How gay men's wives in China practice co-cultural communication: Culture, identity, and sensemaking Academic Article

abstract

• 2019, 2019 National Communication Association. Around 13.6 million heterosexual women in China are married to gay or bisexual men, and they call themselves tongqi. Tongqi belong to both co-cultural groups (as women and wives) and a dominant group (as heterosexuals). Through a narrative analysis of 51 stories told by tongqi, this study examines the co-cultural strategies tongqi use, and identifies two novel co-cultural strategies: self-blaming and enduring. It also examines how tongqi narratively construct their husbands co-cultural strategies and finds that tongqi often internalize the ideologies (of gender, sexual orientation, marriage, and family) in their sensemaking process and in their communicative responses to their husbands.

authors

• Tang, Lu

published proceedings

• JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL AND INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION

author list (cited authors)

• Tang, L. u., Meadows, C., & Li, H.

citation count

• 6

complete list of authors

• Tang, Lu||Meadows, Cui||Li, Hongmei

publication date

• January 2020

publisher

• Taylor & Francis  Publisher

published in

• Journal of International and Intercultural Communication  Journal

keywords

• China
• Co-cultural Theory
• Gay Man's Wife
• Narrative Analysis
• Tongqi

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

• 10.1080/17513057.2019.1569252

start page

• 13

end page

• 31

volume

• 13

issue

• 1

URL

• http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17513057.2019.1569252

user-defined tag

• 5 Gender Equality