Queer acceptance in Asian societies before and after the introduction of western European queerphobia
Part 2 of "Questioning tropes about anti-LGBTQ+ attitudes in communities of color"
[Warning: mild spoiler for Samurai Champloo at the end]
Now some of us who live in countries with predominantly Western European cultures may have experienced or witnessed a variation of this incident:
A LGBTQ+ person of Asian[i] descent walks into a pre-dominantly white queer space and is assumed to be a cishet person who has wandered into “the wrong place.”
The specifics of the incident might differ: It could have happened in Western Europe or in North America. It could have happened in the middle of the 20th century or last year. The target of these unfounded assumptions could be South Asian, East Asian, or any other Asian regional origin.
The responses of the unwelcoming people gatekeeping the queer space could be:
a loud “She/he can’t be [insert queer identity]! She/he is Asian!” remark from the 1960s,
a wall of silent stares that say clearly without words, “What are you doing here?” in the 1990s,
or a whispered “Are they in the wrong place?” in the 2020s.
But the common thread linking these incidents is a baseless assumption that Asians are much less likely than [the unnamed “default”] to be queer. As for what that unnamed “default” is, see the previous post. 😉 (Similar uninformed assumptions have also been made about other people of color. Btw, according to a 2016 study from UCLA School of Law, non-Latino white Americans are the least likely to identify as transgender compared to other U.S. demographic groups. [1])
If/when these people get past their initial faulty assumption that the Asian individual in question can’t be queer, the next assumption that they often make is that the queer Asian person is closeted, and/or their family/community is transphobic or homophobic.
Now this assumption might be true in some cases. But those who make such assumptions might want to ask themselves if they are anywhere near as quick to make similar assumptions about a white queer person.
The harms of double standards and gatekeeping
The queer identity of a white European-descent queer person is almost never framed in opposition to their whiteness. They are not perceived as having a conflict between race, ethnicity, and queerness in the way queer people of color are perceived to be, even when there are ample examples of homophobic white families and supportive non-white families.
Queer Asians can have their queer identities denied by European gatekeepers of “queerness” when they fail to perform the stereotypical conflict between their ethnic/religious identities and their LGBTQ+ identities that some Europeans have come to expect. An asylum court in the Netherlands decided that a gay Pakistani asylum seeker could not really be gay because he did not undergo much personal struggle in coming out. In the Orientalist view of the Dutch court, it was impossible for a gay Pakistani to not struggle between being Pakistani and being gay.[2]
Queer Asians can also have their queer identities denied by European gatekeepers of “queerness” when their personal experiences fail to meet European stereotypes of how homophobic Asian societies should be. A Dutch asylum court rejected a gay Afghan asylum seeker whose boyfriend’s family wanted to kill him, despite his own family member documenting the death threat. The Dutch judge could not believe that an Afghan gay man could have a family member as an ally. Since the Afghan man’s family failed to perform the unadulterated homophobic villainy that the racist Orientalist script written by Europeans demanded of them, the European judge decided that the asylum seeker could not really be gay.[3]
Europeans and their colonial descendants usually have no difficulty acknowledging a wide range of attitudes towards LGBTQ+ people - both positive and negative - in their own societies, but too many of them fail to imagine that non-European societies also exhibit similar complexities, where different families and neighborhoods may display varying levels of tolerance towards members of the queer community. Saro Imran, a transgender youth advocate in Pakistan, has the acceptance of family members and the support of peers despite facing transphobia in larger society.[4]
Queer visibility in late 19thc. – early 20th c. South Asia and East Asia
The Mughal Empire (which ruled in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India during the 16th-19th centuries) supported traditional nonbinary trans communities[ii] with grants of cash, land, and begging rights.[5] Audrey Truschke, a Rutgers University professor specializing in Mughal history, said.
“I would be hard-pressed to think of any instances in premodern India where people seem particularly concerned about there being various people we would now call ‘transgender.’ Whether it’s women dressing up as men, or intersex people or eunuchs, they’re around, they’re there, they have their own place in society, and that’s that.” [6]
But the socioeconomic status of traditional trans communities in South Asia took a turn for the worse after the British colonizers criminalized them in the 1871 Criminal Tribes Act.[7] The legacy of European influence feeds present day anti-trans discrimination in South Asia. [8]
There were similar developments in East Asia and its diaspora. Amy Sueyoshi, a professor in Sexuality Studies at San Francisco State University, described how the homosexual tradition in Japan, which was socially acceptable during the shogunate, started to decline during the succeeding Meiji era (1868-1912): “Japan was increasingly trying to become more Western and modern, they began to adopt American notions of morality, both in terms of gender as well as sexuality.” [9]
In the early 20th century, gay expatriates from around the world, including the U.S., took refuge China because China was more tolerant of homosexuality than their home countries were.[10] But this native tolerance would wane as China continued the move toward Westernization. When translations of works by European sexologists became more widely available in China, homosexuality became increasingly pathologized.[11]
Queer Asian Cultural Memory
Despite Western queerphobic influence, native forms of queerness have never been fully suppressed in Asia. Traditionally organized transfemme communities remained publicly visible in Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and India. India Express describes them as “an integral part of South Asia’s civilizational space”.
In 2007, Nepal led the world in issuing a Supreme Court ruling that the government must legally recognize non-binary people based on self-identification.[12] In 2014, India’s Supreme Court also recognized a non-binary gender category and gave non-binary people the right to self-identification.[13] For comparison, Denmark, the first in Europe, allowed self-identification for trans people starting in 2014.[14] In 2018, a Netherlands district court referred to legal precedents from Nepal and India when it ruled that the Dutch legislature should recognize a non-binary gender category.[15]
Nepal issued its first nonbinary passport in 2015.[16] For comparison, the US issued its first nonbinary passport in 2021.[17]
In 2006, Lu Wei-ming, a Taoist priest in Taiwan, opened a temple dedicated to 兔儿神, a deity of homosexual love.[18] Wei-ming Temple is said to be the only gay shrine in the world.[19] The 21st c. gay temple in Taipei is heir to the queer Chinese tradition behind a similar gay temple established in mid-16th c. Fujian, China. The story behind the 16th c. temple dedicated to male same-sex desire was recorded by 18th c. pansexual polyamorous writer Yuan Mei under the entry 兔儿神 in Chapter 19 of his story collection Zibuyu.[20]
In 1999, Oshima Nagisa, one of Japan’s foremost directors, released the award-winning queer period film Gohatto, set in the 1860s. The film was adapted from the short story Maegami no Souzaburo by the popular historical novelist Shiba Ryotaro. The plot of Maegami no Souzaburo and its film adaptation Gohatto was driven by Japan’s homoerotic shudo tradition. [21]
The popular 2004 anime Samurai Champloo also paid homage to Japan’s rich queer history through a minor character, a closeted gay Dutchman. He came to Edo Japan seeking liberation after reading a gay Japanese book that opened his eyes to the possibility of a public queer life. In Episode 6 "Stranger Searching", the anime references the well-documented intersection of drag actors and the gay/bi male scene in Edo Japan: the Dutchman outed himself as gay after watching the performance of a Japanese drag actor. Samurai Champloo revels in being irreverently ahistorical, but the book that inspired the gay Dutchman really does exist: Ihara Saikaku’s The Great Mirror of Male Love, written in the 17th century.
Asia is a large and culturally diverse continent. The extent to which queer histories are acknowledged in public discourse varies from country to country. But queer ancestors have lived there, just as they did on any other continent, and they existed as an integral part of traditional societies, and not in opposition to tradition, despite what some queerphobic voices in the present day would have us believe.
(There may be more parts to this “"Questioning tropes about anti-LGBTQ+ attitudes in communities of color" series in the future but they may not be contiguous.)
References:
[1] Race-Ethnicity-Trans-Adults-US-Oct-2016.pdf (ucla.edu)
[2] So much for Dutch tolerance: life as an LGBT asylum seeker in the Netherlands (theconversation.com)
[3] So much for Dutch tolerance: life as an LGBT asylum seeker in the Netherlands (theconversation.com)
[4] Empowering transgender youth in Pakistan | OHCHR
[5] Pakistan's Transgender Community Rises Up | The Nation
[6] Pakistan's Transgender Community Rises Up | The Nation
[7] (PDF) Governing Gender and Sexuality in Colonial India: The Hijra, c.1850–1900 | Jessica Hinchy - Academia.edu
[8] The Third Gender and Hijras | Religion and Public Life at Harvard Divinity School
[9] Seen and Unseen: Queering Japanese American History Before 1945 - OPENING EXHIBIT (youtube.com)
[10] ‘I wanted to avenge them’: From mug shots to works of art, this exhibit explores Northwest culture through the lens of gay artists | The Seattle Times
[11] A Preliminary Exploration of the Gay Movement in Mainland China: Legacy, Transition, Opportunity, and the New Media | Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society: Vol 39, No 4 (uchicago.edu)
[12] South Asia’s Third Gender Court Judgments Set Example | Human Rights Watch (hrw.org)
[13] NATIONAL LEGAL SERVICES AUTHORITY (NALSA) VS. UNION OF INDIA - South Asian Translaw Database - THIRD GENDER (clpr.org.in)
[14] How does Denmark compare? (oecd.org)
[15] South Asia’s Third Gender Court Judgments Set Example | Human Rights Watch (hrw.org)
[16] Nepal Is The Latest Country to Acknowledge A Third Gender on Passports | TIME
[17] U.S. issues first passport with a nonbinary gender 'X' option : NPR
[18] How a rabbit god became an icon for Taiwan’s gay community | LGBTQ+ rights | The Guardian
[19] Thousands Of Gay Pilgrims Trek To Taiwan To Pray For Love At "Rabbit" Temple | News | Logo TV
[20] 卷十九_子不语_袁枚_在线阅读_中华典藏 (zhonghuadiancang.com)
[21] 「前髪の惣三郎」新選組の男色騒動 /司馬遼太郎 新選組血風録より - akのもろもろの話 (akirainhope.com)
Notes:
[i] “Asian” is defined as someone whose ancestry is from the Asian continent. This definition includes West Asians (e.g. Palestinians and Iranians), Central Asians (e.g. Kazakhs and Uzbeks), South Asians (e.g. Pakistanis and Indians), Southeast Asians (e.g. Filipinos and Cambodians) and East Asians (e.g. Chinese and Japanese).
[ii] Hijras are transfemmes who live in guru-chela communities. Regarded as nonbinary, community members intersex and/or transgender. The term is considered derogatory in Pakistan where khwaja sira is the preferred term. In parts of North India, kinnar is preferred. The preferred term is Tamil Nadu is thirunangai.