Feature Article | "Cool" Girls and Their Lovers

Acknowledgments | Susie, Wang Chaofan, Yang Chao, Lei Lei and all interviewees

01 "Cool" girl

Lynn has been thinking about being a boy when she wakes up since she was a child. "This way, you don't have to wear a skirt, and the knight's sword can be put in your trouser pocket." This is the enlightenment of her gender awareness.

At the age of 6, Lynn often played the game "The Princess and the Knight" with her classmates in kindergarten, but one day she was surprisingly lucky. Lynn defeated several boys in the "Battle of the Knights" and was selected as the prettiest girl in her class, and that day, while climbing a ladder out of sunlight, she kissed her.

"Wonderful" is the adjective that Lynn recalls that scene now. The sun did not shine into the ladder, but quietly penetrated into Lynn's heart. Before graduating from elementary school, Lynn gradually came into contact with the Internet and saw an article on the Internet about "same-sex marriage", in which the term "homosexuality" was explained as - "Children conceived due to the unhappiness of one of the men or women are prone to appear. Sexual Orientation Issues" . This derogatory interpretation not only did not solve Lynn's confusion, but made her add a protective film to herself. Years later, Lynn was having a late-night snack with a few friends, and someone deliberately stirred up the conversation and asked her if she was Lara "Lesbian." "After I admitted it without shyness, they still didn't believe it. Maybe it was better for me to hide it." When faced with the question, Lynn's answer was as calm as usual.

Lynn is from an economically developed area in Zhejiang. She is a cool girl. She has short hair and can swear along with boys. She plays football, guitar, skateboards and photography. She likes all things fun. Her college classmate Z once said that Lynn had two lights in her eyes—a light from talent and a light from a gendered temperament, both subtle and complex.

"Queer Theory" is a product that became popular in the United States in the 1990s. It is a key theory based on feminism and used to collectively describe sexual orientation or gender identity in society. Compliments have also gone through a long process, just like Lynn has come along the way. She occasionally minds other people's attention, hoping that she has some "gender vagueness". "It's good to be vague, and I won't be asked some questions right away, but I don't really want to grow long hair, I'm used to it," Lynn said. She will also feel that she is "floating", on the one hand, her identity is floating, and on the other hand, her state of mind. Before graduating from elementary school, Lynn clearly recognized his "sexual orientation", something ignorant was dormant, but just about to move.

During junior high school, Lynn had an unexpected "love affair" that I didn't know how to describe. Zhang Yuan is a classmate of her cram school. After the two gradually became acquainted with each other, Zhang Yuan cried and hugged Lynn from behind during a lunch break. At that moment, Lynn felt the beating of her heart - this warm feeling of beating is alive. . After that, what Zhang Yuan left to Lynn was just a "science textbook" with notes - that was the base of their memories.

"Zhang Yuan got married in 2020. Before the marriage, she sent me a message, which was innocuous. In fact, I have always been concerned about this matter. She obviously knew what kind of person I was at that time and knew that I liked her. , why didn't you reject me seriously?" Thinking of Zhang Yuan, Lynn felt unwilling and complained, but she still felt happy from it.

In 2007, the Taiwanese movie "Tattoo" was released on the big screen. Lynn on the other side of the strait felt his brain buzzing when he saw it, "It's very shocking, and there are many things that don't need to be said, just look at each other and know that we are the same people. ".

"We're the same people," this subconscious craving for identity always gets an emotional response. After graduating from university, Lynn has been working in a government agency as a "non-staff". In her spare time, in addition to taking some photography work, the most important thing is to prepare for the "public exam". Coincidentally, her current lover met in the "public examination" cram school. After a 7-year exotic romance and a naive first love as a teenager, she met Xiao Yi.

No matter from which point of view, this is a "meeting of golden wind and jade dew". Even in the eyes of the two of them, a little bit of "husband and wife" can be seen. "I'm a little taller than Xiao Yi. When I wasn't together, I liked to walk with her, just like a friend's. Once I walked up the stairs with her and suddenly felt a little shivering. I hurriedly pulled her over and she It kissed my face. Later, Xiao Yi said, I was all red to the base of my ears, all of which were red, and the lipstick print on my face looked pretty cute. I took her home that night and forcibly dragged her around the house. In the end, it was late at night, and she became impatient, so I kissed her downstairs in her house.”

After this long kiss, Lynn and Xiao Yi are together. Sexual orientation is just a term that gets in the way. "No force can stop us from being together. I love her very much." This is Lynn's most real thoughts at the moment. Lynn and Xiao Yi had a group photo on their 26th birthday. In the photo, the two were very close together, and they both wore funny glasses. The corners of Lynn's mouth rose slightly, looking very romantic and right.

"Cool" girls occasionally have anxiety. Lynn's lover, Xiao Yi, grew up in a traditional family. Since she was a child, she was a girl who was strictly disciplined by her mother. After they were together for a few months, Xiao Yi's mother noticed something different. "Her mother is very strong, and I can't force her to make any choices. She told me one day that she wanted to jump out of the window at home. I love her very much, really, but I don't dare to think about the future, so I can only cherish the present carefully. Now my thoughts are very simple. I am admitted to the civil service, have a stable job, do what I like, and work hard to make money to buy a house. Even if I get swept out of the house, I have a place to rest. The house can give people a great sense of security." Lynn after the epidemic I feel the importance of the house more and more. "And after the epidemic, the sense of oppression has become stronger. Many of my friends are preparing to buy a house, and I don't even have a car."

The photo Lynn took a few months ago left the scene of Xiao Yi drinking Jim Beam: on a street corner, in a bar, the lights were dim, Xiao Yi wearing a white printed T-shirt, her long hair was tied up, and her beautiful face was revealed. Holding a draft beer mug in his right hand, his lips against the rim, leaning sideways on the stool, his eyes look foggy - like a deer. She is a girl with double eyelids, her eyes are warm and hot, revealing a sweet and melancholy look, like a bamboo that has shed its bondage, and is walking towards the bushes of flowers on the other side - "This is the scene of a movie tattoo".

In 2016, the United Nations Development Program conducted a large-scale statistical survey on sexual minorities in China. The results of the collected 28,454 questionnaires showed that families had the lowest acceptance of sexual minorities. More than half of the respondents considered their family's attitude towards sexual minorities as "unacceptable". In China, the LGBT (English acronym for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) people are still excluded from the mainstream, and only 5% of sexual minorities have disclosed their identities. But past experience tells us that unless we take a serious inventory of sexual minorities, they don't "count" at all.

02 Want a child

Although the development of the times allows "they" to have the living space of the public, the pressure from the outside world is often magnified several times, making them live like outsiders. Traditional thinking, marriage and fertility, including career development, family life are all affected - this happens to almost everyone who lives with the LGBT label.

Unlike Lynn, Jiang Lili had already made plans. She is a physical education teacher in an elementary school. She wears black-rimmed glasses. In her spare time, she teaches football at a training institution. Her income barely keeps up with the housing price. In 15 years, she gritted her teeth and bought her own house. Bought a car.

"My family knows a little bit about my situation, they just don't know what to say."

In her mother's eyes, this girl was an "outlier" since she was a child. She didn't like skipping rope, kicking shuttlecock, and dancing at all. She liked to play football. "My parents divorced early, so I went directly to the sports school in junior high school. At that time, there were boys in the sports school who touched me, just like the touch between arms, and I was instinctively disgusted. At that time, there was a senior sister who would often talk to me with I talk about homosexuality, and over time I feel that I should be like this," Jiang Lili said when recalling her choice of sexual orientation.

Jiang Lili said that she had never had any sexual impulses with men in her life. Jiang Lili's first sexual experience happened in the campus dormitory with her senior sister when she was 15 years old. "It started hastily, ended hastily, and it was very embarrassing." Even so, Jiang Lili made a decision at the moment - to spend time with a girl the rest of my life. To this end, she also changed her somewhat feminine name "Jiang Lili" to "Jiang Xiao".

Jiang Lili's longest relationship did not escape the "seven-year itch".

In 2015, Yuan Ying, who was still in her third year, met Jiang Lili at an off-campus women's football match. "She asked me for the contact information, but I didn't think there was anything. What can a 95-year-old little sister and a post-80s like me send? And Yuan Ying is not the one I like. Yuan Ying has long, tall, The skin is dark and not thin, just like a typical girl in the south of Shenzhen." However, the phrase "long-term love" has been fulfilled in them as usual.

After being together, Yuan Ying often appeared beside the green field where Jiang Lili was in class. The sixth-grade students are familiar with each other early, and there are always various questions to ask Jiang Lili, "Mr. Jiang, who is this sister?", "Teacher, are you two in love?". In the face of these ignorant children, she was noncommittal. Jiang Lili, a Virgo, and Yuan Ying, a Scorpio, both pay attention to details. They live their lives very elegantly. This can be seen from the layout of the room. The furniture and small decorations in the room are all made by them. Come, friends in the circle describe the two of them as living like a poem.

During the 15-year winter vacation, Yuan Ying went back to Shenzhen once, confessed her "sexual orientation" to her brother, and hoped that he would support her and Jiang Lili to live in a foreign land. She still remembers her brother's reply to this day, "I realized your condition very early on, and I will wait for you to come and tell me one day. I will handle the business of my parents and the family. Don't worry, you will always be the family. You need to tell me what you are a part of." Yuan Ying felt that her brother was so manly for the first time.

After Jiang Lili found out, she quietly set up a house in the new district. When Yuan Ying came back, they bought a cat and left the single apartment they originally rented. "I'm trying to protect and create a safe and strong relationship." After Yuan Ying left, Jiang Lili looked at the BOSS speakers in the living room and said, "She chose this."

In 2019, just when she was preparing to go abroad to register "marriage", Yuan Ying left Jiang Lili. "The reason Yuan Ying gave me at the time was that she felt that there would be no results in this way. Sooner or later, she would have to marry a man and have children. It is better to end it now. She wants a normal relationship between men and women." Yuan Ying is gone, but Jiang Lili will still watch some of her developments on social media. A few months later, Jiang Lili found out that Yuan Ying was with another girl.

After several emotional experiences, some of Jiang Lili's lovers left her like Yuan Ying, and some went to get married and have children. "Maybe they are old enough. I'm 35 years old this year, and I want to have a child. I think about it every now and then," she said. Regarding children, Jiang Lili wants to complete the emotional continuation through artificial insemination or adoption. "It may be due to motherhood, and they will want a child, whether male or female." She talked about this idea with her current lover, "I also have emotional needs, the desire to be a parent and the instinct to love a child. I don't think there's anything wrong with me wanting a child. It's weird and abnormal. Because the society stipulates what marriage and family must be, and those that do not conform to the mainstream model are considered abnormal. I will explain it to my children after they are sensible, so that they can realize that marriage and family can also be diverse from an early age. ".

If the continuation of emotions is the nature of women, then the pressure brought by the traditional family concept is even more unbearable for them. Jiang Lili suddenly received news that her junior high school classmate Qianqian was engaged at the end of 2020. Her first reaction was to joke.

"I've known her for more than ten years, and it's a little hard for me to understand her choice. I think she might have a strong family concept in her bones. She can't bear her parents, so she has to return to her family." Jiang Lili was a little helpless Say.

Qianqian is an only child, and she became clear about her "sexual orientation" in high school. After going to Manchester City at university, she seemed to be in a "new world" - there will be street performers singing Oasis in the open space next to Poundland (UK retail store). Song, the same-sex and heterosexual people on the side hold each other's hands and look at each other with smiles.

"You are still you, the world seems to be a paradise", the English name Dorothy, "Friend of Dorothy in English slang is synonymous with homosexuality", she spent a "gregarious" time in Manchester. After returning to China in 2019, she began to try to confess her "sexual orientation" to her parents.

"That was the first time I saw my father get angry. My mother didn't say a word, and her eyes were empty. Finally, my father said, if you are like this, don't come back in the future, and don't ask me for a cent. money", Qianqian recalled the "coming out" negotiation that day, with the same eyes as her mother's. Under the pressure, Qianqian had many emotional problems, and even tried to control it with drugs.

Qianqian's mother is a high school teacher. After the "coming out" negotiation that day, she sent a message to Qianqian behind her husband's back, and Qianqian kept screenshots and put them in the album - "Homosexuality is not a disease, I understand that. But when it came out of my own daughter's mouth, I couldn't accept it anyway. Maybe you can't understand the feeling of being a mother, just as I can't accept what you said."

Under the general environment, subject to the traditional culture's ideas of "inheriting the lineage", "starting a family" and "raising children to prevent the elderly", most LGBT people often choose to marry the opposite sex and have children under the pressure of parents' urging and forcing marriage. Concealing your "sexual orientation" in marriage and living a secular life with a mask.

Qianqian used to cry alone in the quilt for many nights. After a year in this way, Qianqian left the first-tier city under the arrangement of her family, returned to work in her parents' company, started a blind date, and then got engaged. The whole process only took half a year. "I want a child, and then give him complete freedom, he can have all his own decision-making power", this is the main reason for Qianqian's compromise.

Wang Jin and Tiantian's "sexual orientation" are both same-sex, and the "shaped marriage couple" has been together for 3 years. Both of them got married because of family pressure. Apart from legal certification, they get along in an "open relationship". "The first time I saw him was in the summer, he was wearing light blue shorts, showing very thin legs, and then he spoke very softly. Anyway, I could see what kind of person he was at a glance. I think he was also at a glance at that time. I see it."

Before getting married, they discussed a set of rules, "Notarization before marriage, what to do in front of parents, not to take their lovers home, and if they are forced to have children in the future, only the child's name will be written on the property certificate, etc." Forced by the worldly vision, Wang Jin and Tiantian have kept this secret for three years, and have never let their parents realize, "This is the life we want, at least we didn't harm those boys and girls who were not like this."

Li Yinhe, a professor at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, conducted a research survey on "formal marriage", "In China, if someone is not married until the age of 30, everyone will be suspicious and there will be rumors; if a "homosexual" never gets married, he will It is equivalent to "coming out" in disguise. In a "home-based" society, the wishes of the family and elders are often superior to the individual's choice of happiness in life. In a society like China that attaches great importance to marriage, family and fertility, many comrades have to succumb to the pressure of reality and go to marriage.”

Of course, there is another situation, that is, there are some "homosexuals" who have "come out", but in order to hide from the public, or in order to have offspring, they deceive innocent people of the opposite sex into marriage; With the unrealistic hope of being "changed" after marriage, or the consideration of inheriting the lineage for one's own family, innocent people of the opposite sex are used as test objects, or as a child-bearing machine.

Both Wang Jin and Tiantian believe that "sexual orientation" is an innate choice, "It's not what we want to do at all. Physically, we can't have intimate contact with the opposite sex, and I don't know how to hide my marriage with Tiantian. For a moment, she and I knew that."

03 The ubiquitous "Garden of Eden"

Different from the male compatriots who usually choose some specific "tutorial school" locations, the female compatriots have a vague concept of the location. It seems that as long as the other party is around, their "Garden of Eden" is everywhere.

Lynn recalled that the most impressive place was the "cram school". "But it doesn't mean that. The places we usually go are the same as ordinary couples. We can't let us live in the shadows forever." The so-called "floating field" , "Bath, Sauna" and "Peony Garden" seemed a little unfamiliar to Lynn.

During her stay in the UK, Qianqian conducted some investigations and discussed it with her teacher. She found that the word "sex" was a major cause of the differences between male and female "sexual minorities"— "Freud wrote a study on Dora's case in 1924, which mentioned that women's Love is a substitute, and so is sex. There is a fundamental difference between men and men in the choice of sexual objects. Men will actively choose objects, while women are in a sexually hidden position due to their biological structure.”

"Back to the present, male subjects are direct about their sexuality, and they will choose some specific private places to integrate with the object. So in Hong Kong's sauna room, men's flesh and silk can be seen at a glance; it can also be seen in foreign Pubs. Condoms thrown away in men's toilets. Women, in most cases, have a deeper desire for sex."

"Looking from another dimension, because the sexual factor is small, the proportion of emotional needs increases. On the contrary, it makes the problem of mutual trust and loyalty even smaller. We also need and will open a room, but people will not notice it. We all need sex, just on a different scale."

04 Like a Sheepdog

Alex is a "heterosexual" and is also a host of the "LGBT topic" group in Clubhouse. He has an impression of "sexual minorities" - "their group has a characteristic that when they get along and talk, they can It's relaxing and warm, like a sheepdog. They don't have thorns, but they have an attitude towards the world."

In 2005, Alex fell ill, and during the month he was hospitalized in the ward, he became acquainted with his roommate, Guan Xin. In Shanghai at that time, Guan Xin, an unmarried 35-year-old, was called a "sissy" by many people. Most of the time he lived in the shadows, and even once felt sick. As the only son in the family, on the one hand, he protects the little secret of "sexual orientation" through "voice training", and on the other hand, he copes with the matchmaking arranged by his family again and again.

"I noticed this habit of him from the very beginning. Early in the morning, the sound of humming and harping came from the garden. The sound from the dantian was very lively. Once he came back from the garden to practice his voice. Then I asked him why he was like this. Maybe he was too suffocated. He told everything about him in one go. He hated his body, but he had no choice but to explain it to the family. And at that time , the so-called small gathering places in Shanghai Hongkou and Fuxing Park have not yet formed, and it is difficult to find similar ones,” Alex said when recalling Guan Xin.

Since then, Alex has been following some of the life of this group from time to time and tried to participate in some discussions online. In 2016, he saw a passage from Shawn, the chairman of China Rainbow Network, in a report, and was deeply touched - "Each of us may become a niche side. Just like some people will be lonely, some people will leave early. , some people will be a little different from others, just like some people are gay. The emphasis now on our differences is that we want to be able to realize that we are all the same in the future.”

Alex doesn't want everyone to be so high-profile and take these people seriously. I don't want to be as pitiful as some "LGBT" people say, and need the society and family to accommodate you. The word "tolerance" itself has a somewhat condescending connotation. I hope everyone has a normal mind, no matter whether it is "gay" or "heterosexual".

In the past few years, China's attitude towards "LGBT" people has also become more and more open. Many people are beginning to realize that a more accepting attitude towards "LGBT" people is in part the result of progress in social literacy.

There is a group called "LGBT China Alliance" on the social media Douban, which was established in 2016. The top of the page reads: "Love is the driving force of human progress and the way of human progress. Love should not be limited by any kind of species, race, nationality, religion, identity, gender, age.... Every love All deserve to be encouraged, protected, respected, and praised. Bravely stand up for one's own position, bravely express one's feelings, bravely be yourself, this is the birthright of human beings. Love is a temple, Love a higher law. May everyone have love in their hearts, and may everyone have the best, purest, true love in the world."