one thing most any leftist will say about china despite supporting the country is that they're a very traditionalist culture, and so LGBTQ issues in particular are a blight on leftist westerner's otherwise positive view of china.
upon scrolling thru rednote, i think that's bullshit now. i really don't think you're worse off being LGBTQ in china than you are in america. yeah, you can't get married, but that right is under constant threat of being taken away in the US anyway and let's be real- it probably will be taken away. meanwhile, china is making progress on that front, the US wants to regress.
i saw multiple LGBTQ people on rednote. i saw a lesbian couple, one of the girls even said "LGBT is completely normal in china now, especially in the cities. even the older generations who might not accept it mind their own business". can that be said about america? how many queer people here have been accosted by some boomer who couldn't mind their own business? i saw the gayest fucking dude i've ever seen in my life (that's a compliment). he was also wearing makeup and sassily singing along with destiny's child. completely comfortable in his skin and with his identity, and while all of the comments and his speaking were in mandarin that i couldn't understand, you can tell by the vibe it was all positive. meanwhile in progressive america, if you're a guy who wants to put on makeup and go live on tiktok you're gonna face all sorts of homophobia and bigotry.
one of the few things western liberals could really say about china, that even those of us who are left wing and pro china thought to be at least somewhat true, appears to just straight up not be true.
I remember when my chinese language partner sent me a little text she wrote in English about her home city Chengdu. There was a line in there about the city's culture where she said that in Chengdu, "you will often see homosexuals holding hands!"
She 100% meant this as a positive thing btw, she's a total sweetheart.
Folks look at this, the homosexuals are walking down the streets of Chengdu in the middle of the night holding hands, look at them they feel so safe, tremendously safe. What does that leave them? Serenity.
We could use an emoji of this Trump impersonator
There’s an excellent Trump impersonator on there that’s doing Mandarin lessons and lifestyle content, speaking Mandarin in the Trump accent.
That guy's got Trump down pat
Chengdu has a (positive) reputation of being China's most queer-friendly city, I guess she was drawing attention to that?
Yeah that's for sure what she meant, just phrased it in a funny way
Haha, that's cute.
The phrasing reminds me of visiting my now-wife in the tier-3 city in the midwestern US where she lived at the time — apparently you would not often see homosexuals holding hands there, as evidenced by this other queer girl who got so excited to see us holding hands that she yelled "equality!!!" at us as we walked past holding hands, then seemed super embarrassed about the outburst and sheepishly added "me too" and gave us a thumbs up. Wholesome and memorable tbh
I remember an old coworker from Texas saying this about his first trip to San Francisco, but in a very confused way. He said he wasn't homophobic, but he was blown away that there are places where this was possible to do in public lol.