{"id":274763,"date":"2023-05-16T03:48:58","date_gmt":"2023-05-16T07:48:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thechinaproject.com\/?p=274763"},"modified":"2023-05-26T05:28:20","modified_gmt":"2023-05-26T09:28:20","slug":"beijing-lgbt-center-shutters-after-15-years-citing-uncontrollable-factors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thechinaproject.com\/2023\/05\/16\/beijing-lgbt-center-shutters-after-15-years-citing-uncontrollable-factors\/","title":{"rendered":"Beijing LGBT Center shutters after 15 years, citing uncontrollable factors"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe class=\"wp-embedded-content\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts\" security=\"restricted\" title=\"[The China Project] Beijing LGBT Center shutters after 15 years, citing uncontrollable factors\" src=\"https:\/\/art19.com\/shows\/china-stories\/episodes\/954eba4d-d1f7-4739-b8d5-2e39d61765ef\/embed#?secret=5CTixKqeoP\" data-secret=\"5CTixKqeoP\" width=\"500\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>In a devastating blow to the queer community in China, the Beijing LGBT Center \u2014 one of the largest and last-standing organizations serving sexual and gender minorities in the country \u2014 has announced its shutdown after celebrating its 15th anniversary in February and surviving multiple waves of governmental clampdowns on LGBTQ spaces.<\/p>\n<p>The abrupt announcement of disbandment was posted to the group\u2019s official WeChat account this morning, only two days before the International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia (IDAHOBIT), which commemorates the World Health Organization\u2019s 1990 decision to declassify homosexuality as a mental disorder.<\/p>\n<p>In the shocking post, the organization said that it had ceased all operations as of today, citing unidentified external factors out of its control. \u201cThank you for following and supporting us over the years,\u201d the statement reads. \u201cWe kindly ask for your understanding for any inconvenience caused. We hope everything will work well for you in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Center added that for people who had paid to attend its events, refunds would be processed by May 26. For those who had donated to the organization, they could request information about how their donations will be handled.<\/p>\n<p>Founded in 2008, the Beijing-based organization was a prominent LGBTQ advocacy group that fought tirelessly for queer rights and provided a vibrant space for members of the community to connect. One of the group\u2019s first achievements involved educating psychologists in China about conversion therapy, a dangerous practice that targets LGBTQ youth and seeks to change their sexual or gender identities. In 2014, the Center played a catalyzing role in launching China\u2019s first LGBTQ impact litigation case, helping a gay man win a lawsuit against a practitioner of electroshock conversion therapy.<\/p>\n<p>Despite tightening restrictions on queer activism in China over the years of its existence, the Center managed to spearhead a variety of influential initiatives, including organizing educational programs geared toward trans healthcare, setting up speed-dating events for queer people, and compiling information on LGBTQ-friendly clinics.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe Center was so many things: a hub, a refuge, a flagship, a festival,\u201d Darius Longarino, a research scholar at the Yale Law School\u2019s Paul Tsai Center, who has worked extensively with experts in China seeking to advance LGBTQ rights, told The China Project. \u201cThey provided services to the community like mental health counseling and HIV testing and ran myriad activities like film screenings, exhibitions, English corners, parties, and discussion groups on coming out and intimacy \u2014 and so much more.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOver the years, countless people came through the Center to participate in its life and work in some way. They touched many lives and left beautiful memories,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n<p>Stephanie Yingyi Wang, an assistant professor of gender and sexuality studies at St. Lawrence University, told The China Project that the Center was special in that it provided &#8220;a regular physical meeting place for queer people&#8221; in the country.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;A lot of the past participants became volunteers and even staff,&#8221; Wang, who has worked with the organization on various initiatives, said. &#8220;Its closure is indicative of the dying of these kinds of community spaces for queer people in China, because the Center had been a beacon for many people, especially younger people in smaller cities and rural areas, to seek refuge.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>In a country where LGBTQ-related research is hard to conduct competently due to the sensitivity of the topic, the Center was able to work with forward-looking scholars and institutions to carry out large-scale surveys about the lives of queer individuals in China, such as a 2017 survey with Peking University on the mental health of transgender Chinese people. These reports, according to Longarino, \u201ccrucially filled an information void and have been continuously cited by journalists, activists, and academics.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Although China decriminalized homosexuality in 1997, living in a truly accepting and inclusive society still remains a distant dream for the Chinese LGBTQ community. Same-sex marriage is yet to be recognized, and queer people still face discrimination and animosity in society. Meanwhile, groups advocating for LGBTQ rights have long had to deal with close scrutiny and routine crackdowns by the government.<\/p>\n<p>As a result of China\u2019s intensified effort to reduce the space for queer activism, ShanghaiPRIDE, one of the country\u2019s longest-running and biggest festivals celebrating its LGBTQ movement, <a href=\"https:\/\/thechinaproject.com\/2020\/08\/17\/more-info-on-shanghaipride-shutdown-team-members-asked-to-have-tea\/\">decided<\/a> to stop all activities in 2020 to protect the safety of its people. A year later, Chinese social platform WeChat quietly <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/nbc-out\/out-news\/chinese-social-media-app-wechat-deletes-university-lgbtq-accounts-rcna1357\">deleted<\/a> dozens of LGBTQ accounts run by university students, claiming that some had broken rules about publishing information on the internet. Later that year, in a similar fashion to how the Beijing LGBT Center revealed its closure, LGBT Rights Advocacy China, a nonprofit organization with a focus on changing law and policy concerning queer people in the country, suddenly <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/technology-china-media-social-media-taiwan-348cab147964f24ccf83907403d4c84a\">announced<\/a> in a WeChat post that it had shut down but did not disclose the exact reason.<\/p>\n<p>To cope with the increasingly hostile environment, the Beijing LGBT Center appeared to have adopted a less progressive agenda in the past few years, shifting its focus from pushing for radical reforms to serving the community through initiatives like networking events, educational workshops about sexual health, and joint programs with large companies to increase workplace diversity and inclusion.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The Center has been under constant scrutiny and surveillance for its work, but because it&#8217;s been in operation for a long time and had been actively negotiating with the authorities, it still managed to maintain its major programs. As I know, more and more of its activities were affected and forced to stop recently,&#8221; Wang said. &#8220;I can only say that this closure seems inevitable in the long run, but I still admire how long the Center has stood up against immense pressure and remained to be the beacon for many.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Longarino said that a highlight of the Center\u2019s recent work was its campaign to promote LGBT-affirming mental health care, which was pivotal given that one-third of mental health professionals in China still believed being gay was a mental disorder and that conversion therapy was effective, according to a survey the Center conducted with a scholar at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAt the grassroots level, the Center organized dozens of training sessions for mental health counselors, sometimes with just a handful of attendees, to help them learn how to better serve their LGBT clients,\u201d said Longarino, who has worked with the organization on some of these efforts. \u201cThrough slow and painstaking work, this became a network of thousands of LGBT-affirming counselors who then provided platforms from which the Center could reach higher-level stakeholders.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>On Weibo, the news of its sudden shutdown has triggered an outpouring of sadness and reminiscences about its importance to the community. \u201cTen years ago when I just graduated from school, I achieved self-acceptance here. Thank you and I hope future generations of sexual and gender minorities can still find their organization,\u201d a longtime fan <a href=\"https:\/\/weibo.com\/1501416452\/N0JWK2199#comment\">wrote<\/a> on the Center\u2019s Weibo page. \u201cWe don\u2019t say goodbye. We say \u2018See you down the road,\u2019\u201d a Weibo user who used to volunteer at the Center commented.<\/p>\n<p>As the public space for civil society continues to shrink in China, the Center\u2019s closure is an indication that \u201cwhat was once accepted or tolerated no longer is,\u201d Longarino said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don&#8217;t think the Center crossed a line, but rather the line crossed them,\u201d he added. \u201cMedia used to be able to report on LGBTQ-related rights litigation and there was more space for discussion and expression. Now, with the suppression of these voices, those pushing stigma and prejudice have become more dominant.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cI don&#8217;t think the Center crossed a line, but rather the line crossed them.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20030,"featured_media":274770,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","filesize_raw":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[12908],"tags":[21263,14026],"column":[],"class":[],"coauthors":[18963],"acf":[],"la_post_categories":{"society-and-culture":"Society &amp; Culture"},"la_post_tags":{"beijing-lgbt-center":"Beijing LGBT Center","lgbtq":"LGBTQ"},"content_writeup":{"rendered":"<p>In a devastating blow to the queer community in China, the Beijing LGBT Center \u2014 one of the largest and last-standing organizations serving sexual and gender minorities in the country \u2014 <a href=\"https:\/\/thechinaproject.com\/2023\/05\/16\/beijing-lgbt-center-shutters-after-15-years-citing-uncontrollable-factors\/\">has announced its shutdown<\/a> after celebrating its 15th anniversary in February and surviving multiple waves of governmental clampdowns on LGBTQ spaces.<\/p>\n<p><em>More editor\u2019s picks from this week:<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>American basketball star Dwight Howard<\/strong>, who moved to Taiwan last year to play in its professional league after 18 NBA seasons, <a href=\"https:\/\/thechinaproject.com\/2023\/05\/15\/former-nba-champion-dwight-howard-regrets-calling-taiwan-a-country\/\">has expressed regret<\/a> after he received backlash in mainland China for starring in a government-backed video promoting Taiwan\u2019s tourism business, in which he referred to the island as a \u201ccountry\u201d and appeared alongside its vice president, Lai Ching-te (\u8cf4\u6e05\u5fb7 L\u00e0i Q\u012bngd\u00e9).<\/p>\n<p><strong>Gu\u014d B\u00e8ib\u00e8i \u90ed\u84d3\u84d3, also known as \u201cTeacher Guo\u201d (\u90ed\u8001\u5e08 gu\u014d l\u01ceosh\u012b) in the online world<\/strong>, once had 7 million followers before she was banned by Chinese censors in September 2021 for \u201cperforming ugliness.\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/thechinaproject.com\/2023\/05\/17\/unconventional-internet-celebrity-loved-by-queer-chinese\/\">She was well liked by queer people<\/a>, who related to her eccentric personality and quirky sense of humor as someone living on the fringes of society.<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>One-Way Street Magazine<\/em><\/strong> is a Chinese journal that thinks books and ideas are worth arguing about. Published four times a year, its pages are filled with essays, notes, interviews, long-form nonfiction, book reviews, poetry, and short stories <a href=\"https:\/\/thechinaproject.com\/2023\/05\/16\/one-way-street-gathers-independent-voices-from-china-and-beyond\/\">by some of the most spirited voices from China and abroad<\/a>.<\/p>\n"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thechinaproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274763"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thechinaproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thechinaproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thechinaproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20030"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thechinaproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=274763"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thechinaproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274763\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thechinaproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/274770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thechinaproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=274763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thechinaproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=274763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thechinaproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=274763"},{"taxonomy":"column","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thechinaproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/column?post=274763"},{"taxonomy":"class","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thechinaproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/class?post=274763"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thechinaproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=274763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}