Chinese gay men’s coming out narratives: Connecting social relationship to co-cultural theory

ABSTRACT

Theorizing the intersection of queer identity and culture values, this study examines Chinese gay men’s coming-out experiences through a narrative analysis of 60 self-reported stories online. It finds that Chinese gay men’s decision to come out, their communication orientations, and the outcomes of their coming out are influenced by traditional Chinese cultural values such as family, marriage, and duty. Assertive assimilation, assertive accommodation, and nonassertive accommodation are the most used communication orientations. The study adds to co-cultural theory by demonstrating that types of social relationships affect the communication orientations adopted, at least in the context of China.

KEYWORDS:

• Coming out
• gay men
• co-cultural theory
• narratives
• China

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Dr. Mary Meares and Dr. Meredith Bagley for reading the initial draft of the manuscript and providing valuable feedbacks, and thank Dr. Mark Orbe and Dr. Tony Adams for providing constructive comments to our conference presentations. Finally, they would like to express their gratitude to two anonymous reviewers and the editor for their thoughtful comments.

Notes

1. Homowife is the literal translation of the Chinese word tongqi (tong—homo, qi—wife), This term has been commonly used by Chinese and Western journalists and researchers to refer to tongqi (e.g. Burger, 2012).