Researching LGBT Issues in China
This blog post is written by Runze Ding, a PhD student at the University of Leeds.
My Ph.D. thesis investigates gay identity and digital media in China, which is based on my nine-month ethnographic fieldwork in Guangzhou and Beijing. During the fieldwork, I interviewed 83 demographically diverse gay men and discussed their life stories since they ‘realised’ their sexuality with a particular focus of the relevant use of digital media (the Internet). With a more exploratory nature, my Ph.D. project reveals that information and communications technology has indeed played a significant role in the everyday lives of different generations of Chinese gay men, as digital media became their vital sources of learning and understanding about sexual identity and gay community life, their main venue of communicating, connecting and meeting with other same-sex attracted men.
However, their use of digital media is still shaped by (Chinese) social norms and social locations. Although digital media have introduced Chinese gay men to up-to-date transnational gay cultural products, the digital representation of homosexuality still highlights a discourse of “how to deal with the marginalised sexual identity regarding the Chinese context”. Secondly, although digital media have facilitated greater connectivity between Chinese gay males and helped them to manage and maintain different gay circles, it does not necessarily produce solidarity in the community. These gay circles are often stratified by the nature of class.
Researching LGBTQ+ topics is important to me not only because I am a member of the Rainbow Community, but also because LGBTQ+ individuals face different social scenarios and their stories could reveal more insights into the modern-day social, cultural, and political issues. Their stories help us to understand the construction of modern society. As LGBTQ+ issues have become a part of the neoliberal social development, we need to hear different voices from diverse cultural and social backgrounds to make more sense of our increasingly globalised world.
