‘Teach as an outsider’: closeted gay academics’ methods for addressing queer difficulties in China: Sexual intercourse Instruction: Vol , No

Summary

Gay lecturers in China experience a number of hazards when addressing queer problems on heteronormative and repressive campuses. Small is acknowledged about their experiences of navigating the social and political constraints positioned on them. Drawing on job interview info from 40 gay lecturers in China, this posting explores participants’ procedures for addressing queer problems in the classroom. It is shown that a variety of techniques were adopted by closeted members to lessen prospective challenges and increase the legitimacy of engaging with queer concerns. Despite Chinese universities getting heteronormative areas in which training about queer challenges is constrained, closeted homosexual teachers can workout pedagogical agency to challenge heteronormativity in the classroom. Such agency is positioned in between the extremes of conformity and subversion. By unpacking closeted teachers’ agency, this analysis interrogates the normative discourse of the ‘coming out imperative’ which considers queer teachers’ coming out the only way to empower students and challenge heteronormativity.