Return Come Out Queer Lives in Postcolon

Chapter 9
Return, Come Out: Queer Lives

in Postcolonial Hong Kong
Lucetta Y.L. Kam
The story that cannot quite get told is also a queer story—a tale of ‘difference’ that is
palpable only as an undercurrent. It resists the logic of the norm and risks oblivion under its
representation pressure. (Leung 6)
There is a photograph overlooking tens of thousands of protesters holding

umbrellas at the occupation area of Admiralty during the Umbrella Movement1
started in September 2014 in Hong Kong. I took a closer look and found a tiny spot
of rainbow amidst the sea of colorful umbrellas. Someone was holding a rainbow
umbrella, the symbol of LGBTQ rights. During the time of street occupation, I also
spotted rainbow umbrellas and rainbow flags on slogan walls and outside tents in
the occupation areas. I am curious to know the stories of those participants in the
Umbrella Movement who have made an effort to display their sexual and gender
politics. In a territory-wide movement of such scale and intensity, “minority” issues
can be easily overlooked or put aside due to long lasting prejudices in society or
strategic considerations of the organizers. I can also recall sights of people carrying
rainbow flags or slogan boards with LGBTQ messages in numerous political events
in Hong Kong such as the annual July 1st pro-democracy March and the June 4th
candlelight vigil. They are usually a small group of LGBTQ activists or scattered
individuals in the crowd. Who are those people and why are they so eager to make
LGBTQ messages seen and heard in the city’s political scenes? What are the
experiences and stories of LGBTQ participants in Hong Kong’s political events?
Copyright © 2017. Springer. All rights reserved.
1
The Umbrella Movement, also known as the Umbrella Revolution or Occupy Movement, is a
mass pro-democracy movement began in September 2014 in Hong Kong. It is estimated that over
one million people joined the street sit-in or occupation taken place in the major commercial areas
and traffic intersections in Admiralty, Mongkok and Causeway Bay. The protesters’ goal was to
oppose the election reform proposed by the government and to ask for full voting rights for all
citizens in Hong Kong to elect the chief executive. The street occupation has lasted for three
months. Scattered tents stayed and public activities have been held in the occupation areas months
after the forced clearance by the police.
L.Y.L. Kam (&)

Hong Kong Baptist University, Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong
e-mail: lkam@hkbu.edu.hk
© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2017 165

Y.-W. Chu (ed.), Hong Kong Culture and Society in the New Millennium,
The Humanities in Asia 4, DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-3668-2_9
Hong Kong Culture and Society in the New Millennium : Hong Kong As Method, edited by Yiu-Wai Chu, Springer, 2017.
ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/hkbu-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4825434.
Created from hkbu-ebooks on 2020-06-18 00:31:14.
166 L.Y.L. Kam
What kind of “performances” are they trying to put up in all those inherently
heterosexual or desexualized and degendered political movements? How do they
connect gender and sexual politics with other political issues and resistance cur-
rently ongoing in Hong Kong? The disconnection of gender/sexual politics and
politics in general in Hong Kong is deep-seated in the common sense of the general
public and many activists as well. So why do some people want to bridge up this
disconnection and work to ensure LGBTQ presence in the big picture of local
political movement? These are the questions gradually direct me to start this
research project.
The project is also inspired by Helen Hok-Sze Leung’s book Undercurrents:
Queer Culture and Postcolonial Hong Kong (2008). Leung eloquently writes about
the transitional and postcolonial period during Hong Kong’s “return” (“wui gwai”
in Cantonese, huigui in Mandarin) through an analysis of the production of local
queer culture at the time. She connects the city’s political uncertainty with the
unpredictability and anxiety of queer desires. The ambivalence of queer desires and
the instability of queer lives (or lives without a promised future) echo the post-
colonial experience of Hong Kong during and immediately after the transition. She
proposes that “contemporary queer culture in Hong Kong is paradigmatic of the
city’s postcolonial experience” (5). Putting Leung’s proposal into the current
political and social context of Hong Kong in 2015, the parallels of queer lives,
desires and Hong Kong’s postcolonial experience have become even more pro-
nounced. In her book, Leung uses Stanley Kwan’s short film Still Love You After
All These (1997) to have a parallel discussion of “queer space” (through Kwan’s
narration of his childhood neighborhood in Hong Kong when he was a closeted
boy) and Hong Kong’s postcolonial space. In the film, Kwan narrates in Mandarin
Chinese to tell the neighborhood and his life before Hong Kong’s “return” and his
“come out”. Leung sees Kwan’s choice of language as a linguistic reflection of the
everyday contradiction and ambivalence in postcolonial Hong Kong.
Kwan pointedly narrates the entire film in Mandarin, the decreed national dialect, rather
than in his native Cantonese. He is ‘passing’ linguistically as ‘Chinese’ while ironically
evoking the emotional particularity of his experience of growing up in Hong Kong, which
can never be completely encapsulated in the distinctly ‘foreign’ dialect in which it is
articulated. (Leung 14)
The effect of this linguistic “disconnectedness” is reminiscent of the experience

of “coming out” in a LGBTQ context. In Leung’s words,
Still Love You expresses an affection for this time-space, which the advent of a nationalistic
narrative of ‘return’—much like the ‘coming out’ narrative of identity—claims to super-
sede and consequently renders irrelevant. (Ibid.)
The language of one’s new identity or the newly invented narrative of the self is
in fact and ironically unable to tell who this person was nor who this person is. The
nationalistic narrative of “return” might sound as “irrelevant” as the narrative of
“coming out” to tell one’s history of self especially when the new narrative seeks to
override or over-write what came before it and to monopolize or pre-write what will
possibly come after it.
9 Return, Come Out: Queer Lives in Postcolonial Hong Kong 167
Leung’s book is also a rare archive of queer cultural productions surrounding the
time of the political transition of Hong Kong. Those queer images, voices, songs,
writings and life stories form an essential part of the culture and history of Hong
Kong. Inspired by Leung’s effort to map out the queer cultural scene of the post-
colonial Hong Kong, my research project aims to document queer voices and
stories in various local political struggles in post-1997 Hong Kong. This paper
looks at and looks for the connection of LGBTQ identification, tongzhi movement
participation and civil political movement participation.
This paper is also built on and continues Leung’s parallel discussion of “return”
and “come out.” In other words, I intend to understand the postcolonial experience
of Hong Kong people through a parallel reading of LGBTQ people’s experiences of
being part of the Hong Kong society. This paper tries to incorporate queer voices
and stories into the discussion of local Hong Kong political struggles. It tells stories
of queer people’s participation in local tongzhi movements and civil political
movements, the connection of their sexual/gender identity, community involvement
and civil political participation in Hong Kong.
The inclusion of queer people’s voices and experiences in local political resis-
tance is also a response to the following situations in Hong Kong, namely, (1) the
disconnection of gender/sexual politics and civil political movements; (2) the
heteronormative culture and assumptions of local social movements; and lastly
(3) the lack of gender perspective and sexual analysis in dominant political dis-
courses of Hong Kong.
The disconnection of gender/sexual politics and civil political movements stops
us from having a more holistic understanding of what politics is and from imagining
a culture of social movements or political resistance that can take gender and
sexuality as seriously as class and ethnic politics. There is a general failure in Hong
Kong for people to connect gender/sexuality and political resistance. “Why gender
(and sexuality) matters in political resistance?” “Does one’s sexuality have anything
to do with politics?” Similar questions are common in classrooms and public dis-
cussions of political issues. The disconnection has led to another form of reduc-
tionist understanding of gender, that is the reduction of “gender politics” to
“women’s issues.” The gendered division of issues in Hong Kong’s political and
social discussions is obvious. Anything related to women, or marriage and family
will be categorized as “gender issues” or “women’s issues.” The two terms are
interchangeable. This is a problematic compartmentation of issues. It reflects the
ideological divide of what are considered women’s issues and what are those of
men’s issues. It also reflects the assumption of seeing women as the gendered other
(hence their issues are “gender issues” or “gendered issues”) and the rest of the
issues (not women specific) are universal ones. On a closer look, there is also a
clear heteronormative understatement. The assignment of issues and ways of
understanding certain issues are based on normative heterosexual genders and their
respective roles. This leads to the second point, the heteronormative culture and
assumptions of local social movements. Here I do not intend to generalize local
social movements into one unified group of people. There are diverse activist
groups with diverse politics and the LGBTQ movement is also a significant part of
168 L.Y.L. Kam
the local social movements. What I am highlighting here is the heteronormativity

that is overwhelmingly and sometimes unconsciously presented in mass political
events such as the Umbrella Movement. It is not hard for us to observe a very
visible gendered division of labor in the occupation areas among voluntary workers
and participants. Women were concentrated at first aid stations and supplies sta-
tions. Men were more often summoned or expected to take up physical and dan-
gerous duties. The division of labour reflects the dominant heteronormative script of
gendered roles in our society.
Dominant political analyses of Hong Kong are generally lack of a critical
gender/sexuality perspective. The reasons can be due to the above-discussed factors
existing in local social movements and society at large. The field of
gender/sexuality studies in Hong Kong is growing very fast in the recent decade.
The number of scholarships of local gender/sexuality studies and scholars spe-
cialized in gender/sexuality studies of Hong Kong society has been increasing
steadily. The collection of Xing Zhengzhi (Sexual Politics) edited by Yau in (2006)
is an important publication to introduce diverse topics and issues of gender and
sexuality during the transitional and post-1997 Hong Kong. Recent attempts of
studying Hong Kong from gender and sexuality perspectives include Man-kit Cho’s
study of the Hong Kong Family Planning Association and the city’s sexual
modernity,2 Ka-ming Wu’s analysis of transborder politics in postcolonial Hong
Kong through the case of mainland pregnant women,3 and Mary Ann King’s
discussion of coloniality and community building by a new gender framework.4
This paper continues the effort laid by those earlier and current scholarly and
activist works to incorporate gender and sexuality into the political analysis of
Hong Kong.
Methodologically, I combined in-depth interviews and open-ended questionnaire
for LGBTQ identified people who have participated in local political events in
recent years and for local LGBTQ activists. I interviewed LGBTQ participants of
the annual July 1st March, June 4th memorial events, anti-national education
campaign (2012), the Umbrella Movement (2014) and other major political and
community-based movements taken place in recent years. I interviewed LGBTQ
participants of major public LGBTQ events in Hong Kong, such as the annual
Hong Kong Pride Parade (started in 2008), IDAHOT events (started in 2005) and
the more recent Pink Dot Hong Kong (started in 2014).
2
See Cho “Jiajihui Xiandai Xing” (2010); “Mapping the Sexual Landscape” (2013).
3
See Wu “Neidi yunfu chanzi (內地孕婦產子)” (2012); “Muqin, bentu zunguixing he houzhimin
xianggang (母親,本土尊貴性和後殖民香港)” (2013).
4
See King “Xunzhao shequxingbie de zhimin mailuo (尋找社區性別的殖民脈絡)” (2012);
“Indiscernible Coloniality Versus Inarticulate Decolonization” (2015a); “Wanchai shequjianshe de
xingbie yihan (灣仔社區建設的性別意涵)” (2015b).
9.1 Return and Come Out
“Return” and “come out” are two keywords in post-1997 Hong Kong. They rep-
resent two distinctive yet overlapping moments of identity formation. The former
refers to the official expression of the end of British colonial rule of Hong Kong in
1997. The change of the sovereignty of the city is officially expressed as the
“return” of Hong Kong to China. The term “return” (“wui gwai” in Cantonese) has
been widely used in official documents and events related to the handover of
sovereignty. “Come out” is a term originated from the lesbian and gay movement in
the Anglo-European context referring to the telling of one’s sexual orientation or
gender identification to other people. It is an essential part of the LGBTQ move-
ment that is built on identity politics. Hong Kong’s LGBTQ community and
movement developed rapidly after the decriminalization of (male) homosexuality in
1991. The 1990s has witnessed the establishment of the city’s early lesbian and gay
organizations and the emergence of local sexual and gender identities. After 1997,
the politics of coming out and visibility dominated the local LGBTQ movement.5
The solidification of “tongzhi” as an umbrella identity of the LGBTQ community in
Hong Kong was realized in many public campaigns and events that call for tongzhi
visibility and equal rights in the subsequent seventeen years.
The first part of the paper is a parallel discussion of the identity discourse of
“return” and “come out.” The second part of the presentation is about how LGBTQ
people connect their personal stories and their participation in the tongzhi move-
ment and political movements in Hong Kong.
9.1.1 “Return”
The assumption of “return” in the political context of post-1997 Hong Kong is one
based on a China-centered perspective which sees the handover of sovereignty as
the “return” of the once colonized territory back to its “original” proprietor.
The literal meaning of “return” or “wui gwai” in Cantonese (huigui) in the
context of Hong Kong assumes there is an original place for Hong Kong to return
to, such as a place called “home,” “homeland” or “home country.” The place or the
state that we say would return to is always thought to be the final destination or
where we truly belong. Temporally, the discourse of “return” celebrates the present
and condemns the past.
It is assumed that the “return” of sovereignty would give birth to a new national
subjectivity that has been non-exited in the past and is considered to be more
5
See Wong “Cong ‘zhiren cheng tongzhi’ tansuo xing/bieyundong dezhuanhuashi zhenfen-
zhengzhi” (從“直人撐同志”探索性/別運動的轉化式身份政治) (2015); Kong Chinese Male
Homosexualities (2011); Kong, Lau and Li “The Fourth Wave? A Critical Reflection on
the Tongzhi Movement in Hong Kong” (2015).
170 L.Y.L. Kam
politically correct. The return of Hong Kong, as understood by some, is not only the
return of sovereignty, but also the return of a national self or subjectivity. The most
popular imagination of Hong Kong’s “return” to China is a visual representation
built on gender stereotypes and normative ideas of heterosexual family. Hong Kong
is always represented as a lost kid coming back to his biological mother, China. The
allegory is widely circulated in school textbooks, government publications and
mass media. One of the problems of this representation is the ideological under-
standing of Hong Kong as a child and China as the mother or parent. The depiction
of Hong Kong as a child in those heterosexualized political representations can be
seen as a reflection of the status of Hong Kong in the discourse of “return.” The
allegory is basically built on heterosexual assumptions and an ideology of essen-
tialized Chinese family that’s popular in our political imagination of the relationship
between China and Hong Kong, or China and Taiwan. Hong Kong is always
represented as coming back to its original self after its “return” to China. In queer
term, before 1997, Hong Kong is like a gay person hiding in her closet.
9.1.2 “Come Out”
The term is originated from the LGBT movement in the Anglo-European context.
Sexual minorities use collective identities to identify with each other and use them
as a foundation for collective actions to survive and fight for equal rights in
heterosexual society. The logic of “coming out” assumes the existence of a “real
self.” This real self, while in the closet, is usually violently dismissed, repressed and
silenced. Once come out of the closet, the person is able to be her real self and can
live a life that’s true to herself. Many have pointed out the limitation of the politics
of coming out. One obvious limitation is that when we come out, we are only
allowed to come out as one single identity, or one single identity that is collectively
recognizable. One cannot come out as more than one identities, or as an identity
that is unknown or disapproved by other people in the community. The act of
coming out gives birth to a new subjectivity. Similar to the discourse of “return,”
the subject that is born after the very act of coming out is usually considered as
more real and politically correct than what is before coming out. Therefore, tem-
porally, “coming out” also celebrates the present and condemns the past.
Both discourses of “return” and “come out” are built upon a binary logic, that the
present state is better than the past, that the “outed” subject is more correct than the
“closeted” one, that the new national subject is more advanced than the colonial
one. The condition of Hong Kong’s subjectivity after 1997 and its similarity to the
coming out discourse of LGBTQ people are what inspired me at the very beginning
to start this project.
9.2 From “Return” to “Come Out”
In the post-1997 official discourse, there is a linear imagination of “return” and then
“come out.” Hong Kong people are expected to “come out” as new and proud
national subjects after the “return” of the city to China. Hong Kong people are like
gay people. The colonial period is the closeted time. The discourse of return leads
us to imagine the past as a period of darkness, humiliation and misery, much in the
same way as a gay person in the closet. The “come out” of Hong Kong after 1997 is
a “return” to the right track and an overturn of the humiliating past. Yet the logic of
“return” restricts us in the same binary way as the logic of “coming out.” It only
calls for a return to one singular identity and one particular geo-political location.
The past must be condemned. The present must be celebrated. The future is actually
not as open as before. Individual differences come after collective identification.
In the following part, I will use the Umbrella Movement as an example to
discuss LGBTQ people’s participation in civil political movements and how they
see the connection between their sexual and gender identity and political
participation.
9.3 The Rainbow Umbrella
The Umbrella Movement, also known as the Umbrella Revolution or Occupy

Movement, is a mass pro-democracy movement began in September 2014 in Hong
Kong. In this Section I am going to discuss the queer voices, participation, cultural
production and the disputes caused in the Umbrella Movement.
The LGBTQ participants in the Umbrella Movement consisted of individuals
who do not belong to any organizations or groups, LGBTQ activists, scholars and
student organizations such as Action Q, a LGBTQ advocacy group formed by
students of various tertiary institutions in Hong Kong. The presence and involve-
ment of Action Q in the Umbrella Movement were highly visible. Their organizers
took up an active role to support the movement and made a clear stance to bring
gender and sexual justice into the pro-democracy movement. They organized a
number of creative actions in local universities to promote the Umbrella Movement

with a clear LGBTQ agenda. They put up rainbow flags on campus buildings with
messages related to the goals of the Umbrella Movement. They invited university
students to hold a rainbow umbrella and post the photographs taken onto their
Facebook page. They are one of the LGBTQ groups in Hong Kong who has made
an effort to connect the political agendas of the Umbrella Movement and LGBTQ
movements. One telling example is the slogan they carried in the Hong Kong Pride
Parade 2014, which was taken place during the time of street occupation. The
slogan writes “Civil nomination for all. Equal rights for tongzhi.”6 It is a conscious
6
“公民提名必不可少/同志平權刻不容緩.” Translation mine.
172 L.Y.L. Kam
effort to make LGBTQ rights visible and equal in the pro-democracy movement
that fights for universal voting rights.
Another incident related to LGBTQ in the Umbrella Movement is the dispute
over Hong Kong Federation of Students’ (HKFA) participation in the Hong Kong
Pride Parade 2014. HKFA is one of the major actors in the Umbrella Movement. It
has been a long-term supporter of the Hong Kong Pride Parade. Hong Kong Pride
Parade 2014 was held in November and it was during the street occupation. Part of
the parade route was just outside the occupation area in Admiralty. The HKFA has
publicly shown their support of the Parade and announced their participation on
their Facebook page. It even changed its profile picture on Facebook, which was
originally the logo of class boycott, to rainbow color during the month of Pride
Parade. They then received hundreds of negative comments on Facebook for their
open support of the Pride Parade. The opposition views can be categorized into four
types: (1) to align the Umbrella Movement with tongzhi is strategically unwise;
(2) equal rights for tongzhi is not related to the Umbrella Movement; (3) tongzhi are
taking over the Umbrella Movement; (4) student leaders’ participation in the Pride
Parade would divide up their supporters. The negative comments demonstrate an
overwhelmingly heteronormative assumption of the Umbrella Movement and the
contesting views on gay rights among the participants. Despite of the opposition,
the student leaders of HKFA joined the Parade.
On the creative front, there was a humorous rewriting of the brotherhood of
student leaders by Boys’ Love (BL) fans. Not long after the outbreak of the
Movement, a fan page of student leaders was set up by BL fans on Facebook. It is
called “In Defense of Lester and Alex to Occupy Mountain Mo Shan Hehe
Group.”7 Alex Chow and Lester Shum were two student leaders of HKFA. They
had a prominent presence in the Umbrella Movement and were regarded as the
major student organizers and spokespersons. During the occupation, their popu-
larity soared rapidly and many fan groups were formed on social media. The two
young men’s public presence and private interactions were re-created by their fans
into erotic fantasies. They were nicknamed “Alexter,” the combination of their
English names, and were fantasized by fans as a (fictional) couple. Until December
2014, the Alexter fan page on Facebook attracted over 34,000 followers. The
administrators regularly posted fictional, originally created BL stories, songs, and
pictures of the few male student leaders based on their public appearance in the
occupation sites. Fans of popular culture rewrote the heteronormative script of
social movements and political discourses by a playful twist of the hegemonic
masculinity that is so often performed or expected to be performed in social
movements in Hong Kong. It is a new way of political participation and inter-
vention through the use of subversive resources found in popular culture and the
creative rewriting of the dominant hetero-male-centered political narrative.
7
“捍衛 lester alex 佔領巫山 HeHe 團.” Translation mine.
And here’s where Boys’ Love (in [Mandarin] Chinese, danmei) meets activism: Alex and
Lester are friends. Photographs of them in threatening situations show their courage, and
also show moments of shared grins, comforting pats, banner holding, and standing side by
side. In a way, the homosocial power of their friendship stands for the overwhelmingly
youth-generational force of the Umbrella Revolution and its likely generational legacy.
(Lavin and Zhu (2014), “Alexter: Boys’ Love Meets Hong Kong Activism”)
The creative effort by female BL fans can be understood as the queering of the
heteronormative movement and the homoeroticization of the always (hyper-)mas-
culine notion of “brotherhood” in the culture of social movements.
In the last section, I would present stories of queer people’s participation in the
Umbrella Movement and the connection between their identity and political
participation.
According to the LGBTQ informants I interviewed, the participation of their
LGBTQ friends in the Umbrella Movement was more in number than their straight
friends. They were participating both physically and virtually on social media.
Danny8 (queer gay, 33): Over eighty percent of my Facebook friends are “members.” [gay
people] [Right after the occupation] I found that many have changed their profile pictures to a
yellow ribbon [the symbol of democracy and universal suffrage]. I was quite surprised.
I thought the tongzhi community would not pay much attention to this issue. I cannot do a
comparison on whether it’s the entire society or just the tongzhi community that is partic-
ularly supportive of the yellow ribbon or the Umbrella Movement. Just based on my personal
experience, looking at my Facebook newsfeed alone, so many people changed their profile
pictures already… I do not know if it’s related to their tongzhi identity so that they are more
aware of the importance of political reform… Many apolitical middle class gay men or even
teenage boys have changed their profile picture. I was so surprised. Even those dating apps
showed the same phenomenon. People on them changed their profile pictures. Before they
were all nude pictures showing muscles and then all were changed to yellow ribbons [laugh]
… There are a lot of tongzhi at Mongkok and Admiralty [the two major sites of occupation].
We turned on the Grindr app and saw so many tongzhi [nearby in the occupation area].
Chris, a thirty-six years old lesbian, was a regular sit-in protester at Admiralty. She
had a tent at a fixed spot in the occupation area. Her butch appearance attracted
other passing by lesbian women to join her in the tent. There was a time her tent
hosted seven TBs (butch lesbians).
9.3.1 Visibility
When being asked about why they participated in the Umbrella Movement, apart
from the general political agenda, informants told me they were joining for the
visibility of queer people. Zita, a twenty-nine years old lesbian, was a regular
protester in the occupation areas of Admiralty and Mongkok. She was conscious in
dressing herself in a way different from styles that will be read as normative
femininity so as to make her queerness visible in the occupation areas.
8
Names of the informants used in this paper are pseudonyms.
174 L.Y.L. Kam
Zita: It’s mainly for visibility. You got to be seen… During the occupation, there are many
lesbians. When you walk around, you would see a lot of queer people. I see this as an
opportunity to achieve something. This is the right time to do it. You dress like that to walk
around [in the occupation area], in a way, you are showing other people different ways of
dress or different styles of women. They ought not to have long hair or certain kinds of
appearance.
Zita also regarded the display of her queerness as a form of gender performance
to disturb the heteronormative surface order in the occupation areas.
Zita: I think [the presence of queer people] shows another kind of power… You know there
are those police officers always capturing people [with a video recorder]. He [Zita’s gay
friend] would keep posing before the camera [laugh]. Only some people are able to have
this kind of humor.
When asking about the connection between their LGBTQ identification and
political participation, there are three major forms of connection, namely, (1) po-
litical awareness; (2) technological enlightenment; (3) strategic connection of issues
and people.
9.3.2 Political Awareness
Nearly all LGBTQ activists I interviewed mentioned political awareness as a cause

for them to extend their participation from LGBTQ movements to other social or
political movements in Hong Kong. The initial sense of self-affirmation and
political empowerment they obtained in LGBTQ event organizing has allowed
them to develop an interest and passion to take part in other political struggles
beyond LGBTQ rights. The self-narrative of Betty, a twenty-three years old woman
who identified herself as “not so straight,” is an illuminating example of how one’s
gender and sexual struggle and empowerment can lead to a sense of social justice
that is applicable to other political struggles. When being asked why she took part
in LGBTQ movements, she wrote me a long story of her adolescence and early
adult years,
Betty: It definitely has something to do with my education. I received my secondary
education in a girls’ school for seven years. Throughout all these years, I had doubts over
my sexual orientation and gender roles. For example, I felt weird to have a crush on girls.
Some of my friends even had stable relationships and sex with girls. It undoubtedly
broadened my horizon about the possibility of sexuality.
It also hit on me when I saw a large continuum of femininity in a girls’ school where some
girls appeared to be more ‘feminine’ while some others behaved like guys. Since my school
was a traditional Catholic school, there were rules that we need to follow yet I think were
ridiculous. For instance, all the girls had to wear dresses or skirts (as casualwear) for the
school Christmas party. Senior form girls had to put on another set of school uniform,
which included a pencil skirt. It was so much tighter that we could hardly run or stretch in
it. The school principal said it was meant to cultivate our gracefulness and ladylike
manners. I didn’t know the ideology behind or anything about feminism but I just felt
uncomfortable with this saying. I thought it was unreasonable to mold all the girls into a
single type of human beings that share similar attributes. We are humans with individuality!
(Sorry for the long story!) After I entered the university, I was not attracted to any girls but
a guy in my class. He appeared to be more effeminate than the other guys but it didn’t really
matter because everyone is unique. I confessed to him but unfortunately I was rejected as he
told me he was gay and didn’t dare to tell anyone in our social group. He even told me that
he was bullied by other boys when he was in secondary school (a boys’ school). Though
devastated, I felt great sympathy for this good friend for being in the closet and being
“deviant” from the majority.
Meanwhile, another girlfriend of mine confessed to me that the relationship between she
and her girlfriend had hit a rough patch. Her other half was a religious Christian, so was her
family. They felt great pressure hiding the relationship from her girlfriend’s family and
acting against the religion. As a friend, I honestly could not do anything to help them.
Since then, I decided to pursue a minor in Gender Studies in the university so that I can be
empowered with related theories and make a change in the future. Later, I realized that I
had to put my knowledge into actions or the reality would not change a bit. Then, it was
why I have joined the X organization and participated in LGBTQ events.
Betty’s narrative of how she has developed from feeling helpless and frustrated
to feel empowered and motivated to put what she learnt into actions tells the
connection between one’s gender and sexual struggles and the cultivation of
political awareness.
Danny is a thirty-three years old activist who identifies himself as queer gay. To
him, there is no inherent difference between LGBTQ movements and civil political
movements. In his words, both kinds of movements “challenge the existing power
relations of domination.” However, he adds that being a LGBTQ person makes him
more sensitive in understanding the operation of power in society. Zita’s views
echo with Danny’s, namely, that being a member of the minority group allows her
to experience things that might not be felt by other people.
Zita: I don’t see there’s a direct connection. But some sorts of political sense are developed
from the identity of tongzhi, something you can only experience when you’re a one of the
minority. For example, the feeling of being repressed or there’s no way to file a complaint.
Many people don’t share that feeling… Just look at those of my middle class friends who
don’t care about politics, they won’t feel the same way as I do… Or look at my own family,
apart from my [tongzhi] identity, actually we are not repressed in any other aspects. So I got
my political awareness from this identity. You start to realize there’s injustice in society. If
you’re just an ordinary middle class person, you won’t realize that those unfair things
would affect you. So it all started from my own awareness. I develop compassion from
some of my own experience, and tongzhi identity is part of it.
9.3.3 Technological Enlightenment
Chris explains the connection between her participation in LGBTQ movements and
other political movements in technological terms. She joined a lesbian group ten
years ago as a helper to manage the website. The experience allowed her to have
176 L.Y.L. Kam
access to activist training courses organized by various local NGOs. From those
courses and the working experience at the lesbian group she joined, Chris learned
the know-how of social organizing.
Chris: [I] learned the models of social organizing and developed agency [to take part in
social movement]… Because of tongzhi movements, I got to know all these frameworks [of
social organizing]… This identity [of tongzhi] didn’t make my life more difficult or easier,
but it had led me to join those organizations and through them I enhanced my skills [of
social organizing]. The influence is indirect.
Chris was an active participant of the Umbrella Movement and has also been
active in various sectors of local social movements. She admitted that the practical
skills she learned during the early years of her participation in LGBTQ movements
have helped her a lot in subsequent activist projects she has been involving.
9.3.4 Strategic Connection
The connection of one’s participation in LGBTQ movements and civic political

movements is sometimes out of strategic considerations. Katy is a fifty-two years
old transgender activist. One of the major parts of her activism is to obtain equal
rights and especially equal legal status for transgender people in Hong Kong. This
required her to deal with politicians and legal professionals. In order to build
strategic alliance and to work together with different professional parties, Katy sees
it necessary to get herself involved in politics or specifically, to work closely with
politicians.
The connection of LGBTQ politics and those of other political issues sometimes
require creativity and a sense of humor. Similar to the strategy of Action Q, queer
activist Danny designed his annual drag performance in the Hong Kong Pride
Parade in a way that was in line with the goals of the Umbrella Movement. As
mentioned earlier, the Pride Parade in 2014 was held during the Umbrella
Movement and the parade route covered the occupation area in Admiralty. Danny
was an active participant in the Umbrella Movement. He wanted to choose a drag
character that can connect the messages of the Pride Parade and the Umbrella
Movement. In the end, Danny appeared in the parade as the Buddhist goddess
Guanyin.
Danny: Pride Parade is more festive. The choice of my drag performance has to be relevant
to the theme and to show support to the Umbrella Movement. Guanyin helps all miserable
people to go to the land of happiness and teaches us that we are all equal. These messages
are well delivered [in that context]. It’s not merely a playful performance or a play of
gender. There are also some messages to deliver and those messages are relevant to the
Umbrella Movement and to all political movements in general.
This is a paper aims to understand how queer people tell their story of sexuality
and gender and their participation in civil political movements, and how queer
people tell their stories of Hong Kong. I would end this paper with the experience of
Candice Tang, an organizer of Action Q. It is about an episode of her joining the

class boycott in September 2014 as a LGBTQ activist. On that day, she was about
to attend an open class co-hosted by Action Q and the Hong Kong Scholars
Alliance for Sexual and Gender Diversity (a scholars’ group to promote sexual and
gender diversity) held in front of the government headquarter in Admiralty.
Tang: I was wearing this ‘Action Q’ t-shirt today and was about to go out. Before leaving
home for work, my mum asked me if I was going to the class boycott. I said yes. She asked
why I was wearing this t-shirt that writes ‘tongzhi action’.9 Actually my mum wasn’t the only
one who would ask this question. I am an activist in the sexual minority movement or tongzhi
movement. People then would ask: You’re involved in the tongzhi movement, then why are
you also taking part in all these other social issues? Some people might think I’m making use
of them to promote my own agenda. I remember that time when I was attending the meeting of
class boycott in the capacity of an Action Q member, someone asked me: Why are you here
under this identity? Why are you involving yourself in the issue of voting rights as a tongzhi?
Why don’t you just use student as an identity? They would think that is enough. We would
then raise this question: So why issues of gender/sexuality cannot be incorporated into other
social issues? Or when they are added into this issue [of universal suffrage], why is there so
much resistance? (Ip and Chan 383 (Ip and King-fai 2015). Translation mine.)
References
Cho, Man-kit. 2010. Jiajihui Xiandai Xing (家計會。現代。性). In Chongxie wocheng de

lishigushi (重寫我城的歷史故事), ed. Hui, Po-keung. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press.
Cho, Man-kit. 2013. Mapping the Sexual Landscape: A Study of the Family Planning Association
of Hong Kong (1950–1980s) Dissertation, The Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Ip, Iam-chong, and Chan King-fai. 2015. Bake bu baxue: Yusan yundong qianxi de lilun he sixiang
dajianyue (罷課不罷學:雨傘運動前夕的理論和思想大檢閱). Hong Kong: Step Forward
Multi Media Co., Ltd.
King, Pui-wai Mary Ann. 2015. Indiscernible Coloniality Versus Inarticulate Decolonization: The
Dynamics of Community Building Processes in Wanchai. Dissertation, University of Hong
Kong.
King, Pui-wai Mary Ann. 2015. Wanchai shequjianshe de xingbie yihan (灣仔社區建設的性別意
涵). In Xing/bie zhengzhi yu bentu qiyi (性/別政治與本土起義), ed. Wong, Wai Ching and
Choi Po King. Hong Kong: Commercial Press.
King, Pui-wai Mary Ann. Xunzhao shequxingbie de zhimin mailuo (尋找社區性別的殖民脈絡).

2012. In Journal of Local Discourse 2011, ed. Editorial Committee of the Journal of Local
Discourse and SynergyNet. Taiwan & Hong Kong: Azoth Books Co., Ltd, 2012.
Kong, Travis S. K. 2011. Chinese Male Homosexualities: Memba, Tongzhi and Golden Boy. New
York: Routledge.
Kong, Travis S. K., Sky H. L. Lau and Eva C.Y. Li. 2015. The Fourth Wave? A Critical Reflection
on the Tongzhi Movement in Hong Kong. In Routledge Handbook of Sexuality Studies in East
Asia, ed. Mclelland, Mark, and Vera Mackie. London & New York: Routledge.
9
The Chinese name of Action Q has the characters “tongzhi action” in it.
178 L.Y.L. Kam
Lavin, Maud, and Zhu Xiaorui. 2014. Alexter: Boys’ Love Meets Hong Kong Activism.
F Newsmagazine, 17 November 2014: http://fnewsmagazine.com/2014/11/alexter-boys-love-
meets-hong-kong-activism/. last Accessed on 31 Oct 2016.
Leung, Helen Hok-sze. 2008. Undercurrents: Queer Culture and Postcolonial Hong Kong.
Vancouver: UBC Press.
Wong, Kit-mui. 2015. Cong ‘zhiren cheng tongzhi’ tansuo xing/bieyundong de zhuanhuashi
zhenfenzhengzhi (從“直人撐同志”探索性/別運動的轉化式身份政治). In Xing/bie zhengzhi
yu bentu qiyi (性/別政治與本土起義), ed. Wong, Wai-ching and Choi Po-king. Hong Kong:
Commercial Press.
Wu, Ka-ming. 2013. Muqin, bentu zunguixing he houzhimin xianggang (母親,本土尊貴性和後
殖民香港). In Journal of Local Discourse 2012, ed. Editorial Committee of the Journal of
Local Discourse and SynergyNet. Taiwan & Hong Kong: Azoth Books Co., Ltd.
Wu, Ka-ming. 2012. Neidi yunfu chanzi: Zhonggang kuajingxia de jieji wenti yu shenfenren-
tongzhengzhi (內地孕婦產子:中港跨境下的階級問題與身份認同政治). In Journal of Local
Discourse 2011. Ed. Editorial Committee of the Journal of Local Discourse and SynergyNet.
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Author Biography
Lucetta Y.L. Kam is an assistant professor in the Department of Humanities and Creative Writing
at Hong Kong Baptist University. Her research interests are gender and sexuality in Chinese
societies, tongzhi communities and activism in China and queer mobility studies. She is the author
of Shanghai Lalas: Female Tongzhi Communities and Politics in Urban China (Hong Kong: Hong
Kong University Press, 2013; Chinese edition 2015).

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Chapter 9

Return, Come Out: Queer Lives

Lucetta Y.L. Kam

There is a photograph overlooking tens of thousands of protesters holding

L.Y.L. Kam (&)

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2017 165

The effect of this linguistic “disconnectedness” is reminiscent of the experience

the local social movements. What I am highlighting here is the heteronormativity

the more recent Pink Dot Hong Kong (started in 2014).

9.1 Return and Come Out

9.1.2 “Come Out”

9.2 From “Return” to “Come Out”

9.3 The Rainbow Umbrella

The Umbrella Movement, also known as the Umbrella Revolution or Occupy

number of creative actions in local universities to promote the Umbrella Movement

9.3.2 Political Awareness

Nearly all LGBTQ activists I interviewed mentioned political awareness as a cause

9.3.3 Technological Enlightenment

9.3.4 Strategic Connection

The connection of one’s participation in LGBTQ movements and civic political

Candice Tang, an organizer of Action Q. It is about an episode of her joining the

Cho, Man-kit. 2010. Jiajihui Xiandai Xing (家計會。現代。性). In Chongxie wocheng de

King, Pui-wai Mary Ann. Xunzhao shequxingbie de zhimin mailuo (尋找社區性別的殖民脈絡).

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