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

Submitted ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨years⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨ballthrower@lemmygrad.ml⁩ to ⁨china@lemmygrad.ml⁩

Hearing talk that the new Harry Potter movie is being “censored” by removing talk abt Dumblefuck and Grimshit being in love at one point or another. Thing is, there’s never any sources provided, especially never in the Chinese perspective, it doesn’t line up with what China would usually do (as there is a lot of LGBT media in China and popular LGBT people who get representation across the nation). And yet people often smear the country as being less progressive as the US, the country that has passed extremely discriminatory laws against LGBT people while in China there’s trans healthcare. Doesn’t make sense. Any of y’all know more about the subject than I do who can send me sources about the topic?

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ThatCakeThough@lemmygrad.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨years⁩ ago
Disney literally donated to homophobic politicians.

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stalinsghost@lemmygrad.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨years⁩ ago
definitely frustrurating and definitely disney doing its best to subvert criticism by appealing to the racism of their majority white liberal possibly gay but mostly an /ally/ consumer base by pretending they cant do more because big bad evil china

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panic@lemmygrad.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨years⁩ ago
I can tell that China does censor LGBT content, I don't know why.

But from my (not-Chinese) perspective the LGBT censorship is not... vile. Compare it to the Hays code and we aren't forced to watch LGBT people being killed off, raped or cured. It's a "wink-wink, two bros" thing. Tied with "did I mention that straight people are normal and being gay is a bit funny".

Most prosecuted cases are definitely tied to pornography and not being LGBT. Which rubs liberal the wrong way but the government is right to do so.

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- ballthrower@lemmygrad.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨years⁩ ago
  Understandable. It’s just confusing considering I’ve been around Chinese fandom sites for awhile now and seen how popular LGBT content is there. Never seen irl porn on those sites, but certainly hentai, so liberals shouldn’t be too mad. But they’re liberals so they think irl porn is freedom for some reason.
  
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  - panic@lemmygrad.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨years⁩ ago
    Liberals will only care about two good-looking actors/actresses kissing on a tv show before they contemplate the reality of being gay in China. Are LGBT people protected from housing discrimination, can they be fired for mentioning off-hand their sexuality? Who cares! They only want to consume Chinese LGBT people like any other product.
    
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- American_Communist22@lemmygrad.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨years⁩ ago
  I did hear it was getting much better though, do you know anything about that?
  
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  - panic@lemmygrad.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨years⁩ ago
    Absolutely. China is still developing and growing its ideas towards LGBT people (like every other country on Earth) it follows that the self-censorship will mellow with time.
    
    It's a relatively new phenomenon, the Mainland produced some (questionable at times) LGBT content up to 10 years ago. It's not a feature of "Chinese media" by any means. Online/independent communities keep making it. It will get better.
    
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dwzero@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨years⁩ ago
A friend of mine was very concerned about this claim, so i dug around a while ago. The best i could do was an auto translated memo from the government to the broadcast administration, seemed to suggest that they didn't want unrealistic portrayals of homosexuality. Thats all the more i know.

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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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- American_Communist22@lemmygrad.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨years⁩ ago
  
  There’s some hints that lgbt people in China are getting their politics from the US,
  
  Like they're liberals or they're gaining important education on LGBTQ matters and support?
  
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  - TheConquestOfBed@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨years⁩ ago
    A little bit of both. Since the party isn't cultivating the LGBT movement at home it seems like LGBT NGOs and their proponents are taking on some elements of western liberal idpol since that's where a significant amount of resources come from, and well-off/influential LGBT people are being educated in US colleges and bring those ideas back with them, the good and the bad. I don't have solid numbers though, just what I've seen in stuff similar to what I've linked.
    
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Amicchan@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨years⁩ ago
Hypocrisy at it's finest.

Wait they seriously did this? *facepalm*

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arisu_magatoroido@lemmygrad.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨years⁩ ago
I saw a self-proclaimed LGBT person with hundreds of thousands of followers on Weibo. But he supported the Ukrainian Nazis, attacked China's epidemic prevention policy, believed that the new crown was just the flu, and opposed Deng Xiaoping and Mao Zedong, saying they were not communists, and called those who opposed him 小粉红(a derogatory term). When people refute him, he always says refuters are attacking the LGBT community

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