Abstract
China’s economic liberalization in 1978 created new gendered and sexual subjectivities. This essay examines a new internet meme gaymi (“gay confidante”) and its discursive construction of gay men as genteel embodiments of a women-friendly “emergent masculinity” (Inhorn and Wentzell, 2011). We argue that firstly, the gaymi discourse actually centers on the women who desire gay male companionship, because it ironically articulates the desires of these women and not those of the men. Secondly, strong links possibly exist between the rise of the gaymi and the popularity of the Korean Wave in China. Hence, the gaymi gestures at intra-Asian cultural globalization.
Introduction
A “desiring China” (Rofel, 2007) that began to take shape after economic liberalization in 1978 also created new gendered and sexual subjectivities, including notions of a more socio-economically independent womanhood (Guo, 2017; Yang, 2009). Now, popular internet memes such as nan guimi (“male intimate friend”) and nuannan (“warm man”) frame public discussions of men’s friendships with women in urban China (Shen, 2015; Wang, 2015). For instance, Xinhuanet (2012) published survey results that claimed 80% of working women wanted a nan guimi, while 70.3% of respondents replied that they “have one or two” such friends in another survey conducted by Sina.com (2013). A nan guimi resembles a nuannan in that both figures are imagined as someone particularly attentive and considerate to women, can communicate with them on an emotional level, and demonstrates a certain aesthetic sensitivity in everyday life. However, the former is understood more as a gender role, while the latter refers to a character trait. Put simply, they are gentlemen who understand women’s needs.
A third, likewise urban-based, meme gaymi (“gay confidante”) has also emerged. A portmanteau of “gay” and “guimi,” this new term puns on the latter (cf. the meme jiyou – “gay buddies” – in Wei, 2017). Originally, “guimi” referred to an intimate friend of the boudoir (guizhong miyou). As late as the Zhou Dynasty (ca. 1046–256 BCE), the sexes were already separated according to their work. Men dominated the public sphere because they farmed, while women ruled the domestic roost because they wove and cooked (Hinsch, 2013). Eventually, this natural outgrowth of work became a moral injunction that demanded good girls spend their days in their boudoirs (guige) in the deepest recesses of the household compound, even though only wealthy families could afford such provisions. With female chastity so highly valued that some girls would rather die in a fire than have strangers rescue them (Mann, 2011), only selected female non-kin (usually a handmaiden or a similarly wealthy best friend) would be privileged enough to visit such cloistered girls.
A male guimi would have been utterly unimaginable in dynastic China, but women nowadays prize gaymis as highly sought-after companions. Sanlian Shenghuo Zhoukan (2006), a lifestyle magazine read mainly by young, urban, and professional women, proclaims that “gay men became must-haves in the US; every woman wants a male gay friend. They’re clever, pretty, understanding, humorous, fashionable, and the best fashion guides.” In another similar magazine Xin Zhoukan, Huang (2011) goes even further to lament that … good men are either all married, or they’re gay. Oscar Wilde was gay, as are Elton John, Pai Hsien-yung, Leslie Cheung, and Kevin Tsai. When handsome men appear in fashion TV programs, we first suspect whether they’re gay. It’s not enough for women to have guimis; they must have gaymis.
The term “nan guimi” masculinizes the originally feminine “guimi.” “Gaymi” retains this masculinity, and further focuses on the identity’s gay sexuality. In a country that still widely treats homosexuality as shameful and even a mental illness (Engebretsen, 2013; Li, 2006; Zheng, 2015a), the high regard for gaymis challenges us to explain this paradox. To do so, we invoke the idea of “emergent masculinities” (Inhorn and Wentzell, 2011) to frame our investigation of the gaymi as a discursive figure of non-toxic, women-friendly masculinity. We ask: how do straight women produce and sustain their friendships with gay men? How do both sides understand each other’s gender and sexual identities? To answer these questions, we plan the following steps. Initially, we discuss the relevant literatures pertaining to masculinity and the gay-friendly “fag hag.” Next, we analyze interview data gathered from gaymis and their female best friends in Jinan, China. Specifically, we make two arguments. First, we maintain that while the discursive figure of the gaymi constitutes an emergent masculinity that women want, actual gay men resist their objectifying reduction into handmaidens to straight femininity and, ultimately, heterosexuality itself. Indeed, women who have gaymi occupy the center of this phenomenon, even though these women remain as-yet-unnamed. In China’s social environment, the gaymi nonetheless still represents an improvement. Secondly, we opine that the gaymi most likely arises with the increasing popularity of the Korean Wave in China. K-dramas introduce the beautiful and emotionally sensitive kkonminam “flower boy” to the Chinese audience, and enable female fans to desire and accept men with softer masculinities. As such, the gaymi contradicts commonly received wisdom that posits Asia as a passive recipient of globalizing culture from the West. Hence, this essay enables us to better comprehend changing attitudes towards gender and sexuality in contemporary China.
Masculinity and fag hags
This essay draws inspiration from two bodies of literature. The first one pertains to masculinity. Anthropologists define and use the concept of masculinity and the related notions of male identity, manhood, manliness and men’s roles in at least four ways: anything that men think and do; anything that men think and do to be men; some men are considered (inherently or by ascription) as “more manly” than other men; and, finally, men as women’s mirror opposites (Gutmann, 1997). Under these various frameworks, the meanings of masculinity differ in social domains as diverse as the body (Alter, 1992); the nation (Archetti, 1999); domestic violence (Bourgois, 1995); homosociality (Brandes, 1980); warfare (Chagnon, 1968); heterosexual desire (Frank, 2002); initiation rites (Godelier, 1986); fatherhood (Gutmann, 1996); same-sex sexuality (Kulick, 1998); and kinship and marriage (Peletz, 1996). In China, men’s engagements with issues of interpersonal relationships (Fu, 2012); gender and sexuality (Louie, 2002; Pan and Huang, 2013); and queer male cultures (Zheng 2015a) have also been critically explored. The cultural specificities of these studies present an issue of commensurability. In his seemingly universal set of core masculine attributes, even Gilmore (1990) fails to formulate a definitive theory of universal masculinity, because too many variations exist. Sociologists Carrigan, Connell, and Lee (1985) formulate the now-canonical meta-theory of “hegemonic masculinity” that undergirds studies of masculinity.
Our second group of literature concerns the “fag hag.” In popular US queer discourses, “fag hag” refers to a straight woman who socializes extensively with gay men (Moon, 1995). As her homophobic and misogynistic name suggests, she exists on the fringes of the already marginalized lives of her gay intimates. While this invisibility seems to rests on the anxiety that any attention on the hag will necessarily mean neglecting the fag (Doyle, 2006), she and her gay best friend are well-represented in US popular media. Notable pairings include Carrie and Stanford of Sex and the City (1998–2004), and the titular characters of Will and Grace (1998–2006). Existing fag hag scholarship typically deconstructs her gay friendships in the media. For instance, Linneman (2008) examines feminized masculinity in Will and Grace, while Fackler and Salvato (2012) propose their theory of effeminate enthusiasms. Precisely because the fag hag identifies with, rather than as, gay men, she transcends the quagmire of queer identity politics (Thompson, 2004). As to why straight women befriend gay men in the first place, evolutionary psychologists Russell, et al. (2013, 2015) argue that since straight women and gay men compete for different mates, they trust each other more for mate-selection advice.
Emergent masculinities
Having discussed the relevant literatures, we now move to discuss the idea of “emergent masculinities” (Inhorn and Wentzell, 2011) that frame this article. This notion draws inspiration from the classic theory of “hegemonic masculinity” (Carrigan, et al., 1985; Connell, 1995). Defined as social strategies that legitimize patriarchal dominance over both men and women, hegemonic masculinities are achievable only by a small handful of men with access to the correct socio-economic resources. Those who fail possess non-hegemonic (also called “marginalized” or “subordinated”) masculinities. The ways these socially less-valued men react to this unequal state of affairs range from complicit acceptance to uncomfortable resignation to deliberate protest (Connell, 1993). A sustained focus on the relationships between hegemonic masculinities and their subaltern counterparts, however, has led to static dualisms in the scholarly applications of the theory. Indeed, hegemonic masculinity is now frequently described as an “assemblage of toxic traits” rather than as a context-dependent subject position (Connell and Messerschmidt, 2005). These stereotypes often do not reflect the complexities of reality, prompting Connell and Messerschmidt (2005) to call for theoretical reformulations.
Heeding this call, Inhorn and Wentzell (2011) coin the term “emergent masculinities” to focus on novel concepts and practices of masculinity. If manly selfhood is a gendered performance (Butler, 1990, 1993), it is also an act that is forever in progress. From moment to moment, manly acts vary in different contexts. This idea of emergent masculinities also offers the following conceptual advantage over the older theory of hegemonic masculinity: Whereas hegemony emphasizes the dominant and hierarchical, emergence highlights the novel and transformative. When applied to manhood, emergence encapsulates change over the male life course as men age, change over the generations as male youth grow to adulthood, and changes in social history that involve men in transformative social processes. Finally, emergent masculinities highlights new forms of everyday masculine practice that accompany these social trends. These include, for example, men’s desire to “date” their partners before marriage, men’s acceptance of condoms and vasectomy as forms of male birth control, men’s desires to live in nuclear family residences with their wives and children, men’s encouragement of daughters’ education, and men’s use of social media technologies in homes and workplaces. (Inhorn and Wentzell, 2011: 803, italics in original)
Analysis
Methods
In this essay, we examine how straight women and gay men regard the gaymi phenomenon. To this end, from July 2016 to March 2017, we interviewed 11 self-identified gay men, and 15 heterosexual women who have gaymi. Aged between 18 and 26 years old, these informants were undergraduates and graduate students at the time of their interviews. We (a straight female professor, an openly gay male professor, and a male undergraduate who socialized often with queers) initially recruited our informants from the students we taught in our public university in Jinan, the provincial seat of China’s Shandong province, before contacting other interviewees via the snowball method. They either came from cities, or they had already been urbanized previously. We always talked to our informants individually in our semi-structured interviews, even in cases where a straight woman introduced her gaymi to us (or vice versa) after the interview. This way, we minimized the interference that the presence of an intimate friend might have on the interviewee’s replies. Our findings in the following discussion may present an urban bias, because rural residents may understand “gaymi” differently. However, exploring this possible urban–rural divide will bring us well beyond the limits of this article, so we shall leave it for another time (interested readers may start with McDonald, 2016 and Wang, 2016). All names used are pseudonyms.
Intimate friendships
In the creation and maintenance of gaymi relationships, both male and female interviewees took the gender and sexuality of their would-be intimate friend into serious consideration. Some women suggested they wanted gaymi relationships right from the very beginning, specifically because their male friends self-identified as gay. Little He revealed that “it’s cool to have a gaymi for a friend, because such people are fewer in numbers. They’re a rare species, so I gain face when I tell others I have a gaymi.” Others opined that the personalities of the individuals involved, rather than one’s gender identity or sexual orientation, determined how deep a friendship could become. Gay informant Little Li proclaimed, “I’m very annoyed by all this talk about gaymi, even though I’m one myself. Whether we become intimate (with our girlfriends), it depends on personal relationships and the individuals involved (kan guanxi, kanren).”
Yet, some women sought out gaymis, because of what they imagined intimate friendships ought to be like. Little Pan said: I’ve always wanted to find a gaymi. The reason was simple. Call me shallow, but I just wanted to be like Xiao S (Dee Hsu) and have a boyfriend like Kevin Tsai (both hosted the immensely popular Taiwanese talk show Kangxi Lai Le 2004–2016). It had nothing to do with sex, because we would be sharing a longer-lasting sort of love. This love differed from that between men and women, but [my gaymi] would be able to understand my love for my boyfriend. He might not be my type for dating, but he’d always be by my side, no matter whom I dated. Later, I met my current gaymi. I felt that I couldn’t tell my boyfriend some things, but I would tell them to my gaymi.
Indeed, our female interviewees regularly framed their desires for gaymis in terms of care. To them, gaymis embodied desirable “soft” masculinity by acting with gentility and emotional sensitivity. This care enabled the women to open up to their gaymis, especially about sex and other such sensitive topics. A female informant Huahua reasoned that “he’s gay anyway, and we’ve been good friends for years. I can touch him, and tease him. I won’t do that with most other men.” Another female interviewee, Little He, admitted: It’s very safe to go out with a gaymi. After all, he won’t do anything to me … I’m more at ease when I go out with my gaymi than with a straight man. My boyfriend’s also not worried … I’m more relaxed when I go out with my gaymi. Some things that are inconvenient to say to my girlfriends, I can tell my gaymi. Like questions about sex. “Because we’ve been friends for so many years, and our friendship circles overlap with each other, I don’t mind it when she introduces me as her gaymi to friends whom we both know well. I heard that some of her girlfriends envy (xianmu) her, because (having a) gaymi is now a fashionable thing. They also want to find their own gaymis. But you think, how can there be so many gaymis? How can there be so many excellent gaymis like me? [laughs boisterously].”
Gaymis as fashionable
Gaymis were also associated with the culturally hip. Female consultant Little Pan opined that “(having a) gaymi is now a fashionable thing,” in that having such a friend signaled to others that one was socially progressive and open-minded enough. Some women thought gay men would shower care and concern on them, while others wanted gaymis for the latter’s fashionable tastes. As Little He admitted, I’m a straight women with poor tastes, so my gaymi always laughs at me; he says I’m not woman-like at all. Whenever we go out shopping, he recognizes more brands than I do. He even knows which brand has released what style of clothing before. I can’t be bothered, but I like it this way. There’s someone to go shopping with me, and I can also get a fashionista’s advice. He’s got a wicked tongue though, and he likes to criticize me for kicks. There were some Internet discussions a while ago, about how Chinese men aren’t worthy of Chinese women. Just look at their awful body figures. They don’t dress well, they don’t go to the gym, and they’re such male chauvinists (zhinan’ai, literally “straight male cancer”) who want women to do this and do that. But women pay more attention [to outward appearances], at least about themselves. A classmate who’s now studying overseas told me that Chinese girls are very welcomed there, but Chinese guys face disasters. When I went out on exchange, I felt the same. Slightly older guys just stare at us in such a wretched, vulgar manner. But the gay guys around me are all very clean. Even if they have normal looks, they bother to exercise and to dress well. Maybe the straight guys look too lame (taitu) in comparison, so I feel good about the gay guys around me.
Our female interviewees believed that the undesirability of Chinese men led to these men’s inability to find girlfriends and wives. Rather than targeting the severe shortage in women caused by China’s one-child policy as being at the root of this problem (Li, et al., 2010), critics instead focused their ire on weiniang (“fake women”). In the early 2010s, a round of mass panic broke out, when media discourses blamed a perceived national deterioration of masculinity on effeminate men who looked more feminine and alluring than real women. The weiniang’s increasing visibility in the media endangered the nation-state with their supposed powerlessness, feminized passivity, and social deterioration that were reminiscent of China’s colonial image as “the sick man of the East” (Zheng, 2015b).
Gaymis as indices of social progress
When gaymis are popularly imagined as “soft” men, they too discursively threaten the nation-state. Critics fear that this softening is contagious, so they advocate education reforms to “save the boys” (Zheng, 2015b). Rather than treating softer, emergent masculinities as epidemics that warrant urgent intervention, we argue instead that the increasing presence of gaymis in popular gender/sexuality discourses indexes social progress. First, this presence encourages more gay men to come out of the closet, thus enabling the heterosexual majority to better understand and accept their fellow queer countrymen. Second, gaymi discourses prove that their interlocutors, the straight women who desire gaymis, are now willing to openly articulate the qualities that they desire in men. Part of the empowerment of daughters unintentionally caused by China’s one-child policy, this new assertiveness arises because their parents and grandparents now pour all of their affections into these singleton girls. Previously, girls had to compete against their (especially male) siblings (Fong, 2002). Such empowerment is historically unprecedented, so if we regard the “soft” gaymi as an emergent masculinity, then we can also see these articulate, university-educated, and professional women as embodiments of a more self-confident “emergent femininity.”
But while the gaymi figure indexes liberal social change, its construction is nonetheless based on stereotypes that Chinese society has of gay men. Recall, for instance, Little Pan’s earlier statement about how “(having a) gaymi is now a fashionable thing.” Here, she reduces gay men to accessories that queer-friendly women like her must have to demonstrate their liberal gender-equality beliefs. What happens when having a gaymi is no longer fashionable? Both our male and female interviewees demonstrated awareness of these misconceptions. Noting the existence of poorly attired gay men, gay informant Little Li asserted that “there’re many [of us] who are fashionable or put on cosmetics, and have good skin, but can you turn all of them into gaymis? There’re many in our gay circle with poor tastes, but does that mean they have no female friends?” Echoing this view, a female consultant Xiaoxiao observed, Gays are divided into many types. Some like these things, but others don’t. Who likes to be categorized? If there’s categorization, then there’ll be resistance, you know? Furthermore, it’s not because gays have good tastes, but because the tastes of some straight men and women are simply in the pits. Good and bad are always relative. I feel very strange. Straight men come in all shapes and sizes (qianqibaiguai), but the girls around me reject them, because they don’t look good or clean enough. Now, these girls even reject us gays, saying that we’re not gay enough. How many gays do they really know? … But sometimes, I also think that the gay circle is too caught up in outward appearances, so we can’t blame those outside the circle.
Links with BL culture
Before we conclude, we briefly explore the gaymi discourse’s possible links to greater forces of cultural globalization. We suggest that the current interests in the gaymi figure may draw inspiration from Japan’s boys’ love (BL) genre of literature (Welker, 2011), and also via the intermediary figure of the Korean kkonminam “beautiful flower boy” (Jung, 2010; Maliangkaij and Song, 2014). In her interview, Xiaoqing said: “My gaymi really does look especially good. He should be the best-looking male friend I have, other than my dad of course.” With that, she fished out her cell phone to show us a photo she took with a guy. Indeed, he looked handsome with fine features: I should be a waimao dang (person who prioritizes surface appearances). I’ve liked beautiful people since I was young, whether they are dates or just friends. My friends always say I’m obsessed with looks (kanlian de huachi), and I agree with them. I guess this is also the reason why I admit I’m a funü. Those beautiful boys let me enjoy their beauty. The love that they share with each other is also very touching. So, I support all people, no matter their genders. As long as they’re in love, it’s good.
In the case of another female interviewee, Honghong, this BL-gaymi link becomes even more obvious: I have a girlfriend who loves BL (danmei aihaozhe). Starting from high school, she told me things about the BL circle. They have their own Internet forum, so I got to know a little about them. I don’t like it that much, because they often gather to write stories and string the tales into series. But if I see two beautiful boys together, I feel that they’ll certainly fall in love with each other. I don’t know why. For example, if I fail to chase a beautiful boy, I’ll be very sad if he ends up with another girl. It’s like she steals my love away (hengdao duo’ai). But if he ends up with another guy, I’ll even feel very touched and I’ll be happy for them. Many tongren novels have this sort of plot. [It’s] very pure.
Conclusion
Over the past decade, the figure of the gaymi has gained popularity among Chinese women. Discursively constructed as a genteel and fashionable gay man who accommodates women’s emotional needs, the gaymi embodies an “emergent masculinity” (Inhorn and Wentzell, 2011) that differs radically from the yanggang stoic tough-guy sort of manhood present-day Chinese men are taught to aspire to (Hinsch, 2013). Pai Hsien-yung, author of the 1983 Taiwanese youth homosexual novel Niezi (Crystal Boys in English) is held as an archetype for gaymis, as are Taiwanese television host Kevin Tsai, and the late Hong Kong movie star Leslie Cheung. In a country like China that still widely treats homosexuality as shameful and even a mental illness (Engebretsen, 2013; Li, 2006; Zheng, 2015a), the discursive popularity of the gaymi figure enables the heterosexual majority to better understand and accept their fellow queer countrymen.
Yet, as much as the gaymi figure indexes progressive social change, its construction is nonetheless based on common stereotypes about gay men. Surely, not all gay men can (or want to) affect gentility and impeccable tastes, especially when soft mannerisms are often read as effeminacy. Neither should gay men be treated as accessories to show off one’s liberal leanings. Indeed, for all the valorization that the gaymi figure receives as a supposedly better man, the gaymi discourse is actually not about him. This discourse does not articulate what gay men want. Rather, we hear the desires of the as-yet-unnamed straight women who want gaymi companionship. In reality, the gaymi services heterosexuality, because he embodies the traits that these women would much rather find in straight men.
Lastly, on a more macro level, our interview data strongly suggest that the gaymi discourse may be driven by straight women’s interests in Japan’s boys’ love genre of literature and related media, and the “beautiful flower boy” of the Korean Wave. Were our suspicions correct, then this study will contradict the common wisdom that Asia passively receives cultural globalization from the West.