This article reminds me of an evening with gay colleague, an Australian I'll call Terry, back in the early nineties at a bar in Taipei.
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| "Sino-Soviet friendship is a perpetual spring |
Terry's point was that there was still hostility to gay folks in Australia, despite its legality. Whereas in China there was a long history of tolerance to the gay community despite its illegality[*]. I nodded in agreement, thinking of the number of famous Chinese poets, artists and calligraphers who have waxed eloquent over millennia about Sapphic and Uranian pleasures, painting provocative peaches and plums.
And I recalled to Terry an experience I'd had at a pub in Canberra, ten years prior. I had been chatting with another colleague, also gay and his boyfriend. The three of us were discussing a question I'd asked them: would they miss not having children? This was back in the early eighties, before gay couples could have children by surrogacy, as in the article below. So, yes, my gay interlocutors said, having children was something they would sadly miss.
It was loud in the pub, so we were sitting close in, heads nearly touching to hear each other, and I guess we looked like three comfy cosy gay guys.
The next thing is a big yute rolls up, clearly drunk, and says with a snarl in his best Strine "aaahh, whyncha fuck off outa here, ya fuckin poofters!"
At which point I stood up. Normally this sorts things out because I'm 6'4" and built — was, then! — fit and young (ahh, youth…). But this bloke, drunk, punched me. The punch landed fair on my face. My head flicked back but I didn't fall. Mass and inertia. I was about to say something - not to hit back because I've never hit anyone in my life - but the pub Manager came up very quickly. Impressively quickly. I thought the manager might have a go at me, but no, he kicked out the lout who'd hit me, kicked him out of the pub, and apologised to us; we three "poofters". Good man.
My comment to my mates: "How ironic. I'm the only straight guy here and I'm the one who gets poofter-bashed".
("Poofter bashing": good old Aussie term for what was in those days distressigly common, bashing up gays for sport and fun...).
So… read on, and see in this article that it's by no means easy in China either, despite Terry's observations.
[*]:Social acceptance of homosexuality has been slow in China despite the nation's long history. Written references to homosexuality date back to the Shang dynasty (circa 1600-1050 BC) some 3,000 years ago, with same-sex relationships considered relatively normal, until around 1840 when China increased contact with the then-prudish West, according to historian Bret Hinsch with Taiwan's Fo Guang University, although other scholars dispute this.
Disapproval started to soften in the 1980s, homosexuality was decriminalised in 1997 and it stopped being classified as a mental disorder in 2001, according to Equaldex, a website for data on global LGBT rights. And a Taiwanese draft law in February to make same-sex marriage legal following a 2017 Taiwan constitutional court ruling has fuelled a quiet debate in mainland China.
