Keep Silent, Keep Sinful: Mainstream Newspapers' Representations of Gay Men and Lesbians in Contemporary China

Abstract

From a critical discourse analysis of all gay-related news reports in five mainstream Beijing newspapers in the six years between 2010 and 2015, this paper distills four dominant aspects of the image of gays and lesbians represented by the news media through discursive and rhetorical strategies: gays as crime victims because of their inherent weakness, gays as violent subjects, gays as enemies to traditional values, and gays as a source of social instability. This means that despite its legal and official recognition in China, homosexuality is still tainted with sin and perversion in the mainstream public discourse. The way in which the Chinese news media and journalists constructs the image of the homosexual person notably differs from that in the West. Newspapers treat gay men and lesbians separately, with the former deemed socially destabilizing elements of violence and promiscuity and the latter seen as closer to 'normal' heterosexuals in the way they think and act. In addition, Chinese news reports almost completely silence gay people who are rarely interviewed, and the few who are see only their expressions of shame or regret published. This article also discusses and interprets such discursive strategies within the specific sociocultural context of Chines society.