Western gay-rights movements have impacted gay lives in Asia, especially the definition of gay identity. In the 1990s, Taiwan gay-rights movements followed the example of West and advocated that gay man is a normal man who happens to have different sexual orientation from heterosexual men. Nominally, the advocacy of the normal man seems gender-neutral, but it actually involves social gendering processes. As Sedgwick says, in order to interrupt the long tradition of viewing gender and sexuality as continuous and collapsible categories (a tradition of assuming that anyone, male or female, who desires a man must by definition be feminine), effeminophobia is needed to interpret the concept that male desires male. In Taiwan social context, this definition of gay identity also helps gay people erase the stigma of sissy constructed by psychological discourse. “I am gay therefore I like man but not woman with a dick” is a common discourse of self-expression in Taiwan gay community. However, this definition causes gay community to look up to masculinity as the standard and to marginalize sissy gay men. In recent years, many researchers criticize the cultural phenomenon and point out it is gay community that colonizes itself by copying heterosexual society’s ideology in which man is superior to woman. These researchers raise an important criticism, but at the same time, they perform and consolidate the same power structure in which masculinity is superior to femininity in gay community. Because these researchers do not go a step further to question the positive causal relationship between gay identity and gender performance; they narrow our understanding about the culture of Taiwan gay identity.
Taiwan gay community’s gender performance is very complicated. I find that the prime time “Asia Pop” of G Star, a famous gay club in Taipei, a good example to present and illustrate the complexity of performing gender culture. What is G Star’s “Asia Pop”? “Asia Pop” refers to a cultural spectacle which is regarded as a prime program in G Star and is composed of Korean, Japanese and Taiwan female pop music, such as Korean pop music (K-pop) by Girls’ Generation, T-ara, CrayonPop, Sister, and so on. In my analysis, I conceptualize “Asia Pop” as a cultural landscape composed of dancing bodies with K-pop in G Star. When DJs play Asia Pop, many gay customers step onto the stage and imitate female stars’ dancing steps in music videos. Their dancing skills are so good, even better and more feminine than female stars’. Because K-pop’s MV dances are highly feminine, gay men who participate in the dance movement are considered sissy gay men, called C-Mei in Chinese. The “C-Mei landscape” organized by Asia Pop in G Star is popular with local gay community and foreign tourists. Obviously, the landscape does not fit in the common description of gay community’s gender performance. Regarding the “C-Mei landscape,” I wonder how gay people recognize their identity, how they do gender through participating in Asia Pop, and why G Star arranges such a feminine performance as its prime program. In order to answer these questions, I adopt ethnography approaches to analyze “C-Mei landscape” organized by Asia Pop in G Star.
In my field work, MV dance is a kind of body technology of self-realization for many C-Meis. My key informants recognize their gay identities as “sexual inversion.” Sexual inversion indicates that a man has a male body but a female soul. Many gay men think that they have the so called “girl spirit” (少女心 in Chinese) . When they participate in Asia Pop and dance happily on the stage, they comfortably perform their “girl spirit” which is usually oppressed in public spaces. Asia Pop not only opens up a space for C-Meis to act like girls and realize their feminine identity, but also makes other people regard them as C-Meis. The club is a place for flirtation and opportunities to do one-night-stand. To refine that slightly, sexual desire is a clubbing constant. In Taiwan’s gay club context, C-Mei is usually considered an undesirable subject who has less chance to have sex with other customers, because gay people look up to masculinity as the standard in recent years. Some of my key informants are afraid of being labeled as C-Mei, so they avoid dancing in Asia Pop program. For other customers, these dancing C-Meis are undesirable in terms of sex, but they are considered to do dancing exhibitions like shows. Some informants tell me, because their dance is regarded as a show to entertain other customers, their “girl spirit” seems unreal. To put it in those terms, Asia Pop is an ambivalent and contested space: on one hand, it offers the participants their C-Mei identities and makes them undesirable in club context, but on the other hand, it is also a kind of show that blurs the reality of the participants’ “girl spirit.” Asia Pop opens up a space for C-Meis to perform “girl spirit,” but there is a controversial question: why does C-Mei show up only through the image of a clownish role?
In gay community, Asia Pop is a kind of alternative drag culture. Asia Pop’s music videos present heterosexual desire through which young girls pay court to handsome boys. Thus, gay men who follow MV dance steps and perform their ‘girl spirit’ imitate heterosexual mechanism through Asia Pop. In her gender performativity theory, Judith Butler finds drag culture a good example to elaborate that heterosexuality is an illusion naturalized as real, and she mocks the arbitrary distinction between maleness and femaleness. She takes drag culture as an example to argue that gender is mimicry. In my field work, Asia Pop as an alternative drag culture is not so radical as what Butler argues. For my informants, Asia Pop helps them realize their “girl spirit” even just in a contingent moment. When they participate in Asia Pop and dance, they feel good about themselves and get comfortable with their performed “girl spirit.” According to this observation, I think it is worth mentioning that C-Mei provides alternative definitions about being a gay man in Taiwan. Gay identity defined by sexual orientation forcibly produces a distinction between heterosexuality and homosexuality. This definition makes us think that homosexuality is a species which could be defined clearly. In fact, it is not. Just like what my field work presents, my informants recognize their gay identity from the concept of “sexual inversion,” which assumes all sexual desire is basically heterosexual. So, is there a real clear distinction between heterosexuality and homosexuality? In what sense are they different from each other?
C-Mei landscape constructed by Asia Pop is not only a gender performance issue, but also a commercial management issue since G Star is a commercial space. For club managers, how to create great atmosphere is an important issue. What customers consume is mostly the atmosphere in the club. The qualities of music and customers are two major components of the so-called great atmosphere. Nevertheless, these two key elements are not separate from each other but relational. As I have mentioned, sexual desire is a clubbing constant, so the manager has to consider how to keep desirable types of customers, such as masculine men with short hair, great muscle, and so on. Music plays an important role to govern the quality of customers in clubs. Take G Star for an example. Asia Pop is usually considered C-Mei’s music, so some gay clubs avoid playing Asia Pop to attract sissy gay customers. It is the ideological connection between Asia Pop and the specific identity of C-Mei that is found in the low level of sexual hierarchy which makes music a managerial technology of gay clubs. Interestingly, why does G Star arrange such a sexually undesirable program to be their prime time show?
For G Star, operating Asia Pop as the prime time program is not accidental. According to my field work, Asia Pop is not only a drag culture but also a tactical governance of drug use. In gay community, house music, a genre of electronic music, is regarded as an authentic gay music. House music is a kind of electronic music which has powerful tempos and repeats sentences all over a song. Many gay clubs in Taiwan take house music as the principle music, such as Jump, which is well-known for its outstanding house music. In contrast to Jump, G Star particularly plays Asia Pop during its prime time. Why does G Star arrange its prime program in this way? Actually, G Star plays Asia Pop to help avoid drug-use problems in clubs.
Taking drugs is an important way of musiking for house music. Because drugs enlarge people’s sense of listening, they make people blend into house music and gain huge pleasure. However, if G Star plays house music during its prime time, it must face lots of drug-use related problems such as order control, police inspection, and so on. For G Star, drug-use brings so much trouble that house music is avoided. Therefore, G Star creates the landscape of Asia Pop to govern drug issues. In sum, Asia Pop not only involves contested definitions of gay identity but also reflects political economy of club culture.
I have briefly put forward some arguments about C-Mei landscape shaped by Asia Pop in G Star. Through this cultural landscape, I reveal the complicated meanings of performance of gay identity in Taiwan: C-Mei landscape not only has the potential to re-define Taiwan gay identity, but also helps us discuss more about night-time economic issues like club management and its cultural governance.
Acknowledgement
Million thanks for Tim Deng's and Tsung-yi Michelle Huang's help.
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