TBG and Po: Discourses on authentic desire in 2010s lesbian subcultures in Hong Kong, China, and Taiwan

Abstract

Across lesbian communities in Hong Kong, China (PRC), and Taiwan (ROC), a group of masculine-presenting, assigned-female-at-birth individuals have come to be known as tomboys. Their partners are often normatively-feminine women who are labeled po (wife) in the mandarin-speaking China and Taiwan and TBG (“TomBoy’s Girl”) in the former colony. Throughout the late twentieth century and the 2000s, po and TBG had been conceptualized as latent heterosexuals whose heterosexuality was “falsely” displaced onto the tomboy lover, and it was also widely suspected that these women would eventually return to their “true” heteronormative lives. On the other hand, the 2010s era also sees queer women in the three Chinese societies increasingly leaning towards doing away with tomboy, TBG, po and all kinds of sexual identity categories altogether. How has the decades-old image of the “falsely-desiring” TBG/po evolved in this context of postidentity politics? In what ways is TBG/po desire imagined to be “real” or “fake”? And how has the true/false framework itself been transformed by postcategory yearnings? This article traces the shifting discourses on “authentic desire” ascribed to TBG and po women by first examining two media texts popular in the three lesbian circles—Yes or No and Girls Love—and second by looking into how women in these circles interpret these texts.