Queer Comrades, Queer China: Hybrid Lesbian Identities in an Age of Social Media

Abstract

Seeking to problematize the "global gay" versus "local cultural specificity" argument, this paper analyzes an emerging lesbian (lala) identity and culture in contemporary P.R. China through the content of webcasts on the social-media website Queercomrades.com (QC). Four female same-sex themed webcasts are explored in order to expose the issues pertinent to the Chinese lala community and examine reified female same-sex representations and self-representation. Identifying elements of rapid cultural, social, and economic changes in the PRC, as well as surviving traditional Confucian cultural norms and influence from globalization, and recognizing Chinese queer culture and identity as amorphous and ever-evolving, this study finds that by participating in QC's webcasts, the guests on QC serve as role models of a new globalized reality that includes evolving hybrid sexualities. Through confession and storytelling that draws on new emerging Chinese identities, Western discourse and globalization and performances that mirror Confucian rectification of names and the tradition of exemplary biographies, the hosts and guests on QC participate in creating a new "exemplary woman" model for women who identify beyond the boundaries of the heterosexual symbolic at the turn of the 21st century.