Danny Ball plays Ari in Malthouse Theatre’s 2023 production of Loaded. Photo: TS Pubicity / Tamarah Scott.
Ari’s casual assertion that he’s a wog, not white, scorns millennia of Western empires claiming Greek epistemology as an intellectual forebear while systemically deorientalising it. This feels particularly salient for how homoeroticism in Greek antiquity is absorbed into the lineage of anglophone gay culture today. That troubled relationship to history and lineage is also a recurring trope in migrant narratives, as the point of origin recedes into a romantic homeland fading into the horizon, or becomes a risk and a burden, a chorus of voices clamouring for tribute. Or a third thing: a ship with new parts but the same name.
It’s really interesting to see all the different iterations of this story (I also reviewed the audio play in 2020) and be pushed to tease apart my responses and figure out what’s in the work vs what’s changed in the world or the presentation context or my point of view. A good exercise as a critic!
Disheartening news this week on the eve of IDAHOBIT that Beijing LGBT Center has been forced to shut. Beitong, as it was known in the community, was the leading NGO for queer advocacy and research in China, as well as providing important welfare and peer support services. Our paths crossed frequently over the years that I was reporting on LGBTIQ+ issues in China, so this loss feels quite devastating both personally and politically – the China I knew and loved is being eroded piece by piece.
Beijing’s NGO community made such a big impression on me but a lot of what I remember is already gone. Q-Space, where this was taken, closed their physical space in 2020.
Foreign Policy has a good analysis of Beitong’s closure in the context of a natalist push for gender normativity, heterosexual marriage, and more babymaking to rebalance the country’s demographic woes. I’m quoted there, as well as in articles by the AFP and Bloomberg wires that have been syndicated pretty widely. I also gave NBC an interview for their story that should be out soon – I’ll add it to my press page when it’s published.
Beijing LGBT+ Center is absolutely pivotal to queer advocacy and social welfare in China and it was basically the last major, long-running organisation standing after waves of crackdowns smashed everything else.
It just feels so utterly hopeless. I know that queers & feminists in China know how to work a loophole, a cat door, a hairline fracture, a whisper, a metaphor, but soon that's too subtle and quiet to reach the people who need it. A secret handshake can't replace a lighthouse.
Anyway, it’s pretty cool to go on a late-night tweet spree and then see it translated into half a dozen different languages, but disappointing that so many media outlets remain inattentive to gendered language, even when reporting an LGBTIQ+ story. My pronouns have been in my Twitter bio since I started the account, and in my website bio and email signature (ey/eir/em, they/their/them, 伊 or TA).
It’s ironic too, because what I’m most proud of from my time in China journalism was building up LGBTIQ+ and gender reporting into beats that were taken seriously and resourced appropriately, and integrating that area expertise into editorial processes, ethics and house style. Using the correct pronouns for someone is just one very small part of that but often revealing of broader priorities. It’s something that Beitong and their peers like Tongyu and BGHEI invested in, too, with media guidelines, training, analysis and awards. So I hope media outlets take stock and use events like IDAHOBIT and Pride as an opportunity to consider how they could improve their LGBTIQ+ reporting.
For The Saturday Paper, I reviewed She and Her Pretty Friend, an appealing and accessible history of queer women’s lives in Australia from roughly 1830 to 1980. There’s a lot I liked about it and a few things that bugged me too. As always, I can send a read link if you can’t access it through the paywall, just leave a comment.
Scrimshaw code-switches easily between the cautious register of the historian and the more colourful lexicon of chronically online queers, reading real events in relation to memes and fandom tropes such as “oh my god, they were roommates” and “be gay, do crime”. The effect is chatty and conspiratorial, like catching up with a friend who can’t wait to tell you about what she just read, and it’s endearing to witness her transparent disappointment when women treat each other badly or don’t get the life we feel they deserve.
Yuki Kihara, Fonofono o le nuanua: Patches of the rainbow (After Gauguin), 2020.
For The Guardian, I spoke to Venice Biennale artist Yuki Kihara about fa’afafine community, climate change, and resisting the image of the lone genius in her show Paradise Camp.
The Canadian series Sort Of is a wry, thoughtful take on family and gendered labour with one of the best nonbinary characters I’ve seen on TV. My review here.
I don’t see a divide between literary and genre. Writing spec fic and horror connects me to a sense of who I am, my roots and psyche where the world of the real and the world of the unreal isn’t so binary.
Lian Low
Lian Low is a writer and a former editor-in-chief of Peril. I interviewed her for Liminal, mining her insights on the queer, the monstrous, and the last thirty years of Asian Australian arts and culture.
The article is a follow-up to my TV story for China Tonight (video below). You can also watch the full 30-min episode on iview, which includes my chat with Stan Grant about the issue, as well as other stories from the China Tonight team.
Since I started teaching, I’ve said yes to every student journalist who’s wanted to interview me in the hopes that it earns karma for my students.
Not sure if that’s an effective strategy, but here are a couple of the stories: I spoke to Swinburne’s The Wind Down podcast about the Chinese video games industry clamping down on queer narratives, and Robbie Mason from USyd’s Pulp mag about freelancing in this economy.
Episode 1 aired last night with Annie Louey’s story on 躺平 and mine on queer activists, Angharad Yeo on gaming restrictions, and of course Stan Grant and Yvonne Yong with all the news. Catch up on iview and set your alarms for 9:30pm, Monday nights on ABC TV.
Jinghua Qian 