Two: Contesting Heteronormality: Recasting Same-Sex Desire in China's Past and Present (2014)

Recent studies of globalization of gay and lesbian identities denote a universalizing perspective on same-sex practices. This universalizing perspective has been theorized by Stephen Murray as a neo-evolutionary process toward a universal, egalitarian, Western gayness (Murray 1992). Murray maps out an evolutionary model of homosexuality from unequal relations based on age (Ancient Greece), gender roles (modern Mesoamerica), class (early capitalism), to equal relations (Murray 1992). In Murray's evolutionary model, an increasingly strong gay and lesbian culture, identity, and politics have been diffused little by little throughout Western World. Eventually, this model of Western world will be future trend that other countries and cultures will follow.Dennis Altman (1996a, 1996b, 1997) also contends that trend is toward a transition from gender-based identities to Western egalitarian sexual identities that are not rigidly tied to a particular gender identity. Altman argues that through vehicle of media, entertainment, and tourism, Euro-American experiences and notions of sexuality are becoming increasingly globalized and widespread and a global queering process takes place through influence of Western concepts of sexual identity.Such universalizing perspective generalizes that same-sex exhibit a unified meaning that is independent of culture. This emphasis on sexual acts as determining factor to identify a person as evinces a standpoint that eschews the cultural contexts that gave rise to particular sexual practices (Rubin, 2002, p. 80). Their focus on sex acts in categorization of homosexuality fails to recognize cultural meanings associated with sexual practices. In Herdt's study (1994), Sambia boys go through initiation ritual of ingesting semen of older men for years to build their masculinity and mature into men. The same-sex acts do not warrant them a label of homosexual - a personal and social identity with a particular history within Western cultural context, but must be understood in Sambia's cultural context. The same-sex acts are cultural that are informed and constituted by gender ideologies of antagonism and cultural beliefs in finiteness of men's seminal essence and role of its ingestion in boys' maturation into men.Through elucidating historic continuities and changes of malleable and fluid sexual imaginations in China, this paper eschews universalizing perspective of same-sex and argues that sexual and sexual meanings are shaped by cultural and political contexts.In this paper, I will chronicle changing meanings of homoerotic romance in cultural history of same-sex desires in China. More specifically, I will discuss ways in which same-sex desires were exhibited and received during imperial period, Republican era, Maoist times, and post socialist era. During imperial period in China, same-sex desires were deemed normal and were enjoyed not only by many emperors, scholars and bureaucrats, but also by common people of all social classes. There was never a fixed or reified sexual identity linked to a certain sexual preference. Sexual fantasies during this vast historic time in China were fluid, diverse, and in constant flux. At turn of twentieth century, onslaught of Western medical knowledge changed this cultural tradition and indoctrinated in society heteronormality and a pathologized and vilified vision of homosexuality. This inaugurated repression of same-sex attracted people during Communist era. The post socialist era continued normalizing heterosexuality and disavowing China's past. This paper contends that recasting past and linking past to present can enrich our understanding of present and contest current discourse of heteronormality.Imperial ChinaThe tradition of homoerotic relationships in China is as ancient as history of Chinese culture (Van Gulik, 1961; Chou, 1971; Bullough, 1976; Ruan & Tsai, 1987; Ruan, 1991; Ruan, 1997; Hinsch, 1992). …