In 2019, on the International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, and Transphobia, a group of “rainbow hunters” embarked on a mission at a prestigious Shanghai university. They were school employees, mostly campus workers and student counselors, tasked with finding anyone with attire or accessories associated with the LGBTQ community. Those found with the rainbow flag, a prominent symbol of the gay rights movement, or other related items were given warnings and told their “parents would be ashamed” of them.
That afternoon of May 17, the university removed all visible rainbow flags and followed up by shutting down an unofficial student-run club advocating for the rights and welfare of LGBTQ students.
“I knew the crackdown was coming sooner or later, but I didn’t expect it to come so quickly,” said Bonnie, a co-founder of the university’s LGBTQ club, who has since graduated and relocated outside mainland China.
In recent years, gender and sexual minorities in China have been increasingly targeted by the authorities and social media platforms, limiting their advocacy and outreach. Most recently, in May, the Beijing LGBT Center was unexpectedly closed, and in 2021, WeChat abruptly shut down several accounts belonging to LGBTQ groups from different universities without any reason.
But nine former and current students from five Chinese universities, some of whom wished not to be quoted, told Foreign Policy that student-led LGBTQ groups have been under immense pressure for years. They’re seen as a “cult” and labeled as “radical” and “illegal” organizations and have been dying a slow death even before the recent crackdowns. Foreign Policy isn’t naming the schools and clubs or disclosing the students’ real names to protect their identities and from possible repercussions against them or their families.
“The media reports have been fixated on the 2021 crackdown,” Bonnie said. “But we were silenced much earlier than that. I wonder if our existence will disappear from memory, as the large focus is on the WeChat crackdown. I envy those organizations [blocked by WeChat] because they can unite under the same flag. But how do we tell our story?”
Bonnie met Jerlin and CMM during her freshman year in the fall of 2017 in Shanghai. Jerlin had already proposed an LGBTQ association as a freshman in 2015, but the university had yet to approve his request. Student-led organizations usually need to apply to relevant university departments, detailing their purpose and benefits to the student community and are required to find a teacher who would supervise them. Regardless of the approval, the trio, however, printed hundreds of flyers inked with the slogan “unofficial, unorthodox,” calling like-minded students interested in gender and sexuality issues to join the club. The three distributed them in dormitories and slid them underneath doors, which Jerlin said was “just like doing the job of a door-to-door salesperson.”
“We are determined to eliminate ignorance through knowledge, combat ignorance with reason, replace apathy with empathy, and treat discrimination with equality,” Jerlin said of the motivation behind starting an LGBTQ club at the university.
In its first year, the club organized movie screenings and book readings on gender and invited experts to speak about safer sex and body anxiety issues. Members also started a campaign to raise awareness and empathy toward LGBTQ students, where they went around campus with a placard asking a simple question: “I’m gay. Are you willing to hug me?” Students said many of their classmates, even those who claimed to be open-minded, often made fun of LGBTQ individuals and even called them derogatory names.
A national survey conducted in 2015 by the U.N. Development Program among some 28,000 LGBTI individuals revealed that only 5 percent of them chose to disclose their sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression at school or in the workplace, fearing discrimination. A 2019 survey by the Chinese Journal of School Health involving 751 LGBT students showed that 41 percent of them had been called names and 35 percent verbally abused.
By October 2018, Jerlin said their club was already on the university’s radar. Club events were being “supervised” by school administrators, and a planned interaction on HIV/AIDS was abruptly canceled. Then the university introduced new rules prohibiting outsiders from entering the school library and study rooms, where the group hosted events. Students were then also required to reserve study rooms unlike before.
“This is when I realized the school was engaging in a witch hunt against us,” Bonnie said. “The intense scrutiny of the club made many students believe we were nothing but trouble and an illegal organization. So many of them, even those who claimed to be gay, started hating us.”
Gu Li, an assistant professor of psychology at New York University Shanghai who studies the development and mental health of LGBTQ individuals, said many university-level students could be struggling with their sexuality and self-acceptance issues. He said student groups and their organized activities may serve as an opportunity to learn about sexual orientation and gender identity while connecting with others.
“How those groups are organized and what activities they conduct are more impactful than the mere presence of the groups,” he said.
China decriminalized homosexuality in 1997 and declassified it as a mental disorder in 2001. The country’s LGBTQ community has since made significant strides—they’re more vocal in addressing their rights, and their visibility has grown dramatically. The community has been emboldened by small yet significant victories: In a 2014 landmark case, a gay rights activist sued the local government department in central Hunan province for defamation; in 2016, a same-sex couple sued a civil affairs bureau, also in Hunan, for rejecting their marriage registration, even though China doesn’t recognize marriage equality; and in 2020, viewers welcomed a video advertisement featuring a man bringing his male partner for the Lunar New Year dinner. In bigger cities, gay and lesbian bars attract large crowds, while drag shows and voguing provide a vibrant entertainment space and exposure for the queer community and allies.
The positive signals indicated a seemingly tolerant attitude toward the LGBTQ community, both from the public and the authorities. But those small wins have mostly been short-lived, as the rhetoric against LGBTQ individuals in certain quarters has turned sharply negative in the past few years. Many nationalists view their identity as a “Western ideology” similar to feminism. There are arguments against Western-style gay pride parades and rainbow capitalism in China, saying for many LGBTQ Chinese, “their familial role and national identity take precedence” over sexuality.
Meanwhile, both the central and local governments have been aggressively promoting incentives for young people to marry and have children amid China’s record-low marriage and childbirth rates. A made-up “masculinity crisis” and malicious targeting of effeminate men have also led to a shift in attitude toward LGBTQ acceptance. In recent years, television channels have blurred rainbow flags, and social media platforms have banned “sissy” men during livestreams, a term that the official state-run Xinhua News Agency described as a “sick culture.”
Then, in 2020, Shanghai Pride, a series of events rather than a parade, abruptly ended, and this year, the Beijing LGBT Center, which had been a crucial support system for the community, shut down due to “force majeure”—a common euphemism for pressure from the authorities—after almost 15 years, raising concerns over the shrinking space for the LGBTQ community in China.
Lik Sam Chan, an assistant professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and co-chair of the International Communication Association LGBTQ Studies Interest Group, said the suppression of LGBTQ activities in China could have stemmed from the ruling Communist Party’s fears of potential Western influence through such events. He said those opposing the LGBTQ community were developing a group identity by negating others and defining “what is not us.”
“What has happened in the last one or two years is an obvious, targeted suppression of LGBTQ-themed activities,” Chan said. “The LGBTQ movement and the #MeToo movement are an unfortunate target, set up by the nationalists, to solidify their sense of Chineseness.”
diana wynne jones fans: you might enjoy this excellent blog post that puts dwj’s work in the context of her life and time. especially after going on a mini dwj tear last month, i maintain that dwj was doing really interesting and original work in fantasy, scifi, literature for children, and literature in general, and that her influence is far more widespread than people realise just in the sheer number of authors she has influenced (a smattering of which you will find towards the end of the post). overall this is simply a really good read and i enjoyed myself immensely all the way through.
the plot to yoi is genuinely so fucking funny like. this dude got drunk and danced with me and i was so haunted by his beauty all year that i quit my job as a world famous athlete and flew to japan. turns out he doesn’t remember our first meeting and thought i was just a lunatic who showed up at his door and decided i was his boyfriend and he went along with it because im hot. we’re engaged now
yoi from viktor’s perspective: my darling my lost love.. finally we reunite and can be together! i will teach you everything i know and stay by your side and you will finally get all the love you deserve💛
yuuri’s perspective: why is my celebrity crush in my house and how do i make him leave
you’re twelve years old and you break your father’s hand when he hi-fives you. the first thing you learn is that the smallest slip up can hurt the people you love. your (foster) father smiles and says it’s okay (it’s not).
your parents are not your parents. the idyllic farming community that raised you is not your home. you’re a You-Don’t-Know-What from You-Don’t-Know-Where. all you know for sure is that you’re not human.
so you can fly. so you can run fast. so you can lift cars. so what? why do you even have this power? what should you even do with it?
your father said do what’s right, so that’s what you do.
you stop a robbery. the man’s knife shatters against your skin and you see the same fear in his eyes that you saw in your father’s when you were twelve. you catch a falling child before it can hit the water. his mother looks at you like you’re a god.
they love you, even though they don’t know you. the most powerful man in the world hates you because they love you.
you wanted to write when you were younger. you wanted to tell stories that needed to be told. you never wanted to star in them. you never wanted super-geniuses and demi-goddesses looking to you for advice; like you have any idea how to handle threats to reality itself. you’re just a kid from smallville who’s trying to do the best he can with what he’s given.
you try and get back to the farm as much as you can. it feels normal being back among the open wheat; where everyone smiles because you’re that nice Kent boy.
when you were younger, you pretended to fly, hands out to your sides and running through the tall grass by the river. it doesn’t look as beautiful from on high; the details get lost and the colors of your hometown blur together from a mile above ground.
the problem with flying is that it puts you so far above people you care about
“oh but Superman is such a boring c-“ shut up shut up shut up forever.
One of the keys to Bruce and Clark’s friendship is Bruce going ‘powers shmowers you think your godlike strength makes you infallible and above people? You’re just some dude in a cape. Who’s an idiot.’
Clark: Oh thank God. This guy gets it.
Bruce *expecting arrogance*: wait what
Clark: yesterday I accidentally locked myself out of my apartment in my underwear trying to get the mail and I forgot I could just break the door open. I stood there for an hour waiting for the locksmith to open before I remembered.
Bruce:….
Clark: I’M AN IDIOT OK, I’m just a guy, I have no idea what I’m doing
Bruce: I hate how endearing this is. Stop making me like you
Clark: if I get my mom to make you lemon squares will you teach me how to pick a lock
No one asked but I think the secret to making the enemies-to-lovers trip work is respect. They can loath each other, but they have to loath each other as equals. Like “sorry but no one else is allowed to murder this man but me” + “it’s an honor and privilege to despise you.”
“The Jedi have unhealthy relationships with people!”
Actually, that’s Anakin!
“The Jedi are too embroiled in politics to truly be able to help people!”
Anakin is literally in the pocket of the Chancellor and continuously insists that they have to abide by the law while multiple other Jedi, particularly Council members, generally try to avoid that whenever possible in order to better help people on the mission.
“The Jedi aren’t involved in politics enough to truly be able to help people!”
Despite living in the Chancellor’s pocket, Anakin literally has no idea how the political system works as evidenced by his criticism of it in AOTC and TCW “Heroes on Both Sides.” By contrast, we see that Ahsoka has clearly gotten an education in politics and has been taught that it’s important to be involved in politics in order to try to keep corruption from happening, an education good enough that she’s literally capable of teaching other kids her own age about it. It’s also the Jedi who we see actively recognizing that Palpatine is corrupt and choosing the do something about it, unlike Anakin who just keeps making excuses for Palpatine.
“The Jedi didn’t fight enough for the clones!”
The Jedi are the ONLY ones we EVER see fighting for the clones in ANY WAY. We see Jedi criticize EACH OTHER for negative treatment of the clones, we see Jedi fight back against the Kaminoans to save the clones, and we see Jedi literally dying to protect the clones. Yoda himself makes the argument to trust the clones after they discover that the clones are probably a Sith trap for the Jedi. There is NO ONE ELSE who ever fights for the clones at all, but the Jedi are seen to do so MULTIPLE TIMES. And I will note that aside from fighting on the battlefield with them, none of these examples include Anakin, who is frequently seen to EXPLOIT his own men, particularly Rex, for his own selfish agendas.
“The Jedi steal babies!”
This has been debunked over and over again by people with more resources than me, but guess who actually DOES steal children? If you guessed Anakin, YOU’D BE RIGHT! And according to the multiple people who gave me examples last time I asked (thank you to all of you who did so), he specifically steals a baby FROM A FORMER JEDI. He also literally helps torture captured Jedi children into becoming Jedi hunters and keeps the body of a Jedi child as a trophy.
“The Jedi have unhealthy relationships with people!”
Actually, that’s Anakin!
“The Jedi are too embroiled in politics to truly be able to help people!”
Anakin is literally in the pocket of the Chancellor and continuously insists that they have to abide by the law while multiple other Jedi, particularly Council members, generally try to avoid that whenever possible in order to better help people on the mission.
“The Jedi aren’t involved in politics enough to truly be able to help people!”
Despite living in the Chancellor’s pocket, Anakin literally has no idea how the political system works as evidenced by his criticism of it in AOTC and TCW “Heroes on Both Sides.” By contrast, we see that Ahsoka has clearly gotten an education in politics and has been taught that it’s important to be involved in politics in order to try to keep corruption from happening, an education good enough that she’s literally capable of teaching other kids her own age about it. It’s also the Jedi who we see actively recognizing that Palpatine is corrupt and choosing the do something about it, unlike Anakin who just keeps making excuses for Palpatine.
“The Jedi didn’t fight enough for the clones!”
The Jedi are the ONLY ones we EVER see fighting for the clones in ANY WAY. We see Jedi criticize EACH OTHER for negative treatment of the clones, we see Jedi fight back against the Kaminoans to save the clones, and we see Jedi literally dying to protect the clones. Yoda himself makes the argument to trust the clones after they discover that the clones are probably a Sith trap for the Jedi. There is NO ONE ELSE who ever fights for the clones at all, but the Jedi are seen to do so MULTIPLE TIMES. And I will note that aside from fighting on the battlefield with them, none of these examples include Anakin, who is frequently seen to EXPLOIT his own men, particularly Rex, for his own selfish agendas.
“The Jedi steal babies!”
This has been debunked over and over again by people with more resources than me, but guess who actually DOES steal children? If you guessed Anakin, YOU’D BE RIGHT! And according to the multiple people who gave me examples last time I asked (thank you to all of you who did so), he specifically steals a baby FROM A FORMER JEDI. He also literally helps torture captured Jedi children into becoming Jedi hunters and keeps the body of a Jedi child as a trophy.
If everyone receives Minimum Basic Income, what happens to all the relationships where one of the individuals no longer has to depend on the other(s) to survive?
Just let that marinate for a moment.
Not just the economic landscape but the social landscape could be transformed.
Not for nothing, but this is literally part of the entire point of Universal Basic Income.
When abused people can just literally walk away, knowing they can still have enough money to live, the world will be a lot less sheltering of abusers and that is a massive fucking benefit.
It gets better than that, if we go with my ideal UBI scenario, in which we peg UBI to “enough to live in any major metropolitan city in the country” and do NOT adjust it for cost of living.
Suddenly, the poverty and scrabbling for survival of rural areas? Gone. That UBI will go a whole long fucking way out there. Suddenly, people who had to move to the cities to get jobs that paid enough? Can afford to move back. Heck, they can afford to get decent fucking broadband out there and continue working, just, not in the city. Suddenly, people who live in rural areas but want to move to the cities with like-minded people? That’s affordable, too. Suddenly, people who want to have a bigger house, but are stuck in a tiny apartment in a city? They can afford to move out to where there are bigger houses.
Universal Basic Income would realign our whole damn society, and I think it would long-term be for the better.
[Image Description: A series of sixteen tweets by John Rogers @jonrog1 that say:
1) A moment at the Teamsters/UPS rally this morning clarified our current struggle with the studio CEO’s (among other bosses). Teamsters got a lot of wins, but one of the main sticking points is the pay for the 65% of local UPS workers who are part-time …
2) If you read the SAG-AFTRA demands, a truly STUNNING amount of their points involve protecting background actors, and trying to improve conditions for the 87% of their union who makes less than $26,000 a year.
3) As WGA members know, this is not a strike for the showrunners. We’re trying to fix the fact the the current younger generation of writers can’t even afford housing and their pathway to advancement has been cut off.
4) Like … folks, I’m fine. There are maybe two proposals in there that affect me. I’m walking in 90% weather and losing over 50% of my income for the year because I want the younger writers to get what I got at this stage of their careers.
5) Our unions and the CEO’s and various negotiators have a fundamental cognitive disconnect. Because CEO’s types only succeed by FUCKING THEIR PEERS.
6) Zaslav, Iger , those types of execs, etc have never gone without so a fellow exec or a junior exec could thrive. A fellow exec failing is the moment to use your own leverage to advance past them, if not destroy them.
7) Part of it is the money but part of this, I think, is a genuine inability to grasp even the concepts of any labor action. Because it is always other-directed.
8) So many people treat capitalism as part of nature red in tooth and claw, but it’s not. It’s a human construct. There are different rules you can play by – but not if you want to win.
9) The greatest gift capitalism ever granted was the ability to validate selfish behavior as a virtue because that’s “just what’s necessary, I don’t make the rules!” (Look ma, it’s reification!)
10) This is where I usually point out that Adam Smith wrote that you have to overpay workers to keep your labor force up, and you need to take into account the psychic damage of capitalism to the workers, and that admiring the rich is the greatest source of moral corruption …
11) But I’ll stave off that diversion to just land with … this is a discontinuity of attitudes which I think was once breached by the fact that management USED to come from people who loved building their company or their trade, even if they eventually did management shit.
12) Now, even that thin thread of SYMPATHY (Adam Smith joke, get it? People?) is gone. The CEO’s are working off a different scorecard, practically and morally. We’re not just playing by wildly divergent rules, our lives and careers are DEFINED by those wildly divergent rules.
13) To them, we are IN FACT being “unreasonable”, as our behavior does not make sense in their moral framework. They don’t think they’re being evil, they think they’re playing by the actual rules, and we’re nuts.
14) There’s not great conclusion to this, other than to note that the bit about making writers homeless was described as “cruel but necessary” because they genuinely don’t understand the meaning of cruel, because they are always on the other side of the power dynamic.
15) And if they’re ever NOT on the top of the power dynamic, they’re not suffering, they’re dead. They are un-people in their own eyes.
16) These men are not irrational, but they are deranged. This isn’t about money, it’s about identity. And in a fight about identity … they will set billions on fire.
Because they can always get more money. But they’ll never shed the stink of losing to their lessers.“
The real challenge of cooking for one is that potato size takes on disproportionate importance. There are so many dishes where one average potato isn’t enough, but two average potatoes is too much, so now I’m assessing diameters and ratios like a tuber phrenologist in search of the potato that’s just the right amount of potato.
Try going by overall weight rather than size
Do I strike you as the sort of person who can reasonably be expected to keep track of partial potatoes?
consider: any partial potato can simply be boiled. miniature mashed potato for you
Any partial potato will be forgotten in the back of the fridge until the resulting mould culture starts developing a state religion.
You’re an ancient Greek man coming home from 4 months of war to find your wife 3 months pregnant. Now you’ve embarked on a solemn quest: to punch Zeus in the face.
Soon after you begin your quest, you encounter another man in a similar situation. You decide to join forces, as two mortal men stand a better chance at punching Zeus than one.
Two villages over, you encounter a woman who had relations with Zeus and was left with a highly aggressive half-boar half-man offspring. She too feels your anger and offers to join your quest.
By the time you reach Mount Olympus, you’ve amassed a large and formidable army of cuckolded/ravished mortals, demigods with daddy issues, mythical creatures with scores to settle, and a seamstress who you’re pretty sure is Hera in disguise.
Zeus never stood a chance.
What I find best about this scenario is that the original wife probably expected to be murdered for her infidelity at worst or have her relationship with her husband ruined as he grew to resent her baby, at best.
Instead this man looked at his beloved and said, “who did it?”
And she replied “Zeus,” accepting he probably wouldn’t believe her.
And then he sighed, strapped his sandals back on and said, “I’ll be back before the baby is born.”
“Where are you-?”
“The lord of the sky came into my house, molested my wife in my bed and ate my food. I am going to settle the score.”
“Darling, he’ll kill you.”
“He may try, if he would like.”
You’re so right, that IS the best part.
I’m personally caught up on the seamstress.
“The pathway up Olympus is guarded by dozens of traps and perils strong enough to thwart even the Titans. How are we going to get past all of…” the shepherd boy with golden eagle feathers gestured uselessly at the slopes above them, particularly the herd of eight-legged goats snorting fire.
“There’s a way around,”
Yiorgos
said, though he was not specifically asked. But he had been the first to begin the march on Olympus, and so felt obligated to take the lead whenever possible, “In the stories there’‘s always a way around whatever obstacles the Gods place in our way.”
He hadn’t meant the words to come out as a question, but they had that lilt to them none-the-less. And even though he hadn’t meant it to be a question, much less a question directed at anyone specific, it was directed at one all the same. Just as the eagle-feathered shepherd boy’s had.
“Way I heard it,” a woman’s voice said. Rough with the Mycenaean Greek equivalent of a backwoods accent, and with the depth of a farmer’s wife who straps cattle to her back to carry to market, “there’s a back path. Hidden behind an invisible door that only one key in the world can open.” Everyone’s eyes had turned to the broad older woman in heavy shawl sitting amidst supplies in the foremost cart. “Least, that’s what my grand-mammy always told me.” she added after a moment of dozens of eyes on her.
“Oh, we were so foolish!” That was Lydia, a lithe waif of a woman, many months pregnant, sitting opposite the seamstress in the wagon. “Of course there’d be a.. a quest. They’d keep such a key in the depths of Tartarus or in the golden chariot of Apollo, or, or-”
“Or”, the older woman cut her off in a voice both firm, but much gentler than she used on anyone else, “he’s like all husbands and has been promising to move the key someplace better for the past three thousand years but hasn’t gotten around to it.” She gestured vaguely to the hillside, “Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was under, say, that bush right over there.”
It was. Of course. And everyone in the caravan agreed that it had been a very lucky and wise guess from the nameless woman and for the upteenth time since she first sat herself down in the front wagon and announced she was coming along with no further explanation, each and every last member very purposefully gave no further thought to the matter.
…Is that woman Hera? Because I can totally see her being Hera in disguise so Zeus can get his commuppence.
