An advocacy group that served as a safe space for the LGBTQ community in Beijing has been shut down as part of a government pressure campaign against gay rights groups. The Beijing LGBT Center's shuttering Monday is a critical blow for the community that used to publicly advocate for their rights. It's part of a wider crackdown that had started under China’s leader Xi Jinping. The center often hosted public speakers, film screenings and other events. Censorship online and pressure from the government has contributed to many LGBTQ+ organizations closing. The group LGBT Rights Advocacy, which brought strategic lawsuits to push for policy change and rights, closed down in 2021 after its founder was detained.
Given the anti China stance of the western news media, does anyone have conext on this story?
If it's true it won't be the first LGBT center closed down in the past few years (hence why I don't see many reasons suspecting this to be fake).
I've thought a lot about why China can't simply just abandon their current "no support, no encouragement, no opposition" policy toward LGBT and instead just openly support LGBT rights, etc — especially since, in my own experience of growing up their, it was kind of shocking how little homophobia I experienced and how much support (albeit at times a bit condescending) I received from friends, families, teachers, etc., despite its society being highly binary-gendered and heteronormative (or maybe we should say reproduction-normative? -- I do think the pressure and homophobia start mounting immensely when one enters the typical child-raising age, but by that time I already bounced). I don't think I have a good answer as for the CPC's stance on this, but there're a few things I've thought about ...
I would suspect part of it may have to do with the fact that, from the CPC's point of view, their base has historically and I'd say continues to be rural China. And especially since the 1980s reforms, rural China's social structure thanks to the household responsibility system (as opposed to the earlier collective farming) has been defined by peasant households. This probably means that, for the lack of a better word, "feudal family values" returned in full force, insofar as it can supposedly safeguard these households that are now again functioning as units of production as well as life.
Another layer I've thought about is that, following the 1980s reforms which practically dismantled a good part of the social safety net (healthcare in particular, but also guaranteed employment and housing), families and extended families have stepped in to be a new, de facto, makeshift social safety net, a change that I suspect was particularly palpable in cities. Which again probably created space for the return of "feudal family values."
All this is to say that, from the viewpoint of the CPC, they probably think that, the moment they start to formalize the disintegration of "traditional family structures," they expect there to be chaos and decay in society — which, yes, is partly attributable to their conservatism and boomer brain, but also attributable to the socio-economic reality of Dengist China.
(Sidenote: there's actually not a lot of reason to suspect that the CPC/Chinese officials of various levels are in anyway ideologically opposed to LGBT. For example, when the civil code was adopted a few years earlier, some same-sex couples started using its provisions of guardianship as a way to formalize their union, and some local governments openly acknowledged this practice and even mentioned it in their training of public notaries.)
If it's true it won't be the first LGBT center closed down in the past few years (hence why I don't see many reasons suspecting this to be fake).
I've thought a lot about why China can't simply just abandon their current "no support, no encouragement, no opposition" policy toward LGBT and instead just openly support LGBT rights, etc — especially since, in my own experience of growing up their, it was kind of shocking how little homophobia I experienced and how much support (albeit at times a bit condescending) I received from friends, families, teachers, etc., despite its society being highly binary-gendered and heteronormative (or maybe we should say reproduction-normative? -- I do think the pressure and homophobia start mounting immensely when one enters the typical child-raising age, but by that time I already bounced). I don't think I have a good answer as for the CPC's stance on this, but there're a few things I've thought about ...
I would suspect part of it may have to do with the fact that, from the CPC's point of view, their base has historically and I'd say continues to be rural China. And especially since the 1980s reforms, rural China's social structure thanks to the household responsibility system (as opposed to the earlier collective farming) has been defined by peasant households. This probably means that, for the lack of a better word, "feudal family values" returned in full force, insofar as it can supposedly safeguard these households that are now again functioning as units of production as well as life.
Another layer I've thought about is that, following the 1980s reforms which practically dismantled a good part of the social safety net (healthcare in particular, but also guaranteed employment and housing), families and extended families have stepped in to be a new, de facto, makeshift social safety net, a change that I suspect was particularly palpable in cities. Which again probably created space for the return of "feudal family values."
All this is to say that, from the viewpoint of the CPC, they probably think that, the moment they start to formalize the disintegration of "traditional family structures," they expect there to be chaos and decay in society — which, yes, is partly attributable to their conservatism and boomer brain, but also attributable to the socio-economic reality of Dengist China.
(Sidenote: there's actually not a lot of reason to suspect that the CPC/Chinese officials of various levels are in anyway ideologically opposed to LGBT. For example, when the civil code was adopted a few years earlier, some same-sex couples started using its provisions of guardianship as a way to formalize their union, and some local governments openly acknowledged this practice and even mentioned it in their training of public notaries.)