Different Normativities: Beijing Lesbians' Longing and Self-Governance

TLDR: Engebretsen as mentioned in this paper provided a valuable view on queer lives prior to the 2008 Beijing Olympics, which would lead to increasingly strict political regulations, and it is highly meaningful that Queer Women in Urban China came out in 2014, the year that the Chinese government was about to unleash a nationwide repression against women's rights activists.

Abstract: While the field of queer China studies is definitely growing, we are still short of indepth ethnographic research with nuanced analyses of the variegated meanings and strategies an LGBT individual may conjure up in daily life. This monograph on Beijing lalas (the Chinese coinage of “lesbians”) is thus more than welcome in many senses. We may begin with the issue of timeliness. The ethnographic materials Elizabeth Engebretsen provides are culled primarily from 2004 to 2006, which may seem to render the scenarios in the book somewhat outdated. Quite the contrary, however, the book offers a valuable view on queer lives prior to the 2008 Beijing Olympics, which would lead to increasingly strict political regulations. Moreover, it is highly meaningful that Queer Women in Urban China came out in 2014, the year that the Chinese government was about to unleash a nationwide repression against women’s rights activists. It is against this backdrop that Engebretsen argues ardently at the end of the book for future research, advocacy, and outreach initiatives at once within and beyond academe (163). Indeed, the term precarity takes on significance in specific social contexts, which need to be articulated by fine ethnographic works such as this one. According to the same logic, ethnographic methods are always derived from, and embedded in, given social conditions. It follows that both the capacities and limitations of a certain method may reveal the contours of those social conditions. Engebretsen does research chiefly in lala bars, salons, private gatherings, and nongovernmental organizations. She is not privy, however, to the kinds of