Coming out and going abroad: The chuguo mobility of queer women in China

Family and Work Lives of Lesbians in China: Implications for the Adult Worker Model

This article examines the ways in which lesbians explore opportunities and navigate constraints in their family and work lives in urban China. It not only reveals Chinese lesbians' difficulties in gaining equal access to the labour market and developing their desired family lives, but also discusses possible ways of enhancing the applicability of the adult worker model for sexual minority women. Previous research has indicated a shift from the male breadwinner model to the adult worker model, suggesting that both men and women are expected to join the labour market, and that women should not carry all the care responsibilities within the family. However, the model largely overlooks the interplay of gender and sexuality factors in shaping work and family lives. This article adopts a qualitative mixed-methods approach, including interviews with 20 Chinese lesbians and social media analysis, to examine lesbians' experiences of taking part in the family as adults and in the wider economy as workers. It shows how gender norms, heteronormativity, and policy intersect in generating obstacles for Chinese lesbians to thrive as respectable adult workers. This has important implications for attempts to improve the adult worker model to fit better with people's diverse work/family needs.

Revisiting the dominant coming out discourses in China's LGBT activism and research: Lesbians' chugui experiences within the family

This article, by illustrating coming-out stories of lesbians and their families, inspired by and extending Amy Brainer's theorization of LGBT family of origin relationships based on her studies in Taiwan, critically revisits the dominant coming-out discourses in the LGBT activism and research in contemporary mainland China. I first argue that, although the belief that the Western-rooted idea of coming out and Chinese family traditions are incompatible is influential within China's LGBT activist circles, what is seldom recognized is that "chugui", the Chinese translation of "coming out", has already become a local term. However, grassroots but creative definitions of "chugui", such as "to cultivate a better parent-child relationship", is rejected by LGBT activist elites. I then point out an imbalance in China's LGBT research that mainly pays attention to strategies of not coming out to parents, which actually underestimates parents' agency and even otherizes parents in the name of "filial piety". Rather, the emerging liberalistic ideal of family relationships, especially mother-daughter relationships, enables coming-out practices to become intersubjective journeys for both LGBT children and their parents to rethink gender and sexuality. Finally, I criticize the narrowly defined "family", or "home", in China's dominant coming-out discourses, which disproportionately focuses on one's family of origin and presumes it as a heteronormative fortress. I call for studies that recognize queer empathy and solidarity in a family of origin and connects one's experiences in her family of origin with her later life in chosen families, which may be the family of origin of her child(ren).