Abstract
This article explores the representation of the figure of the effeminate boy in two contemporary adolescent novels written in Chinese which break the silence in addressing alternative gender and sexual identities. In A Beautiful Heart, the transsexual and homosexual tendencies evinced by an effeminate boy are treated as forms of sexual perversion to be cured through professional psychotherapy. The narrative’s tensions and contradictions, however, call into question the reductive discourse of pathology. Such questioning unsettles, but does not subvert, the text’s explicit conservatism, nor does it attribute legitimacy to queer identities. The Dream of A Beautiful Lad, on the other hand, sets out expressly to interrogate and shatter the monopoly of received opinions about boyhood, gender, maturity and adulthood. In presenting cases of gender nonconformity, however, the text reveals its own complicity in binarism, carrying with it strong traces of androgynous humanism which, in its intention to validate queer existence, is inevitably coloured by heteronormative and heterosexist prejudices. It is concluded that the various forms of gender-crossing and trans-phenomena represented as accompanying queer boyhood do not necessarily entail transcendence or subversion. The figure of the effeminate boy is nonetheless a welcome presence in children’s and adolescent literature, unleashing possibilities for resistance and intervention in a rigidly gender-defined society.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
The Taiwanese text, published first in Taiwan, has also been published in simplified Chinese in mainland China. It has therefore entered the corpus of contemporary Chinese adolescent novels, and is treated accordingly.
Until the 1990s, sexuality had been a sensitive topic in Chinese adolescent literature. The 1980s and 1990s marked the beginning of sexual awakening among the Chinese public after decades of Maoist suppression when “class” was championed as the sole and ultimate identity category at the expense of all other differences, including sexual and gender differences. Sexuality in particular was labelled as bourgeois, distractive and disruptive. In the 1990s, children’s authors, most notably Cao Wenxuan and Yin Jianlin, began to address male and female sexualities respectively and explicitly in their adolescent novels, with the coming-of-age narrative as the representative genre. While Yin started addressing homoeroticism and homosexuality in female adolescent literature in the late 1990s and early 2000s, male sexualities have tended to be represented in a rather orthodox fashion, in strict accordance with conservative heteronormative values. The representation of male alternative gender and sexual identities in the two selected young adult novels is thus a pioneering move toward the recognition of the complexities and the multiple forms of gender and sexualities in adolescent males.
I have chosen to employ the gendered personal pronoun “he” throughout the analyses of both texts to refer to the effeminate boy, aware that this may invite suspicions of my own interpretation of the protagonist’s gender and sexuality. The pronouns, however, are used in accordance with the novels under discussion, where the protagonists are gendered from the outset. They are thus used for the purposes of consistency and clarity. In the conclusion, I drop the gendered pronoun as a gesture of intervention.
The Chinese pathologising and phobia of homosexuality, according to some scholars, is a modern development. Geng Song (2004), for instance, points to the relative absence of homophobia in pre-modern Chinese culture, an absence which he argues is attributable to the strong hold of the yin/yang matrix as opposed to the male/female dichotomy. Within the hierarchical, power-structured yin/yang matrix, the higher party is in a dominant/yang position and the lower party, a subordinate/ying position. Whether or not this relation is (hetero)sexual (or sexual at all) is not as important. Insofar as women were excluded from the male-defined power structure to begin with, masculinities in pre-modern China were defined and constructed not so much vis-à-vis women as through the largely homosocial, power-structured network populated and sustained exclusively by males. Homosexuality and homoeroticism were therefore not as dreaded as they are now.
Transsexuality is used in this study to denote the condition of being a transsexual. The term “transsexual” describes persons who identify with a gender other than that they were assigned at birth, or who desire the body and role of the opposite sex. When the term “transsexualism” is employed in this article, it comes with loaded ideological meanings. The anti-transgender writer Janice Raymond, for instance, believes that it is an ideology rather than a natural condition (1994, p. 5).
Serano uses the term “trans-misogyny” to designate the specific form of misogyny facing male-to-female transsexuals. The term “cissexism” refers to the belief that transsexuals’ identified genders are inferior to, or less authentic than, those of cissexuals (i.e., people who are not transsexual and who have only ever experienced their subconscious and physical sexes as being aligned). Cissexism is thus a form of discrimination directed specifically at transsexuals but not other transgender people (2007, pp. 12–13). For insightful analyses of gender and femininity from the perspectives of the male-to-female transsexual, see Serano, 2007.
According to Louie, the dynamic tension created between the poles of wen (literary or scholarly) and wu (martial or macho) “permits the production of a greater number of possible expressions of the secular male self than would be possible in the contemporary West” (pp. 147–148). In The Fragile Scholar (2004), Geng Song, following on from Louie, discusses literary representations of the caizi (the fragile, effeminate scholar) model of Chinese masculinity at length, suggesting that in pre-modern China, it is the discourse of caizi as in caizi-jiaren (scholar-beauty) rather than the Confucian concept of junzi (gentleman) or the macho hero that is frequently sexualised and heterosexualised in romances and in popular imagination.
Farewell My Concubine (1993) is a Chinese drama film directed by Chen Kaige, starring the Hong Kong male actor Leslie Cheung, cast in the female role of Yuji. The film has received wide acclaim both domestically and internationally, winning a series of awards including the Golden Globe Best Foreign Language Film and the Palme d’Or Award at the Cannes Film Festival.
This is not to exempt non-trans people from the role they play in the construction of the gender-defined society. Rather, a particular group of trans people (those that are stereotypically-portrayed) have called attention to what non-trans people have been doing all along—the pursuit of gender-marked and gender-coded identity structures. In other words, they have helped alert us to what has been taken for granted.
For an account of trans identities and transsexuals’ relationship with medical discourse, see Hines, 2007, pp. 49–84.
From the turn of the century onward, feminists have reevaluated the hostile stance toward transsexualism taken by radical feminists such as Raymond, and some have urged retheorising within feminism to find grounds for solidarity (MacDonald, 1998; Heyes, 2003). There are still others, notably Sheila Jeffreys who, through Unpacking Queer Politics (2003) to Gender Hurts (2014), have worked consistently to expose transgenderism as a harmful ideology and practice. For an updated and succinct analysis of contemporary feminism’s relationship with transgenderism, see Hines (2007, pp. 85–102). For a sophisticated discussion of how trans activism may be effectively aligned with feminism, see Serano (2007).
It must be noted that Liu’s case, as it is represented in the novel, is not representative of transsexuals as a group in real life. There are, so to speak, many lesbian trans women and gay trans men who defy the argument being made here.
While Hao Shuai sounds like “so handsome” in Chinese, Hao Liang is pronounced the same way as “so beautiful”. The same character, Liang, however, has a different pronunciation: Jing, which is also associated with feminine desirability.
The trans experiences in the novels are represented by non-trans authors; trans authors, and scholars, it should be noted, have taken issue with mainstream non-trans representations of trans people. In Part 1 of Whipping Girl (2007), Julia Serano debunks non-trans representations of transsexuality which, she believes, effectively place trans people in a subordinate position and silence them.
Since its publication, A Beautiful Heart has been hailed as the first psychological counselling novel for children and adolescents in the country. It was listed among the top ten best children’s books in 2014, the year of its publication, by the prestigious China’s Best Books, and won the Best Children’s Title in the same year. It has also been listed among the most recommended children’s books by various book-appraising channels, and has been positively reviewed in mainstream media. The reviews tend to acknowledge the novel’s significance in foregrounding the psychological aspects of adolescence as a whole, rather than single out the case of Liu Zhiying; nevertheless, the positive acclaim and wide reach of the novel have also made alternative forms of gender, sex and sexuality an accessible topic among the country’s adolescent readerships. Since its publication in mainland China in 2012, The Dream of A Beautiful Lad has not enjoyed similar fortunes. It has not received a single rating or review, for example, on dangdang.com, a major online bookstore in China. The novel is marketed by the publisher as one of the “Age of Innocence” book series by a reputed Taiwanese author. In other words, its avowed progressive agenda and the anti-conventional approach to gender and sexuality have been downplayed. Nevertheless, the fact that a major children’s press in mainland China has published the novel can be regarded as a positive achievement in its own right.
At the time when he wrote this, however, Cart deemed sexuality as the area that most stubbornly resisted taboo breaking.
References
Abate, Michelle Ann, and Kidd, Kenneth B. (Eds.). (2011). Over the Rainbow: Queer Children’s and Young Adult Literature. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
Bornstein, Kate. (1994). Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and the Rest of Us. New York: Routledge.
Bruhm, Steven, and Hurley, Natasha (Eds.). (2004). Curiouser: On the Queerness of Children. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minneapolis Press.
Butler, Charles. (2009). Experimental Girls: Feminist and Transgender Discourses in Bill’s New Frock and Marvin Redpost: Is He a Girl?Children’s Literature Association Quarterly, 34(1), 3–20.
Butler, Judith. (2002/1990). Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York & London: Routledge.
Butler, Judith. (1993). Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex. New York: Routledge.
Canguilhem, George. (1991). The Normal and the Pathological. Trans. Carolyn R. Fawcett and Robert S. Cohen. New York: Urzone.
Cart, Michael. (2010). Young Adult Literature: From Romance to Realism. Chicago: American Library Association.
Cart, Michael, and Jenkins, Christine. (2006). The Heart Has Its Reasons: Young Adult Literature with Gay/Lesbian/Queer Content, 1969-2004. Lanham, MD: The Scarecrow Press Inc.
Crew, Hillary S. (2002). Spinning New Tales from Traditional Texts: Donna Jo Napoli and the Rewriting of Fairy Tale. Children’s Literature in Education, 33(2), 77–95.
Cuseo, Allan A. (1992). Homosexual Characters in YA Novels: A Literary Analysis, 1969-1982. Lanham, MD: The Scarecrow Press Inc.
Feinberg, Leslie. (1998). Trans Liberation: Beyond Pink or Blue. Boston: Beacon Press.
Felski, Rita. (1996). Fin de Siecle, Fin de Sexe: Transsexuality, Postmodernism and the Death of History. New Literary History, 27(2), 337–349.
Flanagan, Victoria. (2008). Into the Closet: Cross-Dressing and the Gendered Body in Children’s Literature and Film. New York: Routledge.
Friedman, Richard C. (1988). Male Homosexuality: A Contemporary Psychoanalytic Perspective. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Garber, Marjorie. (1992). Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing and Cultural Anxiety. New York & London: Routledge.
Green, Richard. (1987). The “Sissy Boy Syndrome” and the Development of Homosexuality. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Guan, Jiaqi. (2012). Mei Shaonian zhi Meng [The Dream of A Beautiful Lad]. Hangzhou: Zhejiang Children’s Publishing House.
Halberstam, Judith. (1998). Female Masculinity. Durham: Duke University Press.
Hausman, Bernice L. (1995). Changing Sex: Transsexualism, Technology, and the Idea of Gender. Durham & London: Duke University Press.
Heilbrun, Carolyn G. (1974). Toward a Recognition of Androgyny. New York: Harper & Row.
Heyes, Cressida J. (2003). Feminist Solidarity after Queer Theory: The Case of Transgender. Signs, 28(4), 1093–1120.
Hines, Sally. (2007). TransForming Gender: Transgender Practices of Identity, Intimacy and Care. Bristol: The Polity Press.
Jeffreys, Sheila. (2003). Unpacking Queer Politics. Cambridge: Polity.
Jeffreys, Sheila. (2014). Gender Hurts: A Feminist Analysis of the Politics of Transgenderism. Oxford & New York: Routledge.
Kidd, Kenneth. (1998). Introduction: Lesbian/Gay Literature for Children and Young Adults. Children’s Literature Association Quarterly, 23(3), 114–119.
Kroker, Arthur, and Kroker, Marilouise (Eds.). (1993). The Last Sex: Feminism and Outlaw Bodies. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Louie, Kam, and Edwards, Louise. (1994). Chinese Masculinity: Theorizing Wen and Wu. East Asian History, 8, 135–148.
MacDonald, Eleanor. (1998). Critical Identities: Rethinking Feminism through Transgender Politics. Atlantis, 23(1), 3–12.
Mass, Lawrence. (1990). Dialogues of the Sexual Revolution, vol. 1, “Homosexuality and Sexuality”. New York: Harrington Park Press.
Nikolajeva, Maria. (2010). Power, Voice and Subjectivity in Literature for Young Readers. New York & Oxford: Routledge.
Nodelman, Perry. (2002). Making Boys Appear: The Masculinity of Children’s Fiction. In John Stephens (Ed.), Ways of Being Male: Representing Masculinities in Children’s Literature and Film (pp. 1–14). New York: Routledge.
Pleak, Richard R. (1999). Ethical Issues in Diagnosing and Treating Gender-Dysphoric Children and Adolescent. In Matthew Rottnek (Ed.), Sissies and Tomboys: Gender Nonconformity and Homosexual Childhood (pp. 34–51). New York & London: New York University Press.
Pugh, Tison. (2011). Innocence, Heterosexuality, and the Queerness of Children’s Literature. New York & London: Routledge.
Pugh, Tison, and Wallace, David L. (2006). Heteronormative Heroism and Queering the School Story in J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter Series. Children’s Literature Association Quarterly, 31(3), 260–281.
Raymond, Janice G. (1994). The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male. New York: Teachers’ College Press.
Rottnek, Matthew. (1999). Introduction. In Matthew Rottnek (Ed.), Sissies and Tomboys: Gender Nonconformity and Homosexual Childhood (pp. 1–5). New York & London: New York University Press.
Rabinowitz, Rebecca. (2004). Messy New Freedoms: Queer Theory and Children’s Literature. In Sebastien Chapleau (Ed.), New Voices in Children’s Literature Criticism (pp. 19–28). Lichfield: Pied Piper.
Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. (1991). How to Bring Your Kids Up Gay: The War on Effeminate Boys. Social Text, 29, 18–27.
Serano, Julia. (2007). Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity. Berkeley, CA: Seal Press.
Shapiro, Judith. (2008). Transsexualism: Reflections on the Persistence of Gender and the Mutability of Sex. In Jennifer Robertson (Ed.), Same-Sex Cultures and Sexualities: An Anthropological Reader (pp. 138–161). New York: Routledge.
Song, Geng. (2004). The Fragile Scholar: Power and Masculinity in Chinese Culture. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.
Thorne, Barrie. (1993). Gender Play: Girls and Boys in School. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Warner, Michael. (1993). Introduction. In Michael Warner (Ed.), Fear of a Queer Planet: Queer Politics and Social Theory (pp. vii–xxxi). Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Yu, Liji. (2014). Meili Xinling [A Beautiful Heart]. Beijing: China Children’s Press & Publication Group.
Acknowledgements
The present article is made possible by a research project on children’s literature criticism funded by the Shanghai Planning Office of Philosophy and Social Science (Grant No.: 2017EWY006). I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers and CLE’s Catherine Butler in particular for their insightful comments on the initial version of the article.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Lisa Chu Shen researches in the field of comparative literature and cultural studies at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. She specialises in children’s and young adult literature and is currently working on the gendered construction of childhood and young adulthood in contemporary Chinese novels for young readers. Her recent contribution to Children’s Literature in Education is an article entitled “Femininity and Gender in Contemporary Chinese School Stories: The Case of Tomboy Dai An” (2017). The present article arises out of a research project on children’s literature criticism funded by the Shanghai Planning Office of Philosophy and Social Science (Grant No.: 2017EWY006).
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Shen, L.C. The Effeminate Boy and Queer Boyhood in Contemporary Chinese Adolescent Novels. Child Lit Educ 51, 63–81 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10583-018-9357-7
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10583-018-9357-7