Cooperative Marriage: Queer Politics of Chinese Lalas and Gay Men

Being a new and under-researched phenomenon since 2005, cooperative marriage attracts attention and generates debate in and out of the mainland Chinese LGBT community. Cooperative marriage is a heterosexual marriage performed and negotiated by two non-heterosexual parties, a lala(lesbian, bisexual and transgender woman) and a gay man.

Being a popular coping strategy of lalas and gay men in contemporary China, in facing the institution of family, marriage and heteronormativity, cooperative marriage offers great insights into Chinese families, tongzhi kinship and alternative forms of intimacy and queer alliances. Filial piety, compulsory heterosexual marriage and potential housing, legal and financial benefits in heterosexual marriages are major momentum for this type of highly ritualized marriage. In cooperative marriage, both parties are fully aware of the obligations and nature of the marriage, however many of them struggle to make a balance between the conjugal family, natal family and their same-sex desire.

Various strategies are developed in finding and sustaining the (superficial) harmony of such families: different family practices, new family arrangement, the performance of masculinity and femininity in their conjugal houses and relevant public spaces. Friendship and even family bonds are thus developed and strengthened, forming new sexual alliances in the society.

Like all heterosexual marriages, cooperative marriage is also a gendered experience; therefore the study is especially interested in lalas’ experiences and narratives, their definition of love, family and intimacy. This research studies cooperative marriage from multiple aspects of family practices including domestic, consumption, kinship, marriage, emotion and parental practices, in order to understand their lived experiences and how they do gender and families. Feminist, interpretivist qualitative approach is adopted in the research. Semi-structured interviews were conducted and participant observation as well to gain insights of such marriages, 13 lalas and 7 gay men were interviewed, as well as activists from the LGBT community.