Mainstreaming female masculinity, signifying lesbian visibility: The rise of the zhongxing phenomenon in transnational Taiwan

Abstract

“Zhongxing,” meaning “gender neutrality” in Mandarin Chinese, is the term typically used to describe young women who adopt masculine gender expressions affected by popular Japanese and Korean beautiful-boy styles and who assume a collective and prevalent presence in public space and popular culture in contemporary Taiwan. I examine how this cultural phenomenon evinces multilayered transnational convergence of globalizing western feminist and queer politics, commodified regional flow of Korean beautiful-boy image, and local Taiwanese T-Po lesbian subcultures in the process of Taiwan’s modern and international nation building. I also indicate the gender-specific consequences of cultural transnationalization on queer sexuality formation by elucidating how the rise of the zhongxing phenomenon mainstreams the unique form of female masculinity as a chic, politically progressive, and semi-normative gender performance for young women and represents lesbian visibility as a practice of insinuated signification rather than straightforward confession. Finally, I demonstrate how Taiwanese lesbians take advantage of the zhongxing discourse to conceive of a masculine inclination congruent with their female body and identification and to satisfy conflicting desires for queer visibility and social integration, revealing the subtle relations between normative constraints and the exercise of queer agency in a transnational cultural context.