The story of Queer Comrades brings together several interrelated issues
central to this book: community media, queer activism and an increasingly politicized queer identity, represented by the term tongzhi used in the Chinese name of the webcast. Literally ‘comrade’, tongzhi is one of the most popular terms to refer to sexual minorities in China today. Despite the numerous other terms that circulate in China, including tongxinglian (homosexual) and ku’er (queer), tongzhi is the most widely accepted term for self-identification by queer people in early 21st century China. – Queer Comrades: Gay Identity and Tongzhi Activism
in Postsocialist China – Dr. Hongwei Bao
Category Archives: Meditation
Silent Scream: Conversations Rarely Had About Suicide & One Activist’s Mission
“It’s my experience that people are a lot more sympathetic if they can see you hurting, and for the millionth time in my life I wish for measles or smallpox or some other easily understood disease just to make it easier on me and also on them.”
― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places
Fake-cation – Tracing Illusions of Black, Queer Luxury in China
“To subject to scrutiny the mechanisms which render life painful, even untenable, is not to neutralize them; to bring to light contradictions is not to resolve them. But, as skeptical as one might be about the efficacy of the sociological message, we cannot dismiss the effect it can have by allowing sufferers to discover the possible social causes of their suffering and, thus, to be relieved of blame.”
― Pierre Bourdieu, The Weight of the World: Social Suffering in Contemporary Society
Queer Sexual Economics: Color Theory and the Dark Side of the Moon
“And then he thought, profoundly, how there was something grand about living in hope, but also something terribly unreal and incomplete about it, because when you were hoping, you were not doing or living or experiencing the Now,”
― Larry Kramer, Faggots
Queer Sexual Economics: Tracing Shame and other Fun Activities
“What we have invented, Hans, is a new religion. Oh, not the moralistic and old-fashioned theological kind with that God who does not want us, but one with brutal splendours, magnificent contemporary rites and rituals, scenes, gestures, sacrifices, humiliations, terrors, tremblings, mortifications, degradations, phantasmagoric transfigurations into other realms of feeling, new realisations that will come from this cleansing purge, and then transcendencies unto a New World of our own making, with our own new rules and rewards and justifications.”
― Larry Kramer, Faggots
Queer Sexual Economics: Top + Bottom= Vers?
“And every faggot couple I know is deep into friendship and deep into fucking with everyone else but each other and any minute any bump appears in their commitment to infinitesimally obstruct their view, out they zip like petulant kids to suck someone else’s lollipop instead of trying to work things out, instead of trying not to hide, and…unh…why do faggots have to fuck so fucking much?!”
― Larry Kramer, Faggots
Americanah: Delightful Parallels with the Queer, Migrant Story
“If you don’t understand, ask questions. If you’re uncomfortable about asking questions, say you are uncomfortable about asking questions and then ask anyway. It’s easy to tell when a question is coming from a good place. Then listen some more. Sometimes people just want to feel heard. Here’s to possibilities of friendship and connection and understanding.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah
Queer Covid Chronicles: Where Were You When it Started?
“Genghis Khan said the hand Is the first thing one man gives To another. Not in this war. A gesture of limited distance Now suffices, a nod, A minor smile or a hand Slightly raised, Not in search of its counterpart, Just a warning within The acknowledgment to stand back.”
― Ilan Stavans, And We Came Outside and Saw the Stars Again: Writers from Around the World on the COVID-19 Pandemic
Domino Effect: What Lumumba’s Murder Mean’s to Queer Kenyans Abroad
“Today I wore a pair of faded old jeans and a plain grey baggy shirt. I hadn’t even taken a shower, and I did not put on an ounce of makeup. I grabbed a worn out black oversized jacket to cover myself with even though it is warm outside. I have made conscious decisions lately to look like less of what I felt a male would want to see. I want to disappear.”
― Sierra D. Waters, Debbie.
Double-edged Sword: Enduring Misconceptions About Bisexual Men
“Many bisexuals might indeed feel comfortable and well represented by [creating images of ‘stable, monogamous, appropriately sexual’ bisexuals], but what of the many people who don’t fit in this standard of the “normal” or “good” bisexual? Some bisexuals are sluts (read: sexually independent women), some bisexuals are just experimenting, some like people of certain genders only sexually and not romantically, some like to have threesomes and perform bisexuality for men, some are HVI and STI carriers, some don’t practice safer sex, some are indeed indecisive and confused, some cheat on their partners, some do choose to be bi, as well as many other things that the “myth-busting” [or simplifying/sanitizing] tries to cast off. A very long list of people is being thrown overboard in the effort to “fight biphobia.” In this way, the rebuttal in fact imposes biphobic normative standards on the bisexual community itself, drawing a line between “good” and “bad” bisexuals.
Either way, benign docility and unthreatening citizenship are not exactly what I would want my bisexuality to be associated with.”
― Shiri Eisner, Bi: Notes for a Bisexual Revolution
Shark-Infested Waters: Pitfalls of Black Queer Online Dating in China – Episode 5
“Call When You Say You’re Going To Call. Sometimes being ambivalent about following up with someone (you kinda/sorta like him but you’re not crazy about him) will lead you to play deliberate phone tag. Maybe you call when you know he’ll be at work. Or you tell him to call when you know you won’t be available. Eventually, when nothing happens because of all the missed connections, you tell yourself, well, at least I tried. No you didn’t. Suck it up and call when you’re supposed to.”
― Mike Alvear, Gay Online Dating: How To Meet, Attract And Date The Hottest Guys On The Internet
It’s All Just Drag: What’s the Tea on the Drag Scene In China? – Podcast Episode 4
“Barry prided himself on his ability to keep his lives separate. . . He was Bianca on two Saturday nights a month, and otherwise, he pushed her out of sight, even though he thought about her, shopped for her, planned for her eventual return. Barry went to faculty meetings and family reunions and church, Bianca always lingering on the edge of his mind. She had her role to play and Barry had his. You could live a life this way, split. As long as you knew who was in charge.”
― Brit Bennett, The Vanishing Half
Gays and Girls Behaving Badly: The Dynamics of the GBFF Relationship -Podcast Episode 3
“This is my game within our game—to try to come up with the scenario in which it would work out better. Maybe if I met him now. Maybe if I met him in college. After college. Once he’s comfortable with who he is. But every time I do this, I feel awful. Because I’m sacrificing our history. I don’t love him for who he is now. I wouldn’t love him for who he is two years from now. I love him for all the hims he’s already been with me. I guess that’s the contradiction. I want a fresh start. I would fight for that fresh start. But I also want it to be a continuation.”
― David Levithan, You Know Me Well
A Response to Optimism
“Teach the ignorant as much as you can; society is culpable in not providing a free education for all and it must answer for the night which it produces. If the soul is left in darkness sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but he who causes the darkness.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
Now What? Finding Healing After Trauma – Podcast Episode 2
“Beneath the surface of the protective parts of trauma survivors there exists an undamaged essence, a Self that is confident, curious, and calm, a Self that has been sheltered from destruction by the various protectors that have emerged in their efforts to ensure survival. Once those protectors trust that it is safe to separate, the Self will spontaneously emerge, and the parts can be enlisted in the healing process”
― Bessel A. van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma
Podcast Episode 1 – The Importance of a Chosen Family
“ten reasons to love being queer
viii.
the people within our community are so supportive and so caring and so loving, most of the time towards people they don’t even know
and it is in moments like that when you realize that the queer community is more than a community
we are a family”
― Courtney Carola, Have Some Pride: A Collection of LGBTQ+ Inspired Poetry
Mama’s Boy: A Queer Son’s Love Letter to His Mother
“I am convinced that most people do not grow up. We find parking spaces and honor our credit cards. We marry and dare to have children and call that growing up. I think what we do is mostly grow old. We carry accumulation of years in our bodies and on our faces, but generally our real selves, the children inside, are still innocent and shy as magnolias.
We may act sophisticated and worldly but I believe we feel safest when we go inside ourselves and find home, a place where we belong and maybe the only place we really do.”
― Maya Angelou, Letter to My Daughter
Invisible Leash: Realities of Living Abroad as a Queer African (Pt 2)
“One miner at Robinson Deep Mines, Daniel, […] claims that as an induna or “boss boy”, he had sought the company of a “girlfriend”, that is, a young Basotho man, because he was not authorized to go in town to “see women”. However, when he got special permission to leave the mining complex, he recalls with barely suppressed emotion that, during such leaves, he would soon long to be reunited with his “boy-wife”. He and his peers claimed that “[they] loved them better” and preferred them over the experienced (female) city streetwalkers.”
― Chantal Zabus, Out in Africa: Same-Sex Desire in Sub-Saharan Literatures & Cultures
Invisible Leash: Realities of Living Abroad as a Queer African (Pt 1)
“There is such a thing as too much loss. Too much has been taken from you both – taken and taken and taken, until there’s nothing left but hope, and you’ve given that up because it hurts too much. Until you would rather die, or kill, or avoid attachments altogether, than lose one more thing.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Obelisk Gate
It’s Not You, It’s Me: Meditations on Imposter Syndrome Within Beijing’s Queer Community
“We are hunting the demons that haunt others. We get a smell and off we go. And you know why, Sunil? You know why we are so good at hunting the demons of others? Because we are so good, gifted even, at stalking and evading our own. But all demons hunters think that they are really heroes, and you know what all heroes need?”
― Chris Abani, The Secret History of Las Vegas
Piquing Duck 