131
‘It’s difficult to survive’: China’s LGBTQ+ advocates face jail and forced confession
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 16 Jan 2024
131 points (100.0% liked)
World News
22080 readers
18 users here now
Breaking news from around the world.
News that is American but has an international facet may also be posted here.
Guidelines for submissions:
- Where possible, post the original source of information.
- If there is a paywall, you can use alternative sources or provide an archive.today, 12ft.io, etc. link in the body.
- Do not editorialize titles. Preserve the original title when possible; edits for clarity are fine.
- Do not post ragebait or shock stories. These will be removed.
- Do not post tabloid or blogspam stories. These will be removed.
- Social media should be a source of last resort.
These guidelines will be enforced on a know-it-when-I-see-it basis.
For US News, see the US News community.
This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
look, if the realities of a system or policy are statistically more likely to target queer people, it is a queer issue lol. restrictions on discussing sex publicly disproportionately affect those who are sexual minorities, because all "legitimate" channels for learning about sex are usually targeted for heterosexual couplings. there's a reason why queer people have a vested interest in sex education. modesty laws are also more oppressive for queer people by their nature.
anything that regulates how people dress also regulates gender expression, because clothing in most of the world is gendered. there are things that women wear that men can't, things that are "too much skin" for women and not men. if you legislate what people can wear, you have a very good tool for targeting queer folks, even if it theoretically could also be used to target other kinds of self-expression. you can't make a modesty law that isn't also anti-queer by extension, because modesty as a concept is defined by patriarchy, heteronormativity, and cisnormativity.
Yup, most of the world has gendered clothing. But this is China, where for decades they rejected that. Their school uniforms still rejects gendered clothing.
https://www.koreaboo.com/stories/chinese-school-uniforms-korean-students-jealous/
It's only relatively recently come back from Western fashion.
They're literally trying to fight against what your talking about to such a degree that even your normal concept of gendered clothing is different. And I know that's hard to wrap your head around, but that's exactly why I'm saying, it's not exactly what you think.
*Edit: Let's look at this from another angle. China has been trying to enforce gender neutral ideas for some time, like gender neutral clothing. All this push for gender equality has lead China to become the home to the most female billionaires in the world.
https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/trends/wu-yajun-china-has-two-thirds-of-worlds-self-made-women-billionaires-meet-the-richest-8296901.html
The Chinese government is 25% female.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/239113/sshare-of-women-in-chinese-national-parliament/
So it's in China's position that while not great now, by constantly pushing gender neutral laws and trying to prevent sex being displayed in public, they'll create equality.
As you point out though, that often leads to oppression and other terrible side effects.
I'm saying, I do not believe i personally understand the situation enough to make a judgement call. I just want people to be aware of what's actually happening and not that it's some kind of governmental anti-LGBTQ+ push. It's China trying to be China for better or worse.