Act II, Constraints and Liberation

Starting with the relationship between constraints and liberation as well as queerness, Oliver embarked on a journey to find an antidote to that question.

Scene I: Queer vs the World

Homosexuality appeared and even became popular as early as the ancient Greek period (Drescher, 2010). At that time, male and teenage same-sex love was mainly popular among leisurely traditional clan nobles and rich people, it was not only accepted, but also respected (Halperin, 2000), and there were even a large number of people at that time. Poems related to it appear, such as the 1388 lines handed down by Theognis, the last 158 lines are all about the love of men and boys:

“Oh, beautiful boy, Since the Cypriot goddess has bestowed upon your grace, Your beautiful form is admired by all, Then listen to these words, Put my gratitude into your heart, You have to know how difficult it is for a man to endure love.” (Theognis)

Figure 5, Young man and teenager engaging in intercrural sex, 550 BC–525 BC, Louvre

Figure 6, Teresa de Lauretis the first queer theory conference, 1990

And it was not until the 1990s that queer theory came into being (Anderson, 2014), it is a new branch of postmodern feminist theory that emerged in the 1990s. After inheriting the consistent deconstruction of sex and gender in postmodern feminism, it has further developed its theory (McLelland, 2018). And beyond the scope of philosophy or feminism, it has become a broad, ironic political and cultural resistance movement. Adherents of this theory no longer call themselves gay or lesbian but call themselves queer. Now queer is not only in theory, but it also goes deep into film, art and other more intense forms of expression. Oliver remembers it was 5th April 2017 in the Tate Britain in London, that the UK held the first special exhibition "Queer British Art". This exhibition presents the works, stories and lives of LGBTQ art creators in the 100 years from 1861 to 1967. Oscar Wilde, Simon

Solomon, Maud Allen, David Hockney... They used words, brushes and dances and digital forms to tell the audience one after another private but fascinating stories.

In Oliver’s opinion, Queer community is often in a situation where they have to “act” : “Firstly, they have to hide their true self, secondly, they need to express their true feelings. The injustices, aspirations and reality they experienced were vaguely and powerfully manifested by the creators through artistic means and only possible through artistic means.”

Figure 7, Queer British Art

“Although more people will pay attention to the queer community through these manifestations.” Oliver says to himself. “When we discuss queer art separately, does it mean that even today, it is still a constrained, special exist?” As the famous American art theorist Douglas Crimp once said: “I think everyone in this world has to negotiate and coordinate in their lives, whether they are artists, critics, editors or audiences. We do not forget our identities, but we can have multiple identities and multiple interests at the same time.”

Scene II: Sexuality and Queerness in Ancient China

Countless times, Oliver wished he hadn't been born in such a place. It is worth mentioning that in a social environment like this, it’s a complete guilt to think that way (Wu, 2003), which makes him feel worse and suffocating.

In general, the ancient Chinese had rather open and accepting views of human sexuality until the 13th century (McLelland, 2018). Today, many historical references available indicate that unlike in Europe, in ancient China people were not seriously persecuted for engaging in same-sex sexual behavior. homosexuality was widespread, recognized and fairly tolerated, although not fully accepted (Ruan, 1991; Samshasha, 1997; Chou, 1997), in ancient China it is popular or a trend especially for poets in the Tang dynasty to have same-sex lovers to write poems to, besides having wives, it is also Figure 12, Woman spying on male lovers, Qing-Dynasty, Chinese Sexual Culture Museum, Shanghai normal for emperors in different dynasties to have same-sex companions (Wu, 2003). Same-sex encounters were only seen as behavior, not the core or some special nature of the person. “Male homosexuality may have been a familiar feature of Chinese life in prehistoric times… China’s earliest historical records contain accounts of male homosexuality. ” says Wu (2003). The ancient Chinese called men who had same-sex attraction Long Yang or Xiang Gong and used terms like Yu Tao (“sharing the remaining peach”) or Duan Xiu (“cut sleeve”) to denote gay relationships (Halperin, 2000), which are all positive expressions. However, none of these speculations occurred before the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644 A.D.), a time when the public attitudes of the Chinese people toward human sexuality were beginning to become more inhibited. After being invaded and defeated by the Western powers in the mid-to-late nineteenth century, “progressive” Chinese intellectuals at the turn of the twentieth century believed that Chinese traditions were “backwards” and the actual cause of China’s defeat; they looked to Westernization as a cure for the nation (Stevenson and Wu, 2012). This occurred at a time when homosexuality was regarded as a psychiatric condition in the West. Consequently, a pathological view of homosexuality and other antihomosexual attitudes were adopted by the Chinese along with Western technology and other “progressive thoughts.” Oliver also learned that it was only after 1949 that homosexual behavior was seriously punished in China and served as grounds for persecution during Chinese political upheavals between the 1950s and 1970s (Wu, 2003). “What’s happening, was the history moving backwards?”

In the 1980s, the Chinese government’s “open door” policy made it possible for the Chinese gay and lesbian community to develop (Stevenson and Wu, 2012). It was also at that time within this special social background that they developed a special name “tongzhi” for themselves, which used to mean a group of people with the same ambitions that were commonly used as the secret signal that connects queer people at that time.

He remembers the first time he heard the word was through his mother’s tongue, all the look of disgust and confusion on her face, he can never forget.

Despite the official pathologizing position of Chinese psychiatry–the prevailing view until recently–starting in the late 1980s, gay-friendly scholars and health professionals began to sympathetically research the gay (TongZhi) community in China and advocate for sexual minorities. It was not until 2001 that the latest edition of the Chinese Classification of Mental Disorders removed the diagnosis of homosexuality but still retained a diagnosis resembling ego-dystonic homosexuality (Chong-suk Han, 2008). Nevertheless, the “TongZhi” community in China has much work left to do before achieving full civil rights. “What has happened to Chinese queer in the field of art?”

Due to changes in the social environment, the development of queer art in China has also shown different states in different periods (Zeikowitz, 2004). In the past, because of the influence of social conditions and traditional factors, the social structure of China was very different compares to the west. The dissemination of queer art in China was greatly constrained, there was no way for artists to "go up against the wind" to promote queer art (McLelland, 2018). But nowadays the social atmosphere is becoming more and more open. coupled with someintegration of Western ideological trends, young artists have also started to express queer art in their own way, challenging the heterosexual system and heterosexual hegemony in mainstream culture, aiming to break through the prison that suppresses people's free choice. Still in the real environment of Chinese contemporary art, queerness, as a certain creative theme, a certain visible part of the creation, has not yet developed a representative, and it is still very early and scattered (Anderson, 2014). It's not mainstream, it's just slowly emerging from the ground. As queer artists and art, they don't want to be classified as a category. As a motif, it is developing. The issue we have to focus on is broader, and as a part, it will become richer, but at the moment, it is far from being representative.

Scene III: Chapter One: The Age of Chaos

It was at the age of five, just like any other kid, it is normal to fight and make physical contact in kindergarten and he enjoyed it. But when the boy across the table kept hitting his calf with his feet at a joint lunch, he felt something new and different for the first time.

Was it positive? Was it negative? It was a chaotic feeling…

From then on, he does what a boy should do as usual, hang out with the boys with competitive sports, flirt with girls with love letters… He never questioned the intentions, as he believes the fact that it was what he should do although there was always a question mark underneath…

as time goes by, the more he thought about it, the more struggle he would,

the feeling of being on his own, being the freak one and confused was consuming.

It was not until the age of 15 that the word “queer” came into his life while having a random conversation with friends. That was anoverwhelming momentas if all his worldviews were based on ignorance until then. T

here was hope, the hope of being straight and “normal”, there was a belief, the belief of there is no such thing as “queer”.

The resistance and sense of not belonging established his initial thoughts of why people choose to live as “queer” while there are obvious constraints of being queer in the social environment.

In the context of Chinese culture, the family occupies a very important position (McLelland, 2018).

“They influence our opinions and decisions. We have all wanted to leave them, but we can't actually leave them.” He says so while staring at the word “queer” on his computer, “There’s always an invisible bondage between us, isn’t it?” He can't help thinking of his first conversation with his mother about queer issues, at that moment, he cannot even tell who he was, all those great and unconditional love seem so fragile, he felt like a traitor, it was a rainy day, but there was a storm raging in the house.

Chapter Two: The Enlightenment

It was not until middle school that Oliver tumbled upon pornography, the images were so strong that he even had trouble sleeping afterwards.

Pornography has been distributed on such a widespread and easily accessible scale (Burke, 2016). This is thanks to the internet with some people claiming that it takes up a huge percentage of total web content (Seitz, 2019). There’s no doubt that pornography can leave

negative mental and physical influences.In terms of sexuality, it is one of the most effective measures to make people realize that they’re into things they’re already prone to be into. There is no doubt that pornography has become one guilty pleasure for him, pornography products make him feel like there are two personalities living inside him. They say people do go through some phases and periods in their life when they desire things different to what they usually want, or they awaken something that has already been there (Cowen, 1991).

That’s what happened to Oliver’s mind, he recognized that it was perfectly normal when you live in a heteronormative society to realize that you have non-straight desires because it was not encouraged for you to think you might.

Chapter Three: Inquisitiveness and Attempts

There’s a lighthouse ahead and then? He was always alone. When Oliver was forced to join the football team, he knew he didn't belong there. “There has to be a way to reach out.” He said to himself.

Perhaps because he was born in a small city, thanks to the internet,he made a lot of attempts out of curiosity. “Danlan.org” – an east Asian queer online forum was the first thing in which he found connections, good and bad, more importantly, he got an unprecedented sense of belonging. From then on, Oliver has witnessed the rise of social media, especially queer social media in east Asia as well as the entire world.

“Can you imagine all of the queer people I knew at the beginning were from the queer social media or dating APPs?” One day he was talking about this with his university friends, “I can feel that they are everywhere but there’s nowhere else to find them.”

Coming out in this country could be a mission impossible (McLelland, 2018). Oliver once dated a boy, but it took half a month before he found out that he was experiencing a “marriage of convenience” , which is a marriage between a gay and a lesbian arranged in response to parental expectations of a conventional marriage that commonly happens in China (Furth, 1991).

He felt very sympathetic to this behavior And also frustrated by the constraints this society places on the queer community. He expected that in another context, this constraint might disappear.

Scene IV: Chapter One: Who’s the Popular Boy?

As soon as Oliver came to the western world, he noticed that it seems to be true that there are differences between being the same queer individual in different social content (O’Connor, Stravynski and Hallam, 1997). The same thing was he still feels trapped in this queer body. But at this time, the constraints were more not from the society, but from the queer community itself.

Oliver still remembers when he was in Asia, At the very beginning of queer socializing under the influence of the internet and technology, whenever he opened the dating app, there were almost no real pictures on everyone’s profile (Chiang, 2010) including himself. “It was a guessing game, and everyone was anonymous.”

Things got better in the next few years. But oddly, all users were trying their best to chase a certain male image (Ayres, 1999) - Muscular, bearded, with similar poses and dresses. There’s a certain unspoken queer status and stereotypical mainstream figures of the queer community along with the influence and development of technology and online relationships/kinship (Wu, 2003). People who are queer but embodied in different physical appearances are gradually and secretly classified.

“Would the situation change in a different social context?” Oliver wonders.

Figure 13, Rachrd Fung, Orientations: Lesbian and Gay Asians, 1984 After moving to this western city, he finally got a chance for new queer experiences. he decided to open the dating app and tried to reach out in the same way he did back then, Frustratingly, being neglected and blocked are the most common endings (Chiang, 2010), and it didn't take long for him to realize that the constraints of hierarchy still existed here. But unlike the previous classification based on body and appearance, race is a huge influencer here(Ayres, 1999). Hierarchy and centralization here exist not only in social media but also in mainstream queer media, film and television, pop culture, queer events, everyday life and even pornography. As to western pornography. In gay porn in particular, before 2000, gay Asian actors exist only for the pleasure of white men (Tsang, 1994). In his seminal work, Fung, a famous Asian American porn actor finds that gay Asian porn actors always take the bottom role

of a passive recipient of anal sex, except for one instance. Even in the one exception where the Asian porn actor plays the active sexual partner, the narrative of the “plot” has him performing the role of the white man’s domestic servant. In this way, even the normally aggressive and active sexual role of the “top” is couched in the Asian man’s “service” of the white man (Fung, 2007).

Chapter Two: The Cloaked Truth

All of these experiences and knowledge gradually formed an order in which queer people could involuntarily find their own place and class (Burke, 2016), what it means to be a proper queer as well as the unspoken cloaked truth in queer society and even mainstream queer culture that values masculinity over femininity, active over passive, and virile over submissive.

In doing so, queer culture inevitably creates a hierarchy of those who belong in the queer community and those who are simply marginal members (Chong‐suk Han, 2008). The subconscious and profound constraints within the community are even more severe than those outside the community. At the same time, the development of science and technology has a subtle impact on the social structure system of the entire queer community (Tsang, 1994).

In other words, can we use technology to ease the constraints within the community, develop empathy and understanding, and affect the kinship and social structure of queer community positively?