LGBTQI groups found rare freedoms online, but this year, many were shut by censors. It feels like slowly being sanded down, said one member.

Across China, queer college societies, which had been rare spaces to safely push boundaries, were being swiftly erased from the Chinese internet. In July, 14 of the largest and most prominent accounts were banned, cutting connections between thousands of members scattered across the country and casting them adrift.

The struggle has worsened. Things that were acceptable to speak about online before can now open you up to attack. It’s not just LGBTQI issues, in Mei’s view. Anything rights-related is now a target.

When the country went online in the 1990s, so did many queer people who wanted to find others like them. Gay sex was decriminalized in China in 1997, but by then, there was already a thriving online community. (…) “Censorship wasn’t as strict,” he said of those early years. “It gave you the false belief that things would get better.”

Though these apps present themselves as allies to the gay community, they have aligned with the censors. Blued assigns each user “rainbow credits,” which they deduct if users violate community regulations. Leo has found this includes trying to organize an activity. When a user loses credits, their profile faces more restrictions, the final stage of which is being frozen. Blued’s parent company is increasingly gathering a monopoly over queer online interactions — in August 2020, it bought the largest lesbian dating app, Lesdo, which it shut down this year.

  • Muad'Dibber
    0•2 years ago

    Another anonymous source again, and most of the articles they link are from the NY times, and apnews.

    Also restofworld is founded by sophie schmidt ( eric schmidt, the ceo of google’s daughter ), and another former editor of wapo, the atlantic, and buzzfeed.Their twitter seems to be pushing the same anti china line as every other silicon-valley based news incubator. So nothing new here, just rehashed nytimes articles with another anonymous source.

    • @southerntofu@lemmy.mlOP
      0•2 years ago

      On the topic of queerness in “popular republics”, you can’t exactly deny there’s a strong history of repression. If you’re interested, there’s very good articles about the varying history of homosexuality throughout USSR history (from the first wave of revolutionary feminism in 1917 to the gulag-steering policies of Stalin). I don’t know of good resources about this topic in China, which is why i found this article interesting: in it you learn that homosexuality was decriminalized “only” in 1997 (which is not so much later than western Empires like France), which could explain how queerphobic sentiment/repression is still widespread.

      It’s also worth mentioning how queerness can be framed as an anti-materialist mental framework (though large sections of the queer crowd are also materialist feminists), and how it’s been weaponized by western empires in their colonial enterprise. Just like feminism historically (“white men saving brown women from brown men”), LGBT issues are being framed as if the West is really open and tolerant and human rights are respected here (which is blatantly false in many regards), and African/Asian countries are backwards people full of prejudice that need to be educated for their own good.

      All in all, the article doesn’t seem to push a specific colonial/racist narrative, and appears to paint a factual portrait of the political situation in China surrounding organization and public debate around queerness. I say this as someone who hasn’t been to China (and therefore really has no clue), but who heard similar accounts from chinese speakers involved in LGBT communities.