Performing (Homo)Sexual Citizenship Under Authoritarian Rule: Gay Couple Vlogs and Everyday Intimacy in China.

Résumé

This article explores () vlogs-user-generated video diaries of Chinese gay male couples on Bilibili-as performative acts of (homo)sexual citizenship under authoritarian rule. Drawing on frameworks of sexual, cultural, and performative citizenship, the study examines how these vlogs negotiate relational recognition, legal marginality, and mediated visibility within a tightly censored digital ecology. Combining digital ethnography and reflexive thematic analysis, the article demonstrates that vlogs simultaneously reproduce and resist heteronormative ideals, offering emotionally legible yet normatively constrained depictions of gay life. While these performances often align with conservative scripts of monogamy, domesticity, and filial piety, they also tactically inhabit legal loopholes-such as the Assigned Guardianship System and affiliation-to enact forms of symbolic and relational legitimacy. Crucially, viewer interactions through and comment threads constitute informal pedagogical spaces, circulating information and cultivating civic awareness. The article conceptualizes these mediated practices as performing Chinese authoritarian (homo)sexual citizenship-a mode of gay belonging negotiated through ambivalent performances of public visibility, normative proximity, and strategic intimacy.