School of Culture and Communication - Theses

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Somewhere, between 'in' and 'out': locating Jia and internet in Baling-jiulinghou Chinese gay subjectivities

Yi, Keren ( 2016)

Informed by face-to-face interviews with over twenty young gay men during a 2013 field trip to five cities across Mainland China, this research thesis critically examines the everyday articulations of their sexual subjectivities both in the space of family and in cyberspace. By contemplating the state of existence experienced by these young men—specifically, their management of parent-child relationships and their utilization of Internet and geo-locative social media in negotiating their sexual identities—this thesis seeks to provide a framework to theorize broader socio-cultural specificities lived by this generation of urban Chinese gay men. A central argument of this dissertation is that contemporary Chinese gay subjectivities are not only defined by constant negotiations between ‘closetedness’ and ‘outness’, they are also paradoxically constituted vis-à-vis rapid, ongoing, socio-cultural shifts experienced by the Chinese baling- jiulinghou generation. Focusing on family and filiality, as well as the rise of geo-locative media, this thesis explores how these shifting circumstances are generating conflicting sets of expectations for young Chinese gay men, and constructing them as queer subjects of contradictions and incoherencies.