Homophobia in Haixing

[extrapenguin]

If I were to write a Guardian fic the point of which was something completely unrelated to homophobia, but which ended with Shen Wei and Zhao Yunlan getting a happily ever after, what level of societal homophobia would not throw you out of the story? Would you find it jarring if they dared hold hands in public? If they dared kiss? If they introduced each other as romantic partners in casual-ish conversation without too much euphemism? Their nearest and dearest would know, and marriage wouldn't be on the table anyway, but ... what is the range of attitudes that wouldn't have the readership's suspension of disbelief come crashing down?

On the one hand, I want this to be happily-ever-after dancing on roses without a cloud in sight; on the other, a lot of the relationship developments of canon make more sense if Haixing is at least somewhat homophobic. So: advice?

Comments

[jo_lasalle]

If I were to write a Guardian fic the point of which was something completely unrelated to homophobia, but which ended with Shen Wei and Zhao Yunlan getting a happily ever after, what level of societal homophobia would not throw you out of the story?

Speaking purely for myself and not taking your need for rose petals into account, my default expectation seems to be "mild but not raging societal homophobia, where you can get away with don't-ask-don't-tell stuff for the most part", with variations in both directions. The canon doesn't feel like it's set in homophobia-free paradise (I mean, I know, for obvious reasons!!! I'm just saying, even if I insert off-screen romance in my head, it doesn't fee casually-homophobia-free.) but there's enough stuff in the team's reaction to Shen Wei and the Guo/Chu plot that suggests variation in attitudes, including non-homophobic ones, to me.

I find a completely homophobia-free setting a little bit jarring, but more in the "must adjust head briefly for mild AU" sense, not a "omg not enough homophobia, this story is not for me, how weird!!" sense.

And honestly, if you want dancing on roses, hey - make the universe what you want it to be!

My two Eurocents, caveatcakes for changing of mind all over this one. ^_^

[extrapenguin]

The canon doesn't feel like it's set in homophobia-free paradise
This is what I keep tripping against. I need a happy ending for the fic to work, I just ... need to figure out how circumspect such a happy ending would need to be. They'd be out and accepted by the SID folks and a few of Shen Wei's nearest, and of course the society would have people who aren't homophobic at all, but what about broader society, like Shen Wei's students, or the people at the Ministry, or random passersby? Everyone certainly seems to act like being gay is not normative, so there's something there, but: how much? What is the intersection of fitting HEA and canon-compliant?

[jo_lasalle]

And the happy ending needs to be public, or do the themes of the fic require public celebration for it to be happy? In your specific example, is the students' positive reaction or the Ministry people not batting an eye relevant to your plot, or do you just need to have that sorted in your head for the fic to feel happy?

I also wouldn't find it weird to nudge "not a homophobia-free paradise" up to "there is homophobia but you can get away with a lot at mild cost", i.e. if you assume Zhao Yunlan holding hands with Shen Wei might mean he's unlikely to ever make minister but he also DGAF and he works in a weird department anyway, so they let him be weird, etc.

And in general, I'd take academia as a more progressive than your average workplace. (But that also is a very Western perspective and somewhat hilariously I feel more self-conscious making statements on fake!China academia than fake!China cops...)

[qikiqtarjuaq]

I personally feel like Shen Wei being a Dixingren is likely to cause more of an adverse reaction than the fact that they are men.

However, since there is nothing in drama canon about the attitudes on Haixing, you can reasonably go with either option. I think if you want a happy/fluffy ending, it's not necessarily worth including.

I'm happy to imagine them in a world where holding hands just means people are jealous of them rather than discriminatory.

On the other hand, I have to be in the right mood to read a fic with RL political/social parallels depending on whatever shitshow is happening in the news, so I at least would be less likely to click on fic tagged that way.

[extrapenguin]

Shen Wei being from Dixing will be addressed.

However, since there is nothing in drama canon about the attitudes on Haixing, you can reasonably go with either option. I think if you want a happy/fluffy ending, it's not necessarily worth including.
IDK, I don't actually think the drama canon is neutral on the existence of homophobia! It does seem that it exists, at least in some quantities, even if the SID crew/younger generations/a large chunk of people just go shrug and get on with their lives. Like, it seems there would be at minimum staring.

That said, it would definitely not have any outright incidents of homophobia; this is just me trying to figure out what sort of world they would calibrate their PDA and relationship privacy for. I doubt homophobia would even be explicitly brought up in the fic.

[qikiqtarjuaq]

I feel like Shen Wei's prim and proper repressed restraint will have more of an impact on PDA than anything else here, really. Would it not make more sense to consider Shen Wei's sensibilities vs Zhao Yunlan's shameless wheedling instead?

I've genuinely not seen anything in drama that indicates homophobia is a thing, though obviously they couldn't be explicit about it. Like ChuGuo had their awkward family dinner and his creepy puppet/angry attitude were the focus. We see a few implied f/f relationships on the cases. It's only if you look to the novel set in actual China that there is canonical homophobia, and even that is a lot milder than reality.

What scenes are you thinking about that makes you think otherwise?

[rheasilvia]

To me, the canon seems heteronormative, but not homophobic - which is a contradiction that actually gives you a lot of leeway, because you can basically interpret this in whichever way you want.

Thing is, getting a proper and non-contradictory read on society's view of homosexuality in a series where censorship prevents homosexuality from being overtly mentioned, while it is so blatantly implicit that it rises to the level of accepted canon... yeah, that's not going to happen. ;-)

Personally, I read Haixing as only very mildly homophobic. This is because nobody has a negative reaction to the relationship between Zhao Yunlan and Shen Wei because of the fact that they are both men. (Zhu Hong is simply jealous, and even Zhao Xinci - who I feel would be a homophobe, if that was at all a thing - seems indifferent to the m/m aspect, and tries to warn Zhao Yunlan off because Shen Wei is from Dixing.) They also never appear to hide the relationship in any way; Zhao Yunlan has no issues with snuggling and flirting regardless of whether or not other people can see. The other two gay and lesbian couples don't seem to run into homophobia issues either (which, yes, it couldn't be mentioned, but...).

[trobadora]

heteronormative, but not homophobic

Aaaah, why didn't I read the comments before trying to write my own?! I could have just pointed here! Because THIS.

[extrapenguin]

heteronormative, but not homophobic
Thing is, getting a proper and non-contradictory read on society's view of homosexuality in a series where censorship prevents homosexuality from being overtly mentioned, while it is so blatantly implicit that it rises to the level of accepted canon... yeah, that's not going to happen. ;-)
Huh, that's ... interesting. To me, the censorship-mandated lack of explicit confirmation that the relationship is romantic comes across as the characters self-censoring due to societal homophobia, since everyone accepts them as a couple but doesn't mention is, as if gayness was That Thing That Must Not Be Named. After they get together, even Zhao Yunlan's snuggling and flirting abates a lot; beforehand, it was a tool for getting people off their A-game and in a mildly homophobic society that might work even better.

[bonibaru]

But even the hetero-normative couples in the drama aren't very publicly demonstrative unless they are already married/ canonically engaged-to-be-married couples (which SW & ZYL are not, canonically, as far as we know before the drama ends). At most the other couples might hold hands or give affectionate smiles. So it's not like another series where you have the het couples in sweaty naked bed scenes and the gay couple exchanging a demure peck on the cheek.
And SW/ZYL pretty much do the smiling part and they have no issue touching each other in front of other people, even if it's merely a bro-tastic forearm clasp instead of outright hand holding. ZYL escorting SW home clutching his arm after the pillar excursion is in full-on public.

[rheasilvia]

the censorship-mandated lack of explicit confirmation that the relationship is romantic comes across as the characters self-censoring due to societal homophobia, since everyone accepts them as a couple

This is very interesting! As I said, I think the series does allow you to read this in it, because of its built-in contradictory messages. But personally, it honestly would never have occurred to me to read homophobia here - it isn't as though there is any overt discussion of heterosexual relationships, either, or any het PDA that goes above loving touches and looks - which the main m/m couple also do. To me it seems as though all relationships - homo- and heterosexual - are treated the same, with any differences in demonstrativeness down to the stage of the relationship and the personality of the people involved.

[trobadora]

Ooooh, good question! Personally for the sake of a fic I'm able to buy a wide span of possible attitudes in Haixing, so all of these would be good for me, but so would the opposite, where they couldn't do any of that. Just so long as the rest of the fic fits with that, you know?

Now if we're talking preferences ... I think a setting that's not entirely homophobia-free but also not horribly oppressive would feel truest to what we see on screen.

[extrapenguin]

I think a setting that's not entirely homophobia-free but also not horribly oppressive would feel truest to what we see on screen.
That is also what I'm aiming for. The trouble is calibrating the exact position of the needle. I suppose this is just a sign that I should write the first half of the fic instead of only working on the back half...

[naye]

I would absolutely hate if I was reading a Guardian story and came across random homophobia. There's no canonical basis for it, and I would find it extremely jarring to have homophobia come up either casually or as a major plot point. My still okay limit would be something along the lines of "oh, that's not very... traditional" to a same-sex couple being married. Negative reactions to Zhao Yunlan and Shen Wei holding hands would be a hard nope.

If you want some kind of cloud hanging over the relationship, go with something about Dixing/Haixing relationships being societally taboo - there's absolutely no joy for me in fic that reminds that homophobia is a real thing in real life. I'm already plenty aware, thanks. (I am also plenty tired of homophobia used for angst purposes in fic.)

Obviously this would be different in a novelverse story, where I'd be braced for the canon homphobia already. But dramaverse? Honestly, just go full marriage equality, because why the hell should being gay be an impediment to a fictional happy ever after?

[extrapenguin]

There's no canonical basis for it,
See, I can't help but read the ... forced silence, if you will, as evidence of societal homophobia. If homophobia didn't exist, they wouldn't all be playing coy about the nature of their relationship. (And yes, censorship, but this is an in-universe perspective and I can't just easily imagine that they'd do something offscreen that canceled my read on the homophobia.) See also my reply to qikiqtarjuaq above.

That said, it wouldn't be misery porn homophobia, merely background knowledge I'd use to map out the boundaries of character interaction – how public they'd wish to be, knowing that x amount of homophobia exists in society, compared to how public they'd be if they lived in a homophobia-free place.

If you want some kind of cloud hanging over the relationship,
I actually don't. This is me finding Haixing society as portrayed in the drama as being homophobic, and wanting to know other people's opinions on what amounts of homophobia in Haixing society wouldn't jar them out of a fic.

[bonibaru]

As noted above I don't think it's as much homophobia as it is that no couples behave in an overtly physically affectionate manner in public outside of those who are married or engaged. I might be missing one but if I am I am positive that someone who does remember a particular hetero-normative scene that is the exception will gently and kindly remind me of what I am forgetting lol.

[forestofglory]

My read on canon is similar to yours in that the way nothing is ever stated outright feels like the society is homophobic. However in fic it generally doesn't bother me when there is less or no homophobia.

[extrapenguin]

Thank you for the datapoint! I wouldn't go for Maximum Homophobia, anyway, but it's nice to see support for lower levels of it.

[solo]

There's this place where - as someone MAYBE YOU? - pointed out, Zhao Yunlan starts to assume that Hei Pao Shi and Chu Shuzhi have a thing, and he instantly goes into 'well, the SID is a very diverse and accepting kind of place' mode. This makes me assume that there are definitely less diverse and accepting kinds of places in Haixing.

Dixing, I don't know about.

[jo_lasalle]

Ooooh. I had forgotten about that in this context. That's a very interesting data point!

[extrapenguin]

Yup, that was me! The SID will not cause our couple grief.

As for what's going on in Dixing, we know less of it, but in episode 16, Zhao Yunlan goes around assuming that it's similar enough to Haixing, and IIRC in episode 17 there will be a scene that is readable as at least a metaphor for homophobia. I think I'd give them at least a different set of hang-ups, but I doubt it'll come up.

[china_shop]

For me, PDAs throw me out of stories a little, but that's more for cultural reasons. Like, I read somewhere (online; 100% reliable I'M SURE) that Chinese couples have been known to join foreign tour groups for the express purpose of PDA-ing, because you just can't as locals. What this means in practice is that ZYL can be super-handsy with Shen Wei because of assumed heterosexuality, but that anything that crossed the line into overt romance would get a strong reaction (if Haixing has a similar culture to China).

The only PDAs I can remember are between the married grocer couple, and that's more fussing over than being romantic, and maybe Ji Xiaobai and Zhou Weiwei at the wedding dress shop(?) (again in the context of engagement/marriage), but my rewatch is only up to ep 15. Wang Zheng and Sang Zan snuggle a bit, but mostly when the others aren't around, I think?

(Similarly, I mostly tend to read Shen Wei's reserve as culturally appropriate, given his class and position, and not actually that marked. He's formal where most of the other characters we spend time with are casual, but the lack of touching and even avoiding eye contact at times are just kind of normal? ZYL is the weird one!)

When I read fic with PDAs in, I tend to assume that the writer either doesn't understand the Haixing culture that I see when I watch the show, or doesn't care about it and is deliberately rewriting it how they wish it were/to be more like where they live. Which is a perfectly valid fic choice.

Sorry, this isn't actually answering your question! /o\ Also, I know nothing at all about Chinese culture barring a few posts I read online, so this is also influenced by five years of intensive Kdrama watching... IOW, take with barrelfulls of salt.

[extrapenguin]

I know different cultures have different standards of acceptable PDA and physical contact. Every Chinese person I've met, as well as the Guardian characters, have been super touchy-feely from my POV. Yes, even Shen Wei. (Finns stand at least a meter away from each other and avoid physical contact if at all possible. Yes, even married couples. The fact that my parents once held hands in public was Shocking to a large amount of my classmates and their parents.)

The only PDAs I can remember are between the married grocer couple, and that's more fussing over than being romantic, and maybe Ji Xiaobai and Zhou Weiwei at the wedding dress shop(?)
I'd have to rewatch, but I'm pretty sure Da Ji was clingier in a very PDA way. Unless we have different definitions of PDA? (See above about Finland being the antithesis of touchy-feely.) I'm not speaking about stuffing a tongue down the other's throat in the middle of the street; I'm talking about extending their canonical touchiness to hand-holding and have-a-nice-day kisses.

Based on what we see and gut feeling, I'd say public hand-holding is a form of PDA acceptable for the average (committed if not necessarily engaged) het couple, even if it would count as, well, noticeable PDA. Additionally, there's the question of what Zhao Yunlan and Shen Wei would do in semi-private spaces (locked offices, an empty SID HQ) and in liminal spaces (doorways), which aren't quite public but which aren't quite private either, and the answer to the question depends a lot on the level of homophobia in the setting.

[melannen]

Honestly I would be fine with any level of homophobia, because as people above are saying, the main evidence in the show is evidence of absence, and there's also a fair amount of fairly non-subtle signalling that it would be a lot less absent if not for censorship.

I think I also read Guardian through a lot of the strategies I learned on heavily queercoded American shows twenty or thirty years old (i.e.: Xena Warrior Princess, ST:DS9) where you learn to read absence of outright queerness in canon as, sort of, "this is what's allowed on camera, which is not what the characters are doing off-camera" and it's really, really up to reader's interpretation how much they want to actively reverse the censorship in their worldbuilding. Like it makes absolutely no sense to read Starfleet as homophobic at all, but the network censorship means it's just plain invisible on the screen, so you have to kind of mentally remove the censorship filter to make it work; I can do that with Haixing pretty easily too if I want to read it that way.

That said, I think I've been sort of reading the situation in Haixing as one where homosexuality isn't spoken of, but it's also not actively homophobic? Like, a situation where you wouldn't tell your boss you were gay, because that would be crass and also risky, but you also wouldn't hesitate to introduce your boyfriend to your parents or go to a gay club in your off hours, because there's a deep private/public split (with a good dose of survivalist doublethink) in how it's treated in those two spheres. Which is probably not that far off what it's like in places (like much of China, see: Guardian being a massive hit) that have a history of being culturally less homophobic but are having it imposed from above. That's probably just me reading the censorship into the text though.

But right now in English-speaking spaces we have this concept that you've all actually articulated pretty well in the comment threads above, that if a society doesn't treat same-sex relationships as exactly equivalent to different-sex ones, then it's homophobic. But there's a lot of cultural leeway for a belief that same-sex romances are valid and accepted but are not considered the same kind of relationships as opposite-sex romances. So you might say "Those two men are blood brothers who french kiss in public, are in love with each other, and have sworn eternal devotion, and I admire and support them" but to call them a couple would be weird and kind of daring because the society doesn't use that word for same-sex couples, they have other words. The same way nobody today would call a man who was married to a man his wife, even though that doesn't mean we're devaluing wives (...probably,) it's just that a man isn't a wife.

IDK: Right now, for very good reasons, there's a strong push to make sure gay couples do get socially and legally treated as exactly the same social category as het couples, and not being treated that way can be deeply painful for some non-het people, but I don't think it's a necessary prerequisite for a non-homophobic society that had a different social history. (And there are still queer activists who don't want it either, who want queer relationships to be definable on their own terms.)

Which is kind of veering off topic, but anyway, if I personally wanted to write a hearts-and-flowers no-homophobia type of ending that still felt true to canon Haixing, that's what I would probably go for: try to write in a world where the canon asymmetry is celebration of difference rather than an imbalance, and everybody who hears Zhao Yunlan introduce his "dear friend" knows exactly what "dear friend" means and thinks it's adorable. (Because I think the canon *does* support a reading where a same-sex relationship is as socially valued as a het romance, just without calling it that. Not the only valid reading, but one that is.)

Anyway I've been slowly reading Romance of the Three Kingdoms for my Ancient China Slash background* and basically the Peach Orchard Oath dudes are totally in love and everybody is okay with that but nobody would ever compare it to an m/f romance.

And to finish this way-too-long comment: I also agree that I think given any canon-compliant reading of Haixing homophobia, all of Zhao Yunlan and Shen Wei's circles at least are going to object far more strongly to the Haixing/Dixing part than the same-sex part.

*yes I am so deep in Not Finishing The Show that I decided to read the Great Classical Novels instead, shhhh

[extrapenguin]

Thank you for the long and thought-out response! It is full of interesting things, but the main suggestion of leaning into different-but-celebrated ("separate-but-equal") is unworkable due to personal squick.

Anyway I've been slowly reading Romance of the Three Kingdoms for my Ancient China Slash background
You know, I actually related, though my excuse into diving deep into Chinese poetry is that the protagonists of my other current fandom, Modao Zushi, would 100% definitely quote it. :P