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When I open the closet, half of it has my clothes in it, the other half has hers. Every night, she lies next to me in bed. There is not one night when I am left alone. [But the reality is] I go on the net on my own. Whenever I am unhappy, I cry alone. I want my life to be infused with her presence. This home belongs to two people; it’s not made up of only my stuff. I hope she can truly be a part of my life, completely and thoroughly. (Moon, in her early twenties)1 Beginning in the economic reform period, the country has seen significant changes concerning private life and sexual morality. Models of intimacy that deviated from the normative one (heterosexual monogamous marriage) began competing for legitimacy and acceptance. Alternative models such as singlehood, multiple partnership, cohabitation, extramarital relationship and same-sex relationship have entered public discussion relatively free from the ideological and moralistic constraints that typified the pre-reform era. However, the dominant position of heterosexual marriage as the only socially acceptable form of intimacy has not been threatened. One shared theme of informants’ life narratives is the pressure of marriage. To almost all informants, married or unmarried, marriage is one major source of pressure in everyday life. The emergence of tongzhi communities since the late 1990s and the demand for exclusive same-sex relationship (that is not secondary to a heterosexual relationship) have put tongzhi in a difficult position to fulfil the obligation of marriage. In contemporary China, marriage is still assumed as an uncontested and a natural part of adult life. More than half of the key informants in this study were in their twenties at the time of interview, which is the so-called marriage age of women in China. This helps to explain why they considered the pressure of marriage as the major challenge in their life. It is important to note that the concerns of individual tongzhi in China vary by age, gender identification , class, ethnicity, religious belief, geographical location and the salient rural-urban divide. The problem of marriage as discussed in this chapter represents the most talked about challenge of lalas in Shanghai during the 2005–2011 period. Chapter 3 Private Dilemma 60 Shanghai Lalas As direct state control of people’s private lives through the danwei system or communal surveillance gradually retreated in urban China during the economic reform period, the family has become the most effective institution in monitoring individuals’ sexualities in the everyday context. In this chapter, I will discuss the dilemma lala women are facing in their private lives regarding marriage and their same-sex sexualities. I will look at how lalas are symbolically neglected in public discussion about tongzhi and dismissed from being autonomous sexual subjects in both public and private domains. I will focus particularly on forms of social control imposed by the institutions of marriage and family on lalas’ everyday life, and the deep-rooted stigma attached to female celibacy in China. The Pressure of Marriage Informants suffered most from the conflicts between family expectations and their same-sex relationships. While encouraged and empowered by the recently formed tongzhi communities to imagine and pursue a life that can realize same-sex desires, their heterosexual families are demanding them to keep their same-sex desires and relationships in the closet—at least not to display them in the family space. Such a compulsory demand has forced many informants to pass as heterosexuals in their families. Their heterosexual acting includes self-monitoring of gender expression (especially for informants who identify as Ts), hiding any signs of their sexualities and involvement in lala communities in daily interactions, attending blind dates arranged by parents and relatives, or having cooperative marriages. Straight performance allows lalas to survive in the heteronormative family space, while at the same time, it has an effect of reinforcing the boundary of normality and deviance. In the following part, I will discuss how important marriage is in contemporary urban China and how the family has become increasingly crucial as a gatekeeper of the heterosexual institution. Heterosexual monogamous marriage has been the state-enforced model of intimate union since the introduction of the country’s first Marriage Law in 1950. It is supported by and is closely aligned with other state policies of resource allocation, social status, and communal control. It has long been upheld by the medical institution as the most biologically desirable and “normal” form of sexual...

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