10m Chinese women married to gay men: expert
Source: Agencies |
March 9, 2012, Friday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
IN the eight years since Tianlei told his parents he was gay, they've put relentless pressure on him to act straight and marry.
"My parents push me to deceive a girl into marrying me," said Tianlei, a 28-year-old company manager in the southwestern Chinese province of Yunnan, using a nickname.
"They just want a grandson to save face in front of others and don't care how she would suffer. I would rather die than do it."
But in China, a great many men give in to the pressure.
An estimated 10 million Chinese women are married to gay men, according to retired Qingdao University professor Zhang Beichuan, often trapping wives in unhappy unions they can't easily leave due to Chinese law and social stigma.
Zhang estimates that 80 to 90 percent of gay men in China intend to marry or have married, citing a survey of more than 1,500 Chinese gay men.
"Having no progeny is considered in the traditional Chinese culture the worst kind of unfilial conduct," said Zhang. "And under China's one-child policy, the only son is under even greater pressure from his parents who want a grandson."
For Fang Fang, a 46-year-old woman in eastern China, her marriage to a gay man led to a lifetime of misery.
Twenty-six years after she spent her wedding night alone, she finally came to realize her husband was gay.
"He took advantage of my naivety and weak personality, set up a string of traps and lured me in," said Fang, not her real name.
Her husband, born in the late 1950s, found his sexual orientation humiliating and wanted to become a "normal" man by marrying a woman and, more importantly, having a child to carry his family name.
Breaking free of such marriages is not easy in China.
Divorce is rapidly rising but is still considered shameful, especially for women. Chinese law offers little help to women who might have difficulty proving their husbands are in homosexual relationships and thus can't seek a divorce.
Even when divorce is an option, the stigma haunts many former wives.
"When I told guys I dated that my ex-husband was gay, some of them immediately worried that I was an HIV carrier, since that's the image attached to gays in Chinese minds," said Xiao Yao, founder of a website named "Tongqijiayuan" (Gay wives' family).
After discovering in 2007 that her husband was gay, Xiao searched the Internet for information about women facing predicaments like her own, but her search proved futile.
She divorced her husband a year later following several incidents of domestic violence and poured all her savings into building and running the website, where members seek help from each other, psychologists and law professionals.
"My parents push me to deceive a girl into marrying me," said Tianlei, a 28-year-old company manager in the southwestern Chinese province of Yunnan, using a nickname.
"They just want a grandson to save face in front of others and don't care how she would suffer. I would rather die than do it."
But in China, a great many men give in to the pressure.
An estimated 10 million Chinese women are married to gay men, according to retired Qingdao University professor Zhang Beichuan, often trapping wives in unhappy unions they can't easily leave due to Chinese law and social stigma.
Zhang estimates that 80 to 90 percent of gay men in China intend to marry or have married, citing a survey of more than 1,500 Chinese gay men.
"Having no progeny is considered in the traditional Chinese culture the worst kind of unfilial conduct," said Zhang. "And under China's one-child policy, the only son is under even greater pressure from his parents who want a grandson."
For Fang Fang, a 46-year-old woman in eastern China, her marriage to a gay man led to a lifetime of misery.
Twenty-six years after she spent her wedding night alone, she finally came to realize her husband was gay.
"He took advantage of my naivety and weak personality, set up a string of traps and lured me in," said Fang, not her real name.
Her husband, born in the late 1950s, found his sexual orientation humiliating and wanted to become a "normal" man by marrying a woman and, more importantly, having a child to carry his family name.
Breaking free of such marriages is not easy in China.
Divorce is rapidly rising but is still considered shameful, especially for women. Chinese law offers little help to women who might have difficulty proving their husbands are in homosexual relationships and thus can't seek a divorce.
Even when divorce is an option, the stigma haunts many former wives.
"When I told guys I dated that my ex-husband was gay, some of them immediately worried that I was an HIV carrier, since that's the image attached to gays in Chinese minds," said Xiao Yao, founder of a website named "Tongqijiayuan" (Gay wives' family).
After discovering in 2007 that her husband was gay, Xiao searched the Internet for information about women facing predicaments like her own, but her search proved futile.
She divorced her husband a year later following several incidents of domestic violence and poured all her savings into building and running the website, where members seek help from each other, psychologists and law professionals.
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