askchapo

I lived there for about three years in total from 2013-2020. I'm not Chinese and I'm also so I hung out with queer Chinese people and went to queer events but felt like a double outsider so I'm not confident in my response...

I'd say queerness is accepted (or at least 'tolerated') in China but not advocated. There's progress in some areas but sliding in others.

cw queerphobia/patsoc

I'm not in the country right now so I can't say if this has translated into the lives of queer comrades being harder over there (I would be surprised if it hadn't, but, not sure to what degree)

China's also a huge place so, while Shanghai and Beijing may have prominent gay bars, clubs and districts, a third-tier or smaller city may have just a bar in a given district that's known to the locals as 'that place'. A lot of young queer people will be closeted until university or they start working, and move out of the home and to a different city, even a different province or across the country (and the country js huge). During this time, it's kinda their window to be themselves, until they graduate or get to their late 20s when there's an expectation from parents/grandparents that they pull their head in and have child(ren).

Despite the above, there are still people who have a live and let live mentality, which I'd say is pretty common. China's a huge place with lots of people living different kinds of lives, it's surprisingly tolerant in a kind of way that people can just do their own thing.

I've never been, but from what I've heard from others on the site China is both less actively pro-inclusion than some of the lib cities in the US or Australia, but also much less bigoted than anywhere else. So you might get weird looks and some confusion, but you're unlikely to encounter deranged bigots as well. Kinda like how the US was before the culture war took off, outside of the South at least. Mixed bag.

The Chinese government didn't try to use the non-treatment of AIDS as a way to wipe out queer people from existence that resulted in an entire generation of queer and trans people lost. The West have tried and are still actively trying to eliminate queerness from public life. China is far more humane and tolerant of GSM people than say TERF Island where legislation continues to be a threat to queer people everywhere.

In broad strokes a lot of older Chinese society is conservative and there's a problem with toxic nationalism in China, I can't speak on it any further than that since I'm not Chinese. Gay marriage is legal in China in Taiwan which is already leagues above colonized East Asian nations like Japan and ROK.

Queer identity is talked about in China and they have their own version of grindr from what I can remember reading about. In short, Family acceptance is the main challenge for a lot of Chinese GSM while institutional mainstream queerphobia comes in second.

Socialism is the only way for queer and trans people to get liberation, so China is far ahead of the rest of the world in that respect (besides Cuba).

There's a video of Mandarin Corner, something like "Being a Lesbian in China" which is an interview of a mainland lesbian woman. It's annecdotal but also extremely genuine since the channel is not here for politics but only for language learning

Institutionally, there are legal protections and court precedent for protections based on sex, gender identity, and orientation, though not as strong as I'd like, and gay marriage is something that might be a while down the pipeline. Socially, there are a bunch of conservatives who think being gay or trans is yucky or whatever, but they all mind their own business unless it's their own family.

The younger generation is far better about this, visited Chongqing last year and it was hella gay.

My impression is that it's 10-20 years behind the West, but slowly getting better while the West is going backwards. In the TV shows I've seen from mainland China, men being interested in other men or men wearing women's clothing is still a punchline, reminiscent of the 2000s in the West. Give it a couple of years.

according to one of our users here there are femboys in Shanghai gay bars

Mao and Chinese socialism constantly emphasized the role of women (and other minorities) in revolution, and not just as mothers and caretakers, but you know, someone who can literally shoot and bomb the enemy or hold up half the sky in other ways.

Of course, just because you say something doesn’t mean you stay true to it, and neither of them were perfect in that regards. But just like how the US was largely founded by rich masons, christians, and slavers who hated anyone who wasn’t white or male, the characteristics of the nation were set during this inception and remain even if the nation has evolved for better or for worse.

China is a socially conservative country, but socialism and feminism were its founding principles. Much of the world is lib brained, i.e., they look up to institutions and their history for guidance and justification. I believe it can achieve actual feminist goals and more for other marginalized groups if it stayed true to its principals. Meanwhile, the US can let gay people marry or finally respect women enough to pay them fairly, let them take care of their babies, let them control their bodies, liberate them in whatever way, but if it stays true to its principles, then it will still be a capitalist and imperialist nation, and it will continue to bring the destruction that comes with it everywhere it goes, including the lives of women and minorities at home and abroad.

But specifically, abortion is legal in china to the point that the US supreme court cited China and North Korea’s abortion policies as reasons for why abortion is authoritarian and shouldn’t be allowed in the US. China also tries to prevent abortions in the first place via contraception and education which is good because abortion can be tough on the body, but is still available if necessary. I believe ‘gender reveal’ is also not allowed. China isn’t known to be a dangerous country, and women generally don’t need to fear being alone or out at night unlike many other countries, but of course it’ll also depend on location.