Health and Social Activism of Self-Identified Gay Men in Postsocialist China

Based on ethnographic research on self-identified gay men in Northeast China, this talk addresses the ways in which these men worked in collaboration with, rather than against, the state. Deploying and appropriating the state-endorsed AIDS cause, they drew on the dominant moral order as a legitimate resource to attempt to infuse gay activism while still seeking legitimacy in the mainstream culture. They believed that by declaring that elimination of homophobia was essential to curb AIDS transmission, they used AIDS activism to provide legitimacy for their gay activism.

Tiantian Zheng, Ph.D., Yale University. She is Professor of Anthropology at State University of New York, Cortland. She published nine books on the cultural politics of gender, social class, and sexuality. Red Lights is the Winner of the 2010 Sara A. Whaley Book Prize from the National Women’s Studies Association. Ethnographies of Prostitution is the Winner of the 2011 Research Publication Book Award from the Association of Chinese Professors of Social Sciences in the United States. Tongzhi Living was awarded the Outstanding Academic Title by Choice in 2016, selected for its excellence in scholarship and presentation, the significance of its contribution to the field and value as important treatment of the subject.