Tongzhi Sovereignty: Taiwan’s lgbt Rights Movement and the Misplaced Critique of Homonationalism

Abstract

This essay reviews the influential work of a group of Leftist ‘sex liberation’ scholars who pioneered queer sexuality studies in Taiwan in the 1990s. In doing so, it focuses on their post-2000 political rift with the mainstream Taiwanese lgbt (tongzhi) rights movement. What ostensibly began as a split over views of same-sex marriage has developed into a contentious politics of Chinese versus Taiwanese national identity and what I call ‘tongzhi sovereignty’. In bringing together both national identity and sexual politics in Taiwan as increasingly intertwined sites of contestation, I argue that the two must be theorised in tandem. As a fertile site for unpacking this contentious divergence, I examine and problematise the way that cultural theorist Jasbir Puar’s popular concept of homonationalism has circulated in scholarship of cultural/sexuality studies about Taiwan as a slanted and largely unchecked analytic to criticise lgbt sociolegal progress and, for some scholars, obscures a pro-unification agenda.

Seeing China differently: National contestation in Taiwan's LGBTQ (tongzhi) movement

“…Globalisation scholar Jan Nederveen Pieterse (2020: 5) clarifies that “the issue is not nationalism but what kind of nationalism: outward looking nationalism, engaged in regional and multilateral cooperation, international law and global public goods; or inward‐looking nativist nationalism, provincialism of a complacent or an angry kind.” Moreover, as Craig Calhoun (2017: 26) reminds us, “[t]o think that nationalism is always bad, and that banal nationalism simply underwrites the always available potential for more evil, obscures the importance of nationalism to some much more positive projects.” The inclusive practices of pro‐Taiwan tongzhi encompass a broad agenda from building a more equal society where sexual minorities are legally protected, to supporting the progressive domestic agenda of political parties like the Green Party, New Power Party and Taiwan Statebuilding Party, and ultimately to defending Taiwan's liberal democracy and contested sovereignty. The co‐constitutive relationship between sexual minorities' rights and national self‐determination in Taiwan—what I term tongzhi sovereignty (see Chen‐Dedman, 2022, forthcoming)—is animated by concrete concerns such as legalising and expanding the scope of same‐sex marriage to protect the rights of domestic and transnational couples, “the efforts of LGBTQ parents to secure legal protections for their families” not enshrined in the 2019 ‘special law’ on same‐sex marriage, despite “deep ambivalence about the power of law” (Friedman & Chen, 2021: 553, 554), “channel[ing] resources to people with HIV/AIDS and their partners, creating a sex‐positive space for BDSM and polyamorous practitioners” (Kao, 2021: 4), organising Asia's largest and regionally popular Pride Parade, hosting LGBTQ rights workshops for Asian activists and other collaborative activities that enhance Taiwan's visibility and positive contribution to the international community (Chen & Fell, 2021). For a contested state such as the Republic of China (Taiwan), working to mitigate its global exclusion and perpetuate its autonomy through strengthening a locally derived national identity should not be equated with exclusionary forms of nationalism in other contexts.…”

Taiwan's Same-Sex Marriage Legislation: Social Movement Strategies and Relational Dynamics

“…Also, what makes the debate over SSM legislation in Taiwan unique is not the critique of SSM as a form of homonormativity (modeling gay and lesbian relationships on heterosexual ones) that is often found among more radical queer scholars and theorists. Rather, as Adam Chen-Dedman (2022, 7) has pointed out, the key distinction is how the queer critique among radical leftists in Taiwan “has departed the realm of sexual politics and morphed into a sustained attack against the post-martial law era's movement to localise Taiwanese identity.” In a broader context of Taiwan's political status and cultural identity, including its contested statehood and historical and ongoing tensions and connections with mainland China, the debate over SSM within the LGBTQ community in Taiwan is not only about the ideal form of same-sex relationships, but also very much about a local Taiwanese identity versus a broader and ethnically inflected Chinese identity (see Chen-Dedman 2022, 9–10).…”

Marry or not for democracy and love: Dialogic framing in the Taiwan marriage equality movement and countermovement

“…The recent rise of Mainland China as a regional hegemony and the increasing isolation of Taiwan in international geopolitics backdropped the alignment between the claim to equal rights for sexual minorities and the claim to national sovereignty as an equal to Mainland China (Jung, 2021). A vision of “tongzhi sovereignty” (Chen-Dedman, 2023) emerged from the debates around national identity, rights, and sexual politics, and activists for or against same-sex marriage pivoted their arguments on the contestation over Taiwan sovereignty. Social movement actors took external uncertainty Taiwan faced as an opportunity to carve out a civil space and communicate with the government.…”