this is a call to action, not a complaint! the instinct behind the xi memes is noble but does little to expose the recent and significant harm that our overseas siblings endure. let’s channel our creativity in ways that positively break the mold, bringing awareness and empathy into the conversation.
I get mixed answers every time I attempt to research this on my own. How’re the gays perceived in modern china? I don’t even need to ask about the rest of the queer umbrella, those answers are fairly explicitly negative.
genuinely i think you get mixed answers because it’s a mixed reality haha
i downloaded xiaohongshu (rednote) and there’s a pretty big gay community on there; if there is censorship it’s not on a scale that incredibly different from what the anglophone internet (tiktok, meta etc) experiences. ironically, most of the trans-/homophobia i have seen on that site comes from clearly american users.
that said, while there is no longer law against same-sex relationships, there’s no recognition or protection from discrimination either. further, the government is known to do censorship and sometimes worse (harassment) to queer representation. if you want to be a queer activist or make a movie or tv show with a queer couple, that’s gonna be a lot harder than, say, the usa.
tldr it’s a mixed bag but a slightly different mixed bag than you and i might be used to
(all of this stated as an outsider looking in, i’m pretty confident that i am well informed but others could certainly do better)
i would say the situation is so much worse than you expected. one thing westerners doest seem to realize is that xiaohongshu has a very upper echelon user base, those users already have a tendency to lgbt/feminism such “western value”. if you go douyin/kuaishou, these platforms are where you can actually meet real 2/3/4 tier city people, they tend to have much negative view to such cultures. “基佬”, which means “removeds” is still widely used and mostly in a negative context. during monkeypox outbreak people call the disease as “基佬痘” “removed pox”.
in term of cencorship, xiaohongshu’s policy varies based on account (or speaking genrally, every platform does this, because they have to make exceptions for internation users). like, chinese people cant search keywords like lesbian as they are censored, but people outside china can. cencorship works very complicated in china, in extreame case, western users can send winnie the pooh / tiananmen / hongkong to chinese user on wechat, the message seems deliverd on their side, but the app simply doesnt display such message on the chinese user’s side. not only they censor keywords, they also routinely nuke bloggers “promoting western cultures”, sometimes people can even get into legal trouble. chinese censorship is so much worse than silicon valley tech company, even twitter uder musk, i dont think they are on the same level.
Edit: the removed word is f* word for gay people. i didnt realize lemmy would remove it.