Same-Sex Marriage With Chinese Characteristics

A review of Petrus Liu, Queer Marxism in Two Chinas, Duke University Press, 2015.

Same-sex marriage in Taiwan became legal on 24 May 2019. This made Taiwan the first nation in Asia to recognize same-sex unions. You think it’s a progress for LGBT rights? Well, think again. In the midst of the clamor for legalized same-sex marriage, G/SRAT, a LGBT organization, marched to oppose the institution of marriage at Taipei Pride, proposing the alternative slogan of “pluralism of relationships” on their banner against “marriage equality.” Queer Marxism in Two Chinas is open to such perspectives that go against the grain of conventional wisdom and emerging consensus on gay marriage and LGBT rights. It argues that gay marriage legalization is a victory for neoliberal capitalism, which incorporates gay couples into its fold and wages a propaganda battle against communist China. If we define pinkwashing as the strategy to market oneself as gay-friendly in order to appear as progressive, modern, and tolerant, then Taiwan is pinkwashing itself on a grand scale. Threatened by the prospect of reunification with mainland China, Taiwan has focussed its diplomatic strategy on integrating into the global economy and on securing popular support from the West by promoting itself as a democratic regime with values similar to those in the United States or Europe. Granting equal rights to same-sex couples is fully congruent with these twin objectives, and it serves geopolitical goals as much as it responds to local claims for equal rights and justice for all.

The goal of pinkwashing in Taiwan is to paint China red.

Contrary to what most people may think, the author of Queer Marxism disagrees with the perception that political liberalism has advanced queer rights. On the contrary, if we follow Petrus Liu, the cause of gay and lesbian rights in Taiwan is used to cover up the many cases of human rights violations against queer subjects—be they prostitutes, drug users, AIDS patients, drag queens, transsexuals, illegal aliens, or money boys. These people living on the margins of society are excluded from the definition of a human being. Similarly, it is often advanced that gay visibility and LGBT rights have progressed along the path of economic reforms in mainland China: since 1997, homosexuality is no longer a crime, it has been removed from the list of mental disorders in 2001, while Gay Pride demonstrations, gay and lesbian film festivals, and gay cultural spaces have developed in the main Chinese cities. Modern critics therefore oppose a present and futurity of openness and visibility to a Maoist past where homosexuality was repressed and hidden. But this, according to Petrus Liu, is revisionist history, a reinvention of the past in which Maoist socialism is redefined as a distortion of people’s natural genders and sexualities. Homoerotic desires and longings were also present in Maoist China, albeit in a different form. This militates for a ‘homosexuality with Chinese characteristics,’ based on the recognition that China has a four-thousand-year record of tolerance and harmony when it comes to same-sex relations.

Why do some Asian queer theorists and activists appear as staunch opponents of same-sex marriage? How can they raise the question: “Is Global Governance Bad for East Asian Queers?” What do they want as an alternative to equal rights and entitlements? To answer this question, it is necessary to introduce unaccustomed readers to what ‘queer theory’ is about, and why its Chinese version might differ from the theoretical constructions developed in the West. Queer theory has emerged as a new strand of academic literature that criticizes neoliberal economies and political liberalism. Theorists point out that queer cultures are not always complicit with neoliberal globalization and the politics of gay normalization; nor are local LGBT scenes in Asia always replications of gay cultures in the liberal West. Queer critics underscore that Western liberalism has spawned a new normative order that dissociates acceptable homosexuality from culturally undesirable practices and experiences such as promiscuity, drag, prostitution, and drug use. As the majority of gay men and lesbian women are included into the fold of mainstream normality, other groups and individuals are categorized as deviant, pervert, queer, and socially unacceptable. To quote Judith Butler, a foundational author in queer studies: “Sometimes the very terms that confer ‘humanness’ on some individuals are those that deprive certain other individuals of the possibility of achieving that status.” Or to borrow from another author, “the homonormative movement is not an equality-based movement but an inclusion-based assimilation politics with exclusionary results.”

The norms of acceptable homosexuality

According to some critics, gay cultures have lost their radical edge and are now engaged in a “rage for respectability”: the primary task of the gay movement is to “persuade straight society that they can be good parents, good soldiers, and good priests.” Homonormativity suggests that assimilating to heterosexual norms is the only path to equal rights. It sets the participation to the consumer culture of neoliberal capitalism as the ultimate political horizon of the gay rights movement. The new homonormativity advocates a privatized, depoliticized gay culture anchored in domesticity and consumption. It is grounded in liberal values of privacy, tolerance, individual rights, and diversity. It is fully compatible with neoliberalism: indeed, it reinforces tendencies already at work in neoliberal economies. The bourgeois gay couple is a capitalist’s dream niche market: double-income-no-kids, urbanite and fashion-conscious, it has the reputation of pursuing a lifestyle filled with cultural leisure and touristic escapades. The norm of acceptable homosexuality also sets new standards of governance and regulation for countries that are evaluated along their degree of adherence to LGBT rights as defined by activist groups and legal reformers in Western societies. According to this new standard, governments that legalize gay marriage and gay adoption, make assisted reproductive technologies available for same-sex couples, and encourage manifestations of gay pride and LGBT visibility are deemed as democratic and progressive. Conversely, states that keep sodomy laws on the books, discriminate along sexual orientation, and stick to a traditional view of family and marriage are relegated to the bottom of democratic governance rankings.

For many international observers, Taiwan has been a poster child of economic liberalization and political democratization. As gay visibility and LGBT rights occurred after the lifting of the martial law in 1987 and the multiparty election in 2000, it is natural to assume that gay and lesbian rights are a byproduct of the advent of the liberal-democratic state. Similarly, the People’s Republic of China has turned less intolerant towards its homosexuals and has even let gay cultures flourish in its urban centers as they reached a level of economic prosperity on par with the West. Narratives of sexuality and gender rights are therefore intrinsically indexed to broader theories of economic development and political transitions. These liberal theories tend to translate liberty as laissez-faire capitalism, and democratization as the formal competition between political parties. Petrus Liu takes a different perspective. For him, “any discussion of gender and sexuality in the Chinese context must begin with the Cold War divide.” The geopolitical rivalry between the two Chinas is the underlying cause for Taiwan’s construction of a liberal, gay-friendly political environment. The Republic of China is the People’s Republic of China’s counterfactual: it presents itself as a natural experiment of what the whole of China would have become had it not been affected by the victory of Mao’s Communists over Chiank Kai-shek’s Nationalists. It presents the “road not taken” in communist studies: what would be China today without Maoism and the Taiwan straits division? Is the People’s Republic of China simply catching up and converging towards Taiwan’s level of economic development and standards of democracy, or does it chart a different course that Taiwan will at some point be forced to follow?

Queer China and the Taiwan Strai(gh)t

The question of China’s futures has real implications for the rights and livelihoods of queer people in the two Chinas. For Petrus Liu, it is very difficult to abstract a discussion on queer human rights from the concrete national interests and geopolitical stakes that frame these rights. The invocation of LGBT rights is always anchored in a national context and expresses a desire for national, rather than cosmopolitan rights and entitlements. Democracy and human rights have progressed in Taiwan because the Republic of China constantly needs to distantiate itself from its socialist neighbor. This creates a mechanism akin to Hegel’s ‘cunning of reason’: history fulfills its ultimate rational designs in an indirect and sly manner, and liberalism advances for reasons that are, in essence, illiberal. It is always possible to mobilize the contradictions between national interests in the two Chinas for productive use, with the help of local and transnational coalitions. For instance, Taipei’s Mayor Ma Ying-jeou, who subsequently became President of the Republic of China, officially endorsed the Gay Pride in Taiwan’s capital for the first time in 2006 because he was prompted to do so by the Mayor of San Francisco, Taipei’s sister city, who sent a rainbow flag as a gift to his counterpart before the parade.

In East Asia, gay marriage as a social issue has often designated the marriage of a gay person with a heterosexual wife. This situation has provided the intrigue of many novels and movies, starting with Ang Lee’s Wedding Banquet. In Chinese language, gay men’s wives are designated as tongqi or ‘living widows,’ and their plight is a hotly debated topic on Chinese Internet forums and TV talk shows. Some estimates put their number at 16 million. For some critics, new sexual formations in Asia cannot be interpreted as the spread of Western models of homosexuality. Indeed, tongxinlian, tongzhi, and ku’er lilun may not even be translated as ‘homosexuality,’ ‘gay men,’ and ‘queer theory,’ as these concepts embody different histories and practices. The word tongxinlian reflects the era when sex between men was prosecuted under ‘hooliganism’ (liumang zui, disruption of the social order); and tongzhi, a political idiom meaning ‘comrade’, was appropriated by Chinese sexual countercultures in Hong-Kong and in Taiwan to refer to same-sex relations. Without endorsing the thesis that “Chinese comrades do it differently,” Petrus Liu acknowledges that sexual orientation and sexual practices are socially constructed. This echoes the arguments of historians who define homosexuality as a modern cultural invention reflecting the identities of a small and relatively fixed group of people, in distinction from an earlier view of same-sex desire as a continuum of acts, experiences, identities, and pleasures spanning the entire human spectrum. The argument of Chinese distinctiveness also reflects the often-made thesis that the individual doesn’t exist in Asian societies. Many Asian languages do not have a fixed term for the “I” as a sovereign subject who speaks with authority. They see the “I” as a result of social relations and as an effect of language. Consequently, in the Asian context, an individual doesn’t have rights; rights only exist in relation to others. Only when a person enters a set of social relations does it become possible to speak of rights. This sets severe constraints on individual freedom (gay persons may be obliged to marry the opposite sex for familialist reasons), but it also creates opportunities to press for a non-assimilationist, non-normative life escaping the strictures of homo- and heteronormativity.

“Better Red Than Pink!”

According to Petrus Liu, “Queer liberalism is a key tool with which Taiwan disciplines mainland China and produces its national sign of difference from its political enemy in the service of the Taiwanese independence project.” If the conclusion that he reaches is “better red than pink!”, then we are faced with a very serious case of intellectual confusion. A more generous interpretation would be to consider his text within the parameters of Western academic interventions, which offer a premium for radical provocations and disruptive ideas. But even so, Petrus Liu’s Queer Marxism pales in comparison to more conventional interpretations of Chinese queer cultures, such as the one proposed in reference to Hegel’s ‘cunning of reason.’ We saw that Taiwan uses a political ruse to promote its self-image as a liberal regime and tolerant society in opposition to mainland China; but this ruse of history has felicitous effects if it leads to the advancement of gay and lesbian rights. Similarly, one could always interpret marriage equality laws in Western Europe as a result of rising Islamophobia and as a contribution to a rhetoric of a clash of civilizations: this is, in essence, the thesis of homonationalism as expounded by Jasbir Puar in Terrorist Assemblages (which I review here). But this argument will only get you so far. The cunning of reason tells us that liberalism can sometimes be advanced through anti-liberal means. However, anti-liberalism more often leads to an erosion of individual freedom and a rise of authoritarian regimes.

Again, the case of China can be used as an illustration. In the post-Cultural Revolution period, political liberalism became an important system of thought against Maoism. Student demonstrators at Tiananmen Square built a replica of the Statue of Liberty; and Tocqueville remains one of the favorite reference of political reformers. On the other hand, Western cultural critics and academic genres such as postcolonial studies or postmodernism have been picked up in China by a clique of New Left academics, Neo-Maoist nationalists, and Communist Party apparatchiks. Critiques of Eurocentrism and of Orientalism are used to affirm the superiority of the Chinese culture and to support China’s rightful rise to world prominence after a century of humiliation. Like in the West, cultural critique in China is resolutely anti-liberal; but identity politics takes a very different form than in Western pluralist societies. It fuels cultural nationalism (wenhua minzuzhuyi) and nativism (bentuzhuyi), and it proclaims the irreducibility of national essence (guocuipai) and the superiority of Chineseness (zhonghuaxing). Queer theory, with its strong links to anti-humanism and anti-liberalism, could very much be mobilized for such ends, as in the arguments of the irreductibility of Chinese conceptions of homosexuality and queerness. There is no reason to fear that a book like Queer Marxism in Two Chinas won’t pass the test of censorship should it be published in Beijing in a Chinese translation. Like Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo wrote in an open letter protesting the sentencing of journalist Shi Tao in 2005, “Some writers in China say that nowadays they can write about anything they want. Yes, up to a point. They can write about sex, they can write about violence, they can write about human defects, but they cannot touch upon what is considered as potentially ‘sensitive’ information.” Petrus Liu doesn’t quote Liu Xiaobo in his book: by writing down his name on the free Internet, I am making this review potentially sensitive.