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.
Well that flies in the face of what I was told about this show. How strange. They were all fairly adamant as to why the show has been cancelled.
I can’t remember the name of the show, but the premise is that every episode the characters are transported to a world/dimension where they have to solve a puzzle or mystery in order to open a door and get to the next world.
That’s the craziest thing about Chinese censorship. They actually censor far less than anyone is aware of. However because they’re not transparent about the why, people just start assuming. The wildest part is this is all part of the plan. They want everyone to think the government is overly sensitive so people will start self censoring and the government doesn’t have to lift a finger.
So why that show got censored? Who knows.
*Edit: And while what I wrote sounds dystopian, and in many ways it is so I won’t go further into how it hurts some people, but it also creates a strange benefit for it’s citizens. You know how USA has internet trolls that run around creating havoc? The internet trolls in China all bind together to defend China. Because they think the censorship is in THEIR favor. Let me give you an example. Dolce and Gabbana made what was considered a racist video in China. China itself said nothing about it. The people however, convinced this is something China should censor started massive internet campaigns. Ultimately leading to a gigantic boycott that still affects Dolce and Gabbana to this day. The strange self censorship has in many ways become a badge of pride for many Chinese people.