By Tori Shucheng Yang, Changhui Song, and Hui Xie
Pan, a 50-year-old woman who, after ten years being married and giving birth to two children, found out that her husband is gay. “I’ve truly experienced spiritual devastation… I just collapsed that year. I was in constant despair, battling depression. I attempted suicide repeatedly,” she recalled. “I feel so wronged, so helpless.” The heavy social stigma and lack of legal recognition of homosexuality deepened her despair: “I didn’t know what to do. I was trapped, unable to leave, unable to stay, and I couldn’t talk to anyone about it.”
Pan’s predicament is unfortunately far from unique- an estimated 13.6 million women in China share a similar experience. This staggering number reflects the complex social reality surrounding homosexuality, the institutions of family, and marriage in China. Despite the decriminalization of homosexuality in 1997 and its subsequent removal from the list of mental illnesses in 2001, the LGBTQ+ community remains largely invisible in many parts of the country. The immense pressure to marry and carry on the family lineage often leads to situations where gay men enter marriages with heterosexual women without disclosing their sexual orientation, a practice that has given rise to the phenomenon of tongqi (an abbreviation for “wives of gay men” in Chinese). When these women learn of their husbands’ sexuality, many experience profound shock that fundamentally challenges their sense of self.
Drawing on 34 in-depth interviews, our recent article in Gender & Society explores the sense-making process of tongqi after discovering their husbands’ same-sex behavior. As marriage and intimate relationships are key sites for the reproduction of heteronormativity, understanding how tongqi reconfigure their identities offers a novel framework for analyzing the disruption and reproduction of heteronormativity more broadly.
We identify four ways in which tongqi reconstruct their disrupted identities: oppositional identity work to restore an unblemished identity, maintenance identity work to sustain the marriage, relational identity work to distance from other tongqi, and subversive identity work to promote structural change.
First, some tongqi label their husbands as morally corrupt for deceiving innocent women. Drawing on the dichotomous and hierarchical construction of homosexuality as morally inferior to heterosexuality, this oppositional identity work serves as a form of symbolic retribution, helping these women cope with their disadvantaged position. By shifting the stigma onto their husbands, they reclaim an unblemished identity. This strategy relies on sets of binary constructs: gay versus straight, deceitful versus innocent, abnormal versus normal. By pitting innocent, heterosexual women against gay men, these women simultaneously restore their own identities and reinforce the gender and sexual status quo.
Others engage in what we call maintenance identity work. They reinterpret their husbands’ same-sex affairs within a heteronormative framework, often comparing them to heterosexual infidelity. Due to societal and cultural norms that place disproportionate responsibility on women for maintaining relationships, these women strive to embody the gendered ideals of a “good wife” in an attempt to win their husbands back. Many blame themselves, questioning their own adequacy rather than attributing the situation to their husbands’ sexual orientation. While such efforts rarely change their husbands’ behavior, tongqi eventually work toward acceptance. Adhering to the “good wife” ideal to patch a failed identity thus simultaneously restores heteronormativity and perpetuates gender inequality.
In both cases, tongqi often seek information and community online, making sense of their own identities by positioning themselves relative to other tongqi. Some depict others in the community as financially motivated and sexually promiscuous, drawing on heteronormative repertoires of chastity to establish moral boundaries. Others depict those who are unable to leave their marriages as self-sabotaging and gullible, celebrating their own agency and self-reliance. While relational identity work helps justify one’s response and sustain a positive self-identity through othering, it also reinforces gendered norms and casts the plight of tongqi as an individual problem. This reworking of identity comes at the cost of developing a collective consciousness to challenge heteronormativity.
While most forms of identity work do not challenge heteronormativity, a small group of women viewed their broken marriage as a catalyst for recognizing the structural problems, including homosexuality and gender inequality, that result in the tongqi phenomenon, rather than attributing their situations to individual failings. This realization is accompanied by a redefinition of their self-identity as advocates and educators. However, the social erasure of homosexuality and the limited social support available in most places in China render such identity work less common. Institutional inequalities severely limit the resources available for interpreting and managing one’s identity, making some forms of identity work more prevalent than others.
The different processes of identity work illustrate the complex dynamics behind the reproduction of heteronormativity as individuals sustain, navigate, and interrogate the contradictions in the dominant heterosexual–homosexual binary. These strategies show that heteronormativity is not a monolithic construct that is uniformly internalized. Instead, individuals actively rework heteronormativity into their identities by deploying culturally specific interpretive repertoires to make sense of their experiences. Understanding the diverse responses in mending disruptions provides insights into the tenacity of the gender and sexual order in the face of inherent instabilities and ubiquitous crises.
Tori Shucheng Yang is a PhD candidate in Sociology at the University of British Columbia. Her research interests include international migration, gender, sexuality, and social theory.
Changhui Song is a faculty member at the College of Social Affairs, Henan Normal University, in Xinxiang, China. His research interests include gender and sexuality, hospice, and social work.
Hui Xie is a PhD candidate in Public Health at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Her research focuses on social determinants of health disparities in minoritized populations, including immigrants, LGBT populations, and racial/ethnic minorities.