Health and Social Activism of Self-Identified Gay Men in Postsocialist China

Key information

Date
Time
5:00 PM to 6:30 PM
Venue
Virtual Event

About this event

Tiantian Zheng (SUNY Distinguished Professor, State University of New York)

Registration

Abstract

Based on ethnographic research on self-identified gay men in Northeast China, this seminar addresses the ways in which these self-identified gay men cope with the hostile social environment through consciously shifting identities between the public and the private. In public, these gay men perform manhood and seek to erase traces of their gayness to emulate and achieve legitimacy in the mainstream culture. In private, they draw on mainstream discourse to infuse new meanings in it, refute and defy against social prejudice, and resignify gayness. In so doing, they are caught in a paradox of simultaneously resisting and embracing mainstream culture, thereby reincribing and reinforcing negative images of gay identity.

This talk will unfold in three parts. Professor Tiantian Zheng will first discuss the background of emerging gay culture in contemporary China. She will then discuss the self-identified gay men's health and social activism in postsocialist China. In the third part she will examine the ways in which they embrace and appropriate mainstream culture to elude stigma and discrimination. In conclusion, Professor Zheng will argue that the contradiction embedded in their shifting identities ultimately mitigate and undercut the goals they aspire to reach, perpetuate social prejudice against them, and thwart the activism they purport to do.

About the speaker

Tiantian Zheng is SUNY Distinguished Professor at State University of New York, Cortland, with a Ph.D. in Anthropology from Yale University. She is the author and co-author of ten academic books, five edited journal issues and over a hundred articles. She has received two national book awards and one “Outstanding Academic Title” by Choice (the 2010 Sara A. Whaley Book Prize and 2011 Research Publication Book Award). She has testified before Congress, UNAIDS, and the United Nations and has been a featured guest speaker on NPR, BBC, and NBC. Her 4th ethnography Violent Intimacy:​ Intimate Partner Violence in Postsocialist China will be forthcoming with Bloomsbury Academic Publishing.

Registration

This webinar will take place online via Zoom. Click here to register

Chair: Dr Jieyu Liu, Deputy Director, SOAS China Institute

Organiser: SOAS China Institute

Contact email: sci@soas.ac.uk