The Advent of Queer Discourse Cultivated by Queer People Themselves in 1990s Mainland China: A Focus on the Activities of Gay Activist Chunsheng Wu

Abstract

  This paper investigates the history of queer activism in 1990s mainland China by featuring Chunsheng Wu (Gary Wu), one of the first gay activists in the country. Wu is being forgotten despite contributing significantly to early queer activism and providing valuable documentation related to the Chinese queer community in the 1990s. By analyzing the first-person narratives of queer people documented in Wu’s books and documentary film, this paper aims to portray the formation of queer discourse propagated by queer people themselves through queer activism during the early 1990s, a time when the decriminalization and depathologization of homosexuality had not yet been achieved. There was a dichotomy between “the mainstream medical and scientific representation produced by experts” and “the alternative cultural and artistic representation produced by queer people themselves” that emerged during that period. This paper will conduct a comparative analysis of the practices conveyed by the experts and queer activists such as Wu, including social research, book publications, and filmmaking. With the experts’ discourse of homosexuality as a point of reference, this paper will articulate how the different kinds of queer discourse were formed and reveal their limits by analyzing how queer people narrated themselves. The author believes that this investigation will help illuminate the non-confrontational strategy developed by queer communities in the 2000s and provide insight into negotiating with the current backlash inflicted on queer activism by authorities.