LGBTQIA+ Scholar Series: Remembering Confucian Homoeroticism

Featuring Peng Yin, Assistant Professor of Ethics, School of Theology

Anthony Kennedy in Obergefell v. Hodges (2015) cited the Confucian ritual classic Liji to illustrate the pro-social potential of same-sex marriage. The favorable reference represents a longstanding perception of Confucianism’s tolerance of homosexuality compared to Christianity. If this view amounts to an orientalist idealization, the opposite is a homonationalist view that deems Confucianism as perpetually queer-negative, due to its immutable preoccupation with family as the basis of state welfare.

The talk identifies some “official” reasons by which queer desire is shunned in the Confucian tradition but shows how they imbricate social complexities to unpredictable effects, thus leaving enormous latitude for forging queer subjectivity. I retrieve queer and trans names that move beyond the clinical, juridical, Christian theological modes—names such as cut sleeve, shared peach, Longyang, wildflowers, southern wind, stone maiden, and fox spirit. These names register a queer past before the violent encounter with European missionaries. They also predate a Christian racialization that saw Chinese homoeroticism as marking a pagan collectivity mired in sensual pleasure and ignorant of divine law. In this sense, these forgotten names indicate a queerness that is never allowed to become and that “is not yet here.”