cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/45651005
When two dating apps, Blued and Finka, disappeared from the Apple AppStore in China on November 11, a whole world threatened to disappear.
The apps are two of the most popular among China’s LGBT+ community. Blued had been downloaded tens of millions of times, according to the BBC.
In taking them down, the authorities removed two major LGBT+ spaces, leaving little in their place.
[…]
Apple said it removed the apps “based on an order from the Cyberspace Administration of China”.
[…]
The disappearance of both Blued and Finka “will affect a lot of LGBT+ people’s lives very significantly”, [the specialist in China’s queer culture at the University of Nottingham, Bao] Hongwei says. “It sends a chilling and very clear message to ordinary LGBT+ people that they can’t pursue their own personal interests and desires.”
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Before targeting Blued and Finka, the Chinese authorities led a campaign against authors of the “Boy’s Love”, or Danmei, same-sex romance stories, some of which feature explicit love scenes between men.
Several Danmei writers, most of whom are female, have reported being arrested and questioned by the authorities, and in recent months two major Danmei sites have either shut down, or drastically reduced and toned down their content.
In September, a censored version of American-Australian horror film “Together” was released in China with a gay marriage scene digitally altered to show a heterosexual couple.
And in early 2024, China’s dominant social platform Weibo removed viral images of Chinese dancer and transgender icon Jin Xing waving a rainbow flag.
Despite being a high-profile and immensely popular celebrity in China for years, venues across the country dropped performances by her dance troupe without explanation in January 2025.
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Why is China’s LGBT+ community being targeted in this way? Rather than being specifically singled out, it is likely that it is a collateral victim of Xi Jinping’s notion of “common prosperity”.
Historically, common prosperity has meant an effort by the Chinese Communist Party to promote economic and social equality.
But in contemporary Chinese politics, “the Maoist principles about equality have more to do with uniformity,” says Hildebrandt. “You gain equality by being more like everybody else. You don’t gain equality by being diverse.”
In a bid to create greater conformity within the population, “there has been a push in China to reinforce traditional family values and, in some cases, traditional masculine values,” adds Lanteigne.
At the same time, China’s population growth and economy are slowing. “The current population growth couldn’t support economic growth,” explains Hongwei, meaning there has been a push to encourage heterosexual couples to have larger families to ensure an abundant future workforce.
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In this context of wider policies to promote common prosperity, the LGBT+ community is not the only group facing repression, but it is an easy target.
Since the Covid pandemic, “the Chinese government has endorsed nationalist discourse and LGBT culture is seen as very politicised siding with Western ideologies”, says Hongwei.
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I don’t understand, wouldn’t it be much easier for lgbtq+ people to side with China over the “west” if China’s leadership stopped attacking them?
Yeah, if they were to offer broad programs of welcoming queer refugees from places like Iraq, Russia, and Uganda it would seriously endear me to them. Like, it would make me vocally pro China at least on this one issue.
nothing will stop lgbtq+ folks doing what they want to do
we just have to wait for the big machine to catch up
Seriously. Sucks that shooting ourselves in the foot for the culture war seems to be near universal for the information age.
Yes, at this point genociding Uighurs doesn’t seem like the greater evil… Maybe the same level of evil as genociding Palestinians. But somehow when it comes to the question: where is it better to be LGBTQIA+? China keeps making themselves less appealing than the US. How? Shockingly easily. Why? No idea. It feels short-sighted like everything the US has been doing since the second coming of the pedophile in chief.
During the last lavender scare, the Russians were just as paranoid that their gay citizens were western inventions and persecuted them quite heavily.
…while the US did the same, thinking they were also security risks. This culminated in a society so fearful that people used to introduce themselves first by telling people that they had a wife and kids, then their name. A government official even killed themselves at their desk because their son was outed as gay. We even sabotaged our own ICBM program by firing one of the only astronomers we had capable of working on such things, because he was gay.
He went on to be the father of the gay rights movement as we know it today.
David K Johnson has a whole book about the whole lavender scare, it’s quite a good read.
Thanks for the book recommendation, I’m going to go look it up right now.
China has always been behind the US on LGBTQ rights. Why is this surprising? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBTQ_rights_in_China
Also “genociding Uyghurs doesn’t seem like the greater evil” holy fuck
It’s a ridiculously fucking crass thing to say huh? But like it comes from a place of that’s not my country, my country supports and actively participates in the genocide of Palestinians. This feels worse because I feel partially responsible because I’m a citizen. I don’t have the power to change anything but I feel like I’m failing by not succeeding in changing anything.
In this regard it’s hard to rank any country participating in a genocide as particularly worse than another. There still is a ranking, like I would still rather live in the US than Sudan, but it definitely levels the playing field between the US and China. It’s not flat but it’s so much closer than before 2023. Both seem pretty damn shitty right now.
This isn’t even to bring in ICE and the genocide or country is committing against people of Hispanic origin. But like if you want to argue the genocideness of US Immigration actions, we’ve been oscillating between #5 and #8 since rump 1 if not since Obama was in office. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_stages_of_genocide
Shit’s really fucking bad and we need to be taking it more seriously as citizens of this country. I also really don’t want to get shot or arrested by our police or immigration.
Thought this would go differently. Yeah the US is currently super fucked up, I agree entirely, we have the neo Nazi gestapo running around kidnapping people from their homes, the federal army tear gassing and on the edge of bombing of civilians, it’s like, really really bad yo. But to say “maybe this genocide isn’t so bad in comparison” is so fucked. ALL genocides are fucked by like definition. You don’t compare them. They’re all 11 on the 1-10 shitty scale.
While that posters statement is kinda strong it’s become increasingly hard to separate America and China as a non-American. What ICE is doing doesn’t really look that different than the situation in Xinjiang. And the apathy of the public about it doesn’t seem very different either.