Abstract
The cause of relative conservatism around homosexuality in Chinese societies has been attributed to Confucianism in existing academic research, but this literature does not explain how people internalise the ideology and its influence on their homophobia. By examining academic literature around Confucianism and Individualism, I demonstrate the Confucian emphasis and Western dismissal of communal, familial, and national obligations, which, under the influence of independent homophobic narratives that depict homosexuality to be at odds with these obligations, precipitated a uniquely intense ‘queer guilt’ in Chinese gays. To illustrate the unique effects of this Confucian guilt, I point to how it manifested as an aversion to public expressions of homosexuality, a sense of culpability for familial suffering, and a feeling of responsibility for national strife in Chinese queer literature, while without Confucian prioritisation of these values over the individual, queer works from the West was free of these anxieties. Through comparative literature analysis, a methodology which has been used by previous research to analyse the cause of Chinese homophobia, I add nuance to previous research by arguing that while the ideology worsened homophobia, the roots of discrimination lie in pre-existing homophobic narratives which claim homosexuality to be detrimental to communities, families, and nations, and establish them as a new target of focus for the fight against bigotry.
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Introduction:
Chinese societies are outliers in academic studies about the cause of homophobia. Factors established to correlate with homophobia, including economic deprivation, the lack of education, and Christian and Islamic fundamentalism are not pervasive in it, yet many nations in this area have been slow to change discriminatory laws against gays. The PRC continues to have textbooks that label homosexuality as a mental disorder. Meanwhile, same-sex marriage remains unattainable throughout Asia except in Taiwan, which only legalised it in 2019, far later than many Western nations.
In the ongoing academic discourse about why East Asia is reluctant to accept homosexuality, recent studies have attributed this conservatism to the dominance of Confucianism, an ideology deeply entrenched in East Asian societies for two millennia. Existing academic research on this question usually forms two main groups: sociological survey-based studies which analyse the correlation between Confucianism and attitudes towards gays and classics-based studies which discuss whether Confucian texts have homophobic implications. However, both rely on circumstantial argumentation. Survey-based studies compute how frequently the level of alignment with Confucian ideals in a response matches with indications of homophobia, which may suggest a connection between the two but fails to explain the mechanism through which a Confucian ideal is internalised by society and manifests as homophobia. Meanwhile, textual studies are faced with their own class of issues with interpreting esoteric and ambiguous ancient Chinese literature, where the same text can be reinterpreted to justify vastly different ideas. Moreover, even if a clear conclusion surfaced from text analysis, the same issue for correlational studies occurs. It is unclear as to how the idea from the text has been internalised by society, especially because the tenets of Confucianism are no longer comprehensively nor systematically taught, but rather subconsciously engrained in ‘conventional wisdom’ and normative values.
In essence, both methods can demonstrate a correlation between Confucianism and homophobia, but neither can conclusively explain how specific Confucian ideas inform homophobic narratives. This is an important gap in academic literature because, with the resurgence of Confucianism in China, it is necessary to avoid homophobic pitfalls encoded in Confucianism given that an outright rejection of the incredibly dominant ideology is infeasible.
To fill this gap, this essay will perform a comparative literature analysis on autobiographical and fictional depictions of homosexuality from Chinese and Western societies in the 20th century and argue that while Confucianism did worsen homophobia, it is not inherently homophobic. Through the authors’ implicit and explicit justifications of their Confucian conservatism or Western acceptance towards homosexuality, I identify three main themes on which Chinese and Western writings differ — communal obligations, familial obligations, and national obligations. For each obligation, I examine philosophical academic literature to show that Confucianism emphasises it while Individualism renounces it and explain that due to this, Chinese gays are more easily restrained by existing homophobic narratives which assert that being gay curtails one’s ability to fulfil these obligations. I then show how this manifests as homophobia in Chinese queer literature, and compare how, without these Confucian anxieties, Western authors are able to seek sexual liberation, thus demonstrating the exacerbatory role played by Confucianism.
Crucially, this argument fills the gap in previous literature by showing that Confucian ideals are ultimately conceptualised as a triad of obligations in the Chinese queer consciousness, but are not the fundamental cause for homophobia. Instead, it only increases the strength of homophobic narratives — ones that pit homosexuality against communities, families, and nations — which arose independently of Confucianism.
For literature from Confucian societies, the main primary sources I use originate from the Republic and People’s Republic of China, including the short story anthology Lonely Seventeen and the “canonical” queer novel Crystal Boys by Pai Hsien-yung, Chong Yang by Chiang Kuei, and The Years of My Boyhood by Guo Moruo. For literature from the West, I mainly use British and American sources, including Andrew Holleran’s Dancer from the Dance, Martin Duberman’s Cures and J.R. Ackerley’s My Father and Myself, also drawing from Paul Robinson’s analysis of these works in his book, Gay Lives.
I. Coming Out — A Violation of Communal Obligation
The primary theme that surfaces almost universally in Western queer literature is that of ‘coming out’ — announcing one’s nonconformitive identity to their immediate community. However, this is not the case for Chinese writers, who, despite themselves having written about queerness and in effect come out to society, are apologetic and even homophobic when describing gays’ attempts to express their ‘queerness’ in their novels. Under prevalent homophobic societal narratives that mark homosexuality as deviant behaviour, the display of homosexuality is perceived to violate the community in both 20th-century China and the West. Thus, the disagreement about coming out then boils down to the clash of Chinese aversion and Western nonchalance towards the scandalisation of normativity, which can easily be attributed to Confucian and Individualistic influences.
Confucianism is defined by communitarianism. As David Ho writes, the individual bears responsibility to the Confucian community: “Each member [of society] partakes the attributes of the group. Each share the pride that the group claims, and bears the burden of its collective humiliation.” Indeed, Confucianism advocates that community values ought to be prioritised over individual ones, whereby the communal relationships of an individual such as their occupation or their status as parent, spouse, or child, “overrides his or her personality”, making it such that “there are only interrelated persons, not individual selves.” Thus, when existing societal narratives pit homosexuality against the community, the Confucian communitarian narratives become internalised as a suffocating condemnation of the expression of homosexuality toward the community.
Indeed, in Chinese queer literature of the 20th century, there is a clear sense of guilt directly associated with the act of gay expression. Queer Chinese authors Pai Hsien-yung, who came out publicly in Hong Kong, in 2007, and Guo Moruo, who has written about romantic and sexual experiences with other men, both approach expressions of homosexuality in their novels with an apologetic lens despite both having come out unambiguously.
Pai’s earlier works — previous to his 1983 Crystal Boys in which he all but came out by becoming the first Asian writer to write about the lives of gays explicitly — harboured an intriguing tension between homoerotic sympathies and homophobia: on one hand, he often portrays his characters’ homosexual attractions positively, with either tenderness or passion; on the other, when his characters attempt to express those attractions, they are characterised as aberrant freaks or even rapists.
Pai’s 1960 short story, Moon Dream (Yue meng), is the most emblematic of this motif. The protagonist, Dr. Wu, is gay, and his experiences with another man are described with delicate and elegant language. Their romance takes place by a lake so clear that “it could almost shoot sparks of crystalised water”, in a night “ripe with fragrance . . . like freshly fermented wine”. His love for his partner was similarly described as beautiful and natural, like a “bunch of warmth so soft that it seems molten”. Dr. Wu’s homosexuality appears in a positive light when it takes place in secrecy — under the cover of night in the seclusion of the wilderness.
However, when he attempts to express his desires in a more public environment, his homoerotic love is instead painted as an aberrant obsession. After erecting a statue of his long-dead lover in his yard, Dr. Wu is shown to frequently embrace it, despite being visible to passersby. Additionally, he brings his erotic attachments to his work in the hospital — upon seeing a patient with a strong resemblance to his lover die, he breaks down into tears and eventually goes to the morgue to caress the corpse of his patient. Both of these descriptions play into traditional homophobic narratives of homoerotic love being a freakish obsession which frequently makes gays perform sexual misconduct.
Thus, two seemingly irreconcilable portrayals of homosexuality appear — one positive and romantic and the other negative and derogatory. However, this contradiction may be resolved with some nuance: the positive characterisation of homosexuality appears when the romance occurs outside of public view, i.e. when one does not express their queer identity, while the negative depiction surfaces when homosexuality appears within the view of society, i.e. when one displays their ‘queerness’.
Moon Dream’s apparent contradiction appears throughout Pai’s writing. In his 1961 Lonely Seventeen (Jimode shiqisui), Pai describes the main character’s aversion to female sexuality and ambiguous homosexual attraction to his classmate Wei Boyang sympathetically, but the only explicitly homosexual character in the story sexually harasses the main character — again conforming to the Moon Dream archetype of positive depictions for private homoerotic affections and negative portrayal of public homosexuality. In his famed 1983 Crystal Boys, touted as the first modern Chinese queer novel, Pai goes to lengths to deliver a compassionate picture of the gay community through the protagonist A-Qing, who was rejected by his family, forced into prostitution, and protects his friends from suicide and harm by others. However, Pai still uses the recurring motif of public expression of homoerotic identity being disastrous: when A-Qing sees a child resembling his deceased younger brother, he gives him his brother’s harmonica to get closer, and then holds and caresses him in an act of assault. Despite this not being a public profession of homosexual identity, it does contain a level of ‘coming out’, as the child is a stranger who did not know about A-Qing’s homosexuality. Thus, Pai’s writing throughout the years proves to oppose homosexual individuals who express their sexual identities publicly, despite being overall supportive of private homoeroticism.
Pai is not alone in his aversion towards the publicity of homosexuality. Chinese statesman and writer Guo Moruo’s 1947 autobiography, The Years of My Boyhood (Wode tongnian), harbours similar sentiments despite ostensibly exposing Guo’s homoerotic attachments. Whereas Guo romanticises his homosexual experiences with one “Mr Wang” by calling him his “first love (chulian)”, he describes accusations of his homosexuality as “unspeakable insults (bukanru’er de wuru).” Furthermore, although Guo unambiguously presents himself as bisexual, he writes that it was “this society (1892–1909) [that] gave birth to someone like [himself]”, essentially apologising for expressing his sexuality through writing this book. Thus, Guo, like Pai, praises the romantic value of homosexual love but rejects it as soon as it is socially broadcast due to the Confucian unwillingness to trade communal harmony for individual identity.
The contrary is true for Individualism. Whereas Confucianism opposes the articulation of the individual above personal relations, Rosemont Jr. writes in Against Individualism that this alternative ideology champions the concept of a “free, autonomous, independent individual, an inner self untouched by sociality”, thus affirming the view that one’s obligation to oneself is the paramount and their conception of their identity is the most crucial matter in their life.
Not only do the ideals of Individualism connect with the importance that Western queer writers ascribe to their gay identity, but it also influences their willingness to express it. According to various psychological studies, Individualism manifests as the “freedom to express oneself”, even in defiance of conformity, with ‘oneself’ primarily concerning identity and thus prominently featuring sexuality. In fact, Individualism began as the willingness to separate from the community. The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy, one of the foundational works of European intellectual history, describes this very influence that the development of Individualism had on the Italians: “Not one of them was afraid of singularity, of being and seeming unlike his neighbours.” Indeed, the idea that individual identity is an ultimate concern works its way into Western queer literature, manifesting as a drive to come out.
For instance, Andrew Holleran’s 1978 novel, Dancer from the Dance, which was revolutionary and gained “cult status” for the post-Stonewall gay community, expressing one’s queer identity was described as tantamount to fulfilling one’s life. In the book, when Sutherland attempted to convince Malone to come out to his family, he questioned the latter about whether he would be content with having never told his parents “the most important truth of [his] otherwise opaque life”. They immediately identify sexual identity as a core value to one’s life, prioritising it over any communal concerns.
This sentiment is echoed by a myriad of gay Western autobiographies. For instance, the primary concern of J.R. Ackerley’s My Father and Myself, posthumously published in 1968, was to verify his father’s sexual orientation, implying the importance of one’s sexual identity. Notably, Ackerley describes a conversation with his father in which almost revealed his homosexuality, yet his father interrupted him and told him that he would “prefer not to know.” However, despite there being no need for him to come out to his father, Ackerley still wanted to “[tell] him anything in the world”. Ackerley felt a need to ‘publicise’ his homosexuality to his father, independent of any practical reason. Similarly, Martin Duberman’s 1991 Cures: A Gay Man’s Odyssey describes Duberman feeling a desire to come out, despite not having resolved his thoughts about the morality of homosexuality and the practical effects of broadcasting his identity on his academic work. Andrew Tobias’ 1973 novel, The Best Little Boy in the World, further echoes this sentiment. Not only did Tobias feel a need to “tell everyone around him who would listen that he was gay”, but moreover, he “felt a need to declare himself a gay man before he had even one homosexual experience.” This suggests that these Western authors of queer literature generally feel an intense desire to publicise their homosexuality, even when they have no practical incentive — and occasionally a negative one — to do so.
Under an Individualistic willingness to not conform, Western writers became more able to reject the community in favour of their identities. Meanwhile, in the Confucian backdrop, where conformity was promoted, Chinese writers restrained their expression with guilt. This suggests that Confucianism indeed exacerbates homophobia when its communal obligations are internalised along with existing homophobic conceptions of gays as deviants.
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