Double closet, heteronormativity, and a gay academic living with HIV in China

Abstract

This article explores how a gay academic living with HIV negotiated heteronormativity in a Chinese university. It presents the participant’s professional life in a double closet, where he adopted various strategies to cautiously conceal both his gay identity and HIV-positive status. Such experience is used to unpack the operation of heteronormativity on campus and extend the conceptual edges of how heteronormativity is conventionally deployed. This article argues that heteronormativity in Chinese higher education prohibits and censors not only queer sexuality but non-normative ways of life such as living with HIV. It is also shown that despite staying in a double closet, the participant could exercise agency to challenge heteronormativity.

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