Elisabeth Engebretsen’s new book, Queer Women in Urban China, is based on her research in China’s lesbian, or lala, community. The term lala, she writes, is used to “denote women-loving women and their communities and allies,” a word that came from Taiwan and Hong Kong in the late 1990s and is now commonly used in China. We talked to her at The Bookworm about her fieldwork, which she started just over a decade ago, and her thoughts about the future for Beijing’s lalas.

“When I started my research, everything started to come out into the open a little bit, and [lalas] started to have offline spaces to gather,” Engebretsen, originally from Norway, says. Identity, especially sexual identity, became a hot topic around this time too, and discussing it with people face-to-face was relatively new. “There was a lot of talk about whether or not you had to have a sexual identity and come out, or whether there was anything particularly inherent about homosexuality as opposed to heterosexuality. It was a very new time to talk about these issues, and so was to do so face-to-face with other people instead of only on the Internet. I think that since then more and more women have joined the discussion about what it means to love other women and to desire other women instead of men.”

Lalas’ narratives have also changed over this period, as discussions have been opening up, and society has gradually been doing the same. “The dominant talk was that the best way to be a lala was to embrace the filial responsibilities, be a good daughter, and not come out and make people uncomfortable by being political, but at the same time lead a stable life with a girlfriend. This way you could kind of compartmentalize the lala life on the one hand and be a good daughter like a woman should be in China on the other,” she said.

But this environment has since changed drastically, as the younger generations of lalas are more comfortable coming out than the women who came before, and they have greater access to information with regards to what goes on outside China. Not only are they embracing identity politics but they are also challenging the traditional belief about how to be a good lala. “I think [the community] is probably also a lot more dynamic, which allows for including emergent topics such as transgender politics, polyandry, and all sorts of transnational politics among the LGBT community,” Engebretsen said.

These changes within the community are also leading to new and different initiatives, especially when compared to activism and initiatives throughout the Western world. “What I think is quite interesting is that there are a lot of ad hoc collaborative initiatives not just within the lala communities but between the lalas, the gays, and the transgender community. They are looking at issue-based movements like disability, regional issues, what it is like to be LGBT in the regions [outside the big cities], and then doing stuff to try and address these issues that aren’t just about being lala or gay or transgender,” Engebretsen said.

“I think for example the whole queer China film tour is a really good example of how there’s a need for collaboration because of the political situation. There also seems to be a great willingness among many actors to collaborate with others who aren’t just like them and to bring others onboard in order to do something good, in this case to spread LGBT film to regions outside of the big metropolis.”

However, initiatives like these have been created by a certain political climate and societal values that explain different situations in different countries, and reflect why China’s situation is the way it is. “I think of course a lot of this is exacerbated by the fact that you have a very particular political situation, stepping aside from the insular identity and sexual identity-based activism that you see in a lot of places around the world. If you look at the queer politics of liberation and justice, I think that to always be anchoring what you do and think in terms of static identity doesn’t really take you towards liberation and justice,” Engebretsen said.

“In Norway, where I come from, everyone is obsessed with their own identity because they don’t have to think about staying out of jail, eating, or sort of basic material necessities, and so we all keep talking about marriage and who we are and it doesn’t really get us anywhere else.” The Chinese situation is very different, and specific to China and its environment.

However, this opening up of discussion is not necessarily contributing to successful cooperation on LGBT issues throughout China. According to Engebretsen, lala issues are not always heard, even within the community.

“There have been at least two LGBT conferences here in Beijing, one in 2012 and one in 2013. I was at both of them and the lesbians are really critical towards the gay men for being so exclusionary and so misogynistic. The lesbians would say that the men can’t just show up to these conferences and say ‘I don’t know, teach me.’ It’s not the lesbians’ responsibility to teach the men, they should educate themselves. They have the resources. It’s just being lazy. The same goes for transgender issues, the few transgender individuals who were participating said that they weren’t sure about whether or not they would come back [to future conferences]. They felt that they were always starting from zero, in educating everyone about very basic issues to do with transgender politics and identity. So I don’t know if things are really getting better in that domain, I feel like there is a very large split between the lesbians and the gays within gender politics, and issues with the role of feminist politics and calling out basic gender inequality in society in China.”

Whether this situation will change in the near future remains to be seen as there is no telling in which direction the the political situation will turn, and which of the many voices from the community will be heard.

You can purchase Engebretson’s Queer Women in Urban China at The Bookworm or via bookdepository.com (who offer free shipping worldwide).

More stories by this author here.
Email: [email protected]
Instagram: s.xuagram
 

Photo: Uni