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. ^_^

[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.

[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]

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.

[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.

[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]

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?

[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.

[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 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?

[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.

[extrapenguin]

The ending is heading towards a trajectory where it would not be out of place for Zhao Yunlan to drop off his beloved, publicly known to be Dixingian, boyfriend off at his place of work and give him a goodbye kiss. (Part of the fic is Dixingians becoming public knowledge. Also, Shen Wei will get a happiness overload.) It'd end up tangled in public-ness, so I'd want to sort it out fully as well, to be able to map the boundaries properly and not do anything I'd find stupid in hindsight.

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.
That is definitely a place it could end up in that I'll have to keep in mind!

[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...

[extrapenguin]

Would it not make more sense to consider Shen Wei's sensibilities vs Zhao Yunlan's shameless wheedling instead?
Due to a thing called "the rest of the fic", Shen Wei has been subjected to a few dozen happiness overloads and currently would be skipping along with a silly grin on his face if not for his self-control. :P He's willing to relax his sensibilities a bit now that he doesn't need to compulsively keep everyone away.

As for the homophobia ... the fact that Zhao Yunlan and Shen Wei treat each other as their primary social dates, but don't ever name the relationship (to e.g. Vice-Minister Guo when he's inviting Zhao Yunlan for dinner), and neither does anyone else (see: the entire Zhu Hong arc where she's treated narratively as a love triangle loser but no-one says Shen Wei and Zhao Yunlan are together) just reads as society not being super homophobic, but gay relationships still being taboo enough that people don't want to speak about it and leave it at the level of plausible deniability in case an escape hatch is needed. Then there's also that early-episodes joke where Da Qing complains about the flirting and Lin Jing says "Comrades!" (=slang for "Gays!") and that whole exchange is only funny if it's hilarious to insinuate that your boss is gay. I know it's the censorship, but it doesn't feel like a homophobia-free society to me as a result.

(I also didn't see ChuGuo as romantic, since the first instance of Chu Shuzhi having a positive feeling about Guo Changcheng was basically "ah, he's just like my brother!" and I don't have an incest kink. I also didn't pick up on any even vaguely romantic subtext until the very final episode, where Chu Shuzhi dragging Guo Changcheng off from that blind date had some hints of jealousy, but it was much, much less blatant than Zhao Yunlan and Shen Wei.)

[bonibaru]

I agree with this. I think that canonically you have to overcome Shen Wei's reluctance to show affection or emotion without significant public restraint, much more than anything they showed about the society at large.

The canon is open to do whatever you want. If you write homophobia into the story, as long as you tag/warn for it, it's author choice I think (but give sensitive readers the option to tap out via tags, if it's a subject they find untenable even in what you might consider a mild form).

[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]

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.

[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.

[extrapenguin]

But Shen Wei's reluctance and restraint would obviously be heavily tied up with societal opinions?

If you write homophobia into the story, as long as you tag/warn for it, it's author choice I think (but give sensitive readers the option to tap out via tags, if it's a subject they find untenable even in what you might consider a mild form).
See, my view is that canon-typical levels of $THING (whatever $THING may be) are the price of entry for fic/should be expected to exist in fic without being warned for*. Before this thread, it would not have crossed my mind that someone could watch the same show as I did and somehow interpret its setting as completely free of homophobia.

* Exceptions for the AO3 archive warnings, but even so, if a fic is Choose Not to Warn, one should go in with a baseline assumption of canon-typical.

[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]

The main part of my argument is that the way people talk about our (potential) gay couples is very different to how people talk about even Sha Ya/Lin Jing and Da Qing/Da Ji. With the het couples, it's "crush" and "girlfriend"; with the gay couples, it's "interest" and "friend". Basically it's the asymmetry of word choice that pings my homophobia alarms.

[jo_lasalle]

The ending is heading towards a trajectory where it would not be out of place for Zhao Yunlan to drop off his beloved, publicly known to be Dixingian, boyfriend off at his place of work and give him a goodbye kiss. (Part of the fic is Dixingians becoming public knowledge. Also, Shen Wei will get a happiness overload.) It'd end up tangled in public-ness, so I'd want to sort it out fully as well, to be able to map the boundaries properly and not do anything I'd find stupid in hindsight.

Not having read the fic, going purely by that description: I think you could totally do that and not assume "homophobia-free paradise". Just further along the curve of "mixed bag" than "professional repercussions unless you really keep it on the downlow", especially if you don't assume that fake!Chinese academia is more homophobic than other types of academia. I mean, if there's some random student somewhere in the crowd who secretly thinks they're being inappropriate and vents later to his asshole friends or some ancient professor who judges while unseen, would that matter? If you know what I'm getting at. Unless you need everyone to applaud and provide the rose petals...

[trobadora]

For me as a viewer, there's an obvious, blatant inequality in that there are plenty of hetero couples who are openly acknowledged as couples, and there are no non-hetero couples who are openly acknowledged as couples. Not even in the context of an actual jealousy plotline!

I mean, for obvious reasons, but the world the show portrays does have that inequality, so entirely homophobia-free doesn't ring true for me.

[bonibaru]

See, my view is that canon-typical levels of $THING (whatever $THING may be) are the price of entry for fic/should be expected to exist in fic without being warned for*. Before this thread, it would not have crossed my mind that someone could watch the same show as I did and somehow interpret its setting as completely free of homophobia.

No one makes overt homophobic comments, insults, or threats at anyone in the series. If you did that in a fic and didn't warn for it I would expect that it could be upsetting to some people who were not expecting to see homophobia beyond canon, if canon levels are "don't ask, don't tell" and in your fic it went farther than that - someone asked, or told, and the consequence in the fic was unpleasant/negative/hurtful. Agree that "choose not to warn" is, in itself, a clear choice.

[bonibaru]

Inequity is one thing, and if there is inequity in the fic to the same degree, then it's canon-compliant, yes?

So then inserting more blatant homophobia in a direct, open, explicitly stated form would be a step away from canon. Only one person's opinion, i.e. mine :D ymmv