China, Sex & Censorship: Celebrating Gay Men in Beijing, Dealing with Discrimination in Ulaanbaatar

The big China story this week is Google blowing the whistle on cyberspying and censorship. This is of personal interest to me because I chat online with a gay Chinese man in Chengdu every week, and there are subjects he doesn’t know about, and things he doesn’t have access to.

Once I found myself cutting and pasting the sentences from a censored story into the chat window so he would know what I was writing about. But of course, this was risky business and he made it clear he didn’t want me to do that in the future — our conversation is simply about gay life in the US, since in Chengdu it isn’t anywhere near as open as it seems to be in Beijing, where this week, what is billed as an officially sanctioned male beauty pageant (you can see a video of these shirtless young men here). I suspect my friend in Chengdu can't get to this video link however.

Late Breaking Development That Should Be No Surprise: Police Shut Down The Pageant — Full Story Here.

That's a sea change from just a few years back when homosexuality was a criminal offense. Bu then, in a country where a one child policy and the preference for male children has led to a male/female ratio that makes it hard for a straight guy to find a wife, taking the pressure off gay men from marrying as cover just might help a little. In fact, it also helps take some pressure off the regime, since a country with several million frustrated young men has got to feel like a powder keg no matter who is in power.

I have no idea what's behind the ruling Communist Party easing up on things in Beijing, but it's still not easy if you're in the provinces. And I’m not just talking Chengdu.

Mongolia for example. If you're in NYC this month, stop by the LGBT Center on 13th Street — in the lobby there is an amazing exhibit documenting the lives of LGBT Mongolians living in the capital city of Ulaanbaatar.

Beyond the Blue Sky, created and produced by Brandt Miller, includes amazing portrait photography by Miller and Mareike Günsche and a film by Miller and Sean Devaney.

The photographs are intense and dramatic. While some of the men in these photos are shirtless, each of the subjects’ faces covered by a khadag — a ceremonial scarf made of a sacred blue cloth representing the eternal sky and used at funerals to wrap the head of the deceased.

Each photo is accompanied with an oral history — a life story of each subject, transcribed by Miller — that captures the universal longing all lgbt people feel, that all people feel: the need for love and intimacy that is not merely recognized, but celebrated.

Miller, who was in Mongolia on a Fulbright Fellowship, was a co-founder of the first LGBT Center in Ulaanbaatar.

The exhibit will be on view at the NYC LGBT Center on 13^th Street through April. If you go there regularly as I do, take some time to stop and see it all. If you don’t go to the Center, consider stopping in. There are so many groups that meet there, and social services provided, it can be easy to overlook the fact that the Center is indeed a central arts resource for the community too.

Here is a video interview with Miller, followed by the video documentary made with Sean Devaney:

 

'Behind the Blue Sky' - Short film from Ual Da on Vimeo.

'Beyond the Blue Sky' Interview with Brandt Miller from Ual Da on Vimeo.

Comments

[bitterroot]

Thanks for this. The monk here at Namdroling was actually interviewed at length by Brandt in Ulaanbaatar to help frame the Buddhist view for this project. Nice to see it come to fruition. Wonder how the UB exhibit was.