The Moral Politics of Maternal “Acceptance”: Queer and Family Activism in Xi’s China

Abstract:

This dissertation studies language practices and moral change within a social movement in the wake of China’s rapid social and political change under Xi Jinping’s rule. The movement, or what I call “queer and family activism,” is composed of queer activists and middle-aged straight mothers of adult gay children. Together, they strive to advance sexual rights by promoting family acceptance of queer people, which is deemed as the basis for facilitating social recognition and legal change. Within this movement, mother activists play a pivotal role, acting both as the objects and the agents of activism. Based on ethnographic fieldwork at Tongxinglian Qinyouhui (official English name PFALG China, later renamed TrueSelf or in Chinese, “Chuse Huoban”), a LGBTQ organization central to the queer and family activism, I examine the language practices of queer and mother activists, specifically, the activist performance of maternal “acceptance.” I analyze this performance as both a means of social mobilization and a strategy in political advocacy.

As a mobilizing practice, maternal acceptance stories aim to change parents’ attitude and recruit them into the organization’s network. Their production, circulation, and enactment create what I call “moral classrooms.” Within these social and discursive spaces, globalized discourses, such as identity-based conceptualization of queerness and psychotherapeutic ideals of family relationship, are delivered through a pedagogical register shaped by the Confucianist and Maoist traditions. Meanwhile, the reception of acceptance stories involves negotiating trust amid skepticism enveloping the relationship between activist performers and their audiences.

As a strategy in political advocacy, mothers publicly represent gay people to render gayness and intelligible and visible both to society and to the state. This form of “visibility through representation” varies, as the performance of maternal acceptance is shaped by different imaginaries of sexual citizenship and state-family relations. Acceptance may emphasize the moral legitimacy of maternal love to protect queer people from social harm, thus marshalling the privatized family in support of a liberal model of sexual rights. But it may also foreground maternal suffering to elicit state empathy, thereby seeking to bring queer individuals and their families under the umbrella of paternalistic state care, even at the risk of obscuring or concealing queer existence.

Across these spaces, activist performances of maternal acceptance are multifaceted, heteroglossic, and polysemic. Together, they demonstrate how social movements in Xi’s China operate as moral processes shaped by global discourses, local histories, and contemporary political challenges

Keywords: queer; motherhood and mothering; social movement; language; morality and ethics; China