Beyond heteronormativity? Gay cruising, closeted experiences and self-disciplining subject in People’s Park, Guangzhou

ABSTRACT

In this paper, I examine relationships between public space, gay people’s cruising and construction of gay subjectivity in People’s Park, Guangzhou, China. In particular, I interrogate the complex dynamics between the performance of homosexual identity and the dominant heteronormative ideologies in China’s cultural–political sphere. I articulate how public cruising can be mobilized as a space of alternative socio-spatial ordering and simultaneously a closeted space to experience and reassert hegemonic divides of public/private, normal/abnormal. This paper employs an analysis of self-disciplining and the production of docile bodies to examine how gay cruisers construct gayness as deviant identity and thus attempt to reconcile gay subjects with dominant norms and values. The production of self-disciplining subjects is centered on the discursive formulation that gay men in public need to act in self-regulated and “low-profile” ways. This paper intends to enrich our understanding of the intrinsically dialectical relationships between public space and sexual subjectivity in concrete time spaces.

KEYWORDS:

• Public space
• cruising
• gay identity
• closet
• self-disciplining subjectivity

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank all the friends in Chi-Heng and other NGOs for their invaluable help and support. I am also grateful to Tom Slater, Eric Laurier, Shenjing He, Lily Kong, George Lin, Deborah Martin, and the three anonymous referees for their advices and guidance.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. All gay cruisers’ names cited in this paper are pseudonyms.

2. Extortion and theft happens between gay men on a frequent basis. For example, one gay man may extort another for a certain amount of money after they have sexual intercourse.

3. In this large-scale police harassment, over 100 gay cruisers were arrested by the police. The police charged the gay men of prostitution and extortion, but could not be able to present evidence for each gay man they convicted.

4. Ah-Qiang, The Secret Garden at the Crossroad, online article addressing gay cruising in People’s Park, 14 May, 2009, source: http://www.infzm.com/content/28370 (in Chinese language). Ah-Qiang is the director of PFLAG Guangzhou, a local NGO working on homosexual communities and LGBT rights movement.

Additional information

Funding

The study is funded by the National Science Foundation of China [grant number 41401139], the Science Foundation of Guangdong Province [grant number 2014A030310295] and Department of Education of Guangdong Province [grant number 2014KQNCX060].