Queer Visibility and the Emerging Pink Market in China
While queer marriage isn’t legal in mainland China, more gays and lesbians are coming out, creating a just-beginning-to-be-addressed economic force. Taobao (China’s e-commerce platform akin to Amazon in the United States), for example, recently sponsored a wedding competition in which gay and lesbian Chinese couples vied to win 10 all-expense-paid trips to marry in Los Angeles and get, essentially, a marriage certificate from a foreign country.
Join ASU faculty member Terrie Wong as she uses the Taobao "Rainbow Love" contest to discuss her research on the growing pink market in China and how corporations are joining with LGBTQ nongovernmental organizations to market to China’s gays and lesbians. This lecture is based on Wong's co-authored article "More Coming Out, Bigger Market: Queer Visibility and Queer Subjectivity in the Chinese Pink Market," which is currently under review.
Wong is a lecturer in communication in the faculty of languages and cultures in the College of Integrative Sciences and Arts at ASU’s Downtown Phoenix campus, with research expertise in intercultural communication issues such as cultural identity and cultural hybridity. Over the last five years, she’s taught courses in many areas of communication at ASU and has recently begun writing on pink marketing and queer visibility.
The annual Humanities Lecture Series in the College of Integrative Sciences and Arts provides opportunities at ASU’s Downtown Phoenix campus to analyze, discuss and interpret current research and events in public discussions that help us understand and appreciate various points of view on political, social and cultural issues.