TY - JOUR
T1 - On the transactionalisation of conjugal bonds : a feminist materialist analysis of Chinese Xinghun marriages
AU - Liu, Tingting
AU - Tan, Chris K. K.
PY - 2020
Y1 - 2020
N2 - Regardless of their sexualities, the Chinese face familial and social expectations to marry the opposite sex once they reach the appropriate age. Queers deal with this pressure by doing xinghun. While the relational and psycho-social effects of these ‘cooperative marriages’ between knowing gay men and lesbians have been extensively documented, xinghun remains relatively unexamined at the material level. By applying a feminist materialist approach to study how Chinese queers manage xinghun, we found that Chinese queers evaluate potential xinghun partners according to their economic status. To resolve the complications of related issues, Chinese queers spend large sums of money to maximise the chances of their xinghun succeeding. Moreover, in China’s highly patriarchal society, xinghun wives demand economic compensation for their perceived sacrifice. By regarding the transactionalisation of xinghun conjugal bond as part of the meta-changes happening in neoliberal Chinese society, this paper refines our understanding of xinghun beyond the seeming dichotomy between queerness and heteronormativity.
AB - Regardless of their sexualities, the Chinese face familial and social expectations to marry the opposite sex once they reach the appropriate age. Queers deal with this pressure by doing xinghun. While the relational and psycho-social effects of these ‘cooperative marriages’ between knowing gay men and lesbians have been extensively documented, xinghun remains relatively unexamined at the material level. By applying a feminist materialist approach to study how Chinese queers manage xinghun, we found that Chinese queers evaluate potential xinghun partners according to their economic status. To resolve the complications of related issues, Chinese queers spend large sums of money to maximise the chances of their xinghun succeeding. Moreover, in China’s highly patriarchal society, xinghun wives demand economic compensation for their perceived sacrifice. By regarding the transactionalisation of xinghun conjugal bond as part of the meta-changes happening in neoliberal Chinese society, this paper refines our understanding of xinghun beyond the seeming dichotomy between queerness and heteronormativity.
UR - https://hdl.handle.net/1959.7/uws:64664
U2 - 10.1080/00664677.2020.1855108
DO - 10.1080/00664677.2020.1855108
M3 - Article
SN - 0066-4677
VL - 30
SP - 443
EP - 463
JO - Anthropological Forum
JF - Anthropological Forum
IS - 4
ER -