one thing most any leftist will say about china despite supporting the country is that they’re a very traditionalist culture, and so LGBTQ issues in particular are a blight on leftist westerner’s otherwise positive view of china.
upon scrolling thru rednote, i think that’s bullshit now. i really don’t think you’re worse off being LGBTQ in china than you are in america. yeah, you can’t get married, but that right is under constant threat of being taken away in the US anyway and let’s be real- it probably will be taken away. meanwhile, china is making progress on that front, the US wants to regress.
i saw multiple LGBTQ people on rednote. i saw a lesbian couple, one of the girls even said “LGBT is completely normal in china now, especially in the cities. even the older generations who might not accept it mind their own business”. can that be said about america? how many queer people here have been accosted by some boomer who couldn’t mind their own business? i saw the gayest fucking dude i’ve ever seen in my life (that’s a compliment). he was also wearing makeup and sassily singing along with destiny’s child. completely comfortable in his skin and with his identity, and while all of the comments and his speaking were in mandarin that i couldn’t understand, you can tell by the vibe it was all positive. meanwhile in progressive america, if you’re a guy who wants to put on makeup and go live on tiktok you’re gonna face all sorts of homophobia and bigotry.
one of the few things western liberals could really say about china, that even those of us who are left wing and pro china thought to be at least somewhat true, appears to just straight up not be true.
Up until 2019 there had been quite a flourishing community of LGBT content creators, mostly on bilibili (Chinese Youtube), I can’t speak for the other platforms like Douyin though because I’m not into the kind of brainrot apps lol.
Anyway, Covid happened and there were a lot of anti-China racism from Western countries. Then Biden came into office and ramped out the hostilities against China (sanctions and crossing red lines far more severe than Trump had ever done). Most of the LGBT contents on bilibili also conveniently disappeared since (or have been 限流 which means your content is hidden from the search algorithm), so that’s why I said we’re seeing a regression here. In general, there has been a rise in anti-American/anti-LGBT sentiment (both are tightly connected) far more than I’ve seen in the 2010s.
Now that Trump is returning, there is expectation that the US-China relationship will warm again. Wall Street investment banks e.g. Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley etc. just released their year end reports for their clients that have been bullish on China and expecting the Chinese A-shares to rally after Trump gets into office. Surely the Wall Street ghouls know something we don’t. I’ve also seen similar sentiment on Chinese media so we’ll have to see what happens then. It’s only 3 days away. Who knows what Trump will do but I expect there will be negotiations on tariffs and both sides will reach an agreement that allows them to claim victory on their sides.
Anyway, my point is that if China opens up to the US again, the anti-American/anti-LGBT sentiment could lessen with the easing tension between both countries.