Coming Out, Coming Home: Sexual Identity and Family Belonging in the People’s Republic of China

• In Event: 1547 - Young People Constructing Identities

Abstract

This research focuses on sexual identity discourse in the context of the contemporary tongzhi (LGBT) movement in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Tongzhi groups in the PRC operate within a conservative environment guided by the official state policy of “not encouraging, not discouraging, and not promoting” homosexuality, which simultaneously limits possibilities for action but also allows for a continuous redefinition of the boundaries regulating gender identity discourse. In this paper, I explore identity- and community- building tactics that strategically mobilize cultural concepts, and that push against a dichotomized understanding of global and local sexual identities. I focus in particular on Tongxinglian Qinyouhui (PFLAG China), the largest tongzhi group in the PRC, as an organization that considers family belonging as the central characteristics bringing members of the group together. Grounding my work on ethnographic observations, online discursive analysis, and interviews, I explore how belonging to a family system is emphasized as a shared identity within the group, and I analyze how PFLAG organizers strategically mobilize the cultural and political concept of harmony for this purpose. I discuss the ways shared narratives and public storytelling work to reinforce a sense of familiar, social, and political belonging for young tongzhi, and I argue that PFLAG’s reliance on family and harmony discourses also serves the strategic purpose of displacing the political into the familial, opening up spaces for intervention and possibilities for change.

Author

• Caterina Fugazzola, University of Chicago