We should also focus that collective action frames incorporate
18 This is the so-called process of “domain expansion” in social movements; for further discussion, please refer to Jenness (1995).
preexisting beliefs and symbols as well as oppositional values that emerge in the course of a group’s struggle. The carryover from preexisting values and understandings illustrates the important of what Bourdieu considers cultural capital. Factors such as participants’ education, gender, race, ethnicity, and class background, generally viewed as structural, provide groups with distinct sets of beliefs and skills, or cultural resources, that shape the contours of their resistance (Lichterman, 1992). For instance, queer movements in Taiwan are sometimes criticized as elitist in character, meaning that their core members are mostly college students or academics, and that these people’s connection with other underground gay and lesbian circles and cliques, especially of different social classes or generations, may be slim. Although the Internet facilitates free talk and demonstrates the ability to bring in new participants, there is no denying that many elite-centered representations exist in the world of the Internet. Like the buzzword digital divides is often explained in terms of a lack of the required skills among many people to use the new technologies. Klotz (2004) uses this term to describe the systematic differences between those who have access to, and make use of, digital technologies and those who do not.
Higher levels of education make people more comfortable with basic computer functions, whether that means setting up a machine or interfacing with basic computer functions. Moreover, among the important components of the digital divide is age. It is not surprising to find a significant divide between those who are young and those who are older. Certainly in such arenas as e-mail, chat rooms, newsgroups, and other conversational forums, the participants are overwhelmingly young. Just as access to computers, education, and age has caused a digital divide in structural terms, the content of cyberspace creates a cultural divide. Not surprisingly, the two are mutually constitutive. As Poki (pseudonym), one of queer activists in Taiwan, always noted, “I always think about who has the potential and ability to
conduct the queer movement: college or graduate students19 (because of their age and educational level) have more flexible time and relevant knowledge, and celebrities (because of their discursive abilities) like academic elites can produce discourses and influence media. Both of them carry particular capital and taste. When I became deeply engaged in the queer movement, I found two significant elements that we needed to master:
discourse and media. In other words, whether someone can master discourse and media reflects his or her particular cultural capital. Thus, there are inevitable tensions that operate between diverse standpoints and that cause exclusion from—and a specific selection of—discourses” (personal interview 2003-10-30). I agree with Poki’s opinion: the most key point is that, after the 1990s in Taiwan, students have been able to use the Internet with ease and at little or no cost. Queer movements strengthened the trend owing to the Internet’s financial accessibility.
Poki’s argument reminds me of the class or cultural divisions in the queer movement or in any social movement, for that matter. Borrowing from the work of cultural theorists such as Pierre Bourdieu and Paul Willis, Fred Rose argues that the cultural distinction between the middle and working classes is rooted in the organization of work. Class culture consists of the beliefs, attitudes and understanding, symbols, social practices and rituals throughout the life cycle that are characteristic of positions within the production process. Thus, these cultural products of work life are then
19 Tan (2001: 128) expressed a similar idea: “the people who post information on these BBS’s or Websites are almost entirely university undergraduates and graduates, and some of them are published writers and researchers specializing in gay and lesbian topics. Hence, opinions expressed within such BBS’s are the thoughts of a part of the movements’ educational elites.” In my opinion, on the one hand, students have much leisure time to participate in a queer movement; and on the other hand, students do not worry about the results of their participation in the queer movement. They also can use academic excuses to legitimatize their actions by taking classes on the sociology of gender or on queer theory.
expressed in distinct forms of political action:
“…social class shapes distinct cultural subsystems that order consciousness, organize perceptions, define priorities, and influence forms of behavior. The specific content of consciousness emerges through historical experiences and action within the framework created by class cultures. Movements reflect the class background of participants even if they do not explicitly articulate their goals in class terms. This has enormous implications for when and how people from different classes mobilize politically.” (Rose, 1997: 463)
Thus, we need to focus on protest capital in this context. This idea comes from the nature of cultural capital, itself. A movement actor invests cultural capital in order to make his or her political issue, goals, and activism meaningful, appealing, and convincing to a diversity of audiences. This investment opens up processes of capital transformation because knowledge and know-how can be used to generate economic funds (i.e., a person’s ability to convince others to donate funds) or social contacts (i.e., a person’s ability to persuade others to sympathize with—or to join—queer movements). For instance, celebrity involvement is the central point of campaign events. Their cultural capital translates into protest capital. That is, celebrities’ public statements have weight, and this weight is a collectively recognized and guarded right and privilege to have a valid and legitimate opinion. However, celebrities have this authority and legitimacy only when they are able to incorporate and personify collectively shared values, beliefs, and ideals. Lahusen (1996: 142ff) points out that celebrities’ importance as symbolic figures in public and political life, the identifications they arouse, and their importance as promotional tools in advertising are common topics of investigation. Thus, a celebrity’s habitus20 will be an important focus in
20 Bourdieu emphasizes how a habitus provides resources for the constructing of diverse lines of action and manifests itself most consistently in the form of individuals’
interests and consequent strategies. In particular, Bourdieu has emphasized the
the future studies. Habitus embodies the lived conditions within which social practices, hierarchies, and forms of identification are made manifest through the choices of individuals, but where those choices already are predisposed by an existing social position. Habitus extends the meaning of the term lifestyle beyond its superficial and trivializing connotations (as in “the queer lifestyle”) to a suggestion of intimate connections between ways of living and one’s sense of class, gender, race, and other forms of social belonging.
In other words, habitus is constructed through myriad displays of taste that structure lived environments more or less comfortably to reflect our social and cultural position and that maintain boundaries between those environments one feels naturally at home in (that is, those that are class- or gender-appropriate) and those that feel uncomfortable (those that are class- or gender-transgressive).
In this vein, not surprisingly, celebrity status determines the direction of queer movements.21 One queer celebrity who teaches at the college level told me, “In my opinion, it’s impossible to escape the elitism plight in the emancipatory movement. The academic elite can form an alliance with
importance of the habitus in communicative encounters. The perceptual and linguistic schemes of the habitus shape the ways in which agents make sense or fail to make sense of each other’s communications. This means that they find different meanings in communications to those which the authors of those communications identify in them.
It means that they miss the point or just fail to make any sense of what is
communicated. Whatever the details, however, communication is always a meeting of habitus and the chances of a consensual meaning being arrived at are always less likely if interlocuters are more distant in social space.
21 In my opinion, celebrities in queer movement shape the “collective memory” of queerness from the perspective of elite-centered. Collective memories are built up in the work of homogenizing representations of the past and of reducing the diversity of recollection. Collective memory, Halbwachs (1992) asserts, is always selective; various groups of people have different collective memories, which in turn give rise to different modes of behavior. Halbwachs shows, for example, how working class constructions of reality differ from those of their middle-class counterparts. That is, collective memory is not a given but rather a socially constructed notion. In queer movement, celebrities those who can master media and discourse form the so-called collective memory of queerness through the relevant mechanisms of selection and exclusion.
plebeian queers through fieldwork, and this will produce more emancipatory power. After all, plebian queers lack the theoretical training and the discursive abilities that can effectively generate collective actions against heterosexual hegemony” (personal interview, 2003-10-23). I think his insights are accurate for Taiwan’s current situation, although the implication of radical democracy requires equal deliberation and reflection through the process of participation. Local academics, who comment on the new queer cultures so profusely, have become TV and media personalities in their own right, despite their tendency to tirelessly cite Western queer theory. They are designated the powerhouses of this analytical and promotional discourse.
Thus, through the social movement, they master discourse and media.
V. Conclusion
Through the Internet, we will witness the possible transformation of the current cultural configuration, and this will be the best evidence of a new social movement. That is, the Internet may be the path that leads to queer equity. In my opinion, the Internet is a platform functioning as a basic structure that offers some imaginable possibilities for queer movements. The Internet, insofar as it offers queer folks a channel that they can use to engage in movements, does not therefore guarantee that each queer is really interested in political issues (some queers may be interested only in surfing for pornography or for meeting sex partners on websites). Subjectivity in the movement relies on those who are really committed to emancipatory goals and the mission of cultural politics. Of course, many queer folks look for the advent of a Messiah: someone who can help them in the struggle against hegemonic heterosexuality. In all social movements, this phenomenon is the best example of free riders. Despite its elite-centered implications as I mentioned above, the Internet is still very important for the queer movement.
We must recognize the fact that queer folks stay in different cities and different schools; thus, the Internet can help them form a space for discussion. I look highly on this new technology because it creates new possibilities for queer movements.
In my view, the core mission of queer movements in Taiwan’s context revolves around such cultural politics recording. Cultural politics are crucially important to queerness because they involve struggles over meanings. As Melucci (1989) suggests, new social movements elaborate and negotiate meanings over time, and some even make the question of “who we are” an important part of their internal discourse. Thus, culture has become the field of collective mobilization and social conflict. Social interaction is symbolically mediated and therefore dependent on symbolic forms that allow ongoing communication to be decoded. That is, the struggle over cultural symbols is framed as concern about the transformation of cultural configurations. It is to self-understanding, to making connections to others, that cultural struggle refers.
Afterword
Because my focus is not historical development of queer movement in Taiwan, I only can simply describe certain important events here. Before 1990, Taiwan had no groups advocating gay rights, only a few individuals.
The first queer organization was a lesbian one, Between Us, which remains influential and has produced a number of important activists. The first gay group, Gay Chat, was started on the campus of National Taiwan University in 1993. In the decade that's followed, many groups have formed.
Increasingly, they have moved into the public eye, both through their own
parades and other western-modeled awareness events, as well as media and police incursions into queer discos and bookstores.
Important events in Taiwan queer movements include:
1995. June First annual event of “Gay and Lesbian Awakening Days”
(GLAD), which drew more than 100 participants in NTU campus. This event has traditionally focused on spreading awareness and encouraging dialogue about gay issues.
1995.
December
The Gay Action Front is established in reaction to Taipei City Government's plan to redevelop a popular cruising area, the New Park (now 228 Memorial Park).
1996.
February
The Gay Action Front held e-vote about the top 10 gender news items of the year and about dream stars for queer folks.
1996.
March
The first time in feminist movement has a division for queer folks in “Women 100” parade.
1996.
December
Feminists and queer activists advocate security rights in the night due to Pong Wen-Ru (彭婉如) murdered event.
1997. June Gay Pride Month events take place for the first time in the New Park, establishing a tradition of June as Gay Pride Month in Taiwan (as elsewhere).
1997. July Police react to an increasingly public gay community through a sweep of a gay cruising area, Changde St, taking 40 to 50 men found in the area to the police station for photographing.
Protests led by the Gay Action Front follow.
1998. June The Taiwan Tongzhi Hotline Association becomes Taiwan's first legally registered gay organization after registering with the central government's Ministry of the Interior. The
Association, with Gin Gin Bookshop and other groups, goes on to establish a "Rainbow Community" in Gongguan,
logging 30 businesses as members. The Hotline is now one of Taiwan's most prominent gay rights organizations.
2000.
September
Taipei City Government allots NT$1 million for annual festival called the Lesbian and Gay Civil Rights Movement, Taipei.
2001.
October
Queer activists recommend legislative candidates who are sympathetic to homosexuals and supportive of queer rights.
2003. April Center for the Study of Sexualities at National Central University, a well-known sex radical academic group, was targeted by conservative women's groups and the media, which made a sensational report on hyperlinks to zoophilia websites on the Center's website. Mass hysteria followed that forced the Center to remove its hyperlinks as well as to be subjected to reviews which were rumored to include possible dismissal of the Center's coordinator and leading sex radical, Josephine Ho (何春蕤).
2003.
September
Gin Gin Bookshop (Taipei's only LGBT bookstore) was searched by the police, who confiscated over 500 gay journals. Gin Gin Bookshop, GSRAT (Gender/Sexuality Rights Association Taiwan) and Taiwan Tongzhi Hotline held a press conference to strongly protest such highly
discriminatory police action, and demanded that all the
journals be returned and that the bookstore not be prosecuted.
2003.
November
The first Taiwan Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Pride Parade is held as part of the fourth the Lesbian and Gay Civil Rights Movement festival. Crowds and floats march from the Chaing Kai-shek Plaza to Ximenting.
Summarized by Author
In addition, readers may wonder why I have used Western discourses to analyze and explain phenomena relevant to Taiwan22. One important reason is that queer culture in Taiwan is represented as a translocal or transcultural phenomenon bridging multiple cultures’ backgrounds; that is, queerness does not have a clearly domestic and independent cultural or symbolic system in Taiwan (Chao, 2000, Chu, 1998). In other words, queer cultural domains are not only intersectionally constituted within a single culture but also constituted at the articulation between different cultures. In fact, the everyday experiences of being queer in Taiwan is shaped by the logic of globalization that in fact reveals the constant negotiation of a “blurry home”
as a matter of “here,” “there,” and “in between.” Thus, images of queer sexualities and cultures now circulate around the globe. In spite of the fact that the tendency of globalization will reduce certain social and political signification of queer sexualities and cultures in different contexts, there is no denying that globalization also provides the struggle for queer rights with an expanded terrain for intervention. Like Mike Featherstone argues that the globalization process actually opens up “a dialogical space in which we can expect a good deal of disagreement, clashing of perspectives and conflicts, not just working together and consensus” (1995: 102). Thus, there are more and more hybrid sites of meaning, because “globalization and localization are inextricably bound together” (1995: 103). In short, I am of the opinion that queer culture has become a symptom of globalization: developing from local, grass-root communities, queer activists have utilized global media
22 I notice the idea of cultural appropriation: the appropriation of cultural meanings and practices can occur in different interpretations under different locations. My thinking comes from French cultural historian Roger Chartier. Chartier proposes a notion of appropriation which “accentuates plural uses and diverse understanding.” This
perspective requires “the various uses of discourses and models, brought back to their fundamental social and institutional determinants, and lodged in the specific practices that produce them” (Chartier, 1993: 7). Thus, using western discourses to reflect Taiwan as a cultural appropriation offers some possibilities to transform, reformulate and exceed what we understand currently.
(like the Internet in this paper) to support, inform, empower, lobby and mobilize queer cultures.
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