<h1>Gay Studies: Their World</h1>
From 1989 to 1991, my main focus was on doing gay research. The biggest difficulty is getting study subjects, as homosexuals make up a smaller proportion of the population and are reluctant to reveal their identities. And I'm luckier. In the process of doing single research before, I accidentally came across a homosexual.
At that time, because single people were also a minority in the population, it was difficult to find them with random samples. So I advertised in the Beijing Evening News to solicit volunteers to participate in the study. One of my singles survey respondents was a man in his mid-thirties who, when I asked him why he was single, denied a number of common reasons. Later he said: "You came back from studying abroad and don't look like a bad person, so I'll tell you the real reason I'm single – I'm gay." ”
And just like that, I got my first gay case. Later, he introduced me to his gay friends, his friends' friends, and he grew bigger and bigger, and finally reached the size of one hundred and twenty people. There is a method of investigation in sociology called "snowball", and that's what it does. So, my homosexual research is methodologically impeccable.
Stills from Brokeback Mountain
<h1>The reproduction of the family is more important than the happiness of the individual</h1>
The process of investigation was very interesting and exciting. Through a friend's introduction, I found a gay man because his appearance was a bit like Mitsuo played by Miura Yukazu in a Japanese movie at the time, and Mitsuo became his nickname. I talked to him too many times, for too long, and then I became a personal friend.
Sometimes we would talk on the phone, have a meal together, and chat. He later married a pretty girl and showed me their wedding photos. This girl belonged to the so-called "same wife" who later attracted widespread attention in society, but she was not deceived, and Hikari confessed his sexual orientation to her before marriage.
So why does he have to marry a woman? I asked Hikari this question, and he said, "I'm sorry for my parents if I don't get married, I have a boy in our family, and they point to me for inheritance." "Mitsuo's family belongs to the ordinary working class, and his choice and his motivation are quite representative.
Of course, some homosexuals are motivated to marry the opposite sex only by family pressure, and they also want to hide their sexual orientation, so that such people will not tell their wives their true tendencies. This is not the case with Guangfu, whose motivation for marriage comes more from China's family-oriented values—the reproduction of the family is more important than personal happiness.
I asked Hikari again, "Since you confessed, how can the girl still accept you?" He smiled and said, "I am very concerned about the family, she eats a lot of her flowers, what else does she want?" I asked again, "So she doesn't care if you play with other people?" He said, "She doesn't care about me." ”
Stills from "Spring Breaks"
Over time, Hikari and Xiaobo also became friends.
Xiao Bo happened to be invited by Zhang Yuanzhi at that time to write a gay movie script (that is, the later "East Palace, West Palace"), and was looking for these gay long talks to find feelings, and everyone talked many times, each time for a long time.
Once I talked too much with Mitsuo, and once I saw the last train time, I had to let Mitsuo stay overnight. At that time, we lived in the "one and a half" dormitories provided by Peking University for postdocs, and the so-called "one and a half" was a room of about 20 square meters, next to which there was a four- or five-square-meter hut that could only put a double bed.
That night, in order to make room for Hikari, I went out to spend the night and left Xiaobo and Mitsuo in our "one and a half rooms". Because I am a woman and Xiaobo is a man, I make such an arrangement, but Hikari actually likes men, so this arrangement is not quite right.
Anyway, the next day Xiaobo told me that he hadn't slept soundly all night. For a heterosexual man, living in the same room with a gay man may feel like living in the same room with a heterosexual woman.
Stills from "Love in Siam"
<h1>Xiao Bo helped me a lot</h1>
Doing gay men's research is my subject, but Xiaobo has helped a lot. Some particularly young gay men (such as high school students) have psychological barriers to contact with women, and then Xiaobo goes to interview.
In addition, Xiaobo also went to public places to shoot toilet literature. Later, there were rumors that in order to conduct a gay investigation, I once dressed as a man to go to the men's toilet, which was completely nonsense. The person who really went to the men's restroom was Wang Xiaobo.
He was carried by our "informant" (just kidding, a homosexual who became friends) and went through a situation that made him very disappointed. As soon as he entered, a head popped out of each compartment, and then all retracted. He asked the informant, "What's going on?" The informant said, "I didn't look at you." ”
Xiao Bo's appearance is indeed not handsome, but he is actually full of manhood, which should be the type that gay men like. Our informant was particularly fond of him. After a friend saw this informant, he said to me: "How can this person not leave Wang Xiaobo in three sentences, it seems that he likes him." ”
Stills from "Love, Simplicity"
As far as we know, homosexuals cheat on their wives and have a lot of tricks. However, these tricks cannot be disclosed without the consent of the person in person, so as not to cause family disputes. One of the more common sayings is that I am practicing Qigong and am not close to a woman. Because there are many people who really practice Qigong to abstain from female color, it is not a big problem to disclose this article. Our friend Y himself is not married, but knows a lot about these things. He said gay wives were the most pitiful.
In the course of the investigation, I also met a very interesting person, who was more than seventy years old, not very tall, mentally strong, and full of enthusiasm. He told me that he went swimming a lot and also had fairly frequent sex. The most interesting part of his love story is that he himself is thin, but he prefers fat men, and American basketball star O'Neal is his idol.
He worked in a cultural unit, and from the age of eighteen he had a crush on a co-worker who burned boilers in the unit's gang room, that is, a fat man. But he had always suppressed his lust, going to and from work every day, getting married and having children, and not showing his heart to the man until he retired at the age of sixty. This is a lifetime of love.
Stills from Carol
He said to me with emotion, "My real life began at the age of sixty. Later, when I was facing retirement, I often quoted his famous quote from me for encouragement.
When I visited him at his house, I talked about a knock at the door, the boilermaker, who was now very good friends. When I asked about his married life, he looked indifferent: "There's nothing to say." ”
His wife never paid attention to the men who came and went in the house, and she would only be nervous when a female colleague came, because she had no idea what could happen between men.
<h1>The publishing process went through several twists and turns</h1>
The publication process of homosexual research results has also experienced many twists and turns, which were originally commissioned by the Beijing Publishing House, but after the book was written, they said that the issue was too sensitive to publish. So we found the first edition of Hong Kong Tiandi Books Company, entitled "Their World - A Perspective on Chinese Gay Men's Communities". The following year, a local edition was published in a foreign publishing house.
After the book was published, I received a large number of phone calls and letters, and many homosexual interviews, so in 1998 I published an additional supplement to the book, which doubled in length and changed the title to "Gay Subculture". The book was first printed in 60,000 copies, sold out quickly, and later reprinted in one edition by different publishers. It is the most important work of my research career.
Stills from Call Me By Your Name
There is no pejorative meaning to refer to homosexuals as "they", especially "their world", which sounds quite poetic in terms of the meaning and rhyme of the Chinese. Coincidentally, one year, a female photographer photographed the image of a group of homosexuals, ready to be published in a collection, also titled "Their World".
I think that Chinese readers will mostly understand "their world" in the sense of "look, they have a different world", and gay people who read Chinese will not associate this formulation with feelings of exclusion or disrespect.
However, one Western homosexual has been critical of this, arguing that this is a term that excludes homosexuals from mainstream culture, as if heterosexuals are "we" and homosexuals are "the others".
Here, the "they" as he understands them are "other" and "alternative," not simply "them."
In the sense of Chinese, the former has a pejorative connotation, while the latter does not; the former has a hierarchy ("we" belong to the high rank, the "other" belongs to the low rank) and the latter is equal ("we" and "they" have no distinction between high and low).
His reaction stems from the Westerners' barrier to Chinese, and from the sense of rights and equality that the Western gay movement has brought about after empowering homosexuals, and the consequent oversensitivity and vigilance against discrimination.
<h1>I have a feeling of "experiencing history firsthand"</h1>
As a result of doing homosexual research, I have a feeling of "experiencing history" - I have personally experienced the history of the improvement of the situation of Chinese homosexuals entering the social vision.
Later, I participated in a Hunan SATELLITE TV interview program called "Approaching Homosexuality", and in addition to me, the guests were Cui Zien (a filmmaker, almost the first gay man in China to come out) and Shi Shi (a painter, and almost the first lesbian in China to come out), and the host was Ma Ji's son Ma Dong. The program only premiered, and the replay was stopped, and I heard that the column group was also punished.
Today, not only is there positive coverage of the gay community in the print media, but discussions and reports on the issue can also be seen on television.
Image source: Network
Now, the situation of homosexuals has improved a lot, and there is much less social discrimination, so I have a feeling of "experiencing history".
Once, when I was on a TV talk show, I had a two-sentence conversation with the producer of the show before I went on, and he said something that amused me, saying, "Now it's not gay that we can't get into our business." ”
Makeup artists are also gay and gay people,and I've heard an interesting explanation that goes like this: Many female celebrities love to use gay makeup artists because they need to change clothes frequently, and it is inconvenient if a heterosexual man pokes there, and it is much more convenient to bring a gay man, because he is not only highly skilled in makeup, but also does not harass her at all, not even this kind of thought.
The article is excerpted from "Honey Picking in the World: The Autobiography of Li Yinhe", written by Li Yinhe and published by Jiangxi People's Publishing House, and some of the content has been deleted