Comment on Why do people often say that China bans LGBT western media?

TheConquestOfBed@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨years⁩ ago

Gay rights in China are being granted on technicalities but even these pretty lib sources can reach for the low hanging fruit of official govt documents. It seems like the government is being worn down by shifts in public opinion but very slowly compared to Vietnam/Cuba.

Beijing LGBT Center - Transgender in China includes various (unfortunate) stats on trans topics and examples of famous trans/nonbinary people in Chinese media.

CGTN - Being True to Yourself more of a documentary style piece with a moderately pro-chinese stance.

CGTN - Coming Out with Chinese Characteristics mixes experiences with monologues from public figures. Stats near the end show that lgbt rights issues progress slowly in China not due to culture war style rejection but simple ambivalence to the challenges faced by invisible minorities.

Yennefer Fang - A Day of Trans notable in that the producer helped direct The Eight Hundred. It is a more personal look at things, but tells a story about differences over three generations. There's some hints that lgbt people in China are getting their politics from the US, and the trans man depicted seems to have an easier time gaining acceptance due to gender norms.

Fan Popo - Mama Rainbow a bit older, mostly being interviews of parents of gay children. Shows how the most common opinion generally is "other people's kids being gay is okay, but my kids no." But if everyone does that then...

Chen Leona - I Am Me another documentary about personal experiences of transpeople.

On the topic of censorship...

This article is lib but the Korean perspective is less sensationalized than western tabloids. Chinese reactions against 'pretty boy' and 'sissy man' cultural symbols is (though mildly problematic due to potential overlap with queer culture) technically aimed at curbing interest in hypercapitalist Korean pop culture which is spreading across Asia quite rapidly. It's at the point where K-Pop groups are getting members from Taiwan, Mainland China, and Japan while training members to be multi-lingual in order to increase market penetration across multiple countries. The Chinese govt is very clumsily resisting this by making weak notices to producers and some purchase limits. This doesn't change the fact that some of the most popular Chinese media properties feature pretty boy main characters.

Whether gay content itself is actively being/should be censored seems to be a heavily debated topic in Chinese social media. But finding translations of these discussions leads to very biased western sources.

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