Gender and Language

6     It is in this context that my research was conducted, and a snowballing sample scheme was employed to expand my sample from the close friends and acquaintances of researchers to the people in the circle. Since all my informants were mostly well educated, working professionals (volunteers for AIDS pandemic prevention and education), I do not pretend that they represent the average Taiwanese gay male. Instead, this study intends to analyze situated and strongly context-bound social linguistic practices to shed light on the notions of intertexuality and performativity discussed in cultural studies. Communication among the members of this small community was covert, not known to the public, and thus these gay personals manifest the notion of intertextuality by importing, recreating or referencing internal or foreign texts to create a pool of meanings that can be decoded by certain readers only. At a time when the common linguistic registers and presentations had not yet come into existence, this site became a place where a wide range of "performance exercises" were executed. Some succeeded; others failed. Thus, the examination of the dynamic process of creation illuminates how social reality is continually created through social signs (cf. Butler's concept of performativity). In the same vein, this study sets out to displace content as the natural site, inverting the claims of traditional hermeneutics for meanings as substantive, expressive, and essential.

Gay Personals Lurking Beneath the Surface

Kaoshiung, 174, 24, easygoing, into photography, mountain climbing and outdoor activities; I would like to make friends with you (guys) who are optimistic and forward looking. (Chih-Shiung[3]In this paper, all Chinese names of my informants are pseudonyms. The paper keeps English names as given by informants. The use of English names in the Taiwanese context has a high degree of anonymity since these names are not official. Most personal advertisement posters use English names so as not to reveal their real identity. It is common for Taiwanese to have ten English names for different occasions., 24)

Taichung, 169, 22, music lover wants to make friends with guys, will reply to any responses enclosed with photos and phone number. (Yu-Lin Chang, 22)

7     Starting in the 1980s, five to ten personal advertisements like the ones above began to appear quietly in each issue of Green and Red Light of Love, a magazine akin to Cosmopolitan in the US, which had long been advising working-class, high-school educated young Taiwanese twenty-somethings on dating and relationships. At first glance, these ads often passed as regular personals as a result of not being read as addressing a person of the same sex[4]The English pronoun <em>you</em> does not differentiate male or female. However, such a distinction is made in Chinese. In other words, the personal ad loses its specifically male addressee when translated into English.. In the 1980s, these personal ads resembled other (non-gay) personals; the only identifiable information disclosed, although ambiguously, was that the search was geared towards same-sex (male) friends. Due to length restrictions, the authors of personal ads often refrained from intimating their intentions. Given this, every poster followed a standardized linguistic genre. Often gay posters indicated that they were looking for a "soul mate" to spend their leisure time with. Their "linguistic struggle" consists in finding a "proper" performance, i.e. one revealing a non-conforming male self but not being too obviously "different." At times, the only identifiable register that differentiates gay personals from non-gay ads was a target specified as "male." The prospective respondents were required to read closely to differentiate a "male denoting you" from a "female denoting you" (see note 3). Most ads are kept low profile, following a generic pattern; almost everyone has similar talents and hobbies. While the boundary is neither absolute nor certain, gay male affiliated hobbies likely include: movies, hiking, traveling and photography. As stated by a number of informants consistently: "Straight guys do not usually make so much effort to meet guys on personals." Second, "guys do not have to care how well their respondents look." An informant expresses the possibility for queer decoding as follows:

...you know, what type of guy would post an ad to look for another guy to go hiking and traveling together? Yes, straight men may love to do that with their buddies, but they won't post their search in a women's magazine. (Jake , 37, who posted his ads and allegedly received 88 responses)

Kai-Wei, 42, who responded to three ads in the 1980s, commented on the creation of these personal advertisements: whatever they write, only one word counts, which is the male-denoting "you." This key word is to be found in such a sentence as "I would like to make friends with 'you.'"

8     Despite the linguistic distinction, readers are likely to misunderstand the poster's intention. For one thing, the male-denoting "you" is somewhat inclusive and used to refer to male or female. In terms of linguistic evolution, the female-denoting "you" came into existence under the influence of Roman languages which differentiate the feminine and masculine more strictly. The correspondent female-denoting pronoun in Chinese was thus created to more accurately translate western imported ideas. Because of this grammatical ambiguity the possibility remains that the ad creator literally wants to find buddies to play basketball together.

Gay Personals among Cinephiles

9     Gay men have long used cinema as an important arena for the enacting of homosexual meanings (see Farmer). Movie theaters have long functioned as an "in venue" for gay men's cruising, and this has also been the case in Taiwan. However, not until 1993, when the Golden Horse film festival featured a gay-themed section[5]Gay-themed movies showing at the in 1991 Taipei Golden Horse film festival included: <em>Garden</em> (GB 1990); <em>Torch Song Trilogy</em> (US 1988); <em>Total Eclipse</em> (US 1990). , have large-scale gay-themed films been accessible and well-received in a legitimate context. Given that gay-themed movies were usually rated as "restricted" and had to be scheduled late in the evening, going to the movies, combined with the likelihood of dating and cruising, mobilized a large number of dispersed gay cinephiles to attend the screenings. Taking advantage of the popularity of film festivals and the visible association between gay males and cinema, a handful of Taiwanese movie-related magazines lent themselves as outlet for gay readerships. Featuring special issues focusing on identity politics, desires and fantasy, these magazines transformed into a key vehicle for gay male personals. As the number of gay personals grew exponentially, the genres and linguistic registers they employed were becoming diversified. While many remained conventional - customarily sincere and polite - akin to their straight counterparts, different articulations emerged among gay-identifying posters with certain positions and references that disclosed and, sometimes, even covertly affirmed their sense of gay subjectivity. Here are some examples of film-derived ads:

I wish to see the first green ray of light in the early summer morning. (Yang, 26, friendship)

Stifled ...... a yearning for the room with a view. (Yan, 33)

Walking amid a sun-drenched desert, disoriented, this is my so-called "private Idaho." I can't take it any longer. (Moosh, 38)

Green Ray, the film referenced in the first post, was a well-received among gay circles. The heroine's long pursuit of "true love" was resonated with the community's collective memories of growing up gay in Taiwan. Trying to relate their experiences with others, Taiwanese gay men reference cinematic texts, especially those of Rohmer's films.[6]Eric Rohmer is an acclaimed French filmmaker and a frontier in the French New Wave. His film was screened in the <em>Golden Horse</em> film festival. Several informants of the study felt that the female narrators in his movie in fact are gay men in drag.

10      In January 1997, Corey posted the following personal advertisement in World Movie Monthly, a leading Taiwanese film magazine:

I would like to grow up bravely just as a shrub aspires to survive the most difficult winter and thrive. (Corey[7]As a longstanding friend of the author, Corey (pseudonym) volunteered to offer many personals he posted and share with me what he thought of the responses he received., 34, male, friendship)

There were a hundred and fifty personals published in the issue: approximately 35% of them were similar to Corey's. Within two months Corey received twenty responses: eight were from women; twelve were from men. Corey maintained correspondences with three men regularly. After six months, Corey started dating one of the three, and they have been together for nine years. Corey's story exemplifies a situated linguistic practice in which he re/produces gay male subjectivity. In his words, these linguistic registers "often entail contradictions and contrasts, strangely uncanny." For instance, similar textual practices such as "melancholy struggle," "icy warmhearted," "loneliness amid a crowd" and "subversively submissive" occurred in the same issue. These linguistic terms became emblematic of gayness, actively targeting Taiwanese homosexual men before the rise of the Internet.