(B) Discuss how lived experiences are documented in archives. Is there something essentially queer about that kind of archiving?
In my archive, I have some lived experiences that are documented as an article or a bibliography. Those documents are used to talk about their life experiences and stories about their partners. One example is Billy Tipton, a transgender jazz pianist, who hided his first “sex” from everyone he knew for the whole life until he died.In the article, the author wrote about how he spent his life as a transgender jazziest, and as a father in a family. Such articles are essential queer because they can express the attitudes of the society that toward the LGBTQ+ community at that time, and what LGBTQ+ people feel about themselves at that time. Articles could give readers about summarized stories of a moment, place, time, and people. These are important in my archive because they will show the reality of the society at that time, which could be a criteria to compare with other countries. Moreover, articles are simple to read, which the readers can understand, and take the information in easily and quickly. So these documented articles are essential in my archive.
My Archive Project is about the differences of the perspectives on LGBT in East Asia country (China, Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea) VS. Western country (Spain, United States, and Canada). So my blog posts are relating to the LGBT history of each country by posting history articles, person, music, movie, and novel. Besides the history, I updated current countries’ perspectives, actives, and best LGBT movies for each regions recently.
I believe these updates will emphasized the differences and similarities more and more. In addition, I think introducing the best movies can bring other perspectives, such as perspectives from family, friends, teachers, colleagues, and more. Since movies are giving both visuals and hearings, audiences can get the information can get easily while they are enjoying the movies. => Home
One challenge that I have is the introduction in the website. In my home page, I wrote an introduction about what this website is about. However, I am not sure the introduction can give readers enough information or not.
My upcoming plan is to read and check all of my posts to finalized it before the submission.
(A) What subculture(s) are involved in your Archive Project topic? What defines the people in this subculture, and how do they recognize one another? What codes or special language helps to differentiate who is inside and outside of the subculture? Referring to the readings for this lesson and the experiences of people in those subcultures, discuss how the status of a subculture is beneficial to or detrimental to the people involved in your Archive Project topic.
In my Archive Project, I have items of literatures, articles, musics, and movie. In these subcultures, people are defined by the value of its society, which the majority group in the society is the absolute. Everyone has the same standards like the appearance, food, living standards, and more. However, some of the subcultures are fictions, so the characters would act whatever they want in their society (but the society is still against the minority). From these fictions, artists want to express the gap of fiction and reality of “value” in the society. In the fiction, characters will be criticized, however, they will find a true love by the end, which won’t happen easily in the reality. Since these subcultures are pop cultures, it is easy to define the inside and outside of the subcultures. For example, music and movie have special languages; lyric and script. Subculture is something to encourage people to “face up to a hostile world” (Radclyffe Hall, “Why Did I Write The Well of Loneliness”, page. 171), the author expected to meet an unpleasant consequence, notoriety, in the society, but she believed that it could be a power for the readers and LGBTQ communities. Similarly, most of the items in my Archive, the artists are also encourage the audiences to be who they are, whether the society do or do not accept them.
The movie is called “The Wedding Banquet” released in 1993, China. The movie is showing an inner conflict of the main character, who has to marry with a woman for his family (traditional), while he is having a man partner in his social life (modernity).
This movie shows a clear cultural difference between Western country and Asian country in 1993. This could be the best movie in my website to effectively show the difference between Western countries and Asian countries’ attitudes toward LGBT. Especially when the main character’s parent came on the scenes, the perspective, the idea, of homosexuals changed in 180 degrees. This movie is a romantic comedy that you can both learning and enjoying the different perspectives of LGBT.
This movie is called “Bu I’m a Cheerleader”, released in 1999, America. It is about a girl who has everything until she falls in love with the other girl. Her parents bring her to “rehabilitation” centers when they find the signs of their daughter may like girls. However, rehabilitation centers do not work in the end, because she falls in love with a girl.
This is a movie from a negative perspective of homosexuals. The reason why I choose this movie is because the main character’s sexual orientation is treated as a mental illness, which would give a real perspective of parents. Even though the main character is the girl who is lesbian, the highlight would be how her parents treat her as their child in the movie that is from America.
This movie is called “The Handmaiden”, released in 2016, South Korea. The story is about when the time Korea was under Japan’s control. It is an interesting and thrill film that many characters’ thoughts and expectations are mixed and tangled up around the main character and her lover.
Since the released date of this movie is newer compares to the other two movies, it has some erotic scenes, which is allowed at that time, brings the film more realistic and interesting. The last two movies were more related with normal lives that everyone could have, however, this movie is a psychological mystery movie that has different taste from other two. The reason I choose this movie in this website is because the works and efforts putted on this film shows that South Korea is being open about LGBT communities to its society. This is an improvement of equality in Korea, and it is also a change, where people should give back some very traditional ideas, and familiar with modern ideas.
“Just Two hours’ Vacation” by Hikaru Utada feat. Ringo Shiina
This is the most recent LGBT song released on September 28th, 2016. The two singers are two of the legends who are representing today’s Japan’s Music society. People in the society understood this song in two ways, one said this song is for LGBT community in Japan, and the other said the lyric is just describing housewives, not about LGBT. As similar to Taylor Swift’s “You Need To Calm Down”, this song influenced the society largely underground, since both singers are famous in Japan.
This song brought many of the nations’ attentions. Some of people believed the lyric is about two housewives’ friendship, some of people think it is about two housewives’ romantic relationship. It did give some negative impression for those who are not welcome LGBT community, however, it gave more positive impressions to the society. Some of the people started to think LGBT is not a special sexual orientation, and they even didn’t know why they were not accept them. So this item is important in Japan’s society and in this website, it gives a change of the attitudes toward LGBT.
This is a website written by an organization called “IGayTrips”, which is an organization that give some suggestions for LGBT communities when they are going to travel foreign. In this website, it is also having a calendar for LGBT events in 2019. In East Asia region, it is almost 13 places that are going to have events.
As you can see from the number of events, East Asia is still not as LGBT friendly as Western countries. However, in the other perspectives, the number of locations are increasing, which means East Asia is slowly, but spreading more equal opportunities to LGBT society. This is the comparison I would like to show in this website.
This is an article written by William Yang in May 24th, 2019. The article is about the first gay marriages in Taiwan after same-sex marriage is legalized. The marriages were historical moments in Asia, in which, the law itself was the first idea in the Asia history. In Asia, the topic of same-sex marriage was talking for almost a month even after the law was legalized.
This is the most recent news and the advancement in Asia’s LGBT society, which shows an improvement of attitudes toward LGBT. People believed that this could be a trigger for Asia countries to accept more about sexual orientations. This event also shows Asia is changing in a positive way, and will be LGBT friendly regions like Western countries. So it is one of the important item in this website.
This is the most recent song that sing about LGBT, and become a famous song over the world. The singer, Taylor Swift, is one of the most famous singer around the world. The lyric is talking and encourage about homosexuals, and because of the song was sang by Taylor Swift, it has a strong influence to all the people and countries include countries that are not prohibit the lgbt but not welcome lgbt. For example, in Japan (since it is one of the posts in this website), the song is welcoming, and even playing in the streets.
This is an important item in this website, it is influential and it shows a lgbt positive attitude toward the world. This is different from East Asia, because music is a public media, where every nation can listing. So in East Asia like China, it won’t be released or playing in the public. So this is an interest finding in the comparison of Western countries and East Asia countries.
This is a website written by Andrew Collins, and it listed the calendar of gay pride in western region. From this website, we know there are over 70 places where is going to have a festival for homosexuals in 2019 – 2020 year. In each listed festival, it has a hyperlink to bing the visitors to go more specific description about the event.
This website gives the most recent events in Western countries, and the fact that over 70 places are going to have gay pride events in this year shows the current attitudes toward LGBT in western countries. It is very different from East Asia, which will shown in “Current East Asia Countries” post that the numbers of the events are lesser than westerns.
This is a news released on May 17, 2019, that presenting the bill of anti-discrimination towards LGBTQ community was passes to the White House. This is aiming to extend the protection of LGBTQ people in America who should have rights equally as others. In the news, it talked about the problems of sports, economy and moral aspects for the current situations, and this bill could improve the problems.
This news is an important news for United States as well as this website. It is a current law related movement, and by the answer of this bill, LGBTQ community has even more freedom and rights in the society. This is a good news that came with the news of Taiwan, which allowed same-sex marriages. It gives two perspectives of actual events on the different regions, but at the same time.
What interested me the most in the readings from lecture 6 to 9is the reading “Not That Sort of Women’: Race, Gender, and Sexual Violence During the Memphis Riot of 1866” by Hannah Rosen. It is about the rights of women more than LGBT themes, which I was surprised to read such a reading in this class. Moreover, I was shocked by the fact that some people thought black women were “prostitutes” just because they did not share same race. This reading gives me an idea of distrust that built on the genders and races. In fact, “This logic dovetailed with widespread imagery representing black women sexually indiscriminate , consenting to and even pursuing sexual activity with white men, and thus lacking “feminine” virtue.” shows women’s perspectives of this riot were very negative, and can not be forgiven.
I think such discrimination happened on genders might lead the LGBT community to feel same sex is more attractive, and also create a desire of living as other genders. This reading is a history of African American women, and it illuminated my new perspective of the history of LGBT in my future archives. I would like to find a real event that does not have to related to LGBT, but may lead to the finding of LGBT.
I agree with Hannah Rosen for the rights of women, however, it is difficult to define “women rights” on the concept of “LGBT”. So in the future item, I might select an event that is more related to LGBT rather than “women rights“ even how much I tried to find an event that is not directly related to LGBT concepts.
According to Pew Research Center in 2013, 21% of the populations think the society should accept homosexuality. This number is less than the numbers compare to South Korea and Japan in East Asia.
This is a timeline of the history of LGBT in mainland, China. It published in December 22, 2015 by Jack Smith in the website of TimeOut Beijing. It showed that China became homophobia since it opened Silk Road. Many new ideas came from foreigns to China, as well as homophobia. It provided a history outline of China.
This is an overview of the LGBT history of China in this archive, and it gives comparisons between the timelines from Spain and South Korea. Since it is a timeline, it gives the readers a quick idea of how Chinese people think about LGBT.
This article was published in March 24, 2010 by Tom Mountford from OutRight organization of human rights for LGBT. It insisted homosexuality became legal in 1997, and removed from the list of mental illnesses in 2001. Before 1997, none of the nations could talk about homosexuals in the public, it was strictly illegal and unacceptable things. However, after the 2001, people still could not openly reveal the identity and talk about it. This article provided more information about that time regards the education, society, health, laws, and more.
I put this in my archive because it is a big fact that China legalized the homosexuality in late 20th century. It shows a great difference from other East Asia countries and western countries. Even though those countries prohibited homosexuality, there were still some resources about LGBT community at that time in online. However, Chine did not have any of the resources as I researched, which shows the strong disagreement towards LGBT community in China.
This is a video published in October 8th, 2015 by Channel4.com. It talks about a cure for homosexuality in China, even after 2001. This tells the readers that even after China removed homosexuality from list of mental illnesses, people still believe that it is a mental illness, and it should be cured. Shock Therapy is the most common way to cure the “illness”.
It is an important item in my archive to compare the reality of homosexuality in China compares to all other countries. Even though it legalized homosexuality, it is still an unnatural act in China. This is a completely different reactions from Western countries. But in some point, shared the similarity with Japan.
In 2013, 60% of the population of United States think the society should accept homosexuality (Pew Research Center, 2013). United State has lots of LGBT history, and it is a place where most of the people will study LGBT community.
Without a doubt, Stonewall Riots was the first event that gay people revolted against the polices in a way against to the society. This video was published in May 31, 2017 by History.com Editors. It was an important history of LGBT history in the United States because this event evoked lots of important LGBT movements in United States and around the world.
This item belongs to my archive because it showed the historical moment of LGBT community in United States, and importantly, the date of this riots was happening from June 29, 1969. At that time, Canada was slowly accepted the homosexuality in the society, which illustrated a comparison. However, it gives another comparisons between East Asia. East Asia started to be actived as an LGBT community was later than 1969, while United States started many gay rights movements after Stonewall Riots.
This picture comes from an article “Billy Tipton and the Question of Gender” published in September 9, 2017 by Laura Mills. Billy Tipson was a transgender jazz pianist, who hided his identity until his death. His career was around 1950s, which at that time, the society was not as friendly to LGBT community as now. This is a story of a transgender who hided his identity in his whole life.
This is an important item in my archive because this is the first item I found that a LGBT person hided the identity in his life. His life showed the readers an another way of living as a transgender compares to other people in my posts. In East Asia and western countries, whether the society accepted the homosexuality or not, most of people in my items were revealed their identities, and influenced the society. However, Billy Tipton was not, he continued to hide the identity from others, which gives a comparison to my other posts.
The first person who executed by sodomy law, credit
This is a file of the case of the sodomitical sin. It did not show the date it published, but it comes from OutHistory.org. This website posted the testimonies of people who knew Richard Cornish, a master forced his steward to had a sexual intercourse. This is a significant item because Richard Cornish was the first person who was executed by sodomy law in Virginia at the time 1624.
I put this case in my archive because this is the earliest event happened in LGBT history in United States, and it shows a different attitude towards homosexuality compares to Japan at that time. But it also shows the similar attitude towards homosexuality with South Korea. This event also put the LGBT community in a disadvantaged situations, which may caused LGBT people to hide their identities.
According to Pew Research Center, 80% of the population agreed with the society should accept homosexuality in Canada. Even though this data was from the research in 2013, which was 6 years ago, Canada is still a LGBT friendly country. In fact, there was a research to ask what countries are friendly to LGBT people, and Canada becomes the first place of gay friendly countries. (Nomadic Boys, 2019)
In this post, I want to talk about the one of the first Canadian who revealed the identity in the society, a song and a magazine that influenced Canada.
Robert Ross, a journalist and art critic, who was the first lover of Oscar Wild. He was open with his identity, which gave a great impact to Canadian society. The picture comes from a blog that published in May 2011. It talks about Robert Ross’s life experiences after the death of Oscar Wild, as his lover, and as a homosexual. Even though most of his working areas were in Europe, his family was from Canada, and so he was considered as Canadian, and influenced the Canadian society.
The reason I pick this item is because he was definitely one of the most influential LGBT persons in Canada history, who changed the view of homosexuals. His life was harsh, he was almost arrested because of his identity, and he was bullied by his identity. His life experiences could give a contrast between monks who lived in Japan in early history, as well as other countries.
This is a song called “Any Other Way” by Jackie Shane, released in 1962. Even though the singer was an American, her song was popular, and be in the top 10 best hit songs in Toronto, Canada when she first released the song. This song became a significant song in Canada history because of the lyric and the singer. At that time, Toronto and Canada took large populations of homophobia people. But the singer and the song were very openly revealed to the listeners that she was a transgender and in a LGBT community.
It is an important item in my archive because this song influenced the society in Canada as a best hit song to spread the idea of LGBT. It diminished the antipathy towards homosexuals. This song also provided similar effect as an item “Homosexuality in Joseon Kingdom era”, which posted in Korea post. It was a clue to changed Canada to the most friendly countries over the world.
The first magazine that titled with word “gay”, credit
This article was published in January 26, 2010 by Emily Rose Antflick. It analyzed a magazine: “Gay Magazine”, that was published in 1964. It is a significant item because this article described the details of one of the first LGBT magazines in Canada.
It is a critical item in my archive because “Gay Magazine” was one of the first LGBT magazine published in Canada in 1964. This told us that in 1964, the society was started to accepted homosexuals, which evident the influence of “Any Other way” song, and Robert Ross. It also gave a comparison of the acceptance of LGBT from East Asia.
