Unbecoming Queer: Chinese Queer Migrants and Impossible Subjectivity

I am a queer woman born and raised in mainland China. At the time of writing this article, I am married to my partner of seven years and in the process of seeking permanent residence in the United States. In many ways, I pass as the "model queer immigrant"—in terms of ability, education, and occupation, for example. My request for permanent residency takes place during a time of homonationalism,¹ when the construct of sexual exceptionalism in the United States vis-à-vis queerphobia in mainland China prevails in public discourse. My ability to make my current request for permanent residency in the United States is afforded by generations of struggles for gay and lesbian rights and Chinese immigration accessibility. What is hidden in this process is how the structural forces of cisheteronormativity, which are concealed by the rhetoric of acceptance that ostensibly "welcomes" me to the United States, both enable and constrain the possibility of queerness. This article articulates my process of becoming an impossible queer subject,² a position that I share with many others in transnational queer worldmaking.

It is being said that the United States has entered a new Cold War with China.³ One of many examples of the new Cold War happened in late March 2019, when the gay dating app, Grindr, entered the media spotlight due to the national origins of its parent company. The U.S. government raised concerns about national security, highlighting the fact that Grindr was owned by a Chinese company, Beijing Kunlun Tech Co. Ltd. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) suggested that China could use "sensitive" user data from Grindr to blackmail U.S. American officials or contractors.⁴ The assumption here is that individuals' sexual information is safer in the hands of the U.S. government than it is in the hands of the Chinese government. As a result of U.S. pressure, fewer than two months later, Kunlun Tech agreed to CFIUS's demand to sell Grindr.⁵ Although there have been concerns over foreign access to data as espionage in previous cases, the Grindr case is unprecedented in terms of framing foreign-national control of a social media app as a national security risk.⁶ Against the backdrop of an increasingly tense relationship between China and the United States, the linkage between national security risk and queer relationships in the Grindr case is a prime example of homonationalism. In such a framework, China is cast as a homophobic and threatening territory whereas the United States is presented as the safe home for queer desire.

Instead of feeling angry or offended by the sexual imperialism embedded in such discourse, I feel ambivalent about the Grindr case. On the one hand, I am cautious about the liberationist rhetoric that positions LGBTQ Chinese individuals as oppressed by the Chinese state, waiting to be emancipated by the sexually progressive United States. As a Chinese queer migrant working in the United States, I refuse to be read as a fleeing Chinese queer, migrating to the United States for sexual freedom, living evidence of the sexual exceptionalism of the United States. I do not want my queer existence to be used to fuel an imperial system promising queer emancipation that is predicated upon the perpetuation of the global racial hierarchy. On the other hand, I am aware of the oppression and violence enacted on queer bodies in mainland China. In the summer of 2018, I encountered administrative attempts to intervene and terminate my talks on queer marriages in mainland China because of the sensitive nature of my research. For a while, I was worried about my ability to return to the United States because I had heard stories in recent years of Chinese feminist/queer activists and scholars being barred from leaving the country. Therefore, I was excited that the Chinese government was put in a position to publicly defend its position on queer issues, hoping that this would open up spaces for LGBTQ movements in mainland China.

Feelings of contradiction, tension, and ambivalence, such as those described above, color the everyday experience...