Perhaps Iʼm too traditional: understandings of transmodernity, suzhi, and non-monogamous relationships among Chinese gay men in Sydney

Abstract (English)

Some Chinese gay men and scholars studying them assume a narrative of progression to explain the formation of gay identity and to evaluate non-monogamous relations. They understand nonmonogamy along a narrative of tradition–to–modernity that culminates in Western queerness; those who uphold these ideas are depicted as modern and those who donʼt as traditional. An alternate narrative grounded in Chinese cultural ideas portrays nonmonogamy as low quality (low suzhi) and as leading men to lose face. To sidestep the tradition/modernity binary, I use Enrique Dusselʼs concept of the “transmodernˮ to locate Chinese men in Sydney in a parallel time along their non-Chinese counterparts.
Nevertheless, phenomenologically, same-sex attracted Chinese men experience their sexuality through a dialectic of competing historical narratives of Chinese tradition and Western gay sexuality. The tension of this dialectic emerges from the context of their minority status in Anglo-dominant Sydney, where sexuality develops in the context of a hegemonic gay identity, immigrant aspirations of assimilation, and their own cultural and class backgrounds. I explore how a shifting engagement with ideas of Western modernity, Chinese tradition, civilization and class refinement constitute a lexicon for gay Chinese men in Australia to talk about their sexuality, relationships and identity.