Anderson Cooper’s Coming Out Rattles China’s Closet
By DIDI KIRSTEN TATLOW

View From Asia July 5, 2012, 9:33 pmComment

    BEIJING — When Anderson Cooper, the CNN anchor, recently announced that he was gay, he apparently inspired a Chinese microblogger using the name Sun Yelin-Xiao Hei. On Thursday, Mr. Sun posted a call on Sina’s Weibo, or microblogging, site for Chinese homosexuals to come out en masse on Dec. 12, 2012 — a day apparently picked for its neat number. If you read Chinese, you can read his exhortation here.
    Mr. Cooper is fairly well-known among China’s more Westernized, educated elite, with Sina’s microblog site, the country’s biggest, recording over 38,000 posts mentioning him. Comments since his coming out have been overwhelmingly positive, if occasionally a little nonplussed.
In China, very few homosexuals are “out,” or “chugui” (this translates as “come out closet.”) Familial and cultural pressures to be heterosexual, marry and produce an heir are simply too great.
    So Mr. Sun seemed to be inviting the world to dream: “If on 2012.12.12 all the homosexuals in China ‘chugui,’ ” he wrote enthusiastically, “what would life be like?”
    There’s little chance of finding out.
    If anything, the recent wave of casual, “I’m gay, so what” announcements by prominent Americans is underscoring a fast-widening gap in social attitudes between the United States and many other countries, including China.
     Zhang Beichuan, a leading researcher on homosexuality and a medical professor at Qingdao University, says China faces an epidemic of problems related to the nonacceptance of homosexuality, including AIDS transmission from gay men to their wives and unhappy marriages in which one partner is secretly gay.
    “I really want to say something,” he confided in a telephone interview from Qingdao. “China really needs help and encouragement from the progressive sectors of international society to solve these problems.”
    One particular area of concern, Mr. Zhang said, is the large number of Chinese women unwittingly married to gay men. (Due to traditional patriarchal attitudes that value a son’s offspring more than a daughter’s, it is somewhat easier for a woman to dodge marriage and reproduction. A gay woman may be less likely to marry against her will.)
    “China really needs help and encouragement from the progressive sectors of international society to solve these problems.” — Zhang Beichuan
    Mr. Zhang estimates that more than 90 percent of China’s gay men bow to pressure and marry women — without revealing their homosexuality.
    “There are over 10 million women married to homosexual men, perhaps 16 million,” he said.
(Mr. Zhang’s estimate is based on the number of Chinese marriages, surveys of gay men’s life plans and a gay male population of 3.5 percent. There is no universally accepted statistic for gay populations, of course, but the most common global estimates are 2 to 5 percent.)
    “We have so many women in unhappy, loveless marriages in China,” he said. “Inside this story, there are so many tears, so much pain.”
    Giving men the freedom to come out of the closet would solve the problem, said Mr. Zhang.
In fact, the topic is widely debated here, but in unofficial media and in private. Sina’s Weibo records more than 4.5 million posts for “chugui.”
    Yet, in his role as counselor as well as researcher, Mr. Zhang said, “We don’t lightly recommend to people that they come out. It can have a tremendously damaging impact on their lives.” He cited examples in which parents threatened suicide or fell seriously ill, or the children were forced to flee home.
    Until recently, women married to gay men had a champion: Yao Lifen, a woman in the western city of Xi’an, who ran a Web site offering emotional, practical and legal support for women married to homosexuals, China Daily reported.
    “Tongqi jiayuan,” the Chinese name of her Web site, roughly translates as “A Home for the Wives of Homosexuals.”
     Married for years to a gay man who, she told China Daily, beat her (Mr. Zhang says domestic violence is common in these marriages, the result of deep frustrations and poor communication), Ms. Yao set out to help other women.
     Yet her Web site, www.tongqijiayuan.com, is currently shut down, after complaints to the police from clients that they were charged money for services that never materialized, according to a report in Nanfang Daily. In an email to Rendezvous, Ms. Yao said she was innocent of the charges and that she had been deceived by her boyfriend, who worked on the project with her.
She said she learned only in May that her boyfriend “went behind my back to collect money from some women married to gay men. I am extremely angry and hurt.” She said he changed information on the Web site without her knowledge to cheat people.
    Her boyfriend’s whereabouts were unclear and he could not be reached for comment.
    Mr. Zhang called the shuttering of Ms. Yao’s Web site “a disaster” for these wives, for many of whom it was the only source of support.
    Many Chinese women married to homosexual men never realize their spouses are gay due to ignorance about homosexuality, Mr. Zhang said.
   “The level of information available to Chinese and to American women is very different,” he said.
    Chinese women married to gay men “blame themselves,” he said. “They think it’s because they aren’t good enough.”
   “I blame the government because it is so powerful but the information it offers is totally inadequate,” he said.
   “Education has got to include homosexuality. What we need is not traditional education that ignores the issue, but a much more humane education that addresses it,” he said.
    Just a dozen people have so far responded to Sun Yelin-Xiao Hei’s online call for a mass coming out.
   “Very cool! There’s strength in numbers!” posted one person using the name Yuecai Diancai wo dou ai.

    链接：http://rendezvous.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/05/anderson-coopers-coming-out-rattles-chinas-closet/

  
安德森·库珀公开性向激励了中国同性爱群体

DIDI KIRSTEN TATLOW（狄雨菲）/《国际先驱论坛报》专栏作家  2012年7月5日
李洋译/青岛  小张校/德国

　　
　　美国有线电视新闻网(CNN)主持人安德森·库珀不久前宣布自己是同性爱者，这一事件鼓舞了在中国一位博客署名为“孙叶林，网名小黑”的小伙子。周四，他在新浪微博发布消息，号召中国的同性爱者们在2012年12月12日这天集体公开性向（指公开自己的同性爱取向）。选择这个日子，可能是因为数字比较整齐。如果你懂中文,可以在互联网上读到他的号召。
　　在中国西化程度及受教育层次较高的精英群体中，库珀有相当高的知名度。中国最大的微博网站新浪微博上，有超过38000条微博提到他。自库珀公开性向以来，关于此事的评论除了个别人表示过不解外，大都评价极其正面。
　　在中国,只有极少同性爱者公开性向或出柜(来自英文come out of the closet)。人们普遍隐瞒性向，主要是由于来自家庭和文化的压力太大，要求他们做异性恋，结婚生子，传宗接代。
　　因此，孙叶林似乎是想请全世界的人来一个设想：“如果2012年12月12日，中国所有的同性爱者‘出柜’了”，他兴奋地写道，“生活会变成什么样子？”
　　但我们怕是没机会知道。
　　最近，美国知名人物中兴起了一股公开性向的热潮。他们蛮不在乎地宣布：“我是同性爱者，那又怎样？”这突显了美国与包括中国在内的许多其他国家在对待同性爱者态度上日益加大的差距。
　　同性爱研究学者、青岛大学医学教授张北川先生称，因为社会不包容同性爱，与之相关的一系列问题正在中国泛滥，包括男同性爱者把艾滋传给妻子的问题，和男方是隐瞒同性爱性向结婚而造成的婚姻不幸福问题。
　　在青岛接受电话采访时，张北川说：“我确实想说些什么。中国真的需要来自国际社会进步团体的帮助和鼓励来解决这些问题。”
　　张北川说，其中一个值得担忧的问题是中国有很多女性在不知情的情况下嫁给了男同性爱者。（由于重男轻女的传统偏见，对于女性，似乎更容易躲入婚姻和生育，女同性爱者可能更难以违背人们的意愿和更可能结婚）
　　张估计，超过90%的中国男同性爱者屈服于压力和女性结婚，同时隐瞒了自己的性向。“有超过1000万名女性嫁给了男同性爱者。甚至可能有1600万人。”他说。（张北川所依据的，是中国人结婚的人数、关于男同性爱者人生规划的调查，以及男同性爱者在人口中比例为3.5%。当然，对于男同性爱者占人口的比例没有令所有人都信服的数据，但最通行的估计是人口的2%到5%。）
　　张北川说，“在中国，有那么多女性生活在不幸福、没有爱的婚姻中。这里有太多的泪水和痛苦。”
　　他说，给予男同性爱者公开性向的自由，可以解决这个问题。
　　实际上，这个话题在中国非官方媒体和私下里正得到广泛讨论。新浪微博记录显示，关于公开性向的微博超过450万条。
　　然而，作为咨询师和研究学者的张北川先生说，“我们不会随便建议别人公开性向，因为这可能会对他们的生活造成极其严重的破坏性影响。”他提到一些例子，有的父母以自杀或者患上重病相威胁，有的父母迫使孩子离家出走。
　　直到最近，还有一个人站出来为男同性爱者的妻子们说话。这个人是姚丽芬。据《中国日报》报道，来自中国西部城市西安的姚丽芬开办了一个网站——同妻家园（这个中文网站的名字简单地翻译成英文就是就是“A Home for the Wives of Homosexuals”），为男同性爱者的妻子提供感情、行动和法律上的帮助。
　　姚丽芬告诉《中国日报》，她和一个男同性爱者结婚数年并遭其殴打，于是她决定采取行动帮助其他女性。（张北川说由于严重的挫折感和缺乏沟通，家庭暴力在这些婚姻中很常见）
　　然而，根据《南方日报》的一篇报道，姚丽芬的网站www.tongqijiayuan.com目前已关闭。因为在此之前，警方接到该网站用户的投诉，称网站向她们收取服务费，但这些服务却从未兑现。
　　在写给《国际先驱论坛报》下属博客网站的一封邮件中，姚丽芬说自己是无辜的，并称她被男友骗了。（其男友曾与她一起运营过该网站）
　　姚说，自己直到5月才知道男友“背着我向男同性爱者的妻子们收钱。我感到极其愤怒和痛心”，她说，男友瞒着她改变了网站上的信息来骗人。
　　目前姚丽芬男友的去向不明，也无法与其取得联系并证明姚丽芬的说法。
　　张北川说，姚丽芬网站的关闭是这些同妻的“灾难”，因为对她们中的许多人来说，这个网站是她们获得支持的唯一来源。
　　张北川说，由于对同性爱者无知，还有许多同妻永远也不会知道她们的丈夫是同性爱者。
　　他说，“对于美国和中国的女性，可获得信息的程度是非常不同的”。
　　中国男同性爱者的妻子们往往“怨自己”，张北川说，“她们认为是因为自己不够好”。
　　“我认为这是政府的问题，政府这么强大，但它提供的信息却远远不够。”他说。
　　“教育必须包括同性爱话题。我们需要的不是忽视这个问题的传统教育，而是一个能面对这个问题的更为人性的教育。”
　　目前为止，只有12个人响应了孙叶林在网上发布的集体公开性向的号召。
　　“非常棒！人多力量大！”一个用户名为“粤菜滇菜我都爱”的网友写到。

   “中国真的需要来自国际社会进步团体的帮助和鼓励来解决这类问题。”——张北川