the might issues still persists, why some local municipalities require background checks for certain individuals in the first place.
Oh sorry I thought you were saying systemic discrimination against LGBTQ people, is that not what you were talking about?
Can you describe what you mean by a ghetto? What are the conditions, etc?
