Women in Transitional World final paper. Gender, Sexuality and Queerness in China

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Gender, Sexuality and Queerness in China
The various studies on the gender and sexuality of Chinese women from earlier decades have not only enriched the gender research and feminist theories but also complicated it as well. This paper analyses various essays that demonstrate, from various important perspectives, the dynamics, transnational nature of gender and sexuality issues in China. Interrogating the various perspectives on feminist studies that are typically based on the west, this paper will focus on Black feminism approach as an attempt to address the complex history of gender and sexuality formations in China. The chosen approaches for this paper have addressed feminist issues in various parts of the world and they have provoked an unprecedented and interesting discussion on the state of gender and sexuality. Moreover, it shares a general focus on various issues such as culture.
Studying the history of sex is a bit difficult due to various challenges. The first one deals with time while the second involves culture. These two challenges are related to each other. The challenge of time is evident when the Chinese history is addressed based on various perspectives from the “West”. These perspectives become the primary template for measuring the progress of Chinese history. They focus on the time China transitioned to the modern culture and what the transition involves. This has led the Western scholars argue that with time the Chinese will become “just like us”. This perspective casts sexuality and gender in China is out-dated. However, although the Westerners find certain progress familiar with theirs, gender and sexual cultures differs greatly from the Western models.
Sexual identities especially same sex is believed to have been existing in China which can be traced back to many years. There is enough evidence to suggest that same sex love was highly celebrated in China. There is a Chinese story which talks of an ancient emperor who used to share his bed with one of his favourite male servants. He used to cut the sleeve of his robe which the servant was resting on as an attempt of not disturbing him from his sleeve. This is a clear indication that same sex love existed. Most scholars have used this earlier account to explain that same sex love was tolerated in the Chinese culture. Moreover, it demonstrates that various aspects of the Chinese culture were lost during the Cultural Revolution when Chairman Mao Zedong urged his fellow Chinese to denounce tradition and embrace modernity. It was with the exposure to Western culture that the Chinese get exposed to the definition of sexuality and Western’s intolerance to same sex love. However, this does not imply that tolerance of same sex love could have remained part of the Chinese culture could have it not been for the Western exposure. Moreover, this could have been possible. Nevertheless, exposure to the Western perspectives brought about the notion of same sex love being some kind of an illness. People who were caught up engaging in acts same sex love were persecuted under the crime of “hooliganism”.
In providing a critical ground and empirical of feminism and lesbians and gays in China, it is important to engage in interdisciplinary gender and queer studies. Through this approach, various important questions arise which question the importance of queerness as well as the extent to which the desires to be respected and considered as normal, shaping of sexual and gender identities, and the discourses of social and institutional negotiations circumstances that impact the courses of lives (Mohanty, 338). One of the most influential approaches to queer and gender studies implies the Western perspective to be the point of reference which ignores normativity and strategies of assimilation and considers family structures to be the factors hindering queer life (Bacchetta, 49). Instead this approach encourages confrontational approaches such as coming-out, public visibility and other ethos that challenge the categorical gender and sexuality as being the only way of personal identity. This approach is important in critiquing the “gay” and “lesbian” categories and in demonstrating the power of normative paradigms including those that shape gender and sexuality studies. However, this approach is problematic in various ways with the most important one being its way of oversimplifying various complex social experiences and processes and ignoring the Western underpinnings of discourses. This approach does not examine how such processes happened and what substantiates them. When sexuality and gender are categorized based on this paradigm, their social experiences and identification is ignored questioning their authenticity. In general, these Western paradigms fail to consider the lived realities and aspirations that are essential where desires for respectability and normalcy are crucial in developing individual identities. This perspective resonates well with Bacchetta’s observation that these approaches create a number of problems some which are beyond the scope of scholars. It is due to this that she limits her scope to important issues such as “segregated queer identitary production sites within the US; constricted conceptions of scale and scapes in the production process; and inattention to the effects of intersecting systematic relations of power such as hose based in colonialism, racialization’s, class and especially misogynarchies” facing queer studies (Bacchetta, 52). This proves to be evident when studying queer lives and processes outside the white society.
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