919: I Censor-Ship It with Yi-Ling Liu
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Welcome back to Lez Hang Out, the podcast that is currently crying over a gay novel in an internet cafe.
This week, Leigh (@lshfoster) and Ellie (@elliebrigida) are hanging out with journalist and editor Yi-Ling Liu (@instalingers), author of The Wall Dancers: Searching for Freedom and Connection on the Chinese Internet. This debut narrative nonfiction follows the lives of five individuals across the past three decades as they push for social change while navigating within the walls of China’s Great Firewall. We talk with Yi-Ling Liu about online censorship in China and the life-altering importance of representation and access to community for queer people everywhere.
In the early days of the internet, there were significantly less built-in systems of censorship and surveillance. Internet cafes were cropping up in every town, and globally people were experiencing a newfound freedom that did not exist outside of the confines of their screens. In China and the United States alike, homosexuality was still considered a crime and classified as a mental illness. However, on the newly created, not-yet algorithmically controlled internet, queer people could find one another, form communities and subcultures, and share their stories long before it became acceptable to live openly in daily life. A gay person living in a small city thinking they’re the only one in the world who feels the way they do could stumble across a queer novel in an internet cafe and have a truly transformative experience.
Nowadays, things have flipped, especially in China. While being gay is generally more accepted and younger generations think nothing of coming out, the internet has become a much more restrictive and monitored environment. Gay couples in China can openly live their lives; but if they try to share those lives on social media, they have to do so covertly with language that won’t trigger the firewall. Words like ‘lesbian’ and ‘gay’ are automatically censored; so queer people have had to get creative, inventing a shared lexicon that keeps their content off the government’s radar. As we watch our own cultural landscape change through algorithmic censorship, increased government surveillance, book bans, and legal challenges, we can’t help but see China’s firewall as a very possible blueprint for our own near-future online ecosystem.
Get your own copy of Yi-Ling Liu’s, The Wall Dancers: Searching for Freedom and Connection on the Chinese Internet.
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