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okay so this is an essay that i wrote for my retrospring initially that got much too long, and so i figured because retrospring feels kind of ephemeral in general, that i would upload it here so it would have a bit more of a permanent home!
here was the original question:
and here is the answer, in essay-length glory!
okay so first of all thank you for this question because it took me to some interesting places & research holes trying to conceptualize & articulate my answer. second of all, like, answering this with true rigor and any degree of like accuracy probably requires some sort of degree, like this would be someone's dissertation you know? which is not to say that i am not going to offer up my opinion bc i do have a lot of thoughts, but just putting this here to say that i certainly am not an expert in any way so please don't take my speculation as anything more than that!
i think it's important to highlight at the outset here that there very much exists a korean butch lesbian culture—there are plenty of butch women and they identify as such as well, and many of them create online content that is pretty accessible, if you're interested (butch youtube duo , and this artist which recently went pretty viral on twt for some examples). so, clearly, there is legible community & moreso than that, specifically butch community; like that's very real!! so then the question becomes, like, why is there no real, for lack of a better word, representation of this in the idol scene? i do think it's particularly notable that, like you pointed out, the only butch in kpop is taiwanese-american, and likely chosen specifically to appeal to a sino market: here she is citing specifically that lsm wanted to emulate a "tomboyish chinese singer" (she is probably talking about ella chen here of s.h.e who is also taiwanese also once upon a time the one butch in a group with two other femmes and is now a hot mom...). and like, the second butchest girl in kpop, who is, of course, gwsn miya, also has her origins in like a different entertainment scene that more heavily incorporates crossdressing/butchness, having originally come from a vixx drag king cover band.
this brings us to my first source (yes i am citing sources here i told you there would be a research dive okay), which is this really interesting article by shin layoung on essentially the phenomenon of crossdressing cover bands in korea & its relation to the lesbian/queer scene. it's really worth a read if you have the time, and it's pretty legible and short, too. in summary though, essentially these like crossdressing effectively drag king cover bands were a huge thing in japan (and there remains a strong culture to this day of cover band conventions). i got really distracted going down the youtube hole of digging out these covers LOL but just for your reference here is a great example of one of these groups that made it super big, the pogtan boys (covering obviously, our favourite group lol, bts): fire cover, save me cover. if you followed bts to the point of like you know, knowing their choreo/vibe well enough, this is like a crazy crazy level of devotion—to performance, to persona, to body language, etc. and like through a survey of this scene, that does seem to be the defining feature, wherein each member is responsible for their corresponding boyband member, and thoroughly studies that guy to the point of like, this is just a drag persona! this is Gender.
the article goes on to talk about how there emerged a culture of "fancos" ("fan-costume-play") in korea of similar groups, of effectively, young women who emulated their favourite idols, and embodied them, even going to adopt masculinized versions of their own names within the scene. shin goes on to describe how many women who came to this scene found a freedom and gateway to iban (queer) identity, and how it was generally seen as an all-female gender inclusive queer space. moreover, many masc-leaning women who were already fairly androgynous in presentation found community and understanding here. shin also points out that this community created a space akin to that of traditional korean gukgeuk, all-female opera groups that operated similarly to the japanese takarazuka revue: “an inclusive social club that cultivated and bolstered intimate bonds between women”.
much as gukgeuk became less popular due to increasing modernization and an increasingly gender segregated society, part of the reason shin cites as a decline of the popularity of these fanco spaces is due to increased societal pressures to conform. one aspect of queer desire & expression within fanco spaces was more, effectively, butch4butch relationships, which were kind of just ljklsf like you know girl yaoi LOL but as lesbian communities were more subject to the pressures of assimilation, the trend of relationships migrated closer to femme4femme, relegating more masculine lesbians to a more fringe position. (the article goes on to talk about how the changing landscape of kpop itself influenced the decline in popularity as well, but that's less relevant here so i will say please just read it!)
i think this phenomenon illustrates well a sort of interesting pattern that i have noticed across my reading about a lot of asian lesbian cultures, which is the influence of celebrity pretty-boys on the development & expression of butch identity. k-pop, very notably, is a huge influence here, with the popularization of "flower boys" (sorry to link to myself but as i describe here, a legible gender space that i would argue idolhood has crafted from scratch!). crossdressing/drag cover bands are hugely popular in thailand, the philippines, and of course japan as well. in thailand, there is certainly a long history of "tomboy" lesbians & popular tom/dee pairings. in taiwan and china of course, there is a long history of t/p lesbian relationships. this article by writer qian jinghua is an excellent summary of the intersections between T lesbian expression and transmasculinity, and as well articulates the sort of central tension here, of just who is influencing who? as qian puts it, "The tomboy aesthetic is so popular, in fact, that while some people criticise Ts for “imitating” men, you could equally argue that cisgender men are emulating tomboys." which way this influence goes is dynamic and more mercurial. according to this exploration of the popularization & commercialization of androgynous ("zhongxing") lesbian style in taiwan, when asked, a lot of zhongxing young women cite that fact that this brand of masculinity is popular and common in their community because it's simply more accessible (compared to a more americanized/westernized understanding of masculinity)—the clothes will fit, the attitude is legible, you can, effectively, pass better. so it's not so much that young lesbians are adopting this style so much as just like, for already masc-leaning women, this type of sensitive yet handsome, both sensual and cooly stylish masculinity was a better fit—literally and culturally.
ok so now that we've established that
well i mean i do think there is an obvious answer here. and the answer is, like, you know. homophobia. like underground queer culture has thrived every since queerness existed, right? butchfemme culture has a deep history across cultures (like i am using butchfemme as a shorthand here, but what i mean is like, gender variance in lesbian relationships generally, you know?) but mainstream acceptance and understanding has historically been slim, particularly of gender variance, which has always been seen as an obvious marker of homosexuality. shin layoung’s chapter in queer korea goes into this deeper, describing in specific the different reasons for why from the 2000s to 2010s, lesbian visibility has decreased. again, i recommend the full read if you have the time! but i think an interesting aspect here is the notion of “visibility”—in korean slang, the masculinity of butch lesbians is highlighted as a notable form of visibility, as this passage highlights: “T’ibu” is a shortened form of t’inanŭn (easily noticeable) butch, thus referring to butch women with short hair and a masculine style. These masculine women are also called “kŏlk’ŏ,” a combination of kŏrŏdaninŭn and “coming out,” which can be translated literally as “walking around while coming out.” in this way, we can see how linguistically, the link between masc presentation and a more obvious lesbian identity is inextricable. as societal homophobia increases, decreasing one’s visibility—meaning the decline of fanco spaces online, meaning perhaps aspiring towards more ‘desirable’ feminine presentations, meaning more femme-femme relationships—is an act of self-protection. interestingly, shin highlights that during this period of time in south korea, mainstream discourse over homosexuality was increasing, leading to more public awareness of, like, what a gay person looks like lol, which in turn increased homophobia—but all without an accompanying legal movement to protect especially young queer people. no wonder, then, that decreasing visibility for safety increased as well, and no wonder that this subculture never quite made it to the mainstream.
that being said, i think this then reveals another way to ask this question: why in the world are there even c-ent butches?? certainly homophobia is, like, you know, a thing in china LOL and certainly although taiwan has better laws, there are still the familial and societal pressures that exist. so the question is, why did some aspects of this subculture end up migrating to the mainstream? and so much to the mainstream, with how popular many of these zhongxing celebrities are?
the underground scene of dance cover groups & drag exists certainly in taiwan, china, and hong kong, but notably, from taiwan and china specifically, there have been groups that transcended the fan cover scene. by which i mean, no longer covering existing boy groups, but rather forming just as their own original girl-boy group. boy group made out of girls. drag king group. okay obviously if you’ve been around here you’ve heard me talk about fanxyred/acrush, but just to reiterate, they are (were? lolsob) a mainland chinese group whose gimmick was a boy group made up of girls. the debut mv pretty easily demonstrates this. acrush got a lot of media coverage at the time for this, including this really wild article in dazed, where, again, the previously existing butchness of the members is highlighted (““We didn’t make them dress like this,” she says, showing me a picture of Lin Fan. “They were always tomboys.” In the picture, Lin Fan looks a lot younger – maybe about 14 years old – and is sat in her school uniform, the same ubiquitous zip-up tracksuits that school children wear across China. She had short hair then, too, and looks different to the rest of the girls in the photo. A moment later, Lin Fan herself pops up behind Zhou Xiaobai and grabs the phone. “See, haven’t I always been like this?” she says.”).
before them, taiwan had MISSTER (i know it’s perfect which was a group formed from like a drag competition held out of a lesbian bar by the intrepid butch leader of the group. and in this mv you can really clearly see the lesbian vision: a bunch of butch girls playing out the age old kpop boy mv trope of chasing the same beautiful femme woman. hello! i think despite the fairly short lived active eras and limited popularity, the existence of these groups, which are aesthetically quite similar to those fan cosplaying drag dance cover groups (binders, baggy pants, hats, a specific kind of masc swag), is kind of demonstrative of the paradox here: how and why have they separated out from explicit underground fanculture into a more legible celebrity space?
the existing structure of T/P lesbian subculture came to be primarily in taiwan, where without the comparatively more authoritarian chinese communist government, there grew a more liberal/progressive attitude. and like again i am not an expert again in the political landscape of taiwan (a complicated place!) so i don’t want to comment on the specifics, but like at least in comparison to mainland china, there has always been more media coming out of taiwan, and they are socially progressive enough insofar as legality goes, they are the first asian country to legalize gay marriage. this next section references a lot of this text, which describes the way that T/P culture developed in the mainland, but i am making my own speculative comments, too, and i’ll do my best to highlight when i do! T/P culture arose in the bar scene, in proximity to american influence as well, taking on a similar but not fully analogous structure as butchfemme culture. prior to the early 90s or so, when mainland china was less open, there was like, very limited media, no true celebrity culture. obviously queerness existed, but there was no real legible model of masc women—in part because in this time, the notion of communist ideal citizenship actually sought to minimize the strict gender divide. i.e. we are all comrades under communism. anecdotally, my mother has spoken about the fashion rules at the time she was subject to in high school (in the 80s) emphasizing no frivolity, aka no makeup, no jewelry, the enforcing of like a ~neutral uniform. there was also a militarization of all citizens—my mom trained briefly in the army in university alongside my dad and all their friends. these are all personal anecdotes for sure, but i think they’re good examples to pain the notion of gendered expectations in china at the time: to be a good woman was to be a good comrade, and therefore there was no true alignment between masculine womanhood and homosexuality. my personal conjecture here is that this attitude sort of hung around, even as that level of strict scrutiny extremely extremely faded away.
secondarily, because at the time mainland china didn’t have a structure in place for media output, the taiwanese & hong kong media/entertainment sphere blossomed to a much much much greater extent. a lot of the old classics & like still hugely influential film & pop stars are from taiwan and hong kong (tony leung, jackie chan lol, jay chou, jolin tsai, just to name a few). as per wang, T/P culture started to creep into the mainland in the 90s, and without a previous model of what lesbianism looked like, was quickly adopted by local communities. i think like, there are some parallels here i want to draw: i.e. a lot of those taiwanese and hong kong celebrities were legibly queer and/or gender non conforming. denise ho is a renowned hong kong singer who started incorporating clear lesbian themes in her music in the early 2000s and became the first cantonese singer to officially come out as a lesbian. this is also the era of s.h.e and ella chen fame, if you don’t remember from all the way back in the beginning of this essay, the taiwanese girl that was hugely popular in which ella was the tomboy member alongside two femme girls. s.h.e. has made some. really crazy lesbian-adjacent content. they made a whole song called wife that is about their bond, and for their 17th anniversary song, the music video fully ends in a threeway marriage. EYE think that the movement of media that featured like, genuine lesbianism and moreover, lesbian masculinity, from the relatively more open space generated in taiwan & hong kong into like, the media vacuum essentially that was present in the mainland, helped to cement the possibility of butch celebrities into the mainstream. shortly after this, in 2005, we get li yuchun (also known as chris lee, notably masculinized english name) hailing from chengdu (from the mainland), who was hugely popular, and won the singing competition ‘super girl,’ which i do think is interesting, because, you know, it’s right there in the title. on that same season, we have another rly popular butch girl who did really well, bibi zhou, which also speaks to something i think (i.e. it’s not a gimmick, necessarily, if there’s more than one per season you know?)
anyway my point is that i think if we think about the notion that T/P culture became part of the dominant way of interpreting lesbian expression in the mainland because the existing structure was introduced into a space that had like latent lesbianism but not as much community organizing, then we can sort of see that analogue to like, lesbian celebrity & media being introduced into the mainland chinese space that lacked like truthfully any structure of producing media/entertainment initially at all, becoming hugely popular as a result, and therefore embedding the template of butch women pop stars into the general population’s consciousness.
a further extension of this is articulated well in again this article about the increasing visibility of female masculinity in taiwan, in that it highlights specifically the commercialization of this style, raising the point that in part, the rise in visibility and ease of facilitating this style is built off the back of, well, a deeply deeply capitalistic industry (we’re talking about kpop here LOL). the dynamics between zhongxing or T lesbian & idolboy soft masculinity are inherently built off the idea that idolboy is created, marketed, and distributed by a market that focuses on maximizing capital. and particularly, the trendier a “look” is, the less it has to be necessarily associated with homosexuality. which again reflects the point that sometimes if there is no real discourse regarding homosexuality as a legitimate mode of being on a cultural scale—i.e. if being gay is entirely even out of the question—then sometimes actions & presentations can, paradoxically, be gayer, bc the level of plausible deniability you are afforded is higher. casting aside, the question of like, whether capitalism impedes authenticity or not (is it bad if straight girls get butch???), i do think effectively what is a thing in china is that there’s, essentially, a new consumer category—les T is one of the boxes the algorithm can sort you in. you know when you click into amazon and it tries to guess what you want? and this is just again now personal anecdotes, but idk about you guys, but when i click into amazon or instagram the algorithm has no idea what to do with me—the number of “do you have small boobs? watch this BOOMBA push up bra it will give you cleavage!!!!” ads i have gotten….. but when i log onto xiaohongshu or taobao (chinese amazon), and i like, have done just a mild cursory search for things, suddenly im getting like 5 million different binders and ads for entire clothing brands that are dedicated to making masc clothing for smaller stature folks, etc. and a whole array of “zhongxing style influencers” that do ootds, lookbooks, etc. china has a population advantage, ofc, but i think with the notion of like, this is a class that can be advertised to, it then follows that it makes sense that there will be celebrities that can lean on the buying power of this subgroup.
of course, we do still live in a society. i don’t want to create the impression that china is like, some lesbian haven or anything LOL and especially in the celebrity sphere, something that i have noticed is like, uh lowkey this trend where once you turn 30 you’re not allowed to be butch anymore. and certainly the more famous you are, the more you kind of lowkey get force-femmed lmfaoooo. so often there is this constant push & pull between minute styling differences when these celebrities are on stage, and as they get more famous & older, it slowly starts to tip more and more into ~feminine styles. ella got older, grew out her hair, and now she’s married to a husband with a child. she’s still making weird homoerotic music videos but she has, for all intents and purposes, put the tomboy style away. amber is kind of an interesting phenomenon actually because i think she’s allowed to be as steadfastly butch as she is because she’s like, taiwanese, sure, but she’s also american, and as a sort of import to the country in her own right, she’s almost allowed to maintain herself bc who she is doesn’t actually impact the notion of like, a chinese womanhood you know (saying chinese here because her career is mostly in the mainland). which does lead to wild moments like, how amber & ella were on a show together and clearly bonded, and then judged a different competition show together, and then this happened. (the clip is amber flirting with ella in a decidedly “~handsome” fashion, which, like, there’s so much to unpack here). anyway even li yuchun started wearing more eyeliner and made a whole song about how girls are allowed to be whatever they want! the newer crop of celebrity butch girl idols also clearly clearly got more ~feminized as they got more famous. lu keran from acrush/fanxyred fame started wearing crop tops on stage, lmao, and liu yuxin, street dancer butch hero who won centre after qcyn2 has managed to stay relatively masc in the public eye (GQ cover shoots! calvin klein underwear ads!) but there’s like a very very clear difference in how she looked before she blew up and what they do with her eye makeup when she’s on tour these days
to round this off, like, obviously capitalism is evil blah blah, but i do think going back to the original point re: south korea & the lack of butch girls, i think the notion of like, there being a market to appeal to plays a role there too—basically if the market can determine that zhongxing women is a legible & marketable category of people to cater to, so too can it, in other places, ignore a category of masc women and therefore render them fairly invisible in the public eye in a society increasingly defined by consumerism. which i think is the case in the k-pop scene. there’s this idea that, like, assimilationism is only possible to even pursue when you are sufficiently wealthy enough to participate in that specific societal class that demands it of you, right? the notion that a lot of gender alternative presentations originated from lower classed, already severely disadvantaged & even more marginalized populations, because they were never going to fit into the upper echelons anyway, so much as well have fun with being gay. i think if we look at, like, the globalizing market, k-pop is easily the biggest and flashiest market that is actively being exported to the west from asia. and as k-pop has become more and more of a representation of korean soft power, and made an explicit part of the political apparatus (like you know the amount of GDP the tourism alone brings in is wild!), the more then therefore that k-pop has to appeal to people with money, and specifically people with money in the west. and therefore: acceptability politics reign supreme, always always. i dont think it’s a coincidence that gender variation in k-pop has severely diminished (like on both sides—where are the jo kwons and heechuls of 5th gen?) as k-pop has gotten bigger, brought in more money, and became more widely disseminated to the west.
okay this was a very very long answer thank you for sticking all the way to the end if you read this far!! i’ve done my best to cite sources & take from existing academic work on these subjects here, but of course, like, i said, at the end of the day im a hobbyist and this isn’t peer reviewed or anything, so please don’t necessarily take me as a strict authority. if anyone wants to chat more about anything in particular that i’ve touched on, has questions, wants me to clarify anything, or has any critiques about places where i might have generalized too much, please feel free to hop back in my inbox! in particular, if anyone has more information about other manifestations of masculine lesbianism in other asian cultures (i know a cursory amount about thailand & vietnam—like enough to know that a butch scene absolutely exists and is present/represented in the music/pop culture—but almost nothing about a lot of other places/countries) i would looooooooove to hear more and see the scholarship. thank you for reading!
here was the original question:
Q: I’m curious if you think there is a reason behind the lack of masc/masc-of-center women in Kpop as compared to Cpop? And if I remember correctly the only butch in kpop (Amber) is Taiwanese American. Like of course there is a population size difference and it seems like the way the training process works is very different but it seems like such a big contrast in expected femininity from idols
and here is the answer, in essay-length glory!
okay so first of all thank you for this question because it took me to some interesting places & research holes trying to conceptualize & articulate my answer. second of all, like, answering this with true rigor and any degree of like accuracy probably requires some sort of degree, like this would be someone's dissertation you know? which is not to say that i am not going to offer up my opinion bc i do have a lot of thoughts, but just putting this here to say that i certainly am not an expert in any way so please don't take my speculation as anything more than that!
i think it's important to highlight at the outset here that there very much exists a korean butch lesbian culture—there are plenty of butch women and they identify as such as well, and many of them create online content that is pretty accessible, if you're interested (butch youtube duo , and this artist which recently went pretty viral on twt for some examples). so, clearly, there is legible community & moreso than that, specifically butch community; like that's very real!! so then the question becomes, like, why is there no real, for lack of a better word, representation of this in the idol scene? i do think it's particularly notable that, like you pointed out, the only butch in kpop is taiwanese-american, and likely chosen specifically to appeal to a sino market: here she is citing specifically that lsm wanted to emulate a "tomboyish chinese singer" (she is probably talking about ella chen here of s.h.e who is also taiwanese also once upon a time the one butch in a group with two other femmes and is now a hot mom...). and like, the second butchest girl in kpop, who is, of course, gwsn miya, also has her origins in like a different entertainment scene that more heavily incorporates crossdressing/butchness, having originally come from a vixx drag king cover band.
this brings us to my first source (yes i am citing sources here i told you there would be a research dive okay), which is this really interesting article by shin layoung on essentially the phenomenon of crossdressing cover bands in korea & its relation to the lesbian/queer scene. it's really worth a read if you have the time, and it's pretty legible and short, too. in summary though, essentially these like crossdressing effectively drag king cover bands were a huge thing in japan (and there remains a strong culture to this day of cover band conventions). i got really distracted going down the youtube hole of digging out these covers LOL but just for your reference here is a great example of one of these groups that made it super big, the pogtan boys (covering obviously, our favourite group lol, bts): fire cover, save me cover. if you followed bts to the point of like you know, knowing their choreo/vibe well enough, this is like a crazy crazy level of devotion—to performance, to persona, to body language, etc. and like through a survey of this scene, that does seem to be the defining feature, wherein each member is responsible for their corresponding boyband member, and thoroughly studies that guy to the point of like, this is just a drag persona! this is Gender.
the article goes on to talk about how there emerged a culture of "fancos" ("fan-costume-play") in korea of similar groups, of effectively, young women who emulated their favourite idols, and embodied them, even going to adopt masculinized versions of their own names within the scene. shin goes on to describe how many women who came to this scene found a freedom and gateway to iban (queer) identity, and how it was generally seen as an all-female gender inclusive queer space. moreover, many masc-leaning women who were already fairly androgynous in presentation found community and understanding here. shin also points out that this community created a space akin to that of traditional korean gukgeuk, all-female opera groups that operated similarly to the japanese takarazuka revue: “an inclusive social club that cultivated and bolstered intimate bonds between women”.
much as gukgeuk became less popular due to increasing modernization and an increasingly gender segregated society, part of the reason shin cites as a decline of the popularity of these fanco spaces is due to increased societal pressures to conform. one aspect of queer desire & expression within fanco spaces was more, effectively, butch4butch relationships, which were kind of just ljklsf like you know girl yaoi LOL but as lesbian communities were more subject to the pressures of assimilation, the trend of relationships migrated closer to femme4femme, relegating more masculine lesbians to a more fringe position. (the article goes on to talk about how the changing landscape of kpop itself influenced the decline in popularity as well, but that's less relevant here so i will say please just read it!)
i think this phenomenon illustrates well a sort of interesting pattern that i have noticed across my reading about a lot of asian lesbian cultures, which is the influence of celebrity pretty-boys on the development & expression of butch identity. k-pop, very notably, is a huge influence here, with the popularization of "flower boys" (sorry to link to myself but as i describe here, a legible gender space that i would argue idolhood has crafted from scratch!). crossdressing/drag cover bands are hugely popular in thailand, the philippines, and of course japan as well. in thailand, there is certainly a long history of "tomboy" lesbians & popular tom/dee pairings. in taiwan and china of course, there is a long history of t/p lesbian relationships. this article by writer qian jinghua is an excellent summary of the intersections between T lesbian expression and transmasculinity, and as well articulates the sort of central tension here, of just who is influencing who? as qian puts it, "The tomboy aesthetic is so popular, in fact, that while some people criticise Ts for “imitating” men, you could equally argue that cisgender men are emulating tomboys." which way this influence goes is dynamic and more mercurial. according to this exploration of the popularization & commercialization of androgynous ("zhongxing") lesbian style in taiwan, when asked, a lot of zhongxing young women cite that fact that this brand of masculinity is popular and common in their community because it's simply more accessible (compared to a more americanized/westernized understanding of masculinity)—the clothes will fit, the attitude is legible, you can, effectively, pass better. so it's not so much that young lesbians are adopting this style so much as just like, for already masc-leaning women, this type of sensitive yet handsome, both sensual and cooly stylish masculinity was a better fit—literally and culturally.
ok so now that we've established that
- masculine lesbians exist in plenty of vivid subcultures in korea just like many other asian countries, and
- there is a notable connection between the expression of masculinity within an idolboy framework & butch lesbian context, the question then is, well so why isn’t this seen in celebrity spaces?
well i mean i do think there is an obvious answer here. and the answer is, like, you know. homophobia. like underground queer culture has thrived every since queerness existed, right? butchfemme culture has a deep history across cultures (like i am using butchfemme as a shorthand here, but what i mean is like, gender variance in lesbian relationships generally, you know?) but mainstream acceptance and understanding has historically been slim, particularly of gender variance, which has always been seen as an obvious marker of homosexuality. shin layoung’s chapter in queer korea goes into this deeper, describing in specific the different reasons for why from the 2000s to 2010s, lesbian visibility has decreased. again, i recommend the full read if you have the time! but i think an interesting aspect here is the notion of “visibility”—in korean slang, the masculinity of butch lesbians is highlighted as a notable form of visibility, as this passage highlights: “T’ibu” is a shortened form of t’inanŭn (easily noticeable) butch, thus referring to butch women with short hair and a masculine style. These masculine women are also called “kŏlk’ŏ,” a combination of kŏrŏdaninŭn and “coming out,” which can be translated literally as “walking around while coming out.” in this way, we can see how linguistically, the link between masc presentation and a more obvious lesbian identity is inextricable. as societal homophobia increases, decreasing one’s visibility—meaning the decline of fanco spaces online, meaning perhaps aspiring towards more ‘desirable’ feminine presentations, meaning more femme-femme relationships—is an act of self-protection. interestingly, shin highlights that during this period of time in south korea, mainstream discourse over homosexuality was increasing, leading to more public awareness of, like, what a gay person looks like lol, which in turn increased homophobia—but all without an accompanying legal movement to protect especially young queer people. no wonder, then, that decreasing visibility for safety increased as well, and no wonder that this subculture never quite made it to the mainstream.
that being said, i think this then reveals another way to ask this question: why in the world are there even c-ent butches?? certainly homophobia is, like, you know, a thing in china LOL and certainly although taiwan has better laws, there are still the familial and societal pressures that exist. so the question is, why did some aspects of this subculture end up migrating to the mainstream? and so much to the mainstream, with how popular many of these zhongxing celebrities are?
the underground scene of dance cover groups & drag exists certainly in taiwan, china, and hong kong, but notably, from taiwan and china specifically, there have been groups that transcended the fan cover scene. by which i mean, no longer covering existing boy groups, but rather forming just as their own original girl-boy group. boy group made out of girls. drag king group. okay obviously if you’ve been around here you’ve heard me talk about fanxyred/acrush, but just to reiterate, they are (were? lolsob) a mainland chinese group whose gimmick was a boy group made up of girls. the debut mv pretty easily demonstrates this. acrush got a lot of media coverage at the time for this, including this really wild article in dazed, where, again, the previously existing butchness of the members is highlighted (““We didn’t make them dress like this,” she says, showing me a picture of Lin Fan. “They were always tomboys.” In the picture, Lin Fan looks a lot younger – maybe about 14 years old – and is sat in her school uniform, the same ubiquitous zip-up tracksuits that school children wear across China. She had short hair then, too, and looks different to the rest of the girls in the photo. A moment later, Lin Fan herself pops up behind Zhou Xiaobai and grabs the phone. “See, haven’t I always been like this?” she says.”).
before them, taiwan had MISSTER (i know it’s perfect which was a group formed from like a drag competition held out of a lesbian bar by the intrepid butch leader of the group. and in this mv you can really clearly see the lesbian vision: a bunch of butch girls playing out the age old kpop boy mv trope of chasing the same beautiful femme woman. hello! i think despite the fairly short lived active eras and limited popularity, the existence of these groups, which are aesthetically quite similar to those fan cosplaying drag dance cover groups (binders, baggy pants, hats, a specific kind of masc swag), is kind of demonstrative of the paradox here: how and why have they separated out from explicit underground fanculture into a more legible celebrity space?
the existing structure of T/P lesbian subculture came to be primarily in taiwan, where without the comparatively more authoritarian chinese communist government, there grew a more liberal/progressive attitude. and like again i am not an expert again in the political landscape of taiwan (a complicated place!) so i don’t want to comment on the specifics, but like at least in comparison to mainland china, there has always been more media coming out of taiwan, and they are socially progressive enough insofar as legality goes, they are the first asian country to legalize gay marriage. this next section references a lot of this text, which describes the way that T/P culture developed in the mainland, but i am making my own speculative comments, too, and i’ll do my best to highlight when i do! T/P culture arose in the bar scene, in proximity to american influence as well, taking on a similar but not fully analogous structure as butchfemme culture. prior to the early 90s or so, when mainland china was less open, there was like, very limited media, no true celebrity culture. obviously queerness existed, but there was no real legible model of masc women—in part because in this time, the notion of communist ideal citizenship actually sought to minimize the strict gender divide. i.e. we are all comrades under communism. anecdotally, my mother has spoken about the fashion rules at the time she was subject to in high school (in the 80s) emphasizing no frivolity, aka no makeup, no jewelry, the enforcing of like a ~neutral uniform. there was also a militarization of all citizens—my mom trained briefly in the army in university alongside my dad and all their friends. these are all personal anecdotes for sure, but i think they’re good examples to pain the notion of gendered expectations in china at the time: to be a good woman was to be a good comrade, and therefore there was no true alignment between masculine womanhood and homosexuality. my personal conjecture here is that this attitude sort of hung around, even as that level of strict scrutiny extremely extremely faded away.
secondarily, because at the time mainland china didn’t have a structure in place for media output, the taiwanese & hong kong media/entertainment sphere blossomed to a much much much greater extent. a lot of the old classics & like still hugely influential film & pop stars are from taiwan and hong kong (tony leung, jackie chan lol, jay chou, jolin tsai, just to name a few). as per wang, T/P culture started to creep into the mainland in the 90s, and without a previous model of what lesbianism looked like, was quickly adopted by local communities. i think like, there are some parallels here i want to draw: i.e. a lot of those taiwanese and hong kong celebrities were legibly queer and/or gender non conforming. denise ho is a renowned hong kong singer who started incorporating clear lesbian themes in her music in the early 2000s and became the first cantonese singer to officially come out as a lesbian. this is also the era of s.h.e and ella chen fame, if you don’t remember from all the way back in the beginning of this essay, the taiwanese girl that was hugely popular in which ella was the tomboy member alongside two femme girls. s.h.e. has made some. really crazy lesbian-adjacent content. they made a whole song called wife that is about their bond, and for their 17th anniversary song, the music video fully ends in a threeway marriage. EYE think that the movement of media that featured like, genuine lesbianism and moreover, lesbian masculinity, from the relatively more open space generated in taiwan & hong kong into like, the media vacuum essentially that was present in the mainland, helped to cement the possibility of butch celebrities into the mainstream. shortly after this, in 2005, we get li yuchun (also known as chris lee, notably masculinized english name) hailing from chengdu (from the mainland), who was hugely popular, and won the singing competition ‘super girl,’ which i do think is interesting, because, you know, it’s right there in the title. on that same season, we have another rly popular butch girl who did really well, bibi zhou, which also speaks to something i think (i.e. it’s not a gimmick, necessarily, if there’s more than one per season you know?)
anyway my point is that i think if we think about the notion that T/P culture became part of the dominant way of interpreting lesbian expression in the mainland because the existing structure was introduced into a space that had like latent lesbianism but not as much community organizing, then we can sort of see that analogue to like, lesbian celebrity & media being introduced into the mainland chinese space that lacked like truthfully any structure of producing media/entertainment initially at all, becoming hugely popular as a result, and therefore embedding the template of butch women pop stars into the general population’s consciousness.
a further extension of this is articulated well in again this article about the increasing visibility of female masculinity in taiwan, in that it highlights specifically the commercialization of this style, raising the point that in part, the rise in visibility and ease of facilitating this style is built off the back of, well, a deeply deeply capitalistic industry (we’re talking about kpop here LOL). the dynamics between zhongxing or T lesbian & idolboy soft masculinity are inherently built off the idea that idolboy is created, marketed, and distributed by a market that focuses on maximizing capital. and particularly, the trendier a “look” is, the less it has to be necessarily associated with homosexuality. which again reflects the point that sometimes if there is no real discourse regarding homosexuality as a legitimate mode of being on a cultural scale—i.e. if being gay is entirely even out of the question—then sometimes actions & presentations can, paradoxically, be gayer, bc the level of plausible deniability you are afforded is higher. casting aside, the question of like, whether capitalism impedes authenticity or not (is it bad if straight girls get butch???), i do think effectively what is a thing in china is that there’s, essentially, a new consumer category—les T is one of the boxes the algorithm can sort you in. you know when you click into amazon and it tries to guess what you want? and this is just again now personal anecdotes, but idk about you guys, but when i click into amazon or instagram the algorithm has no idea what to do with me—the number of “do you have small boobs? watch this BOOMBA push up bra it will give you cleavage!!!!” ads i have gotten….. but when i log onto xiaohongshu or taobao (chinese amazon), and i like, have done just a mild cursory search for things, suddenly im getting like 5 million different binders and ads for entire clothing brands that are dedicated to making masc clothing for smaller stature folks, etc. and a whole array of “zhongxing style influencers” that do ootds, lookbooks, etc. china has a population advantage, ofc, but i think with the notion of like, this is a class that can be advertised to, it then follows that it makes sense that there will be celebrities that can lean on the buying power of this subgroup.
of course, we do still live in a society. i don’t want to create the impression that china is like, some lesbian haven or anything LOL and especially in the celebrity sphere, something that i have noticed is like, uh lowkey this trend where once you turn 30 you’re not allowed to be butch anymore. and certainly the more famous you are, the more you kind of lowkey get force-femmed lmfaoooo. so often there is this constant push & pull between minute styling differences when these celebrities are on stage, and as they get more famous & older, it slowly starts to tip more and more into ~feminine styles. ella got older, grew out her hair, and now she’s married to a husband with a child. she’s still making weird homoerotic music videos but she has, for all intents and purposes, put the tomboy style away. amber is kind of an interesting phenomenon actually because i think she’s allowed to be as steadfastly butch as she is because she’s like, taiwanese, sure, but she’s also american, and as a sort of import to the country in her own right, she’s almost allowed to maintain herself bc who she is doesn’t actually impact the notion of like, a chinese womanhood you know (saying chinese here because her career is mostly in the mainland). which does lead to wild moments like, how amber & ella were on a show together and clearly bonded, and then judged a different competition show together, and then this happened. (the clip is amber flirting with ella in a decidedly “~handsome” fashion, which, like, there’s so much to unpack here). anyway even li yuchun started wearing more eyeliner and made a whole song about how girls are allowed to be whatever they want! the newer crop of celebrity butch girl idols also clearly clearly got more ~feminized as they got more famous. lu keran from acrush/fanxyred fame started wearing crop tops on stage, lmao, and liu yuxin, street dancer butch hero who won centre after qcyn2 has managed to stay relatively masc in the public eye (GQ cover shoots! calvin klein underwear ads!) but there’s like a very very clear difference in how she looked before she blew up and what they do with her eye makeup when she’s on tour these days
to round this off, like, obviously capitalism is evil blah blah, but i do think going back to the original point re: south korea & the lack of butch girls, i think the notion of like, there being a market to appeal to plays a role there too—basically if the market can determine that zhongxing women is a legible & marketable category of people to cater to, so too can it, in other places, ignore a category of masc women and therefore render them fairly invisible in the public eye in a society increasingly defined by consumerism. which i think is the case in the k-pop scene. there’s this idea that, like, assimilationism is only possible to even pursue when you are sufficiently wealthy enough to participate in that specific societal class that demands it of you, right? the notion that a lot of gender alternative presentations originated from lower classed, already severely disadvantaged & even more marginalized populations, because they were never going to fit into the upper echelons anyway, so much as well have fun with being gay. i think if we look at, like, the globalizing market, k-pop is easily the biggest and flashiest market that is actively being exported to the west from asia. and as k-pop has become more and more of a representation of korean soft power, and made an explicit part of the political apparatus (like you know the amount of GDP the tourism alone brings in is wild!), the more then therefore that k-pop has to appeal to people with money, and specifically people with money in the west. and therefore: acceptability politics reign supreme, always always. i dont think it’s a coincidence that gender variation in k-pop has severely diminished (like on both sides—where are the jo kwons and heechuls of 5th gen?) as k-pop has gotten bigger, brought in more money, and became more widely disseminated to the west.
okay this was a very very long answer thank you for sticking all the way to the end if you read this far!! i’ve done my best to cite sources & take from existing academic work on these subjects here, but of course, like, i said, at the end of the day im a hobbyist and this isn’t peer reviewed or anything, so please don’t necessarily take me as a strict authority. if anyone wants to chat more about anything in particular that i’ve touched on, has questions, wants me to clarify anything, or has any critiques about places where i might have generalized too much, please feel free to hop back in my inbox! in particular, if anyone has more information about other manifestations of masculine lesbianism in other asian cultures (i know a cursory amount about thailand & vietnam—like enough to know that a butch scene absolutely exists and is present/represented in the music/pop culture—but almost nothing about a lot of other places/countries) i would looooooooove to hear more and see the scholarship. thank you for reading!