Passionate aesthetics

T-P gender practices and discourses, and the hierarchies within lesbian (lala) communities in contemporary mainland China

Dados Bibliográficos

ID3608872
AutoresYiran Wang (0000-0003-3753-2206, University of Amsterdam, autor correspondente)
Ano2021
Volume30
Fascículo5
Páginas561-572
Data de publicação2021-07-04
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoJournal of Gender Studies (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0958-9236 • E-ISSN: 1465-3869
EditoraInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/09589236.2021.1929094
OpenAlexW3162234770
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas1
Referências citadas29

As a masculine-feminine pairing comparable to butch-femme lesbian genders in Euro-American societies, T-P gender roles constitute lively elements in the lesbian, or lala, subculture in contemporary mainland China. Based on an ethnographic study conducted in the mid-2010s in Shanghai and Yunnan Province, China, and applying the theoretical framework of ‘passionate aesthetics’, in this article I investigate discourses and practices relevant to T-P genders. I analyse how hierarchies have been (re)produced inside lala communities, and how, in these processes, (hetero)normative understandings of gender and sexuality have become both sources of knowledge and objects of critique. I argue that multiple and competing passionate aesthetics, including the dominant form of heteronormativity in China and globalized, if not Western, knowledge about gender and sexuality, have entailed three major kinds of hierarchy among lalas: hierarchies among T-P categories, which are paradoxically defined by the notion of ‘pureness’; hierarchies in feminist and LGBTQ activist discourses, which trivialize or even silence everyday T-P embodiments; and hierarchies between masculinity and femininity, which encourage diverse practices of female masculinity but still value masculinity over femininity

Aesthetics · Art · China · Ethnography · Femininity · Heteronormativity · Human sexuality · Lesbian · Mainland China · Masculinity · Normative · Political science · Queer · Sociology · Transgender · African Sexualities and LGBTQ+ Issues · Anthropology · Gender Studies · LGBTQ Health, Identity, and Policy · Sex work and related issues