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Rights projects in a globalized world
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Content
RIGHTS PROJECTS
IN A GLOBALIZED WORLD
by
MINWOO JUNG
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
SOCIOLOGY
August 2021
Copyright 2021 Minwoo Jung
ii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
My dissertation would not have been possible without the intellectual, emotional, and material
support of numerous mentors, colleagues, comrades, friends, and family.
I am grateful for my academic mentors for supporting me to undertake such ambitious
research project. I was more than fortunate to have a team of mentors one can only dream of
(which makes me always wonder what if I have already consumed all my fortune). I came to the
University of Southern California (USC) to work with Rhacel Salazar Parreñas without ever
imagining I will be doing a three-way cross-national comparative research. She pushed me to
think beyond my comfort zones and trained me to become a scholar with a truly global mind.
Paul Lichterman, as a co-chair of my dissertation committee, has pushed me to be my best by
teaching me how to sit with difficult and challenging questions. One rarely has the opportunity to
have such an engaging interlocutor in one’s intellectual journey and I am immensely grateful for
his rigorous support. The name of an “external reader” can be never enough to describe the
consistent intellectual and emotional support of David John Frank. He not only brought attention
to a range of comparative and historical dimensions in this project but also taught me how to
embrace who I am and what I can bring to the communities I belong and care.
At USC, I was lucky to have support from my incredible dissertation committee members
and other faculty members. Hajar Yazdiha offered me a much needed insights on collective
action and social change. David Kang contributed more-than-necessary perspectives on East
Asia and comparative politics. In the graduate program, I found a vibrant community of young
scholars, which was very crucial in shaping my intellectual trajectory. I am especially grateful to
Hyeyoung Kwon, Evren Savci, Yu-Kang Fan, Kit Myers, Michela Musto, Carolyn Choi, May
iii
Lin, Krittiya Kantachote, Kushan Dasgupta, Eunjeong Paek, Mary Ippolito, Yael Findler, Shang
Liu, Kritika Pandey, and Gianne Sheena Sabio. I was fortunate to find intellectual peers and
networks outside the sociology program, who shared generous intellectual openness and support.
I thank the members of the Transpacific Queer Studies cluster: Kyunghee Eo, Jinhee Park,
Christopher Chien, Jenny Hoang, and Huan He. I am also grateful to Lik Sam Chan and Heddy
Nam for their friendship. I also deeply appreciate the incredible administrative and emotional
support of Jennifer Hook, Jody Vallejo, and Stachelle Overland.
The financial support of Social Science Research Council’s (SSRC) Dissertation Proposal
Development Fellowship (2016) and International Dissertation Research Fellowship (2017-2018)
as well as USC Research Enhancement Fellowship (2017-2018) was necessary for me to conduct
the multi-sited global fieldwork for this dissertation. I am also grateful for the Department of
Sociology, Korean Studies Institute, East Asian Studies Center, Center for Feminist Research,
Center for Religion and Civic Culture, Dornsife College, and the Provost’s Office at USC for
their research fellowships and grants that supported my preliminary and follow-up research.
I am lucky to have numerous mentors, colleagues, and supportive communities beyond
USC. The SSRC has offered me not only the financial means to conduct the research but also the
intellectual support to plan, execute, and think through this ambitious global and interdisciplinary
project. I particularly thank my SSRC IDRF mentor, Kimberly Hoang, for her nurturance and
intellectual energy. I also thank Jiyeon Kang, Yeongran Kim, Jeongsu Shin, and other 2019
SSRC Korean Studies Dissertation Workshop fellows for sharing critical thoughts on my project.
I was blessed to be plugged into critical intellectual networks through various workshops and
symposiums. The 2019 Young Scholars in Social Movements conference at the Center for the
Study of Social Movements at Notre Dame had a crucial role for me to see myself as a social
iv
movement scholar. I am immensely grateful to Jo Reger, Dana Moss, and Sharon Quinsaat for
their incredible mentorship and support. The Southeast Asia Research Group’s 2020 Young
Southeast Asia mini-conference gave me rigorous feedback and insightful comments. I
particularly thank Meredith Weiss for her support. I also appreciate Pei-Chia Lan for inviting me
to participate in the 2018 Queer Asia Comparative Workshop at the National University of
Taiwan. It helped me to broaden my understanding of the intersection of queer studies and Asian
studies. I thank Travis Kong, Denise Tang, Ta-Wei Chi, Bo-Wei Chen, and Sara Friedman for
their engaged feedback and support. I also thank Petrus Liu for sharing his critical insights at the
2020 Transpacifics: A Working Symposium.
My intellectual journey was also greatly benefitted from the growing community of
transnational feminist and queer scholars within and beyond sociology. Hae Yeon Choo,
Minjeong Kim, Jaeeun Kim, and other mentors and colleagues at the Association for Korean
Sociologists in America created a nurturing space for junior scholars like myself to study Korea
from a feminist, global, and comparative perspective. I also thank Crystal Baik, Soo Ryon Yoon,
Sorim Lee for their mentorship, friendship, and camaraderie. Jyoti Puri, Vrushali Patil, Evren
Savci, Ghassan Moussawi, Chaitayna Lakkimsetti, Michael Stambolis-Ruhstorfer, and Ying-
Chao Kao, as an emerging collective of transnational gender and sexuality scholars, showed me
how to create a critical and supportive intellectual community. I particularly thank them for
paving ways for junior scholars to work on transnational gender and sexuality studies with
courage and passion. My accidental intellectual sister and brother—if I may—, Maria Cecilia
Hwang and Emmanuel David, always stepped in when I needed advice and support.
My multi-sited global research was additionally supported by numerous scholars who
generously offered me visiting positions and fellowships as well as opportunities to workshop
v
my half-baked ideas by the end of the fieldwork. I thank You Yenn Teo, Pei-Chia Lan, Joice Liu,
and Munyoung Cho for their institutional sponsorships at the Nanyang Technological University,
National Taiwan University, National Chiao Tung University, and Yonsei University,
respectively. I also appreciate Solee Shin, George Radics, Michiel Baas, Lynette Chua, Eno
Chen, Ta-Wei Chi, Josephine Ho, Joo-young Lee, and Youngmi Kim for their camaraderie and
institutional support during my fieldwork.
Over the past several years, I have accrued debt to an uncountable number of groups,
organizations, and individuals who generously shared their time and space for this project to
come into being. There is no way that I could repay them in the way they were given to me;
instead, as one of my thoughtful mentors told me, my responsibility is—and will continue to
be—to write the most rigorous dissertation (and future book) possible and share it with the
world, hoping that it could serve as a potential platform for more people to better understand and
critically engage in the divergent constructions of rights projects. I deeply appreciate my
interlocutors, friends, and comrades at the Taiwan Tongzhi Hotline Association, Taiwan Equality
Campaign (formerly Marriage Equality Coalition of Taiwan), Taiwan Gender Equity Education
Association, Taiwan Alliance to Promote Civil Partnership Rights, Pink Dot, Oogachaga, Free
Community Church, SING Men’s Chorus, The Pelangi Pride Center, The T Project, Rainbow
Action against Sexual Minority Discrimination, Solidarity for LGBT Human Rights of Korea,
Chingusai, Unninetwork, QUV, DDingDong, Seoul Queer Culture Festival Organizing
Committee, Korean Sexual-Minority Culture and Rights Center, Nanuri+, and Korean Society of
Law and Policy on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity. Special thanks to Xiao Du, Meiying,
Wayne, Meimei, Xiao Long, Chiwei, Leo, Nick, Jennifer, Joyce, Gaga, Yenpao, Jack, Jay,
Bryan, Yangfa, Michael, Eileena, June, Vanessa, Miak, Shawn, Johan, Nick, Eugene, Anthony,
vi
Andrews, Kyle, Muslim, Tari, Horim, Woong, Namwoong, Nara, Yol, Dooyoung, Yoona,
Minhee, Candy, Holic, Chaeyoon, and MECO, for allowing me to see the world with new eyes.
Their genuine friendship and camaraderie sustained me in many uncertain moments. Amy, Ah
Ke, Gary, Tawei, Kelvin, Solee, Bryan, Juhee, Jiyeon, Wonkeun, and Junan opened their homes
to me and made me feel grounded during my fieldwork.
Writing a dissertation is known to be a solitary task in a confinement. I appreciate
Jinsook Kim, Sunkyu Lee, Young Ran Kim, Jeongsu Shin, Jinsun Yang, Sumin Park, Seongjo
Jeong, and Heeyoung Lee for making the writing process less isolating. They sustained me with
great conversations and emotional support that was needed to get the writing done. I am
emotionally and intellectually indebted to friends of Sayeon and the Postcolonial Queer Studies
Working from in Korea, as much as my mentors from master’s education, Yeran Kim, Sanggil
Lee, and Nayoung Lee.
My mother, Boksook Lee, provided me with unconditional love and support that made
everything possible. Knowing that she will be always be my side gave me confidence to take
bold leaps in life. This dissertation is for her.
vii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgements........................................................................................................................ iv
List of Tables................................................................................................................................. ix
Abstract........................................................................................................................................... x
Chapter 1. Introduction: Rights Projects in Globalized Asia.......................................................... 1
Global-regional-local encounters................................................................................... 1
The universal, the particular, and the relational............................................................. 5
Universalist approach............................................................................................. 6
Particularist approach............................................................................................. 8
Relational approach............................................................................................. 11
Rights projects............................................................................................................. 15
Comparison of LGBT rights projects.......................................................................... 21
Contextualizing the comparison: Taiwan, Singapore, and South Korea..................... 24
Data and methods: In search of rights projects............................................................ 30
The first phase: Preliminary fieldwork................................................................ 32
The second phase: Extensive comparative fieldwork.......................................... 33
The last phase: Follow-ups.................................................................................. 38
Overview of the dissertation........................................................................................ 39
Chapter 2. Branding Equality: The Marriage Equality Movement in Precarious Taiwan............ 45
Insufficient equality..................................................................................................... 45
The equality project..................................................................................................... 47
The precarious state..................................................................................................... 48
State inclusion of gender and sexual minorities.......................................................... 50
The rise of the marriage equality movement in Taiwan.............................................. 53
Redefining marriage equality....................................................................................... 59
Symbolic convergence................................................................................................. 63
Making international scenes........................................................................................ 66
Equality project in the precarious market.................................................................... 72
Expanding workplace equality and the pink economy........................................ 72
The rise of queer entrepreneurs............................................................................ 75
Conclusion................................................................................................................... 78
Chapter 3. Capitalizing Diversity: The Corporate Diversity Activism in Neoliberal Authoritarian
Singapore...................................................................................................................................... 80
Introduction.................................................................................................................. 80
The diversity project.................................................................................................... 81
The neoliberal authoritarian state in Singapore........................................................... 84
Legal and political exclusion of gender and sexual minorities............................ 84
The entanglement of authoritarianism and neoliberalism.................................... 86
Multinational corporations as a new opportunity................................................ 92
viii
The emergence of corporate diversity activism........................................................... 93
“Within the walls of the firm”: The conditions of diversity project............................ 97
“Playing it safe”: The social processes of diversity project....................................... 100
Diversity project goes local....................................................................................... 105
The authoritarian backlash against the diversity project.................................... 105
Localizing corporate diversity........................................................................... 109
The limits of diversity project.................................................................................... 114
Conclusion................................................................................................................. 116
Chapter 4. Moralizing Solidarity: The Anti-discrimination Movement in Postwar South
Korea........................................................................................................................................... 118
“There is no later, we make change right now!”....................................................... 118
The solidarity project................................................................................................. 121
Legal absence and the silent state.............................................................................. 124
South Korea’s globalization and its paradox..................................................... 125
Legal absence..................................................................................................... 127
The absence of evidence.................................................................................... 130
The specter of North Korea........................................................................................ 133
The liberal politics of postponement.................................................................. 133
The conservative politics of “pro-North Korean homosexuals”........................ 138
“The more connected, the stronger we are”: The rise of a solidarity project............ 141
Rainbow action: Building solidarity within and beyond LGBT movement...... 141
Rainbow occupation: Strengthening solidarity.................................................. 144
Solidarity for anti-discrimination legislation: Expanding solidarity................. 147
The outside of solidarity........................................................................................... 150
Retreat from the silent state............................................................................... 150
Retreat from the market..................................................................................... 153
Conclusion................................................................................................................ 157
Conclusion.................................................................................................................................. 159
Reclaiming the global sociology of rights................................................................ 159
Cross-national comparison of rights projects........................................................... 161
Taking geopolitics seriously..................................................................................... 165
Rights projects as, and beyond, social movements................................................... 169
Bibliography............................................................................................................................... 175
ix
LIST OF TABLES
Table 1. Three approaches to the globalization of human rights.................................................... 5
Table 2. The conceptual framework of rights project................................................................... 16
Table 3. Contextualizing the Comparative Cases......................................................................... 25
Table 4. Data and methods in comparative ethnography.............................................................. 31
Table 5. Comparison of LGBT rights projects in global Asia.................................................... 165
x
ABSTRACT
My dissertation illustrates the examination of human rights and the global circulation of rights
discourse. In this research, I introduce the concept of “rights project,” meaning the complex
endeavor of minority groups to achieve rights, recognition, and entitlements through context-
specific efforts involving the mobilization, coordination, and deployment of various resources in
a range of institutional contexts. In recent decades, numerous global indicators have been
developed by intergovernmental organizations (e.g., the United Nations), human rights advocacy
groups, think tanks, and even businesses to measure and assess rights of various marginalized
groups in different societies. Despite the global impact of these indicators, they are limited in
that they conceptualize rights as a universal construct that can be quantified and compared by the
global legal and policy measures. I argue that minority groups often challenge this universal
notion of rights as they engage in distinct kinds of political and cultural endeavors keyed to their
specific local, national, and regional contexts that I call rights projects. Varying in form and
content depending on specific socio-economic and political circumstances, each rights project
embraces distinct goals, priorities, and strategies and emphasizes a specific set of political
principles and practices.
My dissertation draws on two years of comparative ethnographic research in Taiwan,
Singapore, and South Korea, including 230 in-depth interviews with LGBT activists and
community organizers, and participant observation of more than 250 public events pertaining to
LGBT issues (e.g., pride parades, rallies, marches, press conferences) and community gatherings
of relevant LGBT groups (e.g., membership meetings, education and training sessions, strategy
workshops and forums, fundraising parties, LGBT-inclusive church services, LGBT employee
xi
mixers and networking sessions). I ask what LGBT movements in different local, national, and
regional contexts are fighting for, how they envision, articulate, and practice social change, and
how they challenge the universal notion of rights. I suggest that LGBT rights projects currently
emerging and unfolding in many parts of the world, including Asian societies, are fundamentally
shaped by and operate within the larger context of state governance and global power relations.
My research compares Taiwan, Singapore, and South Korea because these societies
together provide divergent pathways to the social construction of rights projects, in that the
sexual and gender minorities therein have been defined, categorized, and managed according to
very different legal frameworks and trajectories of state management. In Taiwan, recognition has
been made same-sex behaviors and relationships legal; in Singapore, these behaviors and
relationships are illegal; and in South Korea, sexual minorities have remained invisible or legally
absent. My analysis situates these legal structures in particular political and cultural contexts
characterized by distinct forms of rights projects. My comparative analysis reveals three cases of
rights project—an equality project (represented by Taiwan), a diversity project (represented by
Singapore), and a solidarity project (represented by South Korea)—corresponding to the three
nation-states’ respective geopolitical positions, state-market relations, and prevailing cultural and
political norms.
In societies in which the domestic political sphere is largely preoccupied with enduring
geopolitical tensions and conflicts, such as the nuclear threat that North Korea poses to South
Korea and China’s ever-increasing economic and diplomatic pressure on Taiwanese sovereignty,
LGBT groups must struggle simply to make their voices heard. Thus, Korean LGBT movements
have asserted their rights in solidarity with other minority groups in the relatively young
democracy (solidarity project), but the changes that they seek have repeatedly been postponed.
xii
In Taiwan, despite a decades-long campaign for equal treatment and recent successes in the
courts, LGBT movements have realized that their aims cannot be fully realized absent the
achievement of another kind of equality—that of their marginalized nation-state within the
international system (equality project). When domestic legal avenues to pursue equal rights are
impractical or ineffective, as in illiberal Singapore, marginalized groups must forge new spaces
of resistance in order to seek recognition and entitlements. Thus, Singaporeans, faced with
political illiberalism, have looked for alternatives to the legal system, such as the market-driven
discourse of “diversity and inclusion,” in their search for recognition and entitlements (diversity
project). Rather than being local iterations of homogenous globalized LGBT rights discourse,
often associated with same-sex relationship recognition, these three cases of LGBT rights
projects illustrate how marginalized groups enact, substantialize, and reconfigure their aims,
priorities, and strategies simultaneously in reference to, in opposition to, and beyond the
universal notion of rights. In sum, I contend that global discourse of rights is mediated and
reconstructed in varied local contexts and results in different forms of rights projects, which
leads to different strategies of articulating and enacting rights.
This project draws on and contributes to multiple scholarly fields. First, by taking global
and regional politics seriously as a means to understand sexuality politics (and vice versa), I
combine theories of nation-state building, international relations, and global political economy
with gender and sexuality studies. I contend that gender and sexuality-based movements
worldwide are shaped by larger global and regional forces in their mobilization, coordination,
and deployment of varying—and sometimes contrasting and conflicting— ideas about social
change. Second, I join with other scholars in emerging field of transnational gender and sexuality
studies to reconsider the utility of a range of U.S.-based concepts and assumptions. Thus, I
xiii
examine multiple forms of articulating and enacting rights projects and decenter the monolithic
conception of rights prevailing in the studies of global human rights and LGBT politics. Third, I
advance the scholarship on contentious politics by drawing attention to efforts by marginalized
groups not only in resisting the state and market forces but also in recognizing and mobilizing
them for their own political benefits. I highlight the conditions under which LGBT politics
converge with or diverge from market-driven neoliberalism and state-led nationalism, and its
ambivalent empirical and theoretical implications. Lastly, the original research design enriches
the methodological discussion of global ethnography and ethnographic comparisons. This project
offers an instructive model of how we develop global and comparative knowledge without
falling into Euro-American universalism or cultural relativism.
1
Chapter 1. Introduction: Rights Projects in Globalized Asia
Global-regional-local encounters
On a typical hot summer day in June 2017, I was waving a transgender hand-flag on the staircase
facing the Gwanghwamoon Square, the heart of the city of Seoul. Standing with me were more
than a hundred LGBT
1
participants of the Asian LGBT Choir Festival joining from various parts
of the region including China, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the host country of the event,
South Korea. Korean activists were busy setting up the microphone and audio devices for the
press conference, which involved a series of queer artist performance, public speeches, chanting,
singing, and marching. A Korean activist soon announced the launching of the three-day
international festival, yet with a rather un-festive tone by addressing the poor legal and social
status of LGBT people in South Korea. She noted in English, “for over ten years, the legislation
of anti-discrimination bill has been repeatedly failed and LGBT rights are not acknowledged at
all here.” Supporting her statement was the near lack of public attention and only a handful of
passers-by giving cold-eyed stares, with their arms crossed. Facing these sentiments on the
streets, we held together a gigantic rainbow flag from the top of the staircase to the bottom in
order to promote LGBT presence to the public, showing that we’re here.
1
In this study, I use the term “LGBT” as an umbrella term that encompasses lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender,
intersex, and gender non-conforming identities. Despite the criticisms this term generated based on its potential
universalism and essentialism, I use the term for comparative purpose especially when indicating global
manifestation or local iterations of gender and sexuality-based rights norms. I also use “LGBT” when describing
global and comparative aspects of social movements of gender and sexual minorities, due to the fact that my
informants predominantly use this English term in the global and international settings. For the same reason, I
usually follow my informants’ own usage of identity terms, be they for political mobilization or for individual
identification, such as sŏngsosuja (sexual minority) in Korean, tongzhi (sexual minority) in Mandarin Chinese,
queer, as well as acronyms including LGBT.
2
Several steps away from the whole group were members of the Singapore choir,
displaying reluctant faces. Rather than participate, they observed from a safe distance. At the
welcome reception the previous evening, Singaporean choir members told me that they decided
not to attend the scheduled press conference the following day. They wished to avoid what they
noted would be a “press conference” involving a series of public speech, chanting, and marching.
It suddenly became apparent to me that the protest-like press conference, which has become a
mundane form of political and cultural organizing for LGBT and many other civic groups in
democratic South Korea, can be an aberration in other societies. The Singaporean choir members
expressed their concern that the allegedly purely “cultural exchange” would involve “political
messages,” which could jeopardize the group’s very existence back in Singapore, where
homosexuality and political disobedience are not legally tolerated. It was no surprise that less
than half of the Singaporean group members joined the press conference and those who did only
did so from a distance.
In stark contrast was the choir group from Taiwan. Not only did the Taiwanese choir
members seem familiar with street protests and campaigns, but they also appeared to take great
pleasure in participating. During the press conference, which all of the Taiwanese group
members attended, the choir’s young gay leader stepped out and took the microphone to express
his gratitude to represent his home country at the regional LGBT event. He proudly shared
Taiwan’s recent legal achievement, a historic constitutional ruling to support same-sex marriage
as “the first country in Asia,” which was made only a week prior to the choir festival. Wearing
big smiles and confidence, two other Taiwanese members stood behind him and held a big flag
of the contour of Taiwan painted in rainbow colors. Bolstering their sense of pride was the
speech of one of the event’s founding group members. Highlighting Taiwan’s legal progress, in
3
comparison to the widespread discrimination against LGBT people in many other Asian
societies, he described Taiwan as being at the forefront of Asia, and shouted, “What Taiwan
shows us is that our cultures are not inherently backward. We’re forward looking and forward
thinking. Being progressive is not an anti-Asian quality!”
By the end of the press conference, the moderator stated, “Today, here in central Seoul,
we hold hands with people who have gathered from all over the globe. Even though we [are] all
differ in nationality, we are here to sing in one voice.” Following the lead of a queer performance
group, we started to march toward the Seoul City Hall Plaza, chanting slogans together, in
English, “Hand in hand, we sing! We sing equality! Equal rights must come!”
***
The regional cultural gathering of LGBT Asians emphasized a “one voice” towards equal rights.
As the organizers noted, many parts of the region are faced with continuous, if not increasing,
discrimination against LGBT people by the governments’ homophobic laws and policies, mass
mobilizations of conservative religious groups, and the public’s intolerance and disinterest. They
were aware that these challenges are often associated with the cultural traits of Asia—the
emphasis on the state, society, and family over individuals, which then counters the pursuit of
equal rights of marginalized groups like LGBT people. The recent “victory” of Taiwan, however,
grants them an alternative vision against this essentialist account of conservative Asian culture.
In this vision, Asia can also be part of the global movement for equal rights. What emerges, in
response to a cultural reductionism, is a universal claim of equal rights that Asians can—and
should— achieve rights in ways that resonate with globalized LGBT movements, such as
4
through the legalization of same-sex marriage, despite significant political and cultural
differences.
2
The scene of this global-regional-local encounter, however, revealed much more
lingering questions than answers about human rights, culture, and globalization. The legalization
of same-sex marriage in Taiwan, the continued criminalization of homosexuality in Singapore,
and the lack of any relevant legal status or framework in South Korea—how do we account for
these various conditions concerning LGBT rights? The Taiwanese pride of being “the first
country in Asia,” the Singaporean retreat from the outright claim of “equal rights,” and the
persistence of Koreans on the street despite the scarce governmental or public support—how do
we understand these various forms of ideas and actions? From a culturalist perspective, they may
represent fundamental differences inherent in each distinct culture without much overlaps. They
may instead represent different “stages” of the achievement of equal rights, from a universalist
perspective that presumes a shared path towards a common goal of legal inclusion.
This tension between universalism and particularism regarding issues of human rights,
culture, and globalization has long been debated in scholarship, policy development, advocacy,
and public discourse. Revisiting this fundamental debate, my dissertation shifts the gravity of the
question from these two normative stances to inside the world of rights-making, where the
complex dynamics of actions and meanings require a global, culturally sensitive, and relational
perspective. What does it mean to pursue “equal rights” in radically different political and
cultural contexts? What are equal rights to whom, from the beginning? How do we know what
rights—or developments and violations thereof—mean to the very group of people who attempt
to make changes within their own circumstances? What and how do people do with the language
2
No wonder that the lingua franca of this universal claim is English.
5
of rights? For what goals and on which grounds? How do we account for the global connections
as well as local discrepancies in rights-making? How do we produce knowledge about rights
without making universalist or essentialist premises? My dissertation delves into these questions
and suggests that we need more nuanced heuristic devices to understand the variety of rights-
making in a globalized world.
The universal, the particular, and the relational
Scholars have developed three central approaches to understanding the relationship between
human rights, culture, and globalization. I call them universalism, particularism, and
relationalism, respectively (Table 1).
Table 1. Three approaches to the globalization of human rights
Universalism Particularism Relationalism
Key scholars
John Meyer, Jack
Donnelly
Elizabeth Povinelli,
Michael Brown
Raewyn Connell, Julian
Go
Subjects
Global institutions and
international NGOs
Local actors
Postcolonial/transnational
actors
Cases
UN Human Rights
bodies and
mechanisms; US-led
human rights
initiatives
Distinct local
conceptions of “human
rights”; local resistance
against “Western
interference”
Global-local interactions
and translations
6
Emphases
Global diffusion of
norms and policies
Distinct local cultures
and differences
Relations, networks, and
connections
Underestimates
Local meaning-making
processes
Global forces and
cross-cultural
interactions
Emerging connections
beyond the West
Application to LGBT
rights issues
Global polarization of
LGBT rights
Critique on
homonationalism
Local negotiations of
global LGBT discourses
and strategies
Universalist approach
First, the universalist approach holds that human rights are universal across different
cultures. For some scholars, human rights derive from human nature—such as the notions of
shared ontological frailty and moral sympathy (Turner 2006)— and their universality is a given
fact. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights encapsulates this idea by affirming that all
human beings are “born free and equal in dignity and rights” and therefore “everyone is entitled
to all the rights” listed in this international document (UN General Assembly 1948). Many
scholars of this approach acknowledge that human rights can take different forms in different
time and space; however, these variations are still considered to be part of the universality as
they maintain universal principle of human rights and evidence its universal relevance (Dembour
2010). Political scientist Jack Donnelly (2007), for instance, famously advocated the “relative
universality” of human rights, by articulating that human rights are fundamentally universal at
the level of concept despite having multiple forms at the level of implementations.
Sociologists of this approach focus on the process of universalization. The theory of
“world society” developed by sociologists is paradigmatic of this approach. It emphasizes the
7
global diffusion and adoption of norms and values—such as human rights—on a global scale
(Boli and Thomas 1997; Meyer et al. 1997). These global norms emerge from intergovernmental
agencies such as the United Nations (UN) and the European Union (EU), and are diffused
through mechanisms including international covenants, treaties, and agreements, which are
considered as key components of the “international human rights regime” (Hafner-Burton 2012;
Tsutsui et al. 2012). Sometimes they come from global powers like the United States (Whelan
and Donnelly 2007), or from international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) as well as
transnational social movement organizations (Keck and Sikkink 1998; Smith 2008; Tarrow
2005). Significant attention, for instance, has been paid to the global trend of the liberalization of
norms and policies, such as same-sex relationships and marriage (Ayoub 2014; Fernandez and
Lutter 2013; Frank and McEneaney 1999; Kollman 2007).
The universalist approach permeates not only the discussion on “achievements” and
“progress” of rights but also on the “abuses” and “violations” thereof. The premise is the
existence of a universal grid that guides us to define and gauge such achievements or violations
of rights. For instance, scholars have found that, whereas the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and
transgender (LGBT) people are increasingly recognized and even celebrated in some parts of the
world, they are faced with entrenched intolerance and hostility in other parts of the world (Hadler
and Symons 2018; Velasco 2020). As a way to address this “global polarization of gay rights”
(Altman and Symons 2016), various UN agencies, international organizations and NGOs have
drawn attention to global LGBT rights in the recent decades, an example being the establishment
of the Yogyakarta Principles on the Application of Human Rights Law in Relation to Sexual
Orientation and Gender Identity in 2007 (O’Flaherty and Fisher 2008).
8
As another notable case, on December 6, 2011, US President Obama signed a presidential
memorandum on International Initiatives to Advance to Human Rights of Lesbian, Gay,
Bisexual, and Transgender Persons. This memorandum reiterates President Obama’s official
remarks at the UN General Assembly that “no country should deny people their rights because of
who they love,” ensuring that the US considers LGBT rights a significant “global challenge.” A
decade later, on February 4, 2021, President Biden reaffirmed and augmented this memorandum
in order to combat “the criminalization by foreign governments of LGBTQI+ status or conduct.”
The new memorandum pledges, in response to “human rights abuses of LGBTQI+ persons
abroad,” the US governmental agencies shall consider “swift and meaningful” responses
including economic and diplomatic measures, while “building coalitions of like-minded nations”
in the global fight against LGBT discrimination. These US-led initiatives epitomize the prevalent
universalism in the contemporary debate on the globalization of human rights. Coming from one
of the world’s most powerful nations, they define the problem for people in other countries and
establish the solutions for them, according to the universal notion of LGBT rights.
3
Particularist approach
The second approach, that I call particularism, problematizes the very notion of universal
rights. Often dubbed as “cultural relativism,” this approach demands great respect for cultural
differences in particular settings (Brown 2008). The supposedly universal norms such as human
rights are dismissed either as a theoretical fantasy, of few relevance in understanding human
behavior in divergent cultural traditions, or a cultural imposition that enforces the ideas, beliefs,
3
This memorandum gained immediate support from relevant grassroots organizations in the United States including
Human Rights Campaign. However, outside the United States, numerous LGBT activists expressed concerns, that
these US-led LGBT rights initiatives can contradict or even discredit the lived experiences of gender and sexual
minorities abroad.
9
and values of one—usually Western— culture upon another. Human practices are to be
interpreted, according to this approach, by the standards of the particular culture in which they
occur, not by the light of pre-existing universal norms. A pivotal example in history was the
American Anthropological Association’s criticism of the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human
Rights (American Anthropological Association 1947). Concerned with the necessity to recognize
the validity of different ways of life (Merry 2001; Rentein 1988), the statement asks: “How can
the proposed Declaration be applicable to all human beings, and not be a statement of rights
conceived only in terms of the values prevalent in the countries of Western Europe and
America?” (ibid. 539)
Despite its gradual decline within contemporary anthropology and social sciences at
large, the simple claim of particularism still holds widely today that different cultures constitute
distinct systems of meanings, which require knowledge of practices and institutions grounded
within the context of the culture in question (Brown 2008). Proponents of such particularism
today include anthropologist Elizabeth Povinelli (2001) who cautioned against the extension of
Euro-Western categories to incommensurable, and “disparate social and cultural worlds” in the
name of globalization. Other ethnographers also addressed the fundamental difficulty, if not
impossibility, of intercultural translation, an act of which is always imbued with power relations
(Clifford and Marcus 1986).
From the perspective of particularism, the UN or US-led global initiatives to combat
LGBT human rights abuses yield a set of critical issues. At the level of epistemology, key
concepts used in these attempts, from the very demographic categories of “LGBT”
4
to evaluative
4
Despite the global circulation of Euro-American identity terms such as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and
intersex, or politicized umbrella terms like LGBT and queer, there remains distinctive identity categories—kathoey
in Thailand, bakla in the Philippines, hijra in India, and tongzhi in Sinophone cultures, to name a few— being
widely used in various regions to account not only for gender and sexual non-conforming behaviors and identities,
10
terms like “human rights violations” or “equal rights” might not be commensurable across
different geographic and cultural contexts. In her work on pious Muslim women in Egypt,
anthropologist Saba Mahmood (2005) asks us to rethink the Western liberal assumptions on
freedom, resistance, and liberation and to recognize that they are “culturally and historically
located” constructs in light of the local subjects’ aspirations, desires, and capacities. Failures to
recognize and respect such situated differences could easily lead to what Gayatri Spivak (1988)
called “epistemic violence” by erasing and subjugating the local sites of meaning making and
knowledge production. At the level of implications, even the best intentioned agendas of the
Western states and advocates, could reproduce the imperial narratives of non-Western
savages/victims and Western saviors, given the legacy of colonialism and imperialism (Mutua
2001). Building on these critiques, queer theorist Jasbir Puar (2007) would take issues with the
US presidential memorandum’s aim to speak for and save others as a clear instance of what she
calls “homonationalism” through which LGBT rights discourses are mobilized to produce
modern and progressive Western nations and conservative and “backward” non-Western
nations.
5
The anti-universalist critique of particularism has been a powerful tool for criticizing the
universal human rights discourse by highlighting distinctive conceptions of “human” as well as
“rights,” rooted in distinct historical experiences and cultural systems of a given society. It paved
ways for understanding cultural differences as sui generis, which “cannot be ranked on an
evolutionary scale” in comparison to other (e.g., Western) societies (Brown 2008, 365). Its
but also rich historical and cultural meaning systems (Kong 2010; Manalansan 2003; Reddy 2005; Sinnott 2004).
Even seemingly transliterated terms such as gay and lesbi would take on different connotations in relation to the
indigenous classification system of sex, gender, and desire in a given society (Blackwood 2010; Boellstorff 2005).
5
Hence, anthropologist Lila Abu-Lughod (2002) challenges these Western impositions of what is deemed progress
or justice on “cultural others,” and asks how we could appreciate members of different societies “might want, or
choose, different futures from what we envision as best.” (788)
11
strong tendency to essentialize culture as distinct life-worlds with internal coherence, yet without
much cross-cultural interactions and exchanges, also has invited the political mobilization of
particularism for authoritarian governments to justify their domination, exploitation, and
violence in the name of “authentic cultural practices” (Afshari 2011). Many authoritarian
regimes also build on the cultural logic of particularism to provide a rationale for political
homophobia (Weiss and Bosia 2013), by accusing LGBT movements of promoting “foreign
interests” and imposing “Western norms” that contradict local values—be they African,
Catholic, Islamic, or Asian (Currier 2012; Lee 2016; Savcı 2021; Zubrzycki 2016). The account
of culture in particularism as coherent, homogenous, static, and “bounded,” as if discrete islands,
ignores the continued and complex history of cross-cultural interactions from colonialism to
globalization, as well as the impact of various macro-level forces on culture (Donnelly 2007;
Rentein 1988).
Relational approach
The third approach, which we can call a relational approach, attempts to resolve the
theoretical tension between universalism and particularism by extending the postcolonial critique
as well as envisioning culture as “historically produced, globally inter-connected, [and]
internally contested” (Merry 2001, 41). A key theoretical argument can be found in sociologist
Raewyn Connell’s double critique on Eurocentric and separationist epistemologies and their
paradoxically symbiotic relationship. In a reflection of the dilemma that feminist scholarship in
the US and Europe faces in approaching global contexts and differences, Connell (2014) pointed
out that the predominance of Eurocentric framings and concepts, deriving from the historical
experience of the global metropole and empire, has given rise to what she calls a “mosaic
12
epistemology.” According to a mosaic epistemology, the world exists as a collection of “separate
knowledge systems or projects [that] sit beside each other like tiles in a mosaic,” based on
distinct historical experiences and cultures (522). As a radical reaction—or rejection— of
Eurocentric universalism as the “master narrative for the whole world,” she contends, the mosaic
epistemology has unintentionally contributed to the very Eurocentric framework by reproducing
how the colonialists saw the world of distinct cultures in silos as objects of study and
domination. Instead, she calls for knowledge productions that can neither universalize nor
separate, but “cross-fertilize” by recognizing the particular relations, networks, and connections
across various locales.
This “third possibility” has been discussed in sociology as a way to address the
connections between knowledge systems in a globalized world. In his search for a “subaltern
global sociology,” Michael Burawoy (2008) suggests that such intellectual endeavor has to
overcome both universal sociology constructed from above and particularistic or isolationist
sociology from below. Instead, a subaltern global sociology pays attention to the connections
between global forces—such as state despotism and market tyranny— as well as the specific
challenges in different local, national, and global scales. Such efforts should be able to recognize
different configurations of knowledge building in different contexts, and equally importantly, to
address global inequalities among the knowledge systems by “allowing voices of the periphery
to enter into debates with the center.” (443) This new vision culminates in Julian Go’s (2016)
call for “postcolonial relationality,” that “attends to the mutual constitution of the powerful and
powerless, the metropole and colony, the core and the postcolony, [and] the Global North and
Global South.” (142) Reconciling the longstanding tension between Euro-American sociology
and postcolonial thought, postcolonial relationality is a mode of relational thinking “taken to the
13
geopolitical scene, scaled upward and outward to critically apprehend imperial interactions and
their enduring legacies.” (ibid.) Being attentive to the complex global-local connections, both
historical and contemporary, could offer a rich and challenging opportunities for reconsidering
Eurocentric categories of social relations and mechanisms (Bhambra 2014) including sex,
gender, and sexuality (Patil 2018).
While a universalist approach sees the UN or US-led global LGBT initiatives as key
mechanisms for the global diffusion of human rights, a particularistic approach takes them as a
form of Western imposition on non-Western cultural others. A relational approach, however,
would consider US or UN frameworks as only one component of the relational dyad. The active
engagement and interaction—rather than passive adoption or downright rejection— on the other
side, be they the colonized, the periphery, the non-Western, or the Global South, completes the
global relational picture. Hence, scholars have paid much attention to the interactional and
reciprocal processes of translation, which involve complicated cultural mechanisms of
“dubbing,” (Boellstorff 2005) “friction,” (Tsing 2005) and “vernacularization.” (Merry 2005)
Recent empirical works in global and transnational sexuality studies largely resonate with this
relational approach. LGBT activists in non-Western societies, for example, can be convergent
with global (i.e., Western) LGBT rights discourse (Chua 2019). However, they must carefully
navigate and negotiate their relationships with globalized rights-based strategies, international
NGOs, and foreign donations, as well as the opportunities and risks they entail—both material
and symbolic (De la Dehesa 2010; Lakkimsetti 2020; Moussawi 2020; Savcı 2021). It is because
these global-local negotiations are crucial in maintaining local cultural and political legitimacy
(Chua 2014; Currier 2012; Long 2018).
14
Highlighting the enduring power of colonial relations, connections, and networks on a
global scale, the relational approach attempts to find a theoretical middle ground between Euro-
American human rights discourse and anti-universal particularism. It foregrounds the relational
production of human rights, culture, and globalization within the context of colonial histories and
the ongoing power imbalances between the former Western colonizers and colonized. By doing
so, however, it does not sufficiently account for the crucial legacies of non-Western empires
(e.g., Japanese empire) and the newly emerging global powers (e.g., China) (Chen 2010).
Equally insufficient is its focal emphasis on Global North-South dynamics, which does not offer
much room for considering other forms of global relations, networks, and connections including
South-South dynamics (Jackson 2012), inter-Asian relations (Iwabuchi 2014), and other regional
formations. In other words, the relational production of ideas, knowledge, and values—including
human rights— must take into account wider geopolitical dynamics beyond the North-South
binary, for instance, the enduring legacies of Japanese empire (Ching 2019), the global rise of
China and its political and cultural impact in Asia and beyond (Ho 2019; C. Lee 2017), the
ascendency of global cities in the South and the increasing connections and competitions among
them (Hoang 2018; Nam 2017), and the rising “soft powers” in different regional blocks.
My research brings these often incompatible approaches together for a more nuanced
understanding of human rights, culture, and globalization. A singular approach, I insist, cannot
fully explain the diverse world of rights-claiming and the complex—seemingly contradictory,
but often co-existing and even complimentary— dynamics of actions and meanings involved.
Despite some considerable issues, each approach offers distinctive insights into the mechanisms
and processes of the globalization of human rights. With this in mind, my research advances a
multi-scalar approach to understanding human rights—an understanding that emerges not only
15
from the global discourses and organizations (the universal) but also from the ground (the
particular), and that connects, compares, and contrasts ideas, actions, and knowledge across
local, national, regional, and global scales (the relational). Bridging these three approaches, I
offer a new heuristic device that I call “rights project.”
Rights projects
“Rights” is a loaded term, one that has been used in scholarship, advocacy, and policymaking in
the context of oppression and liberation, exclusion and inclusion, and regulation and resistance
of various marginalized groups. I concur with the numerous critiques on the legalistic,
individualistic, and liberal notion of rights (Brown 1995; Somers 2008; Soysal 1994; Turner
2006; Young 1990). These limitations, however, do not necessarily lead us to abandon the
concept altogether. It is mainly because the language of rights and its various iterations and
translations (such as rénquán in Mandarin Chinese and kwŏn-li or in-kwŏn in Korean) have been
widely invoked and used, not only by international organizations, governments, and media but
also by social movement groups, grassroots groups, and community members (Arrington and
Goedde 2021). Rather than suggesting an alternative (or more expansive) definition of rights
from my own perspective, the notion of “rights project” provides an analytic room for
understanding how people define rights in their own terms and what they do with such newly
defined rights. My goal here is to denaturalize the powerful, monolithic, and politically-charged
notion of rights by re-envisioning it as a concrete course of actions and processes within
16
particular geographic and sociopolitical contexts, yet without denouncing the enduring power
and significance of the globalized language of rights.
6
What is a rights project, then? By rights project, I mean the concerted efforts of
marginalized groups to achieve rights, recognition, and entitlements. A rights project is situated
within multi-scalar structures of social relations, from local to regional to global. It is highly
context-specific that the form and content of each project varies according to their particular
socio-economic and political circumstances. Accordingly, each rights project develops distinct
goals, priorities, and strategies, which are associated with different sets of key actors and
institutions. Emerging from multiple spheres and spaces, a rights project constructs particular
definitions of rights, and attempts to find solutions to how such definitions can be justified and
how they become significant as a means of social change. The rights project approach bridges
the aforementioned three approaches—universalism, particularism, and relativism—and
accordingly advances three key theoretical arguments, which then set out to provide three points
of inquiry (Table 2).
Table 2. The conceptual framework of rights project
Rights projects in relations to
Universalism Particularism Relationalism
Takeaways from
existing approaches
The impact of global
forces
Meaning-making
processes on the
ground
Relational production of
ideas and meanings
6
The relationship between “rights” and “rights project,” then, corresponds to that between “feminism” and “feminist
project” (Mohanty 2013), “race” and “racial project” (Omi and Winant 1994), or “neoliberalism” and “neoliberal
project.” (Peck 2010)
17
Advanced emphasis of
rights project
The politics of global-
local interactions
People as agents of
rights-making
Relations between and
among the non-West
Examples
Postcolonial legacies;
global political
economy; geopolitical
configurations
Rights-claiming based
on grounds or
mechanisms (i.e.,
political, economic, or
moral) other than
universal rights
Rights projects
constructed in relation to
regional powers, rival
countries, and other
political and cultural
formations
Inquiry of rights
project
Global and local
conditions that shape
the emergence of a
rights project
Claims-making and
legitimacy-building of
a rights project
Political implications of
a rights project
First, the rights project approach locates the notion of rights on a global scale. It partly
affirms the universalist approach and acknowledges that the articulation and practice of rights in
many parts of the contemporary world is inseparable from the impact of global forces. Drawing
from legal anthropologist Sally Engle Merry’s (2009) work on local translation of global human
rights, I situate the articulation and practice of rights at what she calls “the global-local
interface.” At this global-local conjuncture, seemingly domestic relations and processes with
regard to human rights are situated within the larger global landscape, while global forces are
contextualized within the local politics of reception. Whereas scholars often privilege the legal
aspect of global-local interactions (e.g., international law and policies and their impact on
domestic legislations) (Ayoub 2016; Merry 2009; Tsutsui 2018), the rights project concept
focuses on how local actors attempt to achieve rights, recognition, and entitlements
18
simultaneously in reference to, in opposition to, and beyond the global human rights law and its
inherent universalism.
The concerted efforts of rights project are not simply linked to global human rights
institutions and discourses. I argue that they are deeply entangled in the broader contexts of
globalization and its many facets (Appadurai 1996; Sassen 1991)—such as the postcolonial
legacies and geopolitical configurations of the nation-state, as well as the nation-state’s standing
in the global political economy. From this perspective, the US-led global initiatives on LGBT
rights and its patronizing and interventionist overtones can be understood as a particular form of
rights project that arises from the exceptional status of American empire in the global order (Puar
2007). Similar state-led initiatives on LGBT rights at work in Israel, however, would better be
understood as another form of rights project produced out of persistent Zionism and Israel’s
occupation of Palestine (Atshan 2020). It is necessary, therefore, to ask the global and local
conditions that shape the emergence of a rights project in a given context. What are the social,
political, and cultural circumstances within which a particular rights project (but not others) is
produced, maintained, and transformed?
Second, the rights project approach emphasizes meaning-making processes and
mechanisms from the bottom up. Resonating with the particularistic approach, it advocates for
the importance of understanding how people experience and define “rights”—and the
“violations” and “achievements” thereof— on the ground, instead of imposing a pre-defined and
universal standard. A rights project therefore is a social, political, and cultural process through
which actors in different circumstances build rights. Sociologist Monika Krause (2014) shows
that Western humanitarian NGOs are involved in producing and marketing different “projects”
out of global suffering of non-Western “others”; such projects are the commodities of the global
19
humanitarian industry and indicative of the failure of universal human rights. In contrast, the
concept of rights project helps us understand how people establish what they mean by “rights,”
what and how they do with rights, and what such efforts mean to them. In so doing, it allows us
to see how people understand their relationships to the global human rights discourses, not as
products, but as agents of rights projects.
The bottom-up definitions of rights sometimes align with the liberal and legalistic notion
of rights when marginalized groups demand state recognition and legal entitlement on the
grounds of shared human dignity. These efforts, in other times and circumstances, go against or
beyond the pre-conceived notion of rights. Marginalized groups could demand recognition and
entitlements through other routes or mechanisms (i.e., other than state’s legal recognition)—such
as through global discourses (Soysal 1994), market relations (Dobbin 2009), or moral/ethical
transformation (Mahmood 2005). Accordingly, their claims could be based on ideas, beliefs,
values other than shared worth of humanity—for instance, political, economic, or moral grounds
(Boltanski and Thévenot 2006). From this viewpoint, the promotion of LGBT rights in the
European Union can be understood, not as an exercise of universal rights, but rather as a
particular rights project that mobilizes the moral discourse of “Europeanness” and its others
(Slootmaeckers 2020). As such, each rights project arises from various spheres and spaces, and
can entail a varying—and sometimes contrasting and conflicting—ideas about empowerment,
disempowerment, and social change, which are shaped by the larger global and local conditions.
The second point of inquiry, therefore, is about the specific processes and mechanisms of rights-
claiming. How do people make rights claims in a given context? What are their goals and
priorities, and what are their sources of legitimacy?
20
Third, the rights project approach attends to the relational production of rights across
various local, regional, and global scales. It builds on the relational approach by looking at the
long-lasting and persistent power relations between the West and Rest, Global North and South,
(former) empire and colony, and metropole and periphery. However, it also complicates the
scope and direction of the relationality. Whereas Julian Go’s (2016) postcolonial relationality
centers on the historical legacies of colonialism and the outward relationship of a knowledge
system to the West, rights project approach pays attention to a broader temporal scope and an
inward direction. Building from sociologist Ann Mische’s (2009) notion of projectivity, a rights
project is situated within multiple relational dynamics, not only in relation to the past, but also to
the contested present and imagined future. Taking insights from Kwan-Hsing Chen (2010), a
rights project takes into account the relations, connections, and networks between and among the
non-West, Global South, former colonies, and global peripheries. Through a rights project,
people—particularly marginalized groups— strive to articulate their relationships to the larger
political communities they aspire to belong (or avoid), be they the nation-state, the imagined
communities of the region or the globe.
In other words, a rights project is a relational construct shaped by multiple forms of
power relations in different scales. The political effects of different rights projects, then, are
neither limited to the relationship of marginalized groups to the West, nor could they be reduced
to contestations over cultural imperialism. A rights project can be constructed in primary
reference, not to the global institutions and discourses, but to regional powers or neighboring (or
rival) countries. It could be established as a response to geopolitical conflicts and tensions, shifts
in political landscape (i.e. regime change), economic change, or cultural transformation. In the
process, rights projects often converge with various other political and cultural formations. For
21
instance, LGBT activists’ fight against discrimination and violence can be strongly linked to
decolonization (Puri 2016), national liberation (Atshan 2020), pursuits of alternative modernity
(De la Dehesa 2010), challenges against militant authoritarianism (Savcı 2021), and an emerging
but precarious vision of pan-Africanism (Currier 2012). The complex entanglements of rights
projects and other formations lead us to carefully examine the political effects—often ambivalent
and contradictory— of such context-specific endeavors. What are the political implications of a
rights project?
In short, the rights project approach provides a heuristic device for examining and
understanding the global circulation, translation, and reconstruction of human rights. A rights
project, again, is the context-specific efforts of marginalized groups to define, rationalize, and
enact what they believe as freedom, liberation, or resistance by utilizing the language of rights.
Situated at the global-regional-local nexus, the articulation and practice of a rights project takes
place in multiple spheres (e.g., political, economic, and cultural) and institutional spaces (e.g.,
courts, parliaments, NGOs, corporations, and streets). A rights project does not operate in a silo;
rather, it often interacts and intersects with other cultural and political formations within the
particular geographic and historical contexts, resulting in complicated implications that cannot
simply be reduced to success or failure. As I explained above, an examination of a rights project
necessitates three central questions: 1) what are the social, political, and cultural circumstances
within which a particular rights project emerges?; 2) How do a rights project build its claims and
legitimacy from the bottom up?; and 3) What are the political implications of a rights project?
22
Comparison of LGBT rights projects
My dissertation explores these questions through the case of LGBT rights for three analytical
purposes in relation to the theoretical framework I introduced earlier. First, the globalization of
rights discourses in the past few decades has provided a fertile ground for the emergence (and
counter-emergence) of mobilizations for (and against) LGBT rights around the world (Ayoub
2016), which makes it a timely and relevant topic to explore the question of universalism and its
new manifestations. Second, the globalization of LGBT rights has encountered a diverse range of
local responses (both from pro- and anti-LGBT perspectives) in relation to indigenous
conceptions of sex, gender, and sexuality and local cultural and political norms, associated with
rich historical traditions and cultural meaning systems (Boellstorff 2005); this allows us to
inquire into the question of particularism and its challenges to universalism. Third, these global-
local interactions and contestations over LGBT rights have also been discussed in specific
relation to the historical legacies of colonialism, and to the global hierarchy between the West
and the Rest (Rao 2020); this brings us to examine the question of relationalism and its potential
expansion.
My research presents a comparative analysis of a range of LGBT rights projects
emerging in three distinct social, political, and cultural contexts in globalized Asia: Taiwan,
Singapore, and South Korea. Before discussing the logic of case selection in detail, let me first
lay out the methodological basis for the comparative analysis. Most research based on a
universalist approach has employed large-N quantitative analysis using data on law and policy
measures to investigate cross-national variations in norm diffusion and policy adoption (Velasco
23
2018).
7
In stark contrast is the retreat of ethnographic research from cross-national comparative
analysis, with rare exceptions of two-country comparative ethnographies (Currier 2012; De la
Dehesa 2010), given many ethnographers’ implicit or explicit commitment to particularism
(Brown 2008). Lastly, most research from a relational approach has engaged in historical inquiry
to analyze primary documents and other historical texts (Go 2016; Patil 2018).
I bridge these methodological divides by designing a comparative ethnographic research.
Two or more (cross-national) cases are not always better nor is it always necessary (Small 2009);
building ethnographic comparisons by paying attention to many axes of variation within a
(single-country) case, indeed, is an important analytical strategy for ethnographers (Lichterman
and Reed 2015). I concur, however, with comparativists that comparative ethnography that
explicitly builds a theoretical argument through the analysis of two or more cases can be
particularly useful for the study of human rights, culture, and globalization in general, and of
rights projects in particular. Political scientists Erica Simmons and Nicholas Smith (2019)
address that comparative ethnography can yield important theoretical insights by exploring how
findings from one context translate to other research contexts, and vice versa, and rendering new
questions and dynamics visible, which could not easily be considered meaningful in single-case
studies.
8
By combining explicit comparative research design with ethnographic sensibilities,
comparative ethnography also attends to the relations, connections, and networks among the
cases compared.
7
In parallel to this trend, there has been increasing demand for the development of indicators of human rights
situations for comparing the protection and promotion of human rights across the world (Merry 2016). Increasing
attention has been given to LGBT rights, as exemplified by the United Nations Development Program’s (UNDP)
“LGBTI Inclusion Index” and the global LGBT advocacy organization ILGA-Europe’s “Rainbow Europe Index.”
8
For instance, carefully designed ethnographic comparison could bring analytic advantage by considering “how
practices observed in a given field site upend conventional understandings of a political phenomenon, why existing
explanations are not compelling for a particular field site, or how political meanings that seem obvious become less
so when viewed across cases.” (Simmons and Smith 2019, 344)
24
A cross-national comparative ethnographic research, I insist, can be best suited for
developing new theoretical understandings of the emergence and variation of rights projects in
different global and local contexts. In so doing, I advance the possibility of accounting for
ethnographic nuances while at the same time maintaining a global and relational perspective. As
opposed to large-N quantitative comparison prevalent in universalist approach, I present here a
model of contextualized ethnographic comparison. Instead of asking evaluative questions (i.e.,
“Which country is doing better?”) to be answered using pre-established standards of
measurement (i.e., “Which country has legalized X, Y, and Z?”) and in one-dimensional analytic
space (i.e., “This country has a better rights situation than that one”), this model guides us to
formulate context-specific questions that generate more grounded categories of analysis and
situates them within a multi-dimensional analytic space for the purpose of understanding social
relations, processes, and mechanisms across differing contexts (see Lamont 2012; Steinmetz
2004). The three inquiries for the study of rights projects I outlined earlier—1) social, political,
and cultural circumstances, 2) claims-making and legitimacy-building, and 3) political
implications— go hand in hand with this strategy of contextualized ethnographic comparison.
Contextualizing the comparison: Taiwan, Singapore, and South Korea
The theoretical framework of rights project can be explored in a variety of geographic and
historical contexts; however, for this dissertation, I present a three-country comparative study of
LGBT activism in globalized Asia. I examine three distinct constructions of rights projects in
Taiwan, Singapore, and South Korea. As I discuss below, gender and sexual minorities in these
three societies have been navigating the contradictions characterized by globalized economies
25
but with uncertain political situations within particular global-regional-local conjunctures. Their
shared histories and present circumstances with crucial variations in legal frameworks for LGBT
people, then, make Taiwan, Singapore, and South Korea particularly productive cases for
comparison
9
of LGBT rights projects (Table 3).
Table 3. Contextualizing the Comparative Cases
Singapore Taiwan South Korea
Socio-economic
development
Advanced and globalized economy
Cultural tradition Family-oriented
Historical relation
British and Japanese
colonial rule
Japanese colonial rule
Political regime Authoritarian Liberal democratic
Global positioning Global business hub Diplomatic isolation Rising soft power
Geopolitical tension - China’s rise North Korean “threat”
Legal framework for
LGBT people
Exclusion Inclusion Absence
I focus on Taiwan, Singapore, and South Korea because they are located at the global-
regional-local nexus, within which the dynamics of universalism, particularism, and relativism
9
Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore—and to some extent Hong Kong following its handover to mainland China in
1997—have been standard subjects of comparative inquiries in development studies, urban studies, and (though
somewhat less so) social movement studies on account of their similar socioeconomic development within the
context of differing political systems.
26
actively play out in three key dimensions: 1) the ongoing historical legacies of Cold War, 2)
global political economy, and 3) shifting geopolitical configurations.
First, Asia
10
provides a rich context for exploring the politics of global-local interactions
and their impact on rights projects given the complex historical trajectories and cultural backdrop
that cannot simply be characterized by the dominance of the West. The modern history of East
Asia
11
has been fundamentally shaped by the pre-twentieth century Chinese empire and Japan’s
colonization efforts in the first half of the twentieth century, and subsequent subordination to US
economic, cultural, and military hegemony after the Second World War (Chen 2010). Most
importantly, Taiwan, Singapore, and Korea share the experiences of having been colonized by
Japan
12
and then enduring the postwar political uncertainties, like many countries in the region,
dealing with pivotal issues of independence after the breakup of the Japanese Empire. Thus,
Korea was partitioned into North and South in 1945, Taiwan became the home for the
Kuomintang after its defeat in mainland China in 1945, and Singapore withdrew from Malaysia
in 1965. The national programs for postwar reconstruction, conditioned by the Cold War
framework of “system competition” between capitalism and communism, led to militarized
dictatorships in each of these countries that were abetted by the contingent rapid economic
development (Haggard 1990).
10
In light of recent analytic reflections on the term “Asia” (Chen 2010), I use it here not as a self-contained
geographical concept but as “a geopolitical formation, an economic discourse, a regional imaginary, and/or an
institutionalized object of study” (Chiang, Henry, and Leung 2018, 298), the shifting boundaries and meanings of
which are themselves an important concern of a rights project.
11
Here I use “East Asia” in its broader sense to include Singapore. Geographically and politically, Singapore is part
of Southeast Asia, being a leading member of the regional intergovernmental association ASEAN (Association of
Southeast Asian Nations). Given the country’s continued Sinophone (Mandarin-speaking) culture, with the majority
population consisting of ethnic Chinese, and the strong economic ties with Northeast Asian economies such as those
in mainland China, Japan, Taiwan, and Korea, however, it is often grouped with Northeast Asian countries, as in the
once popular term “Four Asian Tigers.” Singapore’s political and economic role in the region’s history, then, makes
that country suitable for comparison case with Taiwan and Korea.
12
Taiwan (1895-1945) and Korea (1910-1945) were both under Japanese colonial rule for more than a generation,
while Singapore was occupied for much shorter period (1942-1945) during the last phase of the Japanese Empire.
27
Second, the region’s extraordinary socioeconomic growth and integration into the global
economy has often referred to as the “East Asian miracle” led by these “Tiger Economies” of
Taiwan, Singapore, and South Korea (Stiglitz 1996; Woo-Cumings 1999). The miracle of
modernity and globalization, however, did not come about without their own contradictions,
which significantly affected the social, political, and cultural conditions for rights projects, those
distinguished from the Western advanced economies, to emerge. As Korean sociologist Kyung-
Sup Chang (2010) famously articulated as the particular condition of “compressed modernity,”
the very mechanisms that made the economic development possible in these Asian societies,
combined with the family-centered social order, have simultaneously created various hazardous
social, political, and cultural consequences, ranging from political authoritarianism to the abuse
of labor, and the neglect of basic welfare. Thus, despite the relative success of democratic
opposition movements and political democratization in Taiwan and South Korea during the
1980s (Y Lee 2011), the disparity between these countries’ glittering economic accomplishments
and continued political oppression, or at best, limited tolerance of dissenting voices and minority
populations in the region overall has continued.
Lastly, the region has suffered from political uncertainties (O’Donnell, Schmitter, and
Whitehead 2013), in large part owing to the legacies and ongoing tensions of the Cold War
(Chen 2010). Even the most economically developed parts of the region have experienced
political tensions and uncertainties, in particular North Korea’s unclear threats and the unfinished
war in Korea (Hong 2015), Taiwan’s international isolation as the new Chinese empire grows
more powerful (Hughes 1997; Lin 2016), and the sustained political illiberalism and resulting
discontent in Singapore (George 2012; Mutalib 2000; Rajah 2012). More recently, as key players
in the region’s economy and geopolitics, their standings have been increasingly, and inevitably,
28
conditioned by the global power struggle between the US and China. On the one hand, US
foreign policy toward the Asia Pacific region has focused on curbing China’s rise, one example
being the US support for Taiwan’s moves toward independence (rather than the status quo). On
the other hand, the Chinese Communist Party’s new strategic vision of a “China Dream”
13
that
was articulated as part of China’s effort to counter US hegemony in the region and beyond, has
casted a darkening shadow on the sovereignty of other nation-states in the region,
14
especially
Taiwan but also Singapore and South Korea. The region’s persistent political uncertainties and
recent geopolitical shifts also impacted upon the range and possibilities of rights projects.
The shared contradictions of the region, characterized by economic globalization,
political uncertainties, and shifting geopolitics, have been constitutive of the distinct forms of
LGBT rights projects. Amid the rapid social and economic changes, the concerns of various
marginalized groups, ranging from the urban poor (Song 2009; Teo 2018), racial and ethnic
minorities (Rahim 1998), and labor and marriage migrants (Choo 2016; Lan 2006; Yeoh 2004),
have often been ignored, compromised, and even manipulated for the sake of economic
development, national unity, and national security. Those who are outside of the heteronormative
family system, in particular, have long been excluded from the social and political systems
(Chang 2010; Teo 2013) to be considered not only abnormal and deviant, but also incompatible
with the cultural tenets such as “Asian values” (Chua 1997; Oswin 2019). Gender and sexual
minorities are among the latest of these marginalized groups to develop a significant public
presence and engage in political organizing in an effort to move from the margins to the center of
13
China’s new initiatives are known to have drawn on the “Singapore model” of authoritarian development
(Ortmann and Thompson 2018), which indicates the importance of regional scale connections.
14
As a result, extreme and violent forms of physical and cultural territorialization have been intensified in China’s
“internal colonies” of Xinjiang, Tibet, and most recently, Hong Kong.
29
various political and cultural debates, having done so mainly in the past decade (Chua 2014;
Henry 2019; Huang 2011).
Despite these similarities, gender and sexual minorities in Taiwan, Singapore, and South
Korea in the last decade have been defined, categorized, and managed according to extremely
different (and increasingly differing) legal frameworks, which I call legal inclusion, legal
exclusion, and legal absence. On the other end of the spectrum, Taiwan has attempted to
recognize and incorporate gender and sexual minorities into the law through the legislation of
LGBT-inclusive education, anti-discrimination in employment, and, most recently, same-sex
marriage (Ho 2019). On the other end of the spectrum, Singapore has maintained the British
colonial male sodomy law, in the form of Section 377A of its penal code, which sets a
fundamental limit on the lives of gender and sexual minorities (Chua 2014). It reinforces the
state’s regulation of the public presence of homosexuality and transgenderism in the media,
education, and public spaces. Between these two countries on the legal spectrum lies South
Korea, in that Korean law neither protects nor criminalizes gender and sexual minorities.
15
Further, it does neither establish categories or definitions of same-sex behavior or relationships
or of gender variance in the law—a situation that I have termed legal absence.
These various legal conditions, however, have not dictated the forms or meanings of
LGBT rights projects that have emerged in each context, nor are they sufficient to explain the
distinctive construction of rights projects. As I have argued earlier, the concept of rights project
examines the context-specific efforts of marginalized groups in defining their situation, utilizing
relevant resources, and shaping their political present and future in their own terms, which often
15
The only exception is Article 92(6) of Korea’s Military Criminal Code, which outlaws “sodomy or other
disgraceful conduct” between same-sex military servicemen (Na 2014). Even in this case, the ambiguous language
avoids defining or categorizing homosexuality as an identity category—this being an example of “legal absence” as
I have defined the concept here.
30
exceeds the legal realm. A rights project, to reiterate, emerges from political, economic, and
cultural spheres, takes place in various institutional spaces, and interacts with other cultural and
political formations within specific global-regional-local constellations. In other words, my
research takes these (relatively stable) legal frameworks neither as a definitive measure of rights
nor as a point of arrival, but as a point of departure from which to examine the multi-scalar
construction of rights projects. In the next section, I describe the design and execution of my
comparative ethnography.
Data and methods: In search of rights projects
As one of the first three-country comparative ethnographic studies in sociology and beyond, my
dissertation presents a comparative study of LGBT activism in Taiwan, Singapore, and South
Korea. In search of different articulations and practices of rights projects, I conducted twenty-
two months of fieldwork in Taiwan, Singapore, and South Korea in three main phases, from
preliminary research (2015-2017) through the main effort (2017-2018) and follow-up research
(2018-2019). What made this extensive comparison possible was my research design, which is
firmly aligned with my research questions. In order to comparatively understand the differential
construction of rights projects, I focus on varied forms of collective action and meaning-making
processes of LGBT activism across multiple spheres and in various spaces, rather than on the
lived experiences of gender and sexual minority individuals in these societies.
To establish the context-specific dimensions of the comparative analysis, I constantly
sought guidance from the existing scholarly discussions on the politics of human rights, and
LGBT politics in particular, to better situate my findings (Lichterman and Reed 2015). By doing
31
so, I aimed at extending our knowledge of human rights, culture, and globalization, paying
attention to both the global and macro-level forces and micro-level interactions and meaning-
making processes at work (Burawoy 1998; Eliasoph and Lichterman 1999). At the same time, I
constantly tested, revised, and refined my theoretical framework as I kept comparing the
emergent relations, processes, and mechanisms within each context and across contexts.
Repeating this procedure of constant comparison within and across three national sites,
throughout the overall research period, helped me establish the meaningful dimensions of the
comparative analysis. The insights and camaraderie I gained from my informants played a key
role in these analytic processes of comparison.
Let me now explain each step of the research process that involves data collection and
analysis (Table 4).
Table 4. Data and methods in comparative ethnography
Taiwan Singapore South Korea
Key spheres Local/global political Local/global economic Local political
Key spaces
Law and international
arena
Private corporate
sector
Streets and other public
space
Key actors
Local and international
NGOs
Corporate-based
groups
Social movement groups,
local civil society allies
Key agendas
Marriage equality
movement
Corporate diversity
activism
Anti-discrimination
movement
Key groups
Taiwan Tongzhi
Hotline Association
Community groups
Solidarity for LGBT
Human Rights of Korea
My fieldwork roles “volunteer” “community member” “activist”
32
The first phase: Preliminary fieldwork
In the first phase of my fieldwork, over two summers (2015, 2016) and two winters
(2016, 2017), I conducted a series of pilot studies, six to eight weeks in length in each of the
three societies, to map out the world of LGBT politics and activism. I first began with South
Korea where I had prior ties with some of the key LGBT activists in the country. With their
support, I would get connected to a wide array of LGBT organizations and activists, some of
whom expressed great interests in my comparative study. They taught me that some grassroots-
level regional connections were being formed among LGBT activists in Asia. In addition, they
built initial bridges for me to establish contact, as well as my presence and credibility as a
“reliable” and “trustworthy” researcher, to some of the key LGBT groups and activists both in
Taiwan and Singapore, where my subsequent fieldwork was carried out.
16
During this phase, I focused on identifying relevant actors, issues, and events, building
contacts with key informants and groups, and determining the scope of the comparative analysis.
I read through various newspaper and magazine articles on LGBT issues and collected numerous
flyers, pamphlets, and brochures from various public events to chart out the constellations of
LGBT activist groups. Once I developed a sense of the structures of and relations among these
groups for each site, I started to bond with some members of a few key LGBT groups,
introduced myself and my study to them, familiarized myself with their works, and reached out
to other groups for visits and conversations. To expand the range of my contacts, I also reached
out to high-profile individuals in the LGBT communities and local academic institutions to seek
16
The very decision of three-way cross-national comparison, therefore, was not only informed by the existing
scholarship but also guided by my interlocuters in South Korea.
33
assistance.
17
Throughout the research period, the initial introduction from Korean activists to the
LGBT activist communities in Taiwan and Singapore also generated and facilitated more
connections, across and among the three national activist communities in reciprocity, which
further expanded and consolidated my access to each site.
From this early-stage groundwork, I learned that LGBT activism in each society was not
only comprised of conventional social movement actors (e.g., LGBT movement organizations
and NGOs) but also of social service groups, expert groups, various identity-based community
groups, allied civic groups, political parties, corporate-based groups, and even entrepreneurial
individuals, but with varying compositions. For example, the role of allied civic groups was
much more significant in South Korea than the other two sites whereas the presence of
corporate-based groups was notably salient in Singapore than the rest. The social and political
positioning of LGBT activism also varied significantly. While LGBT activism in Korea was
largely embedded in the field of progressive social movements of the nation, its Taiwanese
counterpart was more tightly connected to international NGOs; by contrast, LGBT activism was
strongly networked with multinational corporations in Singapore. Accordingly, important rights-
making activities were being made in different physical (and symbolic) spaces. While Korean
activists almost always went out to the streets and other public spaces to claim their rights,
Taiwanese activists additionally engaged in legal change and in translating the legal
achievements onto the international arena. Singaporean activists, on the other hand, persevered
by exploring the private corporate sector. To be sure, they were developing varying goals,
priorities, and strategies for social change. In other words, I found that the LGBT rights projects
in each society were taking place in different spheres and institutional spaces.
17
I secured visiting positions during various stages of my fieldwork in all three sites at prestigious universities,
which sometimes helped lower the emotional barriers of my informants.
34
The second phase: Extensive comparative fieldwork
With this insight, in the second phase of the fieldwork, for sixteen consecutive months
from May 2017 to August 2018, I directed my attention to these different spheres and spaces of
rights-making in each society. I spent most of my time in the national capitals and/or major
global cities of Taipei, Singapore, and Seoul, respectively, as they were home to key groups,
activities, and events with regard to LGBT rights projects. In Taiwan and South Korea, however,
I managed to travel to several cities outside the capital (e.g., Kaohsiung, Taichung, Tainan,
Taitung, Taoyuan, and Hualien in Taiwan, and Daegu and Jeonju in South Korea) to visit local
LGBT community centers and observed local pride parades and campaign organizing activities.
In Taiwan, I focused on the marriage equality movement and its efforts to brand Taiwan
as a sovereign democracy within the international arena. I found Taiwan Tongzhi Hotline
Association (TTHA), one of the longest-running national LGBT organization, as a base for my
fieldwork and conducted participant observation on their campaigning, organizing, and daily
work as a foreign volunteer. In Singapore, I paid particular attention to the corporate activism
and its attempt to capitalize corporate diversity policies and programs. I became a regular and/or
honorary member of a few community groups (e.g., an LGBT-inclusive church, a gay men’s
choir) to expand my access to the emergent corporate-based groups, organizers, and events.
Lastly, in South Korea, I was specifically attentive to the anti-discrimination movement and its
endeavor to build coalitions with other social movement organizations and NGOs, both
nationwide and regionally. Although I decided to be based on Solidarity for LGBT Human
Rights of Korea (SOLK), one of the largest national LGBT organizations, I was considered as a
full-time (but visiting) activist who was ready to participate in various meetings, organizing
35
activities, and protests for the larger LGBT movement. In each society, I also paid due attention
to dimensions that are not salient for comparative purposes, examples being street politics in
Singapore and corporate space in South Korea.
During this extensive period, I carried out participant observation, in-depth interviews,
and examination of various kinds of secondary materials as my research questions became more
focused. To understand the larger global and local conditions from which rights projects emerge,
I continually collected a large amount of policy and legal documents, administrative records,
scholarly literature, organizational materials (e.g., newsletters, flyers, and statements) from
various groups, and relevant issues of the local newspapers and magazines. Despite my
ethnographic research spans a five-year period (2015-2019), my data enabled me to situate my
findings within the historical context of activism and its changing relationships with the state,
society, and globalization. To have a global and relational perspective, I also accompanied
members of the key LGBT groups on international advocacy trips within and beyond Asia—
from Seoul and Taipei to Phnom Penh and Geneva. During these trips, I served as a liaison, an
interpreter, and/or participant depending on the setting, and observed activists’ UN advocacy
work, regional forums, workshops, and training programs, as well as cultural and political
exchanges. This firsthand participant observation of global-regional-local encounters helped me
to understand that LGBT rights projects are constructed not merely within the national
boundaries but also in ongoing interactions with global and regional contexts.
In order to understand the processes of claims-making and legitimacy-building for rights
projects, I paid particular attention to how the notion of rights are being used, translated, and
reconstructed, and how particular meanings were being associated and/or disassociated with the
notion of rights in different spatial and institutional settings.
36
For participant observation, I focused both on public spaces and on more “closed” spaces.
I attended public events such as pride parades, rallies, marches, candlelight vigils, and press
conferences to observe how multiple actors claim their rights, attempt to gain legitimacy, and
portray such efforts to whom, in all three societies. I was also able to access more “closed”
spaces of activism. During my time in the field, I visited offices of more than a hundred LGBT
organizations and groups, some of which I ended up frequenting and finding my fieldwork bases,
as I noted earlier. In these fieldwork bases in Taiwan and South Korea, I took part in their
everyday interactions and regular activities, such as meetings, education/training sessions,
strategy seminars/workshops, cultural events, fundraising parties, and end-of-the-year parties. I
took various roles of a volunteer (e.g., as a meeting minute-taker or an interpreter), a
participating observer, and an observing participant, depending on the settings (Seim 2021). This
part of the research allowed me to see up close how rights projects are being made in everyday
interactions. In Singapore (and in much lesser degree, in Taiwan), my informants from a few
activist groups and various community groups (e.g., an LGBT-inclusive church, a gay choir)
introduced me to the private terrains of multinational and local companies, which were serving
as crucial spaces for LGBT rights projects. Thus, I attended various corporate diversity
networking sessions, LGBT employee mixers, and LGBT-inclusive entrepreneurial workshops.
All in all, my data involves observations of more than 250 LGBT-related public events and
community gatherings.
My comparative fieldwork required me to constantly move across the three national sites,
sometimes between multiple local cities, every now and then, in pursuit of timely (but shifting)
opportunities for participant observation. I rarely stayed in hotels or other lodging facilities. I
usually found temporary and months-long accommodations in the homes of local activists, in all
37
three sites, with whom I built genuine friendships. They provided me with a sense of belonging
and camaraderie in the field. During my “off time” from field sessions, I often spent time
socializing with these activist friends for various activities, such as language exchange,
gym/yoga sessions, movie nights, local trips, and get-togethers. Intimate conversations with
these friends over meals, drinks, coffee, and cigarettes added much depth to my understandings
of the everyday construction of LGBT rights projects.
I drew on my multiple social positions as part of “ethnographic toolkit” to build these
relationships in the field (Reyes 2020). My visible traits, for instance, as an East Asian male
helped me “pass” as a local,
18
instead of a tourist or foreign visitor, in each society. This means
that my presence did not usually draw unnecessary attention in everyday interactions, and made
it easy for me to take context-specific field roles (e.g., as a volunteer, an interpreter, an observer,
a participant), and resulted in greatly increasing my access to different spaces of rights projects.
Despite my “passing” appearance, most (even those in South Korea) treated me as an “engaged”
guest who was curious but unfamiliar with, and therefore, still needed to be educated of local
cultural and political norms. My invisible traits, such as being an English-speaking, Korean PhD
researcher based in the US, also aided me with gaining trust and credibility, particularly from
activists and organizers of similar cosmopolitan backgrounds in Taiwan and Singapore (but
much less in South Korea). In addition, my sexual orientation often strengthened the emotional
bonds between me and my interlocuters. As such, my positionality was constructed in relation to
each field’s global and local conditions, cultural and political norms, and my own strategic
efforts to portray myself in context-specific ways.
18
In Taiwan and Singapore, I was sometimes perceived initially as an “American-born Chinese.”
38
Most of in-depth interviews with activists and community organizers were also
conducted during this second research phase. I interviewed in total of 230 individuals who were
involved in different forms of LGBT rights projects in Taiwan (n = 84), Singapore (n = 76), and
South Korea (n = 70). Interviews were designed and conducted to account for how they use
different cultural and political logics to explain the particular rights project they’re involved in
(claims-making), and how they make such efforts justifiable (or “honorable”; see Pugh 2013) in
their own systems of meaning (legitimacy-building). With in-depth interviews, I was also able to
capture how my informants understand the achievements, limits, and possibilities of their rights
projects (political implications).
Interviews were usually conducted after some level of rapport and trust had been
established. I prepared an interview guide for each interviewee based on their background, group
affiliation and membership, history of involvement, and recent activities relating to LGBT
issues. The semi-structured interviews took place in various locations according to the
interviewees’ preferences, including their offices, cafes, and homes, and in their language of
choice (Korean, Mandarin Chinese,
19
or English), and lasted from one to five hours. Interviews
focused on their experiences with LGBT groups and/or their activities, information about the
groups such as their main tasks, resources, and strategies, and their ties to global, regional, and
local institutions (e.g., the state, the UN, international human rights NGOs, and region-based
NGOs) and groups. I constantly triangulated my data when drawing from participant
observation, secondary materials, and interviews with multiple stakeholders.
19
Interviews conducted in Mandarin Chinese were assisted by consecutive interpretation (into English).
39
The last phase: Follow-ups
Finally, in the last phase of the research, over two winters (2018, 2019) and one summer
(2019), I revisited each site for a shorter period (two to six weeks) to attend major LGBT-related
events and conduct follow-up interviews with my key informants. My aim in this phase was to
assess crucial political developments such as the passage of Taiwan’s marriage equality law in
May 2019, and the shifting geopolitical situations in the region, most importantly, the increasing
tensions between Taiwan and China and between South and North Korea. I also utilized these
return visits to arrange public talks at LGBT organizations (and academic institutions I was
affiliated during the fieldwork) to share my preliminary research findings with local activist and
community groups and receive constructive feedback. In the meantime, I relied on various social
media platforms, such as Facebook, and messenger apps such as WhatsApp, KakaoTalk, and
Telegram to maintain contacts with my informants and keep abreast of recent news, events, and
debates across multiple locations.
Overview of the dissertation
This dissertation asks how minority groups seek and build rights in their own terms at the
intersection of local, regional, and global contexts. Drawing on cross-national comparative
ethnography in three Asian societies, I examine how LGBT activists navigate the global
discourse of human rights, negotiate with varied forms of state regulation as well as particular
political and cultural norms, and pursue rights, recognition, and entitlements in different spheres
and institutional spaces. I developed a new analytical tool, which I termed rights project, for
identifying and understanding minority groups’ context-specific efforts to articulate and practice
“rights.”
40
My research illustrated three cases of rights projects: an equality project in Taiwan
(Chapter 2), a diversity project in Singapore (Chapter 3), and a solidarity project in South Korea
(Chapter 4). These three rights projects showcase the striking variations of how the idea of
“rights” take different forms and meanings, and are put into action in a variety of ways in a
globalized world. These variations result from local actors’ multi-scalar interactions with global
institutions and discourses, particular sociopolitical contexts, and their relational positions within
world politics. Different rights projects grow out of specific global-regional-local conjunctures,
within which they reconstruct what “rights” mean, how they matter, and to whom they make a
difference.
Chapter 2 introduces the case of precarious Taiwan’s equality project. In the precarious
state of Taiwan, combatted by the ever-increasing security and sovereignty threat from mainland
China, the LGBT movement mobilized the discourse of “equality” in a dual sense, specifically to
address the equal rights of LGBT people in the domestic sphere and to evoke the equal status of
Taiwan as a sovereign nation-state in the international sphere. In Taiwan’s “equality project,”
culminated in the marriage equality movement, LGBT activism garnered legitimacy from
international human rights standards and global allies to pursue legal change in the courtroom,
and in turn, to translate the legal achievement to the global community. In other words, LGBT
movement’s efforts to seek equal rights coalesced with the precarious state’s efforts to seek
international recognition of statehood, which made “LGBT rights” a new symbol—and
evidence— of Taiwan’s equal sovereignty.
Chapter 3 examines the case of neoliberal authoritarian Singapore’s diversity project. In
neoliberal authoritarian Singapore, where domestic legal routes to pursue equal rights are
impractical or ineffective, the LGBT movement forged alternative spaces of rights-making. In
41
the face of the state’s political illiberalism and the legal exclusion of gender and sexual
minorities, LGBT activists turned to the neoliberal market economy that the state’s economic
and political authority is built upon. In Singapore’s “diversity project,” that unfolded in corporate
diversity activism, LGBT movement earned legitimacy and recognition from global corporations
and the business discourse of “diversity” to create an interstitial space for claiming partial
recognition and entitlements, while refraining from challenges to achieve legal rights.
Chapter 4 analyzes the case of silent state of Korea’s solidarity project. In South Korea,
the LGBT movement struggled to make their voices heard in the domestic political sphere which
has largely been preoccupied with the historical and enduring tensions with North Korea. To
break their state legal absence and the use of the political mobilization of North Korea as an
excuse to postpone any meaningful discussion on their rights, LGBT activists claimed their
rights in solidarity with other marginalized groups and staged their connected struggles against
the silent state by demanding a comprehensive anti-discrimination law. In South Korea’s
“solidarity project,” the legitimacy of LGBT activism came from its moral commitments to and
relations with other civil society and social movement groups, and its distancing from powerful
authorities of the state, corporations, and international organizations.
I will show that each rights project must deal with complex political implications that
cannot simply be assessed as a success or a failure. Taiwan’s equality project has contributed to
the legalization of same-sex marriage, marking the first case in Asia; however, their historic
achievement cannot be fully realized without the achievement of another kind of equality, that of
their precarious nation-state within the international system. As the geopolitical tension between
Taiwan and China continues to surge, the equality project and its underlying progressive
nationalism can turn into an exclusive force. By contrast, Singapore’s diversity project avoided
42
pursuing legal challenges and demanding the enforcement of international human rights norms,
and instead focused on creating an alternative space for rights-making in global corporations.
The corporate space, however, is politically limited by the authoritarian state’s vigilant
regulation. It is also politically limiting as it builds on and consolidates the prevalent
socioeconomic disparity within the neoliberal society. South Korea’s solidarity project might
seem stalled in terms of legal mobilization; their continued efforts to enact anti-discrimination
legislation, has not been successful for more than a decade under the state’s persistent silence.
Yet, the solidarity project expanded the notion of rights via coalitions with other minority
groups; at the same time, the moral nature of the project often restrains the movement’s
connection to a wider group of non-activist lay members of the LGBT community.
In sum, these three cases of rights projects show that marginalized groups’ efforts do not
simply reiterate the globalized discourse of human rights; they neither come solely from
particular local cultures, nor are they completely bound to historical relations of
colonialism/imperialism. As much as their societies are situated within the complex local-
regional-global conjunctures, the challenges, political capacities, and limits of LGBT movements
must also be contextualized in relation to them. The rights project approach becomes most useful
to examine such multi-scalar construction of rights in a globalized world.
My dissertation draws on and contributes to multiple scholarly fields. First, my
dissertation answers sociologists’ call for “a new sociology of rights.” (Somers and Robert 2008)
As sociologists, we must pay our due attention to how rights are socially constructed—
articulated, enacted, and achieved—in a variety of institutional spheres and spaces, and in
different scales as they are put into action. The intellectual purchase of “rights project” can be
extended to the struggles and challenges of other marginalized groups in other geographic or
43
historical contexts. The rights project approach could help us better understand the different
forms and meanings of “empowerment,” how they are defined, justified, and enacted, often with
contradictory implications. Second, In sum, by taking geopolitics seriously as a means of
understanding the politics of human rights, my dissertation offers an improved explanation for
the variety of struggles, challenges, and possibilities facing marginalized groups at global-
regional-local conjunctures. My research joins and complicates the growing body of work on
“intimate geopolitics” (Arondekar and Patel 2016; Barabantseva, Mhurchú and Peterson 2021;
Brickell 2014; Smith 2012) to examine how rights projects of the marginalized have become
embroiled, and indeed integral to geopolitical power relations and conflict. Third, the rights
project approach also joins the collective efforts of social movement scholarship in grappling
with the importance of meanings and interactions (Jasper 2010). The rights project approach
directs attention to what counts as “social movements,” “collective action,” or “resistance” and
how they are understood and evaluated, from the perspective of actors, rather than of scholars.
One of the theoretical bargains of rights project is that it attempts to offer a more comprehensive
understanding of how actors define rights, how they make rights work, and how rights become
meaningful in action and in interaction. Fourth, my dissertation also advances scholarship on
LGBT social movements and queer politics. On the one hand, the three cases of LGBT rights
projects illustrate how LGBT rights can take different forms and meanings and take place in
multiple spheres and institutional spaces beyond the realm of law. On the other hand, my
dissertation indicates that the US-based concepts of queer studies (i.e. homonationalism and
queer liberalism) cannot be taken for granted in other contexts. A rights project approach, thus,
helps us decenter the conceptual edifice of US-based queer studies and pushes us to develop a
more nuanced understanding of queer politics in a globalized world. Lastly, the original research
44
design enriches the methodological discussion of global ethnography and ethnographic
comparisons. My dissertation offers an instructive model of how we develop a more nuanced
global and comparative knowledge without falling into Euro-American universalism or cultural
relativism.
45
Chapter 2. Branding Equality: The Marriage Equality Movement in
Precarious Taiwan
Insufficient equality
In October 2016, a critical mass was reached on Ketagalan Boulevard in front of the Presidential
Building in Taipei, Taiwan, when a renowned retired professor from National Taiwan University
took his own life. The act was motivated by the professor’s frustration that he had no legal right
to make medical decisions on behalf of his cancer-stricken same-sex partner or to the apartment
in which they had lived together for thirty-five years because the government refused to
recognize their relationship. Tens of thousands of tongzhi (LGBT) activists, their supporters, and
sympathetic citizens poured into the street to voice their grievances and anger and to urge newly
elected President Tsai Ing-wen to live up to her campaign pledge to support marriage equality.
In a widely viewed presidential campaign video, Tsai delivered a clear message to
support LGBT rights: “in the face of love, everyone is equal.” In the context of a tight race
against the candidate from the then-ruling conservative party, this pledge reflected the status of
LGBT citizens and their allies as a crucial voting group. As a number of my informants
explained, Tsai’s official support for marriage equality convinced many LGBT citizens, even
those who did not support her or her liberal party, to vote for her. These voters wanted equal
treatment after the election. Around this time, an image circulated widely online that caricatured
Tsai with a Pinocchio nose as a liar, and hundreds of thousands gathered to protest nearly every
weekend from late 2016 to early 2017 in the center of Taipei demanding that, Tsai live up to her
promise to support marriage equality.
46
The waves of mass protests reached a turning point in May 2017, when Taiwan’s
constitutional court issued a landmark decision regarding the legality of same-sex marriage;
lawmakers eventually passed a bill to recognize same-sex marriage two years later in 2019.
Numerous international media outlets rushed to cover the news under such headlines as “first in
Asia to legalize same-sex marriage.” However, a number of coverages often sidestepped the
political status of Taiwan, describing it with such carefully chosen phrases as “the self-ruled
island.”
(CNN, May 17, 2019) The People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the Chinese
Communist Party, predictably portrayed Taiwan as subordinate to China, declaring on its social
media account that “Local lawmakers in Taiwan, China, have legalized same-sex marriages in a
first for Asia.” Taiwanese politicians and citizens alike rebuked this attempt to take credit for the
legislation and to diminish their sovereignty. Similarly, the United Nations Entity for Gender
Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women) stirred controversy when its online list
of countries that recognize same-sex marriage was found to include “Taiwan, Province of China”
along with a paradoxically celebratory note that “All people should be able to choose freely
whether to enter a partnership, when and with whom!”
In any case, though Taiwan’s LGBT community did gain legal rights to equal treatment,
its success in this regard remains incomplete as long as the country’s sovereignty remains
precarious. Thus a prominent marriage equality advocate parodied the UN group’s optimistic
declaration as “All people should be able to choose freely to be called by their real national
identity!” And indeed, Taiwan’s marriage equality movement continues, after its legal victory, to
proclaim its “first in Asia” status as a proud accomplishment of the island nation’s democracy
and human rights agenda, not as a part of, but in contrast with authoritarian China.
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The equality project
Building on the rights project approach, this chapter examines the development of marriage
equality movement in Taiwan. The legalization of same-sex marriage in Taiwan, effective since
May 2019, attracted international attention because it marks “the first in Asia,” where
presumably conservative cultures are dominant. Scholars have suggested a range of cultural,
social, and political factors to explain this landmark achievement and the successful mobilization
of LGBT movements in Taiwan (Ho 2019; Hsu and Yen 2017; Jeffreys and Wang 2018). While
these existing explanations still remain useful, I argue that the rights project approach offers a
distinctive advantage in understanding how the movement reconfigured the notion of “LGBT
rights” as it interacted with global discourse of LGBT rights, local political and cultural norms,
and the nation’s geopolitical conditions.
This chapter examines the development of what I call an equality project in Taiwan’s
LGBT movement. By equality project, I mean the specific form of rights project that emphasizes
“equality” as a primary principle, and claims the rights and recognition of LGBT people as part
of the broader social and political progress towards an “equal” society. Actors involved in the
equality project focuses on the importance of equal status, treatment, and standing of sexual
minorities in relation to their straight counterparts. At the same time, they effectively link their
precarious status to that of their country. In turn, they pair their demands of LGBT equality with
the nation’s aspiration to achieve an equal status in an international society. They focused on the
legal mobilization to pressure the government, lawmakers, and the courts; equally importantly,
they put much efforts in translating the domestic legal struggle to the international arena. In these
efforts, LGBT rights were coalesced into a larger demand of Taiwan’s dignity and sovereignty.
48
Given the importance of an imagined international audience to recognize both the progress of
LGBT rights and of Taiwan as a sovereign democracy, the legitimacy of an equality project
stems from the international community and global allies.
I maintain that the equality project was developed in response to an uncertain geopolitical
environment. Facing the nation-state’s lack of widespread external legitimacy as a sovereign
country and increasing international isolation with the economic and diplomatic rise of mainland
China, Taiwan’s marriage equality movement rearticulated the meaning of “equality” of sexual
minorities in parallel to Taiwan’s aspirational equal status as a nation-state in the global sphere,
rather than simply drawing on the globalized notion of equal rights for same-sex couples.
Through the entanglement of LGBT rights claims and national aspirations, the tactical pursuit of
an equality project made the marriage equality movement a powerful emblem of the national
vision that differentiated Taiwan from mainland China.
The precarious state
Despite its economic success and active participation in the global economy, Republic of China
(ROC), also known as Taiwan, is only politically recognized with diplomatic relations by about
15 countries, including Honduras, Haiti, and Paraguay. Although it has strived to maintain non-
diplomatic and unofficial ties with various nations and international nongovernmental
organizations, Taiwan remains an “orphan of Asia” (Wu 2006), “an outsider in a world of
sovereign nation-states,” (Goldstein 2016, 3), or an “unrecognized” state (Roth 2009) that lacks
widespread recognition of its proclaimed sovereignty in the international order. The 1945-1949
Chinese Civil War resulted in the retreat of the nationalist Kuomintang party (KMT) from the
49
Chinese mainland to Taiwan in 1949 and the political separation of Taiwan and China. Ever
since, the Chinese Communist Party has claimed Taiwan as a renegade province that must be
brought under Beijing’s control. The United Nation’s 1971 decision to recognize People’s
Republic of China (PRC), or mainland China, as the only legitimate government of “China,”
with no recognition of Taiwan, was pivotal in the consolidation of Taiwan’s precarious status in
the international system. Following this decision, many countries, including the U.S. and Japan,
switched diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to China. Since the 1970s, China’s international
campaign to isolate Taiwan has been successful not only in intergovernmental relations and
bodies such as the UN, WTO (World Trade Organization), and WHO (World Health
Organization), but also in cultural arenas including the Olympics.
China’s rapid ascendency in the global economy and rising political power in the past
decade has not only shifted the regional power structure but also posed new global challenges, as
China has aggressively extended its economic and political influence throughout Asia, the
Pacific, and beyond and claimed its power as the new global hegemon (Kang 2007; Lee 2018;
Miller 2017). Since the early-2010s, Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s “China Dream” policy, which
calls for the nation’s “renaissance” and “rejuvenation,” has stirred fears and anxieties,
particularly in China’s contested borderlands including Tibet and Xinjiang, as well as in its
strategic frontiers like Hong Kong (Mukherjee 2019). With rising geopolitical tension in the
region, Taiwan’s sovereignty, security, and national identity have been challenged not only in
terms of international recognition but also in terms of everyday life (Wang 2000).
For instance, in addition to the lack of official diplomatic ties with many countries,
Taiwan has compromised with China to use the ambiguous name “Chinese Taipei,” instead of
Taiwan or ROC in international mega-events like the Olympics (Bairner and Hwang 2011; Kang
50
et al. 2015). Furthermore, a growing number of global businesses, such as international airlines
and educational services, have begun to remove references to Taiwan as a separate country and
instead list it as part of China (i.e., “Taiwan, China”), bowing to increasing pressure from
Beijing, and the public display of Taiwan’s national flag by businesses and celebrities has been
attacked online by pro-China netizens (Ahn and Lin 2019). Reflecting this escalating sense of
“Chinese invasion threat,” more Taiwanese are identifying exclusively as “Taiwanese,” rather
than “Chinese,” and prefer “Taiwan” as the country’s official English name instead of “Republic
of China” as an attempt to claim sovereignty (Zhong 2016).
In the following section, I offer a brief overview of the legal measures of inclusion of
gender and sexual minorities in Taiwan, which have taken place regardless of the ruling party’s
political ideologies. I suggest that these developments must be understood in the context of the
international isolation and the precarious state of Taiwan and its efforts to proclaim its threatened
sovereignty to the international society.
State inclusion of gender and sexual minorities
In recent decades, Taiwan has made reputable advances towards the legal inclusion of LGBT
groups via the passage of anti-discrimination laws in education (“Gender Equity Education Act,”
2004) and employment (“Employment Services Act,” and “Gender Equal Employment Act,”
2008), the implementation of LGBT inclusive education in the curriculum, the inclusion of co-
habiting same-sex households in the anti-domestic violence law (“Domestic Violence Prevention
Act,” 2007), the registration of same-sex couples in most local city and county governments
(2015-present), and most recently, the constitutional decision (2017) and subsequent legislation
51
of same-sex marriage (2019). Many of these legal moves to inscribe sexual orientation into law
and policy were made during the first ruling period of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP,
2000-2008) with the support of active state-civic partnerships such as women’s rights and other
non-governmental groups (Lee 2012).
It would be misleading, however, to understand Taiwan state’s involvement in the
increasing protection and promotion of LGBT rights simply as a partisan political outcome (see
Li 2015). As soon as the Nationalist Party (KMT) regained power in 2008, the ruling KMT and
then president Ma Ying-jeou passed a law (“Act to Implement the ICCPR and the ICESCR,”
2009) to ratify two international covenants—International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
(ICCPR) and International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). The
Ma government (2008-2016) also ratified three other major international human rights
instruments including CEDAW (Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination
Against Women, 2011), CRC (Convention on the Rights of Children, 2014), and CRPD
(Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, 2014). All of these international human
rights covenants and conventions address sexual orientation and gender identity-based rights, and
have offered powerful toolkits for LGBT activists to bring legitimacy to their claims for equality
and recognition. The KMT administrations continued, if not expanded, the former DPP
administration’s steps in the state inclusion of LGBT groups by turning to international human
rights system.
In addition to other forms of legal inclusion made in the previous governments, same-sex
marriage has been an object of prominent policy debate since DPP regained office (2016-
present). The issue moved to the center of Taiwan’s political gravity when then-candidate Tsai
Ing-wen officially pronounced her support of marriage equality during the presidential election
52
in late 2015. It was in May 2017 that Taiwan’s constitutional court ruled in favor of same-sex
marriage, which then effectively came into law in May 2019 after multiple critical moments of
heated public debate (Hsu and Yen 2017; Jiang 2019). Even in the face of fierce opposition from
religious-based anti-LGBT groups, the Tsai government has kept its state-sponsored promotion
of LGBT rights both domestically and internationally. In order to promote Taiwan’s
constitutional decision abroad, for instance, the Taipei Cultural Center based in New York, a
Taiwan governmental agency under the Council of Cultural Affairs, invited several queer
filmmakers from Taiwan to organize a film screening event in 2018 Outfest Los Angeles as well
as a series of art events in New York, which coincided with 2018 New York Pride where
hundreds of Taiwanese and Taiwanese Americans attended to celebrate Taiwan’s LGBT-
inclusive democracy.
Scholars have suggested that the persistent geopolitical conflict between Taiwan and
mainland China forms the basis for a range of Taiwan’s national cultures and international
policies (Hsiau 2003; Hughes 1997; Lin 2016). Mainland China’s growing power over Asia and
across the globe in the past decade vis-a-vis the Chinese Communist Party’s strategic vision of a
“China Dream” has heightened political, economic, and diplomatic tensions in Asia, ushering in
violent repression and rebellion in Xinjiang, Tibet, and most recently, Hong Kong (Mukherjee
2019). Various social movements in Taiwan, including LGBT movements, must inevitably
grapple with the shifting horizon of possibilities under the rising geopolitical uncertainty when
formulating and carrying through their claims-making and mobilizing efforts. Most notably in
2014, the Sunflower Movement sustained a few weeks of massive demonstrations and protests
against increasing Chinese influences on the local economy and politics (Hsu 2017; Wang 2017),
which contributed to the election of pro-Taiwan independence President Tsai Ing-wen.
53
Likewise, the geopolitical rivalry between Taiwan and mainland China, and Taiwan’s
subsequent international isolation, affected how Taiwan adopted and implemented human rights
discourses, opening up new possibilities and challenges for social movements (Ho 2010; Liu
2015). Scholars have noted that Taiwan’s legal embrace of LGBT rights in collaboration with
local NGOs was part of a national project to envision the nation as an independent democracy in
contrast to China (Liu 2015; Martin 2003). Similarly, as briefly introduced above, the ratification
and domestication of various international human rights covenants, such as CEDAW, in
partnership with various local advocacy groups, was enacted during the conservative KMT-
ruling governments, as a way to signal international audiences its commitment to human rights
and hence proclaim its statehood (Chang 2009). As such, the LGBT movement in Taiwan has
navigated the territory’s increasing geopolitical uncertainty through building strategic
partnerships with the state (Huang 2011) and leveraging the territory’s uncertain political future
to reshape their organizing strategies and practices.
In the next section, I examine the establishment of the equality project in Taiwan’s LGBT
activism, through the case study of the marriage equality movement. I argue that Taiwan’s
LGBT movement, in the face of its intensifying geopolitical uncertainty, instrumentalized this
momentum by cultivating and mobilizing the territory’s aspiration for sovereignty. Taiwan’s
equality project, culminated in the marriage equality movement, served as a node of double
resistance: it fought a legal regime that discriminated against same-sex couples and China’s
rising hegemony in world politics and the global political economy, which threatened Taiwan’s
national identity and stability.
54
The rise of the marriage equality movement in Taiwan
The history of the marriage equality movement in Taiwan goes back to 1986 when Mr. Chi Chia-
wei came out as gay in public for the first time and applied for a marriage license with his same-
sex partner. His application was rejected by the Taipei District Court and then the Legislative
Yuan under the shadow of authoritarianism. After martial law was lifted in 1987 and the public
began voicing demands for individual freedom and human rights, other courageous individuals
made similar legal challenges, but again without success. Starting in the mid-1990s, same-sex
wedding ceremonies were performed in public as a symbolic protest against the state’s
discrimination against LGBT people, and advocacy groups for same-sex marital rights formed,
such as Taiwan LGBT Family Rights Advocacy in 2007 and Taiwan Alliance to Promote Civil
Partnership Rights in 2009 (Hsu 2015).
It was not until recently, however, that the majority of Taiwanese LGBT movement
groups and communities started to pay attention to and put collective efforts behind the issue of
marriage equality. In earlier decades, leading LGBT organizations like Taiwan Tongzhi Hotline
Association focused on peer counseling, public education, HIV/AIDS prevention services,
community organizing, and advocacy work in collaboration with various civil society groups.
They concentrated on issues such as LGBT-inclusive gender education and anti-discrimination in
the workplace; this led to notable legislative achievements, such as the 2002 Act of Gender
Equality in Employment and the 2004 Gender Equity Education Act. Marital rights, however,
were not at the center of the movement’s agenda until 2016, when Tongzhi Hotline launched the
Marriage Equality Coalition Taiwan to initiate the collective mobilization of legislative lobbying
and public campaigning along with several other LGBT and ally groups.
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LGBT activists whom I met noted that the rising geopolitical tension between Taiwan
and mainland China allowed them to launch a full-fledged and highly-coordinated marriage
equality campaign since the mid-2010s, particularly in the aftermath of the Sunflower
Movement. In March 2014, hundreds of students protested against ratification of the Cross-Strait
Service Trade Agreement, opposing Taiwan’s further economic integration with and reliance on
mainland China. Soon after, students and civic groups occupied the Legislative Yuen for 24 days
and organized one of the biggest protest rallies in the nation’s history (Ho 2015; Rowen 2015;
Wang 2017). The cross-Strait trade agreement sharply entrenched and accentuated the increasing
uncertainties of Taiwan’s future, which turned out to be not fully in the hands of its citizens but
rather under control of China and the pro-China political and economic elites. During the
occupation, protesters used sunflowers as a symbol of hope for Taiwan’s sovereign future, when
citizens could determine the nation’s future, independent from China’s interference (Wang
2017).
The Sunflower Movement brought about a few crucial changes in Taiwan’s political
sphere and marked an unanticipated watershed for LGBT movements. First, the rising public
demands for Taiwan’s sovereignty resulted in a landslide victory for the pro-independence
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in the 2016 General Election: for the first time, the DPP
won the presidency and captured a majority of seats in the Legislative Yuan. The pro-
independence presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen mobilized anti-Chinese national sentiments
during her election campaign and addressed Taiwan’s democracy and human rights as distinctive
features that China must not threaten. In line with this, Tsai became the first presidential
candidate to officially support marriage equality. Before and after the election, a group of
Sunflower Movement participants joined the DPP and helped mainstream the marriage equality
56
issue within the campaign and then the ruling party; the majority of DPP legislators eventually
supported marriage equality.
Second, the Sunflower Movement marked a major turning point in the political activism
of Taiwan’s younger generation: they got involved in the electoral and parliamentary system to
address their political and economic interests (Ho 2019). The future had become a source of
frustration for this generation due to the strained cross-Strait relations, so young people began to
seek political visions for Taiwan’s sovereign and democratic future to transcend their present
reality.
20
Dubbed the “Sunflower generation,” young Taiwanese people started to join existing
political parties that had pro-Taiwan independence leanings, and they even created their own
parties and ran for office to pursue political careers. Kuan, a young gay activist, was in his late-
20s when he served on Tsai’s speech writing team for the campaign and later in the presidential
office. Explaining his own political career, he articulated how the Sunflower Movement
motivated his generation to organize themselves as a decisive voting bloc not only for the present
but also for the future, and how this affected the ruling party’s gradual embrace of their voices,
including voices from LGBT groups:
After the Sunflower Movement, more and more young people started to feel like, “Okay, politics
is something to do with.” … In the past ten years, young people just only talked about politics but
thought it’s nothing to do with them. Just bullshit, like so many shitty politicians saying shit, you
know. But now, we started to monitor politicians and demand the government to care about
public issues, and we debate online. I’m quite optimistic that we’ll get better in ten years. After
ten to twenty years, we’re the majority group in the society. We can decide something, and those
20
This idea was epitomized in the Sunflower Movement’s inaugural 318 Manifesto: “We want to hold on to our
own future.”
57
who are majority right now will become minority in twenty years. I always tell the government
people, “If DPP wants to run the government ten or twenty years later, you have to care more
about young people who will be majority voters by then.”
Third, the Sunflower Movement’s legacy was seen in the formation of “third force” parties in
2015, which challenged the two-party competitive system between the conservative KMT and
the opposition DPP that consolidated in the post-martial law era. Most notably, the New Power
Party and the Social Democratic Party represented the newly politicized young generation and
strongly advocated for progressive reforms toward greater equality, social justice, and Taiwan’s
political and economic independence from China. Both parties officially supported the
legalization of same-sex marriage. In the 2016 legislative election, the Social Democratic Party
had two openly lesbian candidates running for office. One of them, Shuhua, attempted to channel
her decade-long LGBT advocacy experience from Tongzhi Hotline and highlight marriage
equality during the election. Even though she lost her first campaign, she gained local and
international recognition for her political efforts, and she began to direct Tongzhi Hotline and
other LGBT organizations’ efforts on marriage equality, as she saw crucial changes among the
young generation:
After the Sunflower Movement, I feel like our younger generation started to get involved into all
kinds of social issues and public discussions more because we have an anxiety that we might lose
what we have now—that is, democracy. That became a huge motivation for the younger
generation, especially in their twenties. They grew up in a totally democratic environment, and
for them, speaking out their expression is a nature. But especially after the Sunflower Movement,
they feel like, “if we don’t do more, we would lose what we have right now.” This idea is now
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represented in all kind of areas across Taiwan. Marriage equality campaign is one such result. …
People showed their support and spoke out, not only because they support LGBT, but more
[because] they support democracy. They support themselves to have the power to decide what
we’re going to have in the future, what we want to have in Taiwan.
Having been exposed to LGBT-inclusive gender education in schools since the mid-2000s, the
young generation was already largely supportive of LGBT rights, but they had not had tangible
opportunities to take action. The Sunflower Movement, according to Shuhua and her colleagues,
made young Taiwanese people realize that the liberal democracy and freedom they were born
into in the post-authoritarian era could not be taken for granted, but was something they must
continue to defend and achieve. Marriage equality, in this context, became a new frontier on
which they could project Taiwan’s sovereign and democratic future, indicating “the power to
decide what we’re going to have in the future,” independent from both the conservative older
generation who comprise the political and economic elites and external pressure from China.
With this rising “motivation of creating the future we want,” in Shuhua’s terms, equal marriage
rights for LGBT people symbolically coalesced into demands for sovereign democracy beyond
the interests of a specific population. The Sunflower Movement catalyzed the public’s, and
particularly the young generation’s, demand for Taiwan’s sovereign democracy. LGBT activists
were now able to ride this wave and rearticulate the issue of marriage equality.
In November 2016, after months of research and preparation, Taiwan Marriage Equality
Coalition was officially established to create collective action to push forward marriage equality.
The Coalition was initiated by three core groups with different areas of advocacy and expertise:
Tongzhi Hotline was a broad-based community-organizing group with a long-standing
partnership with various civic and professional groups; Awakening Foundation had experience
59
leading legal and legislative reforms related to gender equality and sexual and reproductive
rights; and LGBT Family Rights Advocacy represented lesbian and gay families with children.
Two other groups, Pride Watch and Queermosa, joined for legislative lobbying and public
campaigns.
From late 2016 to early 2017, the Coalition organized and led weeks-long mass protests
in front of the Presidential Building to demand marriage equality. As mentioned in the beginning
of the chapter, the issue had received enormous public attention after a renowned and retired
professor from National Taiwan University took his own life due to the lack of legal recognition
for his relationship with his cancer-stricken same-sex partner. The Coalition also collaborated
with international human rights organizations, such as Amnesty International, to launch
campaigns, and with Marriage Equality Bees, composed of tens of thousands of young
volunteers who led decentralized street campaigns and flash mobs across Taiwan in major cities
such as Kaohsiung, Taichung, and Tainan.
Redefining marriage equality
Earlier attempts to legalize same-sex marriage in Taiwan were led by a few pioneers like Mr. Chi
or the marital rights attorney Yawen, who founded the Taiwan Alliance to Promote Civil
Partnership Rights in 2009. Both focused primarily on litigation and legal strategies. Building on
continued collaboration with predecessors like Mr. Chi and attorney Yawen, the marriage
equality movement blossomed in the mid-2010s, and shifted its priority from legal actions to
collective mobilization by deploying new strategies and symbols and by “making a scene” in
local and international settings.
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One of the most crucial changes was the shift in discourse from “same-sex marriage
(tóngxìnghūn)” to “marriage equality (hūnyīn píngquán).” Previously, Taiwan’s LGBT
movement used both terms somewhat interchangeably, but the establishment of the Marriage
Equality Coalition gave publicity to and encouraged the use of the term “marriage equality,”
subsequently replacing the use of the term “same-sex marriage.” Similar discursive shifts have
occurred in Western contexts, where LGBT movements have faced criticism over liberal
“assimilationist” politics and accordingly attempted to make the movement more inclusive by
emphasizing equality rather than difference with opposite-sex marriage (particularly in front of
the law). In the case of Taiwan, the shift reflects the movement’s reference to some of its
Western counterparts and important international allies, including Freedom to Marry in the U.S.
and Australian Marriage Equality. According to movement leaders, however, Taiwanese activists
faced important strategic considerations beyond the question of inclusivity or legal claims-
making.
To pressure the government and the Legislative Yuan, marriage equality activists in
Taiwan reached out to the larger general public to gain broader support on the issue. Marital
rights attorney Yawen noted that use of the relatively new term “marriage equality” was intended
to revive and refresh the political conversation within LGBT communities and to address the
rights of “diverse forms of families” whereas the term “same-sex marriage” was attached to old-
fashioned notions of the family as an institution of exclusion and oppression. Yawen also
emphasized that marriage equality is rather an “easier” term for the public and politicians alike to
digest. Chenghan of LGBT Family Rights Advocacy, a young gay man who hoped to be a father,
concurred and stated, “marriage equality is pretty much straightforward.” The language of
“equality (píngděng)” efficiently summarizes the diverse demands and complicated legal
61
proceedings behind the scenes into simpler and more convincing terms. Likewise, Kuan, who
served in Tsai’s presidential office and founded the street-based youth action group Marriage
Equality Bees, emphasized that the movement intended to create dialogues with even some of
“the most stubborn and conservative” people, including older generations who would not be
familiar with or convinced by critical and confrontational language.
Most importantly, the language of “marriage equality” was strategically adopted to
challenge two prominent opposition voices. First, in reaction to the rise of the marriage equality
movement, religion-based anti-LGBT backlash was organized and has staged mass counter-
protests since the mid-2010s. These so-called “pro-family” groups attacked LGBT people for
disrupting “traditional Taiwanese family values” and threatening the nation’s future due to their
inability to reproduce (Chen 2018; Huang 2017). In response to these efforts to claim
“Taiwanese values” and Taiwan’s future in terms of heteronormative reproduction, the marriage
equality movement adopted the language of “equality” to project an equal and democratic future
where sexual minorities could be rightful members of society.
Second, the marriage equality movement used the language of equality to try and change
the ruling DPP legislators’ reluctance to address the issue. Despite the DPP’s official support of
marriage equality during the 2015 election campaign, the Tsai government and the ruling DPP
took a cautious approach to the issue in order not to lose their traditional electorates, for whom
human rights—not to mention LGBT rights—were rarely a priority. According to Weiting, a
previous chairperson of Tongzhi Hotline, the government continued to postpone action on
marriage equality, telling marriage equality activists that “there are more important things now
for Taiwan’s democracy.”
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In this context, the discourse of marriage equality was part of the movement’s strategic
decision to link LGBT issues to the larger framework of Taiwan’s democratic future: first, to
counter the anti-LGBT campaign’s reproductive futurism, and second, to convince the
government of the importance of the issue for Taiwan’s democracy. Indeed, many human rights
activists noted that LGBT rights moved from a rather marginalized issue even within the nation’s
progressive civil society in the 1990s to be one of the most widely-supported human rights issues
in the mid-2010s. The issue became a new symbolic frontier for Taiwan’s democratic values and
systems, and by extension, Taiwan’s sovereignty.
Hsinyi, a leading human rights activist of Taiwan Association for Human Rights, noted
that Taiwan’s hard-earned democracy after decades of struggle is currently under increasing
threat from both the Chinese Communist Party and Christian-based conservative groups (who
often oppose Taiwan’s independence and LGBT rights). The territory’s precarious status grants a
sense of urgency to the promotion of LGBT rights and its use as an emblem of Taiwan’s volatile
democracy. Pointing out Taiwan’s international isolation and the effect on Taiwan’s LGBT
politics, longtime activist Yuhsuan of Tongzhi Hotline drew a contrast between Taiwan and
China and associated LGBT issues like marriage equality with Taiwan’s distinctive progressive
features: “It’s like to differentiate ourselves from China … [that] we’re more liberal, democratic
country.” Huiwen, the founder of LGBT lobbying group Pride Watch and a lesbian mother of
two children, expressed her enthusiastic hope that Taiwan would become “the first Asian
country” to legalize marriage equality: “It would really help Taiwan’s independence by showing
that Taiwan is different!”
In summary, Taiwan’s marriage equality movement strategically espoused the language
of “marriage equality” instead of “same-sex marriage” to downplay its association with sexual
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minorities and to highlight the issue’s implications for Taiwan’s democratic future, which is seen
to be under attack by China and pro-Chinese groups. At the critical juncture of the nation’s
uncertain future and the public aspiration for sovereignty, marriage equality gained dual
significance: as a pivotal human rights agenda against the state’s unequal treatment of LGBT
people, and as a symbol of national difference, particularly from China. The platform of
marriage equality in turn manifests Taiwan’s democratic values and systems. In line with this,
the movement’s campaigns were organized less around individual rights to access the institution
of marriage and its associated entitlements—such as housing, healthcare, and inheritance—and
more around projecting Taiwan’s democratic and sovereign futures, based on equality, justice,
and human rights. It used equality to enforce the recognition of LGBT people as rightful
members of Taiwan.
Symbolic convergence
A peak moment in Taiwan’s marriage equality movement occurred in late 2016, when a critical
mass gathered for several weekends in front of the Presidential Building to demand marriage
equality. After months of public hearings and debates in and out of parliament, the review of the
marriage equality proposal was due on December 26 at the Legislative Yuan. On December 10,
an estimated 250,000 supporters of marriage equality gathered at Taipei’s historic Ketagalan
Boulevard to stage a rally supporting the passage of the proposal. Marriage equality activists
handed out hundreds of thousands of pink posters that read “Support Marriage Equality in
Taiwan” on top of a rainbow-colored contour of Taiwan, and other participants held up small
rainbow flags with a Taiwan map. Many demonstrators also wore a metal pin on their backpacks
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that read “Taiwan,” with each letter painted in six rainbow colors.
21
At numerous marriage
equality rallies, public education sessions, and street and online campaigns, one could encounter
the ubiquitous presence of this symbolic convergence between LGBT symbols—namely the
pride rainbow colors—and symbols of sovereignty, such as the name of Taiwan or the shape of
its territories.
The convergence of the rainbow flag and sovereignty symbols in Taiwan’s marriage
equality campaigns exhibits another important dimension of how geopolitical uncertainties shape
the equality project. The six-stripe rainbow flag, created by US gay activist and designer Gilbert
Baker in 1978, gained immediate popularity and become one of the most prominent cultural
symbols of LGBT pride. It has since been widely featured in pride parades, marches, campaigns,
posters, and flyers of LGBT movements all over the world. It is not uncommon to find
nationally-modified versions of the rainbow flag that add features of national flags (e.g., a
rainbow flag embroidered with stars in the US) or national flags painted with horizontal rainbow
stripes (e.g., a rainbow Union Jack). Unlike in other contexts where rainbow national flags are
used to indicate national pride and LGBT communities’ attachment to the nation (Puar 2007), the
rainbow Taiwan flag signals and projects democratic and sovereign futures in a dual sense: as a
hope for democratic reparations after the nation’s authoritarian past, which contributed to state
discrimination against LGBT people, and also as an aspiration for a sovereign nation-state to
overcome its injured statehood under the shade of Chinese hegemony.
First, the use of the name Taiwan and its map, instead of the existing national flag or its
visual features, indicates efforts to develop a new symbolism for the marriage equality
movement that would avoid identifying with the conservative KMT. This is a way to imagine an
21
This ornament was designed and advertised by Tongzhi Hotline.
65
equal and democratic future for LGBT people. Taiwan’s official national flag, consisting of a red
field with a blue canton bearing a white sun, was derived from KMT’s party flag after their
retreat from mainland China to Taiwan. The flag represented KMT’s authoritarian regime until
1987, when martial law was lifted (Chen 2008). Even after democratization, the white sun
emblem and the blue color from the flag served as visual symbols of the conservative pro-China
KMT, and they have been associated with Taiwan’s historical connection with mainland China
and the Chinese reunification movement. Given the historical marginalization of LGBT people
under the authoritarian past and KMT’s current conservative policies and anti-LGBT supporters
(Chen 2018; Huang 2011), the marriage equality movement attempted to construct a symbol that
could problematize the state’s past discrimination and instead project a democratic future,
equally open for LGBT people.
Second, the portrayal of Taiwan’s name or the shape of its territories in rainbow colors
breaks not only from the authoritarian past but also from the Chinese threat in imagining a bright
future where marriage equality will be achieved. Despite its authoritarian legacy and continued
connection with pro-China groups and sentiments, Taiwan’s national flag also represents
Taiwanese national identity and its precarity, in stark contrast with the Chinese five-starred red
flag that symbolizes the threat of Chinese encroachment on Taiwan’s sovereignty. Around the
2016 General Election, for instance, Tzuyu, a young Taiwanese member of a popular K-pop girl
band, faced severe backlash from Chinese media and netizens because she waved a handheld
Taiwan flag on a Korean TV show. She was accused of making a political gesture supporting
Taiwan’s independence. To many Taiwanese people, the release of Tzuyu’s official apology
video, which forcefully erased her Taiwanese identity and denied Taiwan’s statehood, reaffirmed
the experience of living in an “unrecognized” state where rising Chinese hegemony infringed
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upon national sovereignty (Ahn and Lin 2019). By presenting rainbow Taiwan flags and
Taiwan’s name in rainbow colors in this context, the marriage equality movement strived to
develop a new emblem for an equal future not only for LGBT people but also for a nation
looking to restore its compromised sovereignty.
Pride marches would be one of the most prominent occasions where sovereignty symbols
and marriage equality symbols converged and manifested. Taiwan’s marriage equality
movement reached a turning point in May 2017, when the grand justices issued a landmark
decision to support marriage equality and gave the legislature two years to amend the laws. A
month later in New York City on June 25, a group of overseas Taiwanese and Taiwanese
Americans participated in the annual New York Pride Parade to celebrate the marriage equality
ruling and to “represent Taiwan.” A line of marchers holding up rainbow-flag block letters that
spelled “Taiwan” was followed by about 200 participants and a float adorned with a huge
rainbow Taiwan flag, displayed equally between a rainbow flag and Taiwan’s national flag.
Several months later on October 28, Ketagalan Boulevard was full of rainbow Taiwan flags to
celebrate the 15th anniversary of Taiwan Pride as well as the constitutional ruling to support
marriage equality. Among the marchers was a group of youths holding a placard saying, in
Mandarin and English, “Taiwan is an independent country.” They were draped in a huge banner
portraying a white whale, which symbolizes the island of Taiwan, moving from pink sea to green
sky with the phrase, “Make our own Taiwan nation.” Through these symbolic alignments,
“Taiwan pride” acquires a dual meaning: the pride of the nation’s recognition of LGBT people
and the pride of the nation being embraced by the world.
67
Making international scenes
The May 2017 constitutional ruling found the existing civil laws discriminated against same-sex
couples and were unconstitutional; the court gave lawmakers two years to legislate marriage
equality. However, the DPP’s continued reluctance to take the lead on equal marriage rights
legislation allowed further public debate over the draft bill’s form and content. During the two
intervening years between constitutional order and actual legislation, marriage equality activists
maintained their legislative lobbying and public campaigns. They highlighted the implications of
marriage equality for Taiwan’s democratic and sovereign futures, sometimes by “making a
scene” (Creasap 2012; Millward 2015) in local and international settings to bring attention to the
issue. In a softer and gentler practice, several key members of the Marriage Equality Coalition
carried out numerous interviews with local, and more importantly international, media “to bring
back some international pressure to the government,” according to Huiwen, an enthusiastic
advocate and lesbian mother, who had become one of the leading public faces of the movement.
The Coalition collaborated with various professional associations to release statements of
support and relied on expert members of the Coalition including Chih-Yun Hsu, chairperson of
Tongzhi Hotline and a psychiatrist specializing in LGBT issues, to publish articles in acclaimed
international journals about Taiwan’s achievements so as to expand its audience to include
global expert communities and accordingly put pressure on legislative authorities (Hsu and Yen
2017). These attempts elicited frustration and counter-reactions from conservative anti-LGBTQ
groups and helped maintain a sense of urgency on the issue.
The 2018 Gay Games, an international sporting event, provided an opportunity for
Taiwanese marriage equality activists to create an international scene. Founded in San Francisco
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in 1982 to create an inclusive sports environment free from prejudice and discrimination against
sexual minorities, the quadrennial athletic event has developed into an international mega-event
for LGBT people, attracting millions of dollars and tens of thousands of participants from all
over the world (Symons 2010).
The Taiwan Tongzhi (LGBQ) Sports Development Association decided to participate in
the 10th annual Gay Games in Paris, given that they would have an opportunity on the
international stage to use the team name “Taiwan” instead of the Chinese-imposed label
“Chinese Taipei.” Due to China’s coercive campaign to control Taiwan’s international presence,
“Chinese Taipei” is now the predominant term used to address participants from Taiwan in the
Olympics and other international sporting events (Bairner and Hwang 2011). The ambiguous and
politically-charged term “Chinese Taipei,” originally coined and endorsed by Taiwan’s KMT
and the Chinese Communist Party in 1981, has become a symbol of shame and compromise for
many Taiwanese, as it invokes China’s political message that Taiwan is merely a subordinate of
“Chinese” territory. At the same time, the name “Taiwan” has morphed into a symbol of unjustly
banned identity and an aspirational future (Chiang and Chen 2020). In early 2018, the “Taiwan
2020” campaign was launched to demand the government negotiate with the International
Olympic Committee so that athletes from Taiwan can compete under the designation “Taiwan”
instead of “Chinese Taipei.”
22
On July 23, 2018, the Tongzhi Sports Association unveiled the slogan “Taiwan Comes
Out! (Táiwān zhàn chūlái)” at a press conference with the support of pro-Taiwan independence
New Power Party. The lifetime marriage equality activist, Mr. Chi Chia-wei, appointed as an
honorary chairman of the Taiwan team, noted at the press conference that participation in the
22
“‘Taiwan 2020’ campaign submits call for referendum to Central Election Commission,” Taiwan News, Feb 5,
2018.
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Gay Games will be a great opportunity to present Taiwan at an international stage while
competing under the name “Taiwan” and using Taiwan’s national flag in the event of a medal
win: “LGBT people will bravely take care of issues that the government can’t.”
23
The Taiwan
team’s slogan powerfully paired the metaphor of “coming out of the closet” with its departure to
Paris for the Gay Games, and by extension, to the world. In this symbolic alignment, what was
stigmatized and hence concealed in the closet was not only the sexual identity of participating
athletes, but also the national identity of Taiwan, which was banned and replaced by the
disgraceful name “Chinese Taipei” under the shadow of China. The slogan indicates an effort to
resist such symbolic violence and project a future where Taiwan’s precarious sovereignty can be
redeemed.
Following the press conference, however, the Taiwan team found that the Federation of
Gay Games suddenly changed the team’s name from “Taiwan” to “Chinese Taipei,” bending to
political pressure from Beijing to minimize Taiwan’s presence on the international stage.
24
Representatives of Tongzhi Sports Association also reported that the Gay Games organizers
expressed concerns over the display of Taiwan’s national flag at the competition. The decision to
unilaterally change the Taiwan team’s name sparked widespread criticism in Taiwan, with many
suggesting the Games’ decision undermined the very values the event was founded to uphold.
25
Indeed, the self-acclaimed “world’s largest sporting and cultural event open to all” that
celebrates “diversity, respect, equality, solidarity, and sharing,” and invites all people to join “a
world where the exclusion would no longer exist because of any difference,” according to their
23
“Olympians, politicians endorse Taiwan athletes before Gay Games,” Taiwan News, Jul 23, 2018.
24
“Gay Games team renamed ‘Taipei’,” Taipei Times, Jul 27, 2018.
25
For instance, at a press conference regarding the issue, New Power Party’s leader Huang stated, “The Federation
of Gay Games should not become a spokesperson for the oppressor, as that contradicts the spirit of equality and
human rights it aims to celebrate.” “Gay Games team renamed ‘Taipei’,” Taipei Times, Jul 27, 2018.
70
official webpage,
26
ironically compromised to strip the Taiwan team’s rights to compete under its
self-identified name.
In response, the Tongzhi Sports Association changed the team’s slogan from “Taiwan
Comes Out!” to “Let Taiwan Be Taiwan.” The slogan change resonated with the “Taiwan 2020”
campaign directed at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and indicated that Taiwan’s “coming out” could
not be achieved if they were not addressed with their chosen name. The sudden name change had
a personal and political resonance with Taiwan’s LGBT communities. On the night the news
about the team’s unwanted name change was released, a gay bar in Taipei’s biggest gay
neighborhood Ximending arranged a “Team Taiwan” night to cheer the Taiwanese contestants
and “to light up Taiwan in our hearts.” The bar encouraged patrons to bring various kinds of
rainbow Taiwan flags “to express and show the inclusive spirit of Taiwan,” and the event’s
announcement ended with “let’s show the pride that belongs to us in our own way.”
27
Shuhua, a
leading figure of the Marriage Equality Coalition, who has a huge number of social media
followers, posted on her Facebook page in a bid for Taiwan’s national recognition at the Gay
Games:
To all of my international activist friends, just to clarify, we see Taiwan as an independent
country and not belong to China. We have our own government, legal system, and we had our
No. 748 interpretation from constitutional court, which was in favor of marriage equality, which
made Taiwan the first country in Asia to legalize same-sex marriage. This “first in Asia” doesn’t
belong to China but Taiwan. Although we are aware of the difficult situation internationally,
26
The Federation of Gay Games, “Gay Games,” Paris 2018 Gay Games 10 Official Webpage (Retrieved: May 1,
2020).
27
Taiwan Tongzhi Sports Development Association’s Facebook Page, Accessed Online (Jul 26, 2018).
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Taiwanese are fighting for our rights for our dignity, just like we LGBTQ people fight for our
pride! #TaiwanIsACountry #BeWhoWeAre
In this statement, Taiwan’s plight of being forcefully erased from international society was
defined as an issue of dignity, which LGBT people have also struggled to achieve. The idea of
dignity and self-determination, articulated in the hashtag “Be Who We Are,” offers a conceptual
crossroads in which equal rights for LGBT people and Taiwan’s sovereignty could be
simultaneously articulated. Specifically, the marriage equality that Taiwan’s LGBT movement
had long fought for and was about to achieve served as a redemptive vehicle to salvage the
nations’ injured sovereignty.
The intersection of LGBT rights and sovereignty was embodied and performed at the
opening procession of the Gay Games in Paris on August 4, 2018. Followed by the “Chinese
Taipei” flag, which was forced on the Taiwan team, 25 Taiwanese athletes walked into the
stadium. However, they made a scene in front of the more than 10,000 international participants
from about 90 countries by staging a symbolic protest. Wearing t-shirts with rainbow-colored
letters “Taiwan” printed on the left half of their chest, some carried a huge banner with the
message “Taiwan, the 1st Asian country to legalize equal marriage,” in English, and others
waved Taiwan national flags high.
28
Shang-chieh Tang, a young openly gay politician with the
pro-Taiwan independence New Power Party who was to compete in the swimming competition,
held up a flag of a rainbow-colored whale in the map of Taiwan island. A bold message was
placed next to the tail of the jumping rainbow whale: “Taiwan, Stand Up for Love, Equal Rights,
and Taiwan Independence!”
28
“Taiwan flag on full display at opening of Paris Gay Games,” Taiwan News, Aug 5, 2018.
72
Equality project in the precarious market
In this section, I briefly look at how the equality project goes beyond the law and international
politics to engage the market economy. I particularly pay attention to the emerging group of
LGBT-inclusive corporate actors and queer entrepreneurs in Taiwan who attempt to harness the
purchasing power of the increasingly visible LGBT community. I find that these other
participants of the equality project are tasked with maintaining “Taiwanese” respectability by
balancing profit values and values of “equality” (both of LGBT people and of Taiwan as a
nation) as they navigate the rising economic tension between Taiwan and mainland China.
Expanding workplace equality and the pink economy
Taiwan Tongzhi Hotline Association, the oldest and largest local LGBT rights group
released the 2017 Taiwan LGBTI Rights Policy Review, which is Taiwan’s first comprehensive
evidence-based report that examines government policies and regulations relevant to LGBT
groups in order to better urge the government to implement LGBT-friendly policies. Despite its
emphasis on the fact that “LGBTI individuals still constantly face discriminations, violations of
rights and lack of protection in various aspects of their life,” the review does not obscure the vast
achievements of Taiwan’s LGBT movement in the past two decades and suggests “to expand our
work on LGBTI equity to aspects other than marriage equality.” Among other issues, the review
spends several pages on labor rights and workplace equality as one of the key emerging
advocacy areas, detailing several cases of labor rights violations against LGBT individuals, and
further suggesting that the government should not only implement the current laws such as the
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Act of Gender Equity in Employment but also to support new and existing companies to adopt
gender and LGBT-friendly workplace policies. In the press conference upon the report’s release,
a supportive legislator Yu Mei-nu further stated that the Ministry of Labor could consider
recognizing and honoring LGBT-friendly enterprises each year (Focus Taiwan, Jan 3, 2018).
These demands for labor rights and workplace equality do not come from a vacuum. In
recent years, several multinational companies have been introducing internal policies to promote
equal treatment and inclusion of LGBT employees in their Taiwan offices. JP Morgan Chase was
the first company in Taiwan to launch PRIDE, a business resource group for its staffs to promote
diversity and inclusion within the company in 2016. PRIDE regularly hosts various discussion
forums for diversity education and career development and has expanded its outreach by
attending the annual Taipei Pride, sponsoring LGBT-related events, and establishing the Taiwan
Inter-Coalition LGBT Network with other employee groups based in LGBT-friendly companies
in Taiwan, such as Goldman Sachs, Citi, Ernst & Young, Google, and Hewlett Packard. JP
Morgan Chase and several other companies have also begun to offer equal benefits to its LGBT
employees such as family benefits and paid leave by revising the definition of “a domestic
partner” in gender neutral terms. Although major local companies still remain reluctant to take
on this trend, there has been several reported cases of local media companies and start-ups to
acclaim their dedication to equality and diversity as suggested in the list of LGBT-friendly
enterprises, according to a local NGO, Pride Watch’s report.
These cutting-edge efforts to promote workplace equality and inclusion by offering a set
of benefits to a limited number of employees sometimes move beyond the company boundaries,
and reach out to a larger public. Taiwan-based businesses with different sizes and industries,
specifically those serving a young clientele, have become more aware of the LGBT community
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as a valuable customer group. Most notably in early 2016, an online ad of McDonald’s Taiwan
known as the “gay coming out commercial” had gone viral on social media platforms with
millions of views and thousands of supporting comments, featuring a moment of when a young
Taiwanese man came out to his traditional father and getting accepted (Fortune, Mar 8, 2016). It
was a noteworthy move for one of the largest fast food chains based in Taiwan to seek
opportunities in what marketing strategists have called the “pink economy”
(Lukenbill and Klenert 1999) despite the outrage of some anti-LGBT conservative groups. In
2017, hundreds of employees from Airbnb and Uber Taiwan offices joined different local Prides
across major cities of Taipei, Taichung, and Kaohsiung to welcome the pride participants at their
community booths with free t-shirts, nametags, and rainbow stickers, and marched with rainbow-
colored banners and flags, some of them delivering messages such as “Marriage Should be
Equal.” These new businesses that emphasize collaborative consumption known as the “sharing
economy” (Sundararajan 2016) started to market themselves as LGBT-friendly and to tailor their
services for young urban Taiwanese who are becoming increasingly liberal and LGBT-friendly
to capitalize on the emerging pink market, believing that members and allies of LGBT
community would be one of the most important groups to become their service providers, users,
and stakeholders.
On the other end of the business scale, some of the small and medium-sized enterprises
such as cafés, restaurants and bookstores have pioneered in carving out local forms of pink
businesses on the ground level in Taiwan. Along with strong state-led economic policies,
Taiwan’s rapid economic growth has been characterized as an outcome of its specific “market
culture” where small and medium-sized enterprises, rather than giant conglomerates as in South
Korea, make culturally-embedded economic decisions and activities (Hamilton 1998). Under
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these business circumstances, LGBT-friendly bookstores such as Women’s Bookstore and
GinGin Bookstore could open their doors at the Taipei city center in the 1990s, bringing in
various books, magazines, and video materials related to LGBT topics that not only appealed to
but also contributed to the formation of LGBT communities in Taiwan (Erni and Spires 2001).
Located right next door to GinGin Bookstore, H*ours Café is one of the long-standing LGBT-
friendly cafés in the city packed with rainbow flags and stickers, pamphlets and flyers of LGBT-
related events and campaigns, often frequented by various event participants with diverse
backgrounds. It is crucial that these inclusive small businesses are not simply concentrated in one
or a few “gayborhoods” (Ghaziani 2014) like the Red House in Ximending district surrounded
by outdoor gay bars, hair salons, and clothing boutiques (Simon 2004); it rather is a familiar part
of urban daily life in Taiwan to encounter cafés, restaurants, and sometimes pet shops or
hospitals, that welcome their customers with flags of rainbow-colored contours of Taiwan and
campaign stickers in support of Taiwan’s marriage equality. The widespread distribution of these
inclusive businesses across the city do not merely situate LGBT people as neoliberal “consumer
citizens” (Arnould 2007) but offers a sense of “everyday spatial citizenship” (Tonkiss 2005;
Sbicca and Perdue 2014) through which LGBT individuals can engage in and reclaim public
spaces in their quest for equality.
The rise of queer entrepreneurs
While multinational firm’s leadership and the community-rooted small and medium-sized
businesses’ entrepreneurial decisions leverage corporate resources and social cachet to produce
channels though which LGBT individuals experience their rights, it is the efforts of queer
entrepreneurs who bring together social movement and market actors in Taiwan’s equality
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project. Creating and maintaining partnerships with local community-based groups has been
more crucial for LGBT-friendly businesses in the past several years. Hornet, among other
companies, has been spearheading its initiative in the rapidly expanding gay dating app market in
the Asian region through strategic positioning to establish a community-friendly brand identity
especially in Taiwan. One of the marketing managers in Hornet Taiwan office, Chun-chieh,
presented how his company had built partnerships not merely with gay or gay-friendly celebrities
but also with various community-based organizations in order to revamp the app as “a
comprehensive LGBT community platform,” and in doing so, to better connect with current and
potential local clients. In May 2017, Hornet worked with Taiwan Alliance to Promote Civil
Partnership Rights, a prominent marriage equality advocacy group to run a series of art
exhibitions and social media campaigns as part of #WeAreOne global campaign to support
marriage equality in Taiwan. Later that year, the company also sponsored an online survey on
PrEP (Pre-exposure prophylaxis) use and awareness among gay men in Taiwan in collaboration
with HEArT, another local LGBT group working on HIV/AIDS issues.
These collaborative projects have been possible as Taiwanese LGBT organizations
themselves also have identified partnership opportunities with those beyond traditionally gay-
targeted businesses. increasingly advantageous in extending the span of the equality project. It is
these mutual needs and interdependent goals that alleviate the burden of corporate sponsorship,
and in tandem, LGBT movement tend to conceive of the collaborative working relationship as an
equal partnership grounded in a common value of community building, rather than an uneven
“donor-recipient relationship.” (Jalali 2013) My findings suggest that it is the rise of what I call
queer entrepreneurs that explains the emerging civic-corporate partnership in Taiwan’s equality
project. By queer entrepreneurs, I mean LGBT individuals who attempt to create new business
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cultures by bridging civic and corporate spheres. They identify the increasing presence of LGBT
people and the relative success of “equality project” as a new source of business, and engage in
the equality project by branding their business as particularly “Taiwanese.” They mediate
seemingly contrasting values—values of equality and profit values— as they navigate Taiwan’s
precarious market in the global economy.
In Taiwan, some of the market actors have entered the civic sphere as LGBT
communities grow and as the nationwide marriage equality campaign has gained momentum.
When Huiwen, a software engineer and her same-sex partner returned to their home country
Taiwan after studying and working in Canada for a while, what struck them was not just the lack
of legal recognition for their same-sex relationship; more so, it was the LGBT groups’ scarce
interest in mobilizing support from other parts of the society such as corporations. “Why
shouldn’t we? Why can’t we reach out to corporations? Why not in Taiwan?” Huiwen shared her
feeling back then. This idea led these openly lesbian parents of twin kids to launch Pride Watch,
an NGO that promotes the marriage equality movement in Taiwan, and also urges various local
enterprises to offer LGBT-inclusive policies and equal benefits to their employees. Their efforts
have led to some positive outcomes.
Another prominent case would involve the CEO of Portico Media, Jay Lin, an avid
member of Taiwan LGBT Family Rights Advocacy Association and an openly gay father of twin
boys. He shared a similar passion to “add something new to the community” as he started to
establish himself within Taiwan’s LGBT community since he migrated back to Taiwan from the
US. By utilizing his business networks and media expertise, he has been engaged in the marriage
equality movement through the Taiwan International Queer Film Festival which he co-founded
in 2014 as part of his “one foot in the civic world.” Yet as someone who is “not a hundred
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percent nonprofit” but with a “business perspective,” he also launched the LGBT-focused online
streaming service GagaOOLala, which now is known as the Asian gay Netflix, that clearly
attempts to capture the emerging pink economy. For queer entrepreneurs like him, nonprofit
advocacy work for social change and profit-oriented businesses, which might be associated with
distinct sets of value, are inseparable and mutually dependent: more social progress in terms of
LGBT visibility and equality should be made for LGBT-friendly businesses to thrive, and only
by doing so, can material and symbolic profits produced from LGBT-friendly companies can be
transferred back to the LGBT community. In other words, Taiwan’s equality project thrives
beyond the conventional sphere of law and social movements and nurtures new actors of rights
projects, including queer entrepreneurs.
Conclusion
This chapter provided an empirical analysis of the development of Taiwan’s equality project as
the nation’s LGBT movement navigated the shifting horizon of the nation’s geopolitical
arrangements. With rising geopolitical tension between China and Taiwan, LGBT movement in
Taiwan has leveraged the uncertain future to reshape their organizing strategies and practices. I
argued that the nation’s marriage equality movement coordinated a nation-wide campaign and
built a strong civic alliance in response to the external pressure from China which posed a severe
threat to Taiwan’s sovereign and democratic future. Marriage equality activists strategically
adopted the language of “marriage equality” replacing “same-sex marriage” to counter the anti-
LGBT campaign’s reproductive futurism, and to convince the reluctant government and the
ruling party of the importance of the issue for Taiwan’s democratic future. Further, the marriage
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equality campaign symbolically paired the rainbow flag and Taiwan’s sovereignty symbols to
instill “Taiwan pride” in a dual sense: the pride of the nation’s recognition of LGBT people, and
the pride of the sovereign nation. These strategic and symbolic efforts culminated in making
international scenes to address their aspirations to salvage the nation’s injured sovereignty. In
doing so, marriage equality has become a new frontier for Taiwan’s aspirational future.
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Chapter 3. Capitalizing Diversity: The Corporate Diversity
Activism in Neoliberal Authoritarian Singapore
Introduction
On a Thursday evening in the summer of 2018, I presented my passport to gain entry to one of
the skyscrapers in Singapore’s central business district. As I stepped out of the elevator onto the
ninth floor, I saw a framed sign informing visitors that this was the site of a “Pride Event”
adorned with the logo of the consulting firm that was sponsoring the event painted in rainbow
colors. There was also a table on which had been placed a few paper cups filled with small
rainbow flags and a stack of flyers prepared by the company’s pride team with the headline
“LGBT+ Resource Group: Allies—Supporting an Inclusive Culture.” In the hallway leading to
the room where the event was being held, the visitors were greeted with food and drinks as well
as another sign, this one declaring that the firm “proudly supports our lesbian, gay, bisexual, and
transgender colleagues through our leadership, partnership, and participation” in such global
human rights organizations as Human Rights Campaign and Out and Equal.
Looking around, I recognized several individuals with whom I had spoken on other
occasions and greeted them cordially. Among them was Rizwan, whom I did not expect to see at
a corporate pride event, a Singaporean queer activist who wrote experimental poems and staged
them during radical queer gatherings, at one of which I had met him the previous year. Noticing
my astonishment upon encountering him in this context, he asked whether I had been unaware of
his day job at an American courier company. Sitting with Rizwan and two other of his friends, I
learned that they were all considering organizing LGBT employee groups at their workplaces
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and were attending the present event to learn more about how to do so. Rizwan produced a
notebook and pen and prepared to take notes.
Soon, another familiar face appeared in front of the audience, asking for attention. “Good
evening, everyone! Happy pride month!” It was Luis, the man who had invited me to this event,
which was known as Allies Night. He told the members of the audience to greet each other and
called out again, “Happy pride month!” The room was now filled with about a hundred people, a
blend of white expatriates and Asians of various ethnicities, most dressed as if they had come
straight from work in the central business district. Luis went on to share the story of his friend
Kevin, a charming and humorous thirty-something gay man from a conservative Chinese family.
Despite his vibrant dating life and steady job, Kevin had recently confessed to having symptoms
of depression because his family wanted him to marry a woman without knowing, or being
unwilling to recognize, his sexuality. Kevin was depressed because he had only a few close
friends like Luis with whom he could discuss such issues. Lacking acceptance from his family,
Kevin felt isolated. Luis gazed intently at the quiet audience and declared, “There are a lot of
Kevins we meet in our lives at some point.” He then posed a question: “What if there’s a group
of people that Kevin can talk to at work, where we spend eight hours a day for five to six days a
week?” and went on to welcome six panelists representing diverse industries for a discussion of
“business cases” showing the benefits of pride groups to the companies that sponsor them and
implement the “best practices of diversity and inclusion.”
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The diversity project
This chapter examines the mobilization efforts driven by LGBT activists and organizers such as
Rizwan and Luis in the little-explored context of corporations in Singapore. In this authoritarian
society, the LGBT movement has been caught in a double bind between the continued
criminalization of homosexuality on the one hand and the limited freedom that its members are
allowed in terms of political organizing on the other. This chapter shows that Singapore’s
contradictory environment of political authoritarianism combined with economic neoliberalism
has inadvertently enabled the emergence of corporate diversity activism as LGBT employees
have been developing novel ways of organizing in pursuit of rights, recognition, and entitlements
outside the realm of conventional social movements that I call a diversity project.
By diversity project, I mean the concerted efforts by corporate LGBT organizers to
navigate the political and sexual strictures that they face as they appropriate and capitalize on the
globalized business discourse of “corporate diversity.” These organizers have been utilizing the
restricted autonomy granted to them on corporate premises and identifying legal grey areas in
which they can organize events, advocate for LGBT-inclusive policies, and collaborate with
community-based groups. Through the diversity project, LGBT organizers have been turning
corporations into a new frontier for social change in the context of an authoritarian regime. The
diversity project has been bringing about relatively unobtrusive changes within the economic
center of neoliberalism rather than openly challenging prevailing authoritarianism in society.
Scholars have documented the rise and ramifications of “diversity culture” in the
workplace. Corporate diversity discourse has been gradually embraced by the business world as
a new management strategy to increase the visibility of various minority groups. However, those
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who articulate this discourse have often failed to achieve their intended goals and even,
paradoxically, exacerbated the problems that they have been attempting to solve by obscuring the
underlying structures of inequality (Ahmed 2012; Moore and Bell 2011; Wingfield 2019). For
instance, while the growing legal protections for LGBT workers in the US and elsewhere have
fostered greater acceptance of sexual difference within corporations (Lloren and Parini, 2017;
Munsch and Hirsh, 2010), scholars have also seen the emergence of an institutionalized
corporate diversity discourse, that embraces only those who can enact and embody normativity
(Vitulli, 2010; Williams et al. 2009). One such critique was made by Jane Ward (2008) who
focused on the rise and concurrent “neoliberal co-optation of diversity culture,” and showed that
the celebration of identity-based diversity has moved beyond corporations to become deeply
embedded in the daily activities of progressive LGBT movements.
While I agree with these critical observations in the US and other Western liberal
democracies, the case of the diversity project in Singapore shows that the corporate diversity
discourse can take a different form with different effects. As economic sociologist Viviana
Zelizer (1988) and others have insisted (Fourcade and Healy 2007), a market is socially
constructed as it interacts with political, economic, and cultural forces. For instance, firms and
businesses have operated as powerful political actors in certain contexts (Spillman 2012; Walker
and Rea 2014), and have become targets of progressive social movements (Bartley and Child
2014; Soule 2009). Corporations bear on policies and programs, such as corporate social
responsibility and corporate diversity (Dobbin 2009; Williams et al. 2009) with the internal
demands of “workplace movements” (Raeburn 2004). Building on these insights, this chapter
explores how political actions and meanings emerge within corporations beyond top-down
management strategies.
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The diversity project emerges from the context of political authoritarianism. I build on
social movements scholarship that has traced the development of distinct forms of collective
action, mobilization, and context-specific adaptation of tactics and strategies in illiberal societies,
in which the state constrains or withholds basic civic-political liberties (Hildebrandt 2013;
Schock 2005; Spires 2011). Singaporean legal scholar Lynette Chua’s (2014) notion of
“pragmatic resistance” describes the mobilization strategies to constantly negotiate with the
authoritarian state’s legal and cultural regulations in the planning and staging of public events.
Extending these insights, this chapter examines how the diversity project in the private territory
of corporations, entities that are often portrayed as profit-driven, depoliticized, and manipulative.
In other words, the diversity project illustrates the navigation of marginalized groups within the
contradictions of neoliberal authoritarianism as they attempt to build rights, recognition, and
entitlements.
The neoliberal authoritarian state in Singapore
Legal and political exclusion of gender and sexual minorities
The LGBT movement in Singapore has been caught in a double bind as both the political
and sexual freedom of its members have been significantly curtailed. In particular, despite fitful
efforts to repeal it, Section 377A of Singapore’s Penal Code, still remains in force to criminalize
same-sex sexual conduct between consenting adults (Chua 2014; Radics 2015). It specifies a
maximum of two years in prison for “any male person who, in public or private, commits, or
abets the commission of, or procures or attempts to procure the commission by any male person
of, any act of gross indecency with another male person.” (Chen 2013; Radics 2013) Calling for
85
the repeal of the law, a petition was presented in the parliament with 2,341 supporting signatures
from the LGBT communities and their allies in 2007 (Chua 2014; Y. Lee 2008), yet the
government affirmed the status quo in defense of “the moral values of society,” while addressing
that it would not “proactively enforce” the law in relation to the “private lives” of its citizens (H.
Lee 2008). Given the unsuccessful legal challenges,
29
the law has come to symbolize the state
discrimination against LGBT people in the country.
Section 377A is only one aspect of a legal regime that denies any legal protections on the
basis of sexual orientation and that empowers various government agencies to regulate the public
presence of LGBT individuals through the issuance of detailed administrative guidelines. Under
the Ministry of Education’s Guidelines for Sexual Education, public school children have been
taught that homosexuality is criminal behavior (Chua 2014). Likewise, Singaporean media,
including television, radio, films, newspapers, and print media, have been forbidden to promote,
normalize, or justify “lifestyles such as homosexuality, lesbianism, bisexualism, transsexualism,
and transvestism” under the official Film Classification Guidelines and Free-to-Air Television
Guidelines established by Singapore’s Infocomm Media Development Authority (Chua 2014;
Chan 2008). Local television stations have been fined for airing TV shows or interview segments
featuring lesbian or gay couples, while portrayals of same-sex intimacy or LGBT rights have
been edited out in numerous foreign films and TV shows in their Singapore release.
30
Further aggravating these legal and social conditions is the tight control that the
government maintains over speech, assembly, and association. While the Constitution of
29
Since 2010, there have been litigation efforts to repeal the law as LGBT activists found the Section 377A
violating the Constitution of Singapore, which guarantees all persons equality before the law. However, the law was
ruled constitutional in two previous cases, while three more separate cases are currently in progress since 2018
(Chua 2017; Radics 2019).
30
The latest case was the censorship of a lesbian kiss scene from the movie Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
(2019).
86
Singapore guarantees freedom of assembly and association in principle, organizations with more
than ten members are required to register under the Societies Act, without which groups cannot
operate on the ground. Individuals who participate in groups that are not officially registered can
be arrested and imprisoned for participating in illegal assemblies, while all registered
organizations are prohibited from engaging in “political activities.” (Lyons 2005; Tan 2009) The
Societies Act enables the government to refuse to register societies that deem to be contrary to
the “national interest” or a threat to “public peace, welfare or good order in Singapore,” which
has effectively restricted the formation of progressive civil society organizations including
LGBT groups.
31
Furthermore, under the Public Order Act, the Sedition Act, and the Maintenance
of Religious Harmony Act, the public discussions of issues deemed contentious, such as local
politics, race, religion, and sexual orientation, are subject to administrative discretion and
stringent regulations, as is also the case regarding the holding of public assemblies in relation to
these issues (Chong 2010; Chua 2014; George 2012).
Overall, the LGBT social movement in Singapore faces significant official barriers to
conventional forms of collective mobilization (e.g., protests, demonstrations, petitions, lobbying,
and voter mobilization).
The entanglement of authoritarianism and neoliberalism
Whereas the Section 377 of the Penal Code or similar sodomy laws in several former
British colonies such as Hong Kong, Australia, and most recently, India, have been repealed
(McGoldrick 2019; Peterson 2016), similar laws with colonial origin remain in force and
31
People Like Us, one of the Singapore’s earliest LGBT rights groups founded in 1993, for instance, has been
denied registration twice, cited that “it is contrary to public interest to grant legitimacy to the promotion of
homosexual activities and viewpoints,” and never been granted official registration (B. Chua 2005; L. Chua 2014;
Offord 1999).
87
continue to criminalize same-sex sexual acts in large parts of other Commonwealth countries,
including Singapore (Pausacker and Whiting 2019; Sanders 2009).
32
Given its immersion into
the global economy and culture, the case of Singapore contradicts the larger global trend in the
decline of the criminal regulation of sodomy and the overall rise of human rights discourse in the
post-World War II period (Frank et al. 2010; Frank and Moss 2017). As evidence, Singapore has
not signed some of the major international human rights treaties such as the International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic,
Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) as of 2021, which would oblige the country to follow
global human rights norms and subject itself to international monitoring mechanisms (Chan
2009). The Singapore state has successfully disassociated itself from such global trends as
human rights discourse, including the decriminalization of sodomy laws and the legalization of
same-sex marriage, as the state established a particular regime that I call neoliberal
authoritarianism.
Since its independence from the British empire in 1959 and the following separation from
the Federation of Malaysia in 1965, Singapore has been ruled by the People’s Action Party
(PAP). The ruling PAP has developed a particular mode of governance that cannot simply be
regarded as authoritarian, which has been variously conceptualized as “soft authoritarianism,”
(D. Roy 1994; Means 1996) “communitarian democracy,” (Bell 1997; B. Chua 1995) and
“illiberal democracy.” (Mutalib 2000)
33
As the Singaporean sociologist Beng-Huat Chua (1995)
famously noted, the national leaders have consolidated their political power by espousing a
32
The same goes to many other former British colonies in Southeast Asia including Malaysia, Bangladesh, Brunei,
Sri Lanka, and Myanmar.
33
These different formulations converge on describing Singapore’s combination of authoritarian features with
democratic institutions, where the minimal components of democracy such as elections and political parties co-exist
with the ruling party’s de facto dominance of key state agencies and their use of punitive actions against public
dissent (Nasir and Turner 2013).
88
national ideology of communitarianism (which was concurrent with the rise of “Asian values”
discourse) by repackaging some of the cultural heritages. Further, they strategically reconfigured
the “rule of law” as an effective tool of surveillance and criminalization of dissenters to augment
the political legitimacy of the state (and the ruling party) both at domestic and international
levels, while compromising the basic civil and political rights of the citizens (Rajah 2012).
Scholars have suggested that these illiberal uses of communitarian ideology and the rule
of law could succeed largely due to the socio-economic stability and prosperity and the provision
of material welfare (B. Chua 1995; Rajah 2012). Adopting a strong interventionist approach to
develop its economy, the Singapore government has justified its political authoritarianism in
economic terms with reference to the country’s economic performance (Lam 2000; Low 1998;
Tan and Lee 2007; Yeong 2000), by establishing and touting itself as a “global city” (A. Ong
2006; Oswin 2012), a “cosmopolitan city” (E. Ho 2006; Yeoh 2004), and one of the most
prominent “global financial centers” (Sassen 1999) around the world. For rapid economic growth
and development, the government has taken capital-intensive, export-oriented industrial
strategies with its technocratic and managerialist bureaucracy, and has nurtured a “business-
friendly” environment in terms of favorable infrastructure facilities, trade rules, business
licenses, corporate tax rates, as well as low-wage labor force, targeted toward luring foreign
direct investment and multinational corporations (MNCs)
34
since the 1970s (Chiu et al. 1998;
Haque 2004; Low 1998). Since the 1997-1998 Asian financial crisis, Singapore embraced
neoliberal economic reforms, and further liberalized and deregulated its economy in order to
continue attracting global capital and labor (Lam 2000; E. Liow 2012; Yeong 2000). Under this
34
Scholars have also noted that Singapore government has focused on developing a partnership with transnational
corporations, instead of developing its own private sector or domestic capital (Haque 2004). The economy, in effect,
is largely dominated by multinational corporations and government-linked companies with a thin presence of small
and medium local businesses (Yeong 1998).
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state-managed developmentalism, the omnipresence of thousands of multinational corporations’
offices on the island, their direct investments, and the associated “foreign talents”
35
have worked
in favor of legitimizing the state’s political power and legitimacy, and to form a crucial pillar of
Singapore’s neoliberal authoritarianism.
The importance of a globalized economy in the maintenance of the government’s
political power has inadvertently prompted significant changes for LGBT Singaporeans over the
past two decades. As the government further calculated efforts at economic liberalization since
the 2000s, along with an attempt to present a portrayal of global, creative, and cosmopolitan
economy wide open to global capital and labor, its approach to regulate LGBT population has
taken a strategic shift from explicit forms of regulation (such as police raids on gay
establishments) to “more negotiated actions” to balance the conservatism of “moral majority”
and “the economic advantages of courting the global resource of talent and capital.” (Tan and
Lee 2007, 182; also see Leong 2012; Lim 2005; Oswin 2012) The most prominent evidence of
this momentous shift would be then-Prime Minister Goh’s interview with the Time Asia
magazine in 2003, where he officially proclaimed (for the first time as a national leader), in the
journalist’s paraphrases, the “repressive government policies previously enforced in the name of
social stability” has been relaxed, for instance, by “allow[ing] gay employees into [the
government’s] ranks, even in sensitive positions,” the new direction in which was “inspired at
least in part by the desire not to exclude talented foreigners who are gay.” (Elegant 2003)
36
The
35
However, unskilled or semi-skilled migrant workers such as domestic workers are not discussed in the
government’s fascination toward “foreign talents,” (which typically indicates skilled workers from the West) but
rather are governed under a different labor and migration policy framework (Oswin 2012; B. Yeoh 2004).
36
In response to the heated debate followed by his official acknowledgement of homosexuality, Goh clarified his
stance on this issue in his National Day Rally speech later in the same year: “As for my comments on gays, they do
not signal any change in policy that would erode the moral standards of Singapore, or our family values. In every
society, there are gay people. We should accept those in our midst as fellow human beings, and as fellow
Singaporeans. If the public sector refuses to employ gays, the private sector might also refuse. But gays too, need to
make a living.” (C. Goh 2003)
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government’s new stance on homosexuality was largely driven by the larger national project
wherein sexual minorities can partially be legible through their potential economic
contribution.
37
The implication of this “conditional” and “instrumental” tolerance of sexual
minorities (Leong 2012, 23-24) became further apparent in Goh’s successor, the current Prime
Minister Lee’s parliamentary speech on the retention of Section 377A. Despite elaborating on the
reasons why the statute has to be maintained, Lee also insisted on the incorporation of the LGBT
population into the Singaporean society:
In Singapore, there is a small percentage of people, both male and female, who have homosexual
orientations. … They include people who are responsible and valuable, highly respected
contributing members of society. And I would add that among them are some of our friends, our
relatives, our colleagues, our brothers and sisters, or some of our children. They, too, must have a
place in this society, and they, too, are entitled to their private lives. … We should strive to
maintain a balance, to uphold a stable society with traditional, heterosexual family values, but
with space for homosexuals to live their lives and contribute to the society. … Homosexuals work
in all sectors, all over the economy, in the public sector and in the civil service as well. They are
free to lead their lives, free to pursue their social activities. (H.L. Lee 2008, emphasis added)
At the contradictory juncture of economic liberalization in the context of political
authoritarianism, the presence of sexual minorities is finally recognized yet with a particular
reference to their pragmatic values within a communitarian vision. Despite the lack of legal and
37
This calibrated position takes the cue from the urbanist Richard Florida’s (2002) idea that an economic innovation
of global cities thrives with the diverse and alternative lifestyles of “the creative class” such as artists, bohemians,
and gay people.
91
political rights, sexual minorities can be conditionally accepted as part of the “responsible and
valuable, highly respected contributing members of society,” whose value derives not from
universal human rights principles but from their economic contribution to the broader
community.
Even though it was motivated by the economic need for drawing global capital and
cosmopolitan talents to Singapore, the amalgamation of political authoritarianism and economic
neoliberalism that are increasingly apparent in Singapore’s national project has encouraged new
cultural and political capacities for sexual minorities, particularly in the realm of consumerism
and cultural production (Lim 2014; Yue 2012). As a gesture of openness towards creativity and
cosmopolitanism, commercial establishments such as bars, clubs, and saunas catering to gay and
lesbian clientele have been allowed to operate without police interference (K. Lim 2004).
3839
At
the same time, censorship restrictions on LGBTQ-related contents in cultural productions have
also been loosened.
40
In parallel to this cautious trend of cultural liberalization, some of the legal restrictions on
political organizing have also been relaxed, one serendipitously being the successful annual
LGBT-inclusive event known as Pink Dot. Since 2000, public speaking at Hong Lim Park’s
Speaker’s Corner has been exempted from license application and hence partially legalized, and
38
For instance, the Prime Minster Lee (2008) stated, “De facto, gays have a lot of space in Singapore. Gay groups
hold public discussions. They publish websites. … There are films and plays on gay themes. … There are gay bars
and clubs. They exist. We know where they are. Everybody knows where they are. They do not have to go
underground. We do not harass gays. The Government does not act as moral policemen. And we do not proactively
enforce section 377A on them.”
39
The conditional relaxation of the government’s attitude on LGBTQ issues was particularly evidenced in the four
annual gay Nation Parties organized by Fridae, a Singapore-based gay web portal, with the government’s official
permit to run from 2001 through 2004 in the backdrop of Singapore Tourism Bureau’s campaign for attracting
global tourists and businesses (Treat 2015). The party’s success and high international profile, however, caught the
government’s attention and finally was banned in 2004 (Treat 2015; Yue 2012, 3).
40
Singapore’s Censorship Review Committee, for instance, recommended, in its 2003 report, a “more flexible and
contextual approach when dealing with homosexual themes and scenes in content,” in theater performance because
“to attract talent, there are calls for an environment with less restrictive censorship guidelines and more diverse
choices,” which gave a dramatic rise to performances exploring queer themes (E. Lim 2005, 392).
92
in 2008, the government extended the exemption from public speaking to include exhibitions and
performances, as a way to soften its authoritarian image. In effect, social movement groups could
start to hold assemblies at the park as long as they are registered in advance with the police and
agreed to the preconditions regarding contentious issues such as race and religion (L. Chua 2014,
119). Utilizing the new rule, several LGBTQ\ activists, especially after the unsuccessful effort to
repeal the Section 377A in the parliament, came up with the idea of organizing a Singaporean
pride event, yet confining itself to the physical boundary of Hong Lim Park, rather than
marching down the streets (Chua 2014). Instead of portraying it as a protest but a celebratory
picnic-like congregation of people who supports “the freedom to love,” and conveying non-
confrontational and family-friendly messages in the campaign and event (Lazar 2017; Ng 2017;
Oswin 2014; Phillips 2014; C. Tan 2015), Pink Dot has survived for more than a decade since its
first establishment in 2009, and has mobilized tens of thousands of participants every year.
Multinational corporations as a new opportunity
In recent years, the contradictory articulation of neoliberal authoritarianism contributed to
the creation of a new political platform within the neoliberal market economy but apart from
conventional nonprofit organizations and cultural groups. Amid the increasing calls for
“corporate diversity” and “workplace equality” in the areas of gender, race, and sexuality by
international organizations such as the UN, a growing number of global firms have in the past
decade begun to implement LGBT-inclusive policies, programs, and projects (United Nations
2017). Singapore’s corporate environment, notwithstanding the government’s continued
criminalization of homosexuality, has been caught up in this global trend, in large part because
thousands of multinational companies (MNCs) have offices on the island, and their direct
93
investments and “foreign talents” (Chiu et al. 1998; Low 1998) form a crucial pillar of
Singapore’s neoliberal authoritarian system—a system that the government justifies with
reference to the country’s economic performance.
The consequences of this business trend for Singapore’s workplace environment have
been twofold. First, MNCs operating in the country retain a certain level of autonomy with
regard to their internal policies and activities, which may contradict the government’s official
stance on LGBT issues providing that they do not call into question the government’s legitimacy.
Second, the trend toward “corporate diversity” has left behind most small- and medium-sized
local businesses, which tend to be both less engaged in global business discourse and considered
less relevant to the maintenance of a ruling regime’s authority (Haque 2004). Under these latter,
“less global,” conditions, LGBT employees continue to suffer from rampant stigma and
discrimination and a lack of legal protections, not to mention from limited access to employment,
in the majority of local companies (Winter et al. 2018). It is in the contingent and limited space
of MNCs—space created by the contradictory nature of neoliberal authoritarianism—that the
diversity project has emerged in Singapore.
The emergence of corporate diversity activism
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, a number of large companies began to implement diversity and
inclusion policies and programs intended to address gender, race and ethnicity, disability, and
LGBT issues in the United States and the United Kingdom (Raeburn 2004). Since the 2000s,
these efforts have extended beyond the headquarters of an increasing number of MNCs to their
regional offices and subsidiaries around the world, including Singapore, and became a global
94
business initiative (United Nations 2017). The corporate promotion of diversity and inclusion is
part of a broader change in the economy toward the increasing visibility of “diverse”
populations, including LGBT individuals, in the workforce and the business world at large.
Among the interviewees, Scott, an American gay man in his mid-forties who led an
LGBT employee group at the regional headquarters of an American tech company in Singapore,
provided a particularly instructive managerial perspective on the rise of corporate diversity
initiatives in the US and its adoption in Singapore.
First, many large American companies had begun to offer such protections for their
LGBT employees as anti-discrimination policies and domestic partnership benefits, being ahead
of state or federal government agencies in doing so, in order to “retain the talent.” These
companies learned, through internal surveys and research, that the promotion of diversity and
inclusion could encourage “engagement and morale” among workers and hence increase their
productivity by allowing them to “be their authentic selves and bring [their] values” into the
workplace, as Scott described.
Second, he had observed throughout his career in the tech industry since the early 2000s
that the language of “diversity” became a kind of corporate strategy in many American firms’
efforts to garner more revenues. This was the time of the ascendancy of “LGBT decision
makers” in the American business world to top c-suite positions, individuals who could be
expected to be more willing to make business deals with companies that promoted LGBT-
inclusive policies and cultures than with those lacking in these respects.
Lastly, he explained, this corporate culture of diversity began to be adopted in the
regional and local offices of American firms overseas for similar business reasons as the revenue
structure of many corporations became increasingly global, with Asia numbering among the
95
fastest-growing markets (Hoang 2015). “It started in America,” Scott concluded, “and now it’s
all over the world—India, China, Japan, Australia… because diversity and inclusion has become
ingrained in the DNA of our company. It’s key to our culture—a business imperative in our
company’s success.”
Scott’s account of this larger change in the global business culture echoed the
experiences of many of my informants. However, new business norms such as corporate
diversity cannot be implemented successfully from the top down in the absence of internal
demands from the employees on the ground in particular local contexts. What has made this
global initiative possible—for it can be regarded as unfamiliar or even aberrant in the context of
Singapore’s corporate culture—has been the effort of LGBT employees to mobilize.
Adele, a European lesbian woman in her early forties, recalled that no LGBT employee
group had yet formed when she first arrived in Singapore in 2012 to work at an American tech
company. As she came to realize the difficulties involved with “put[ting] a word on LGBT” in an
environment in which corporate diversity was not yet a consideration, she started to work on the
issues of gender diversity and promoting a safe working space for women employees, including
lesbian women. By constantly educating the company’s human resources (HR) department and
leadership about such gender issues as sexual harassment, Adele seized the opportunity as the
language of “diversity started to become a big buzzword” in Singapore’s corporate world in the
following years. She proceeded to address “the other side of diversity,” that is, sexual orientation
and gender identity, and in 2015 established the company’s, and likely the country’s, first LGBT
employee resource group (ERG).
Following the lead of such norm-setters in the tech, media, finance, and energy industries
such as Google, Bloomberg, Barclays, and BP, a slow change has been taking place in the
96
cultures of a growing number of MNCs with operations in Singapore, and it appears to be
expanding into other industries and sectors. Chen, a Singaporean in his mid-thirties, had
launched an LGBT employee group in his British healthcare company in 2018. As a straight
married man, he said, he was not initially interested in or even cognizant of “any diversity issues
or discrimination” despite many years in the industry. The growing visibility of openly lesbian
and gay leaders within his company’s global and regional headquarters, whose stories he learned
about in the company magazines and newsletters, had changed his way of thinking. He had
started to see issues relating to “all of the various elements of diversity” across the company,
such as the underrepresentation of women and Asians in managerial positions and the rise of the
#MeToo movement. Further inspired by the stories of other companies organizing LGBT
employee groups, Chen volunteered to establish one at his firm.
According to the corporate diversity organizers and volunteers with whom I spoke, more
and more LGBT employees and allies in various MNCs, from Fortune 500 firms to startups, and,
to a lesser extent, in some local firms, have likewise begun organizing employee groups in their
workplaces. Thus, as of mid-2019, at least 50 LGBT employee groups appear to have been
officially established in Singapore, indicating the enlarging space of the diversity project.
As for the corporate diversity organizers, most of whom I met were employed at the
Singaporean subsidiaries or Asia-Pacific headquarters of large MNCs in the tech, media, finance,
and energy industries, though a few worked at local enterprises and startups—I note that their
diverse status in this regard again highlights the differential emergence of corporate diversity
activism in Singapore’s MNCs and local businesses. Despite varying degrees of professional
experience, rank, and seniority, the majority of my informants identified as part of the LGBT
community with most being gay men. Notably, there were also a handful of lesbian, bisexual,
97
and transgender women as well as some straight allies. The persistence of gender inequality at
work might have affected the uneven gender distribution in the leadership positions of employee
groups (Williams et al. 2014) as the already male-dominated business network might have
limited their presence.
In terms of race/ethnicity and citizenship, about a half of my informants were Chinese
Singaporeans, in addition to a few ethnic minority (i.e., Malay and Indian) Singaporeans. The
other half were expatriates holding work visas; however, their countries of origin were diverse,
and included Western countries (e.g., US, UK, France, and Australia) as well as neighboring
Asian countries (e.g., Taiwan, Vietnam, India, and the Philippines). The equal presence of
Singaporean nationals as well as expatriates in corporate diversity activism shows that the
diversity project is informed by Singapore’s neoliberal demand to retain not only “foreign
talents” but also local “desirable workforce.” At the same time, the pattern of participation shows
that the diversity project is not a temporary and transient effort enacted predominantly by non-
Singaporeans, but rather a sustained effort put forth by local Singaporeans.
“Within the walls of the firm”: The conditions of diversity project
The LGBT employee groups established in Singapore have not simply “benchmarked” and
imported the strategies and tactics of their global headquarters in Western liberal democracies.
According to sociologist Nicole Raeburn’s (2004) research, the “workplace movement” of
LGBT employees in the late-1990s and early-2000s was characterized by visibility politics
involving, for instance, coming out at work, publicizing identity-based stories and events, and
directly pressuring companies, to increase their presence and to make their policies and practices
98
more equitable. Such visibility politics is not feasible in authoritarian Singapore, as high
visibility could result in significant retaliation from the state. So instead, the Singaporean groups
have forged a distinctive mode of collective mobilization, which is the diversity project used in
the process of navigating the country’s neoliberal authoritarianism.
Andrew, an Asian-American gay professional in his early thirties had worked in the
Singapore branch of a global consulting firm for the past seven years. He explained the complex
considerations that corporations must make under these circumstances. Care needed to be taken,
in his view, when introducing global diversity initiatives, particularly in regions characterized by
a hostile legal environment for “diversity issues.” In the case of Singapore, where the legal and
political constraints on LGBT organizing have become entangled with the relative autonomy of
the neoliberal economy, Andrew said that many companies had taken what he called an
“embassy approach” to LGBT issues.
That is, they enjoyed immunities and privileges that were in some respects comparable to
those enjoyed by foreign embassies, asserting a certain degree of independence and “be[ing]
active within the walls of the firm” with regard to protecting their LGBT employees. However
this is the case provided that the Singaporean government does not perceive them a threat to its
legal and political legitimacy. Conversely, these companies tend to remain cautious about the
public image that they project “outside of the firm.” Another interviewee, Chris, a Singaporean
gay man in his early thirties who served as the “diversity ambassador” at a global tech company,
echoed Andrew’s sentiments regarding this distinction between actions “inside” and “outside” of
companies. “It [being gay] is still criminalized outside of the company, I mean in this country,”
he observed. “So yes, you can be yourself at work, but, once you step out of the office, you still
have to face the repercussions of being out.”
99
The sharpness of the boundary between corporations operating in Singapore and the rest
of Singaporean society manifests in the ambivalence of the country’s neoliberal authoritarianism,
and it has increased in recent years. An example of pushback from the government is provided
by the aforementioned annual LGBT-inclusive Pink Dot event, first celebrated in 2009, which
began to attract financial support from MNCs in 2011 and continued to rely heavily on this
source of funding until 2016. In June 2016, however, immediately following that year’s Pink
Dot—which attracted a record of 13 MNC sponsors, the Ministry of Home Affairs announced
that “foreign entities should not fund, support or influence” Pink Dot because to do so would be
to “interfere in our domestic issues, especially political issues or controversial social issues with
political overtones” (The Strait Times, June 7, 2016). The following October, the government
also amended the country’s Public Order Act to “ensure that only citizens of Singapore or
permanent residents of Singapore participate in the assembly or procession” in such public
gatherings, a move that further diminished direct corporate support for Pink Dot (The Strait
Times, May 30, 2017).
41
In 2016, several active LGBT employee groups were directed by various governmental
authorities, including the Monetary Authority of Singapore, to keep their activities “low-key”
under the threat that the employers of activists who failed to comply with this directive could
lose their business licenses. For Rahul, an Indian gay expatriate who led the LGBT employee
group of a global financial firm, the government’s message was clear: “Whatever you want to do
internally is totally okay, as long as you meet these criteria”—criteria that limit activities to the
41
The government’s retaliation against MNCs, however, had the unintended consequence of empowering local
businesses to engage in corporate diversity activism. Thus, since 2017, the fundraising campaign “Red Dot for Pink
Dot” has called on local companies to sponsor the event, and in 2018 and again in 2019 an LGBT-inclusive career
fair was held in connection with it during which at least half of the participating companies were local firms.
Notably, these local latecomers to corporate diversity activism were equally, if not more intensely, engaged in the
culture of quiet politics as they negotiated carefully with illiberal neoliberal forces.
100
firms’ physical locations and discussions to topics unrelated to Singapore’s domestic politics and
laws.
Even as the government has tightened legal restraints on the LGBT community, it has
continued to leave some room for MNCs’ in-house policies and practices and has refrained from
imposing sanctions and penalties, at least initially, because it recognizes the significance of
MNCs for the domestic economy. Steven, a British gay man who has long resided in Singapore
and served in the Diversity and Inclusion Committee of the British Chamber of Commerce
Singapore, reasoned that the government tolerated corporate diversity activism because “if they
want to attract foreign talents and expats who want a cosmopolitan life, you cannot restrict
everything.” The government’s regulatory framework for corporate engagement on LGBT issues
is thus consistent with corporations’ “embassy approach” to protecting and promoting LGBT
employees as well as with the turn by LGBT employee groups in Singapore toward the diversity
project.
“Playing it safe”: The social processes of diversity project
The prevalence of the diversity project in Singapore’s multinational corporations is reflected in
the three main tasks undertaken by LGBT employee groups, namely arranging events,
advocating for policies, and collaborating with community-based local LGBT groups.
First, one of the most common and crucial activities in which these groups engage is the
staging of educational sessions and cultural events intended to raise awareness of LGBT issues
within a company. The early stages of this form of organization usually involve casual meetings
in which interested employees explore potential needs and agendas among themselves before
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opening up the discussion to the corporate community at large. More established groups build
the capacity to run their own events on a regular basis, such as LGBT awareness and ally-
training workshops for LGBT as well as straight colleagues, often augmented by guest speakers
from local LGBT groups (past examples having included an LGBT counseling center, a
transgender shelter, and an HIV/AIDS advocacy group). Often, employee groups in similar
industries take turns holding networking events that promote information-sharing and raise
awareness.
In any case, these discussions have been conducted with increasing care under the
government’s watchful eye. This concern was voiced by Wei, an Asian gay expatriate who had
recently taken a position at the regional headquarters of an American healthcare firm in
Singapore, where he was preparing to launch an LGBT employee group. He emphasized that his
diversity-related work had to be “really for internal purposes” and could not include any “plan to
go out to drive our political agenda” and that he took pains to “make sure not to cause any legal
issues.” Similarly, Luis, another Asian gay professional in charge of the “pride team” at his
global consulting firm, noted that he had become “very careful” regarding how to manage the
content and tone of discussions that took place during his team’s events. He recalled that the
team had once canceled an inter-company networking event scheduled to discuss and express
support for Pink Dot, having “decided not even to mention Pink Dot in all of our activities” so as
to steer clear of “local political matters.”
Under these restrictions, corporate diversity organizers had developed ways of planning
and organizing events that involve, in Adele’s terms, “playing it a bit safe.” This caution
extended not only to the contents of discussions but also to the choice of location for activities.
“We’re always very careful when organizing events,” she noted. “We cannot organize public
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events. It’s always hosted by one of the MNCs on their premises. [Otherwise] we book a hotel or
public venue and then make it private.”
The LGBT-oriented corporate events that I observed were nearly all held in the offices of
one of the major MNCs in which LGBT employee groups have a strong presence. The
information for such an event, once cleared with respect to legal concerns, usually circulated on
the private email listservs of LGBT employee networks. Potential attendees were asked to submit
their names, titles, and company affiliations in advance in order to verify their identities. Often,
for the sake of security, the notices for these events specifically described them as “private” and
“not open to the members of the public.” At these events, the attendees, having registered in
advance, provide official ID to verify their identities once more before being issued a visitor’s
pass and allowed to enter the company’s premises. The rituals associated with passing through
the security gate to attend these events seemed to mark a symbolic transition from the “outside”
to the “inside,” alerting attendees to the fact that they had entered a realm governed by the rules
of the company (rather than those of the surrounding society), under which the protection and
promotion of LGBT rights were conditionally tolerated.
Second, LGBT employee groups in Singapore have been working diligently to improve
the rules that govern the internal workings of companies. Their demands have included anti-
discrimination policies with respect to sexual orientation and gender identity and employee
benefits for same-sex partners in the areas of medical insurance, sick and parental leave, and
relocation and housing. Instead of challenging and pressuring companies by “making noises,”
however, these groups have made their policy demands quietly, without taking center stage.
Especially important in this context is a group’s close coordination with a company’s
legal department so as to identify “legal grey areas” in which to implement LGBT-inclusive
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policies without overstepping any statutory or regulatory boundaries. Mei, a young Singaporean
bisexual woman who had co-founded the LGBT employee group at her American hospitality
company, proudly recalled: “Last year, our legal team and public policy team actually got
together and went through new regulations on Pink Dot to see what the grey areas were, so to
speak, and, you know, if they didn’t make it explicit, this is what we can do.” One such example
is negotiating equal benefits policies for same-sex couples who cannot offer legal “proof” of
relationships that the Singaporean government recognizes. Thus, Adele, in order to ensure that
same-sex partners at her company would receive these benefits, also built a close relationship
with her company’s legal and HR teams, turning to them for help in finding private insurance
providers and thereby sidestepping the legal uncertainties that characterize same-sex
relationships in Singapore.
Lastly, LGBT employee groups have reached out and collaborated with community-
based LGBT groups in Singapore, at first through shared platforms such as Pink Dot where
corporate-based and community-based groups can mingle, and also through local intermediaries
that share similar goals. Examples among my informants are Luis, who is an avid member of a
gay men’s choir, and Steven, a longtime member of an LGBT-inclusive church.
However, the tightening regulation of corporate engagement in recent years by the
government that culminated in the change of rules regarding Pink Dot has also resulted in the
reconfiguration of these collaborative efforts between corporate employee groups and
community-based LGBT groups, a point made by Rahul. For enthusiastic diversity organizers
like Mei, the newly imposed regulations represented both a challenge and a “turning point” for
her group, causing it to be even more careful about avoiding “sensitive issues.” Based on legal
advice from the company’s in-house lawyers, the group decided to frame its outreach activities
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as part of commonly accepted “corporate social responsibility” efforts, along with food bank
donations and volunteering to help the elderly. It also reaches out to volunteers of various local
groups, such as an LGBT counseling center and transgender shelters.
Moreover, while the employee groups based in MNCs cannot attend Pink Dot officially,
Mei’s group has had great success during the past few celebrations to still instill corporate
camaraderie by encouraging the wearing of group t-shirts specifically designed for the event but
without displaying any company logos. She ascertained this to be a strategy that did not rock the
boat because participation “in individual capacities” presented no legal concerns for Singaporean
citizens and permanent residents. Meanwhile, Adele’s group, in collaboration with other
employee groups, worked diligently with local bars and restaurants near the park where Pink Dot
has been held to celebrate the event without actually attending it. As she put it, “[Although] we
can’t go to Hong Lim Park, there’s something else we can do.”
The nature of the relationships between corporate-based employee groups and
community-based LGBT groups is especially apparent with respect to financial support. Now
that MNCs headquartered outside of Singapore can no longer sponsor Pink Dot, LGBT employee
groups have found legally acceptable ways to extend financial support to local LGBT groups.
This move is possible because regulations banning direct sponsorship specified “events held at
Speakers’ Corner” in Hong Lim Park in order to target Pink Dot and did not mention other
LGBT groups or events elsewhere, leaving open the “legal grey areas” described by Mei.
Hence, some employee groups continue to secure company funds, “in the spirit of
charity,” as Luis put it, which are then used to provide various community-based LGBT groups
with food, furniture, and other supplies. Other employee groups raised funds internally that were
then donated at fundraising events for local LGBT groups “in a personal capacity,” intentionally
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downplaying the company’s presence. In the words of Adele, “We don’t make too much noise
about it. Like, we wouldn’t publicize; we never ask them to display our logo.” One such event
was a fundraising gala for one of Singapore’s largest LGBT advocacy groups held in the summer
of 2017 at a luxurious downtown hotel. At the dinner, the dozens of tables were occupied
primarily by members of LGBT employee groups, who claimed to be participating “in a personal
capacity”—despite the fact that the bookings for the event were carefully (but unofficially)
arranged by the employee groups and the local group. This being the case, LGBT corporate
organizers walk a fine line between the limited autonomy enjoyed by MNCs and the
authoritarian state.
Diversity project goes local
In this section, I consider the reconstruction of the diversity project as they move from primarily
large multinational corporations to small- and medium-sized local enterprises in the face of the
authoritarian backlash.
The authoritarian backlash against the diversity project
LGBT organizations in authoritarian contexts tend to face a dilemma with respect to
“international” donations because of the widespread discourse to disparage LGBT rights as
foreign and contrary to national values (Long 2018; Moreau and Currier 2018).
42
Similarly,
42
Foreign funding for LGBT groups in Singapore, scholars have noted, is either inapplicable due to the nation’s
high-income status or less desirable because the association with foreignness can threaten the legitimacy and
survival of local LGBT groups (L. Chua 2012; Chua and Hildebrandt 2014; E. Ng 2018).
106
Singapore’s corporate diversity activism’s collective effort to support local LGBT-inclusive
event Pink Dot was called out as “foreign” and then banned by the government.
As I briefly discussed earlier, Pink Dot began to attract financial support from
multinational corporations in 2011 and continued to rely heavily on this funding until 2016,
43
the
year of which marked a record number of 13 multinational corporate sponsors including Google,
Facebook, JP Morgan, and Goldman Sachs. In June 2016, however, immediately following that
year’s Pink Dot, the Ministry of Home Affairs issued a warning on foreign funding at events
held at Hong Lim Park, which specifically targeted Pink Dot.
44
The Government’s general position has always been that foreign entities should not interfere in
our domestic issues, especially political issues or controversial social issues with political
overtones. These are political, social or moral choices for Singaporeans to decide for ourselves.
LGBT issues are one such example. This is why under the rules governing the use of the
Speaker’s Corner [at Hong Lim Park], for events like the Pink Dot, foreigners are not allowed to
organise or speak at the events, or participate in demonstrations.
45
The government-issued statement demarcates multinational corporations as “foreign
entities,” while LGBT issues as “controversial social issues with political overtones.”
Multinational corporate sponsorships for Pink Dot, in this sense, become an issue of foreign
interference in domestic affairs. In response to this new regulation that morally accuses Pink Dot
43
Taking into account the sponsorship tiers, the 13 multinational corporate sponsors appears to contribute to nearly
85% of the total raised amount S$222,000 (US$160,000) for Pink Dot 2016.
44
Yuen Sin, “MHA says foreign sponsors not allowed for Pink Dot, or other events, at Speakers' Corner.” The Strait
Times, Jun 7, 2016.
45
Ministry of Home Affairs, 2016. “MHA Statement on Foreign Sponsorships for Pink Dot 2016.”
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of reliance on foreign dollars, Pink Dot organizers issued a counter-statement defending the local
nature of the corporate sponsorship:
Pink Dot SG started off first and foremost as a platform on which values of inclusion and
diversity are celebrated, and over the years this has only strengthened with the growing support of
Singaporeans from all walks of life, including a significant portion of its corporate citizens. For
all the LGBT Singaporeans and their allies that this movement has striven to help give a voice to
and done its part to push the envelope in helping to create greater visibility of Singapore’s LGBT
community, we have done all we can to ensure Pink Dot SG stays within the law. Our Corporate
Sponsors that have supported us over the years are all registered and incorporated in Singapore.
We are fortunate to count among them admired household names, employers of choice for a
sizable portion of our workforce, inextricably linked with and fully a part of this beautiful fabric
we call home.
46
Pink Dot highlighted the legal and tax status of their corporate sponsors, all of which are
multinational firms’ subsidiaries “registered and incorporated in Singapore.” It also alludes that
Pink Dot’s reliance on “corporate citizens” would be warranted given the city-state’s own
relationship with the multinational corporations with “a sizable portion of workforce,” which are
“inextricably linked with and fully a part of” Singapore. Despite a flurry of criticisms regarding
the largely arbitrary definitions of what constitutes “foreign entity” and “foreign interference,”
and their potential political ramifications,
47
the government reiterated its position and put an end
to foreign corporate sponsorship in October 2016 unless they acquire a permit, which became
46
Pink Dot, 2016. “Pink Dot Statement on Corporate Sponsors.”
47
Chua Mui Hoong, “Grey areas in rule against 'foreign sponsorship' of Pink Dot.” The Strait Times, June 19, 2016.
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technically improbable.
48
At the same time, the government also amended the country’s Public
Order Act to “ensure that only citizens of Singapore or permanent residents of Singapore
participate in the assembly or procession” in public gatherings held in Hong Lim Park, a move
that further diminished direct corporate support for Pink Dot.
49
While foreign companies were dissuaded from sponsoring Pink Dot, the government left
room for “local” participation. The Minister of Home Affairs clarified that the government is
“drawing the line [between] Singaporeans and non-Singaporeans” and, in fact, “Singaporean
entities can support the event.”
50
Prompting the importance of local agency, the Minister also
noted in a media interview, “Why don’t we have confidence that our people can organise and
take part in civic activities?”
51
Seizing this contingent opportunity was an unanticipated influx of
local companies stepping up to pledge their support for Pink Dot. In March 2017, a fundraising
campaign named Red Dot for Pink Dot was initiated by a handful of local business leaders,
calling for “a more inclusive corporate Singapore.” Dubbing Singapore’s nickname “Red Dot” to
signal the local nature of it, the campaign emphasizes in its mission statement that “The annual
Pink Dot has always been an event organised by Singaporeans for Singaporeans,” and it
appreciates the opportunity to “fill the vacuum left by multinational sponsors” as local capital
(Red Dot for Pink Dot 2018).
48
Kok Xing Hui, “Local firms throw weight, dollars behind Pink Dot.” The Strait Times, Mar 26, 2017. In the
interview with the Strait Times, the Minister of Home Affairs clarified, “In general, if it related to controversial
social or political issues, which really are a matter for Singaporeans, then it is unlikely the foreigners will get a
permit.”
49
Kok Xing Hui, “Pink Dot rally to have barricades, security officers, as well as checks of bags and ID.” The Strait
Times, May 30, 2017.
50
Kok Xing Hui, “Draw the line between Singaporeans and non-Singaporeans participating in events that can rile up
opinions: K Shanmugam.” The Strait Times, October 21, 2016.
51
Kok Ling Hui. “Pink Dot gets 103 Singapore sponsors and $201,000 - surpassing targets.” The Strait Times, May
4, 2017.
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Helmed by the founder and CEO of a property start-up, and joined by other local business
leaders, entrepreneurs, and investors, the campaign has successfully brought together more than
100 Singaporean companies and businesses each year onboard as sponsors of Pink Dot since
2017. By “local” companies, it means companies incorporated or registered in Singapore, and are
majority owned and controlled by Singapore citizens.
52
They come from various industries,
spanning from retail to marketing firms, production companies to law firms, food and beverage
services to creative agencies. Compared to the multinational corporations (MNCs) which
previously donated to Pink Dot, these local businesses overall are much smaller in size of
employees, stock, and turnover, hence are typically called small and medium-sized enterprises
(SMEs). Although the average amount of donation is smaller due to the shallower pockets of the
local businesses,
53
the total amount of sponsorship has surpassed that of the multinational
sponsorship era. It is known that the campaign raised over S$240,000 (US$172,500) from 120
local sponsors in 2017 and broke the record in 2019 with over S$280,000 (US$201,300) from
118 sponsors.
54
Localizing corporate diversity
I find that the Red Dot for Pink Dot campaign not only shun foreign monetary support in
a reactive manner, but also proactively reconstruct the meaning of “corporate diversity” in
52
The campaign’s “Terms of Use” document details what constitutes a “Singaporean entity.” For companies, 1) it
must be incorporated in Singapore, where 2) more than 50% of the directors are Singapore citizens; and 3) more
than 50% of the shares are held by Singapore citizens or Singapore entities. For partnerships, 1) it must be registered
in Singapore, where 2) more than 50% of the partners must be Singapore citizens or Singapore entities (Red Dot for
Pink Dot 2019).
53
To draw local dollars, Pink Dot reorganized its sponsorship tiers based on the set amount of contribution from
S$7,000 (supporting sponsor) or S$15,000 (headlining sponsor) to S$1,000 (rose sponsor), S$5,000 (coral sponsor)
or $10,000 (fuchsia sponsor). The minimum raised amount is calculated according to this information.
54
These funds were used to defray the costs of the production of Pink Dot campaign videos and the rental of
logistical elements for the event such as lighting and sound systems, tentage, waste management, security personnel
and barricades.
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relation of the nation’s economic development and prosperity by promoting the economic
significance of the LGBT population. For instance, the official webpages of the fundraising
campaign as well as Pink Dot, along with some business news outlets, have publicized the
“testimonials” of the local business leaders and entrepreneurs on their support of Pink Dot. A
few sponsors note that their donation is neither an attempt “to earn more pink dollars” nor an
opportunity to “increase [their] LGBT customer base,” but a “humanitarian-based” action
because it is “the right thing to do” to support “fundamental human rights of all people to live
and love freely.”
55
In contrast, some donors explain their support in terms of its economic
significance:
As a social enterprise, supporting Red Dot for Pink Dot aligns with its corporate values of
providing equal access to services for all, and promoting inclusivity and diversity in its
programmes. (Founder of a wellness business)
56
[W]ithout the freedom to love, open dialogues about ideas and connections that spur change
cannot exist. This freedom is especially crucial to the LGBTQ community in Singapore which
has been instrumental in driving growth in the arts, design, culture and increasingly, business.
(Managing Director of a media agency)
57
In partnering with Pink Dot SG, we believe we are making a statement that diversity and
inclusion are important values to our company. Broadcasting our commitment to these values is
good for business. (Founder and Managing Director of a marketing firm)
58
55
“50 local firms throw their support behind Pink Dot SG,” March 27, 2017, Marketing Interactive.
56
Pink Dot, 2017. “Pink Dot 2017 Sponsors Fact Sheet.”
57
Pink Dot, 2017. “Pink Dot 2017 Sponsors Fact Sheet.”
58
Red Dot for Pink Dot, 2019. “Testimonials.”
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Owners and managers of small businesses and start-ups, particularly those in the new
economy such as IT, media, and service industries, tend to link Pink Dot’s advocacy-oriented
values of diversity, inclusion, and open-mindedness with the business values of equal and
diverse opportunities for customers to access their products and services and also for employees
to reach their full potential. Further, they extend this idea and offer an account that correlates
these values with an overall increase in innovation and creativity that would have a spillover
effect to various other industries—which resonates with the government’s conditional and
instrumental tolerance of sexual minorities in terms of their potential economic contribution
(Leong 2012). As succinctly summarized in one of the quotes above, the financial donation for
Pink Dot is considered not merely as “the right thing to do” but more importantly, to be “good
for business.” One step further, a number of testimonies claim that diversity, ultimately, is good
for the national economy:
We believe a society will thrive with tolerance and diversity. … Living in this little red dot, we
will not hesitate to return the flavour and render support to what we believe will contribute to a
better society. (Director of a retail company)
59
We strongly believe that diversity in every aspect fuels innovation, drives creativity and is
necessary for the progression of society, the economy and our country. (Director of Operations of
a marketing firm)
60
59
Pink Dot, 2017. “Pink Dot 2017 Sponsors Fact Sheet.”
60
Pink Dot, 2017. “Pink Dot 2017 Sponsors Fact Sheet.”
112
We firmly believe that this open-mindedness and inclusion can only better us as a nation.
(Founder and CEO of a property start-up)
61
Local business leaders account for their support of Pink Dot by highlighting their strong
belief that the economic contribution of values such as diversity, inclusion, and open-mindedness
would benefit not just their particular business or industry, but also the larger society and nation
at large. These values are embraced to be “necessary for the progression of society, the economy
and our country,” and would “better us as a nation.” In this economic account of diversity, Pink
Dot’s advocacy-oriented values are first translated into the language of the business world, and
then are reincarnated as the values representing the nation’s economy:
The backbone of our little red dot is our egalitarian ethos, our belief in meritocracy regardless of
colour, race and religion. … For me, any discrimination is a deviation from this ideal. If we as
Singaporeans, do not believe the pledge that has galvanised this country, then who are we? If we
as business leaders, do not practice meritocracy, then who are we? If we as a community do not
see past our differences and love our LGBTQ family and friends, then who are we? (Co-founder
and Principal of a consulting firm)
62
I believe our tiny nation can be a beacon of freedom and prosperity in our corner of the world.
Come to Singapore, where you can be your whole self, do your best work, be treated fairly in
spite of and because of who you are. Live in Singapore, where you can attain opportunities in
spite of and because of who you are. (Founder of a tech startup)
63
61
“Pink Dot 2018: 99.co’s Darius Cheung, e27, Wobe, Zopim, Quest Ventures Among Tech Founders & Investors
Supporting Sponsorship Drive.” 2018 April, Popspoken.
62
Red Dot for Pink Dot, 2019. “Testimonials.”
63
“Pink Dot 2018: 99.co’s Darius Cheung, e27, Wobe, Zopim, Quest Ventures Among Tech Founders & Investors
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In these statements, Singapore’s national values—often dubbed as “Asian values”—that
emphasize social harmony and communitarian development towards a prosperous country are
redefined as “egalitarian ethos” and “meritocracy.” In this narrative, it was through the power of
the egalitarianism and meritocracy that the resource-scarce “little red dot” could be able to pull
together human resources and build itself to become one of the wealthiest countries in the world.
Then it becomes imperative for Singaporeans (“we as Singaporeans”) to push these cultural
values forward to embrace the diversity of LGBT people, as much as the country believes in
multi-ethnic, multi-linguistic, and multi-religious diversity. It is suggested that the promotion of
diversity, then, is perfectly compatible with Singaporean values
64
as it fosters creative and
innovative business environments, which lead to the augmentation of national power for “a better
society” and “a better nation.” For the LGBT-supportive local business leaders and
entrepreneurs, diversity is repackaged as the new social fabric through which Singapore’s
economic future can be imagined—the future where the nation becomes “a beacon of freedom
and prosperity” which attracts and retains global talents to enhance the country’s global
economic competitiveness.
To summarize, the Red Dot for Pink Dot campaign creates and mobilizes a new discourse
of diversity in a way that speaks to potential donors—local business leaders and entrepreneurs—
as well as the government to ensure that it operates within the legal boundary, namely without
foreign influence, as well as within the respectable boundary of Singaporean values. By
Supporting Sponsorship Drive.” 2018 April, Popspoken.
64
About a week after Pink Dot 2017, the organizers asked people to take part in an official online survey to assess
the participants’ experiences. An entire section of the survey was about the shift of sponsorship from multinational
corporations to local companies. One survey question asks how much the participants agree with this statement,
which reflects the organizers’ own intention: “I believe that the support of our local sponsors this year is a statement
that diversity and inclusivity are Singaporean values.”
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highlighting the economic contribution of LGBT diversity and inclusion, it shapes the act of
donation for Pink Dot not simply as humanitarian aid, nor a cold-hearted economic investment
for the business’s benefit. Rather, it is envisioned as a patriotic action for the future of the nation,
imagining it to be “home for all,” as precisely captured in the statement of the campaign’s
founder:
I urge you, my fellow colleagues and friends in corporate Singapore, to be part of Pink Dot 2019.
We do this not for ourselves, but for our families, loved ones, friends and colleagues so that
inclusion and acceptance are core values which define Singapore, a #HomeForAll. (Founder of a
tech start-up)
65
The limits of diversity project
There are limitations to the diversity project, as with all forms of politics, starting with the fact
that distinctions relating to gender, race/ethnicity, and citizenship are implicated even in the
shaping of the corporate diversity activism intended to promote workplace equality. There were
fewer women, not only among the leaders of employee groups I spoke to, but also at the
corporate diversity events and activities I observed in general. The gendered participation
patterns seem to reflect gender inequality within the large MNCs in terms of access to leadership
positions and networking opportunities (Williams et al. 2014), as well as the gendered
implications—benefits and disadvantages— of getting involved in corporate diversity
organizing, which might discourage women’s advanced participation.
65
Red Dot for Pink Dot, 2019. “Testimonials.”
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Many interviewees also mentioned a gap in participation between locals and expatriates
when it comes to daily organizing efforts, a gap that they tended to attribute to the differential
burden of coming out and the persistent fear among locals of being unintentionally outed to their
families, friends, and future employers. One of the Singaporeans, Chen, noted that many of his
Singaporean colleagues were hesitant to join LGBT employee groups: “they’re afraid that if they
do [join LGBT employee groups], somehow, it [their sexual identities] will go back to their
family.” Regarding future employers, the Asian expatriate Andrew observed that Singaporean
nationals, unlike foreigners such as himself, were concerned that most local firms lacked
corporate diversity initiatives and support networks. Glancing cautiously around the café where
we spoke, he lowered his voice to add, “this is a small country.” The quiet political efforts of
corporate diversity offer potentially safe environments, Andrew said, “within the walls of the
firms,” yet the sense of safety that such efforts afford could vary significantly in terms of how
LGBT employees relate to Singaporean society outside those walls.
Corporate diversity activism has thus far mainly been practiced by transnational
corporate elites. According to Dien, a gay member of the LGBT employee group at a global tech
firm, Singapore’s corporate diversity activism is largely driven by highly educated, English-
speaking, gay- and lesbian-identified professionals who are “economically privileged enough to
get anything” thanks to their high incomes and fringe benefits, such as advanced healthcare, from
MNCs. From this critical perspective, corporate diversity policies and programs promoted by
LGBT organizers can seem to be little more than exercises in economic and cultural privilege
that come with the attainment of a particular employment status for a small elite group.
One possible implication of this kind of hierarchy for LGBT communities could be a
widening gap between those who, working at large, well-funded, and well-established MNCs,
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are considered part of the “desirable workforce” and those who do not belong to this workforce.
In neoliberal authoritarian environments, the safe confines of MNCs where LGBT corporate
organizers and other employees are able to enact the diversity project and promote inclusion and
workplace equality could function as physical and symbolic barriers to access rights and
recognition, or even imagining such access, for the rest of the LGBT community. There is, then,
a risk that the diversity project may lack or lose relevance for the LGBT community as a whole
in Singapore and, ultimately, constrain the contingent political possibilities as a new mode of
mobilization.
Conclusion
In this chapter, I have described the conditions and social processes of the diversity project,
through the case of corporate diversity activism, and found that LGBT activists strategized the
contradictions of neoliberal authoritarianism in the process of turning multinational corporations
into a battleground in their struggle for rights and recognition. Under the contradictory
combination of political authoritarianism and economic neoliberalism that prevails in Singapore,
LGBT activists have developed the diversity project. In corporations, outside the conventional
realm of social movements, LGBT activists have been seizing on globalizing initiatives relating
to “corporate diversity” and taking advantage of the limited autonomy of corporate policy and
practice under the repressive state and of legal grey areas that have remained open for advocacy
and organizing. In these ways, LGBT activists have mobilized covertly, thereby minimizing their
risk of legal entanglement with the authoritarian government. The diversity project of LGBT
117
employees in corporate Singapore have revealed the contradictions as well as potential ruptures
within the neoliberal authoritarian state.
Having been associated with transnational corporate elites, the diversity project has not
yet proved capable of advancing larger political agendas. These circumstances in effect reaffirm
the regulatory power of neoliberal authoritarianism to allow only certain subjects to pursue
certain rights and recognition in limited ways. It is also important to further evaluate whether
diversity projects are necessarily elitist forms of mobilization and whether they can be applied
outside the corporate world currently dominated by MNCs. The growing participation of small-
and medium-sized local businesses in corporate diversity activism and similar developments also
raise questions regarding whether diversity project is amenable to new contexts and whether the
notion of “corporate diversity” has significance outside the context of neoliberal
authoritarianism. Also unclear are the long-term prospects for diversity projects in terms of
advancing the politics of rights, recognition, and redistribution, both in corporations and the
broader society. It remains to be seen, for instance, whether the corporate-based efforts could
benefit or enhance ongoing local struggles including efforts to repeal Section 377A of
Singapore’s Penal Code.
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Chapter 4. Moralizing Solidarity: The Anti-discrimination
Movement in Postwar South Korea
“There is no later, we make change right now!”
In November 2016, hundreds of thousands gathered for a candlelight vigil at the Gwanghwamun
Plaza at the center of Seoul, South Korea, in an effort to pressure then-president Park Geun-hye
to resign. Accusations of systemic misuse of power and corruption had mobilized a massive non-
violent resistance effort against Park across the peninsula. This went on for several months and
reached a peak of some two million protesters in March 2017. A number of rainbow flags were
clearly visible in the crowds. Hundreds of members of Rainbow Action (mujigae haengdong), a
nation-wide coalition of Korean LGBT groups, marched to ensure that their voices were heard
amid the anti-government movement, waving gigantic rainbow flags high in the air, with those in
the front line holding six human-sized signs, each with one of the colors of the rainbow that read
in Korean “Resign Park Geun-hye (Pakkŭnhye t’oejinhae).” The image of the catchphrase of the
anti-government movement protests painted in rainbow colors soon emerged as a powerful
symbol of the LGBT community’s contribution to the new democracy movement. In the words
of one of the hand-held signs spotted amid the protesters, “queers are changing the country.” At
one of these weekly anti-government rallies, held in February 2017, a representative of Rainbow
Action, invited to address a crowd of nearly a million, declared:
The democracy of Republic of Korea, which will be rewritten in this plaza, can only be realized
when we finally begin to listen to and raise our voices in solidarity with other minorities seeking
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their rights. We, sexual minorities, will also fight to keep talking about our rights in our daily
lives even after Park’s resignation until true democracy comes.
In March 2017, Park was finally ousted and arrested. For the millions whose participation
in the protracted protests had revealed their aspirations for what they considered true democracy,
including members of the LGBT community. However, Park’s departure was not a final verdict
but rather a first step forward to a new democratic vision for the nation.
This new vision was debated during the election of Park’s replacement. At a public forum
titled “Reconstructing the Republic of Korea” held in mid-February 2017, the leading candidate
Moon Jae-in was confronted by a group of LGBT activists as he was preparing to deliver a
“gender equality policy draft,” that lacks any consideration of gender and sexual minorities, for
the new democratic government. At one point, a lesbian activist called out to him, “I am a
woman and also a lesbian. Is it possible to divide my human rights in half? Is it possible to split
my equality in half?” Her question fiercely penetrated the hall as it fundamentally challenged the
systemic disappearance of the LGBT agenda in the new government’s plan to address equality
and human rights “for all.” Moon kept silent and maintained a stern expression while his
bodyguards tried to eject her from the meeting. When she continued to exclaim, “Answer my
question as a frontrunner, why can’t we include sexual minorities in the policy of gender
equality?” Moon broke his silence to reply in measured tones that she would have time to speak
later, and his followers, who filled the hall, began chanting in unison “Later! Later! Later!”
However, “later (najunge)” did not come that day or afterwards.
A few months afterwards, in a televised presidential debate, Moon—who in the 1980s
had established himself to be a respected human rights lawyer—was asked by his opponent for
his opinion on the subject of LGBT rights. He stated clearly and without hesitation, “I oppose
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homosexuality.” It was evident that LGBT people, despite their participation in the anti-
government movement and efforts to envision a new democracy, were not invited to participate
in the discussion of the nation’s democratic future. As such, LGBT rights as well as other
minority rights, which were repeatedly demanded in the Gwanghwamun Plaza for months, were
barely addressed in the newly-launched Moon Jae-in administration. In its five-year-term
roadmap and top 100 national tasks detailed action plans for a series of political and economic
reforms to establish “the realization of candlelight democracy,” “an inclusive welfare state
enjoyed by all citizens,” and “the Korean peninsula of peace and prosperity” to achieve
reconciliation and cooperation between the two Koreas (Government of the Republic of Korea
2017), LGBT rights were absent. In general, there had been no room for considering the human
rights of marginalized groups in the vision of self-acclaimed “candlelight democratic
administration.”
As a response, in March 2017, LGBT groups aligned with about a hundred civil society
and social movement groups to re-launch Solidarity for Anti-discrimination Legislation. They
began a nation-wide campaign for an anti-discrimination movement as a way to achieve equality
and human rights. The campaign statement, released in September 2017 to mark the first
anniversary of the candlelight protest, wrote:
The first anniversary of the candlelight revolution is coming. The citizens’ rage to hold candles in
the plaza during the cold winter aimed not merely the resignation of Park administration. It was a
stern call to build a country where everyone’s human rights and dignity are respected and new
democracy is realized in opposition to social inequality. Many disenfranchised and marginalized
people, as citizens, also held candles with expectations and hopes. And now, many citizens agree
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that one’s discrimination is linked to another, and that the anti-discrimination law will change the
world for us living in the system of discrimination.
The statement ends, “In the face of [the politics of] “later” that symbolizes the deep-
seated discrimination in the Korean society, we shout out “right now.”” Ever since what Korean
activists call “the incident of later,” the juxtaposition of the two temporal phrases—“later” and
“right now”— has constantly surfaced during various LGBT-related protests and gatherings, and
widely adopted beyond LGBT issues, connecting LGBT movements and various other social
movements.
66
As much as the LGBT-originated slogan “There is no later, [we make change]
right now! (najungŭn ŏpta, chigŭm tangjang!)” has become a new symbol of progressive social
movement and its pursuit of social change, the LGBT movement has also moved to the frontline
of the political and social struggles in South Korea in opposition to any form of discrimination
against marginalized groups by building and expanding “solidarity” for equality, dignity, and
human rights.
The solidarity project
In this chapter, I document the emergence of what I call a solidarity project in South Korea’s
LGBT movement. By solidarity project, I mean the specific form of rights project that
emphasizes solidarity among various marginalized groups, including LGBT people, and claim
the rights, dignity, and equality of LGBT people as part of a package of broader social and
66
For instance, Seoul Queer Culture Festival (also known as Seoul Pride) adopted “There is no later, we make change
right now!” as its slogan for 2017. In the past several years, similar slogans have been widely used in labor movements,
women’s movements, migrant rights movements, disability movements, and environmental movements across various
protests and in statements.
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political reforms regarding human rights, democracy, and social justice. Actors involved in the
solidarity project focuses less on narrowly-defined LGBT-specific agendas (such as same-sex
marriage, which aims at the inclusion of “sexual orientation” and/or “gender identity” in existing
laws and policies) but instead they focus on more expansive political agendas for broader and
more inclusive category of minority groups that include workers, women, migrants, and people
with disabilities. They give priority to anti-discrimination legislation. In making the rights claim
for the solidarity project, actors mobilize the language of “solidarity (yŏndae)” and highlight the
similar structural positions of different minority groups and the necessity of connected struggles.
Despite its aim to achieve legal change, the emphasis goes to the process of building solidarity
across different groups and recognizing each other (rather than asking the state to recognize
them) as deserving members of the society with rights and dignity.
What substantializes this rights claim is their keen dedication on coalition-building and
what I call solidarity work. In order to situate the struggles of LGBT people in relation to other
minority groups—such as irregular workers, harassed women, migrant workers, and people with
disabilities— one of the main everyday tasks of a solidarity project becomes coalition-building.
This is why, in South Korea, rainbow flags—which symbolizes the presence and participation of
LGBT groups— can be found in various sites of social and political struggles, including the
aforementioned candlelight protests, as well as labor strikes, and protests and campaigns of
various minority groups. In other words, the legitimacy of a solidarity project comes from its
moral commitment to other connected struggles, which is believed to be returned by reciprocal
moral commitments from other civil society and social movement groups. Often, the boundary of
this solidarity project can be extended to include grassroots groups in other countries,
particularly those in neighboring Asian societies. However, the project strictly controls its
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boundary not to associate itself with the state, corporations, and even international organizations
as they can threaten LGBT movement’s moral legitimacy that are firmly rooted in the
relationship with other progressive movement groups.
The moral foundation of a solidarity project, I argue, resulted from the South Korean
state’s prolonged silence on LGBT rights. As I will discuss in detail, state officials and
policymakers in South Korea, regardless of political orientation— including liberals and
conservatives alike— have governed the newly mobilized LGBT people by not assigning proper
legal categories, in other words, through the technique of what I call legal absence. The recent
two decades of the legal, administrative, and political disputes between different state institutions
and LGBT groups show that the legal absence of LGBT as a meaningful category has served as
an effective governing strategy of what I term the silent state to keep LGBT people politically
and socially invisible. The state particularly uses the geopolitical situation of the nation in order
to excuse its silence and willful ignorance of LGBT rights, despite the growing demand both
from the international society and domestic civil society. The South Korean state constantly
justifies its continuous silence and delay in responding to LGBT groups’ rights-claiming efforts
by prioritizing the unending Korean war, the ongoing national security threat from North Korea,
and the potential political turmoil this conflict raises. Similarly, rapidly growing anti-LGBT
conservative groups frame LGBT rights in association with the North Korean security threat,
disparaging LGBT people as “pro-North Korean homosexuals.”
This chapter examines how the LGBT movement in this particular global-regional-local
context navigates the political conundrum of the silent state and the specter of North Korea, and
describes how it arrived at the solidarity project as the master framework to articulate and
practice their rights. I show that solidarity is neither an organic pursuit nor a natural outcome of
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an LGBT movement. Instead, solidarity is pursued and achieved through the deliberate and
relentless works of LGBT activists to make their voices heard in a political context where their
very existence can easily be erased and their demands be postponed. The solidarity project, as
much as the equality project (Chapter 2) or the diversity project (Chapter 3), exemplifies the
context-specific resilience of LGBT activism and illustrates the expansive direction of an LGBT
movement. However, I also demonstrate that the moral nature of solidarity project bears its own
limits, which offers us further insights on the issues of moral boundaries, consensus and dissent
within the coalition, the distance between progressive activism and “the community,” and
activist burnout.
Legal absence and the silent state
In this section, I show how the South Korean state has made deliberate and systemic efforts to
keep the newly mobilized group of LGBT people politically and socially invisible. Despite its
global status as an advanced economy, a young and vibrant democracy, and a rising “soft
power,” the Korean state has maintained a two-faced human rights regime: it promotes itself as a
regional, if not global, leader of human rights at the international level while keeping silent on
any meaningful discussion of LGBT issues at the domestic level. The legal absence of LGBT
issues, meaning the near absence of any definition or discussion of “sexual orientation,” “gender
identity,” or related categories such as “homosexuality,” “transgender,” or “sexual minorities” in
the legal system, creates a fertile ground to keep the state’s willful silence. The state usually
responds to the rights-claims of the LGBT movement by not responding, letting LGBT groups
wait for an uncertain period of time, and leaving the issue constantly pending, while not taking
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any concrete steps. The state has used a variety of rhetoric to delay and ignore the demands of
LGBT people: “You must wait,” “We’re working on it,” and “Let’s discuss it later.”
My point is that these are not merely empty rhetoric (Hafner-Burton and Tsutsui 2005),
nor are they indicative of the state’s failure or incompetence (Cole 2015). Rather, the inaction of
the state itself is a powerful action and a carefully calibrated commitment to govern gender and
sexual minorities and their increasing voices. The ambiguity of legal absence, which neither
protects nor discriminates against gender and sexual minorities, put the lives of them in limbo. It
erases LGBT people in civil and criminal law, social welfare, and other economic and social
policies. In effect, it minimizes not only the social presence but also the political capacity of the
LGBT movement. Under the silent state, it becomes easier for members of the LGBT community
to conform to the state-sanctioned silence and live in silence, so long as their lives do not usually
face extreme forms of violence, such as “honor killing,” corrective rape, or murder against
transgender and gender non-conforming people. Due to the rampant but subtle nature of the
state’s willful ignorance, LGBT activism faces difficulty in providing strong evidences of pain,
agony, or discrimination (i.e. “human rights violations”) and to convince and mobilize the very
group of people they hope to represent, which makes the condition for the emergence of a
solidarity project.
South Korea’s globalization and its paradox
South Korea has been exposed to the global expansion of LGBT rights norms within the
context of larger trends in cultural and economic globalization and the rise of international actors
such as the UN with its specialized agencies and international NGOs. South Korea’s democratic
transition in 1987 marked the beginning of a period of rapid economic and cultural globalization
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and new opportunities for civil society and social movements. The first Korean LGBT
organization, Ch’odonghoe, was formed in 1993, which soon split into the gay men’s group,
Chingusai (Between Friends), and the lesbian’s group, Kirikiri (Among Ourselves), in 1994.
Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, various community-based LGBT (mostly lesbians and gays)
groups were created and a few of them later developed into key LGBT rights organizations such
as Tongillyŏn (Solidarity for LGBT Human Rights of Korea; which since changed its name to
Haengsŏngin), first established in 1997, and the Korean Sexual Minority Culture and Rights
Center (KSCRC) in 2003 (Bong 2008; Seo 2000).
67
In the midst of the democratic consolidation of the two liberal administrations (Kim Dae-
jung and Roh Moo-hyun administrations) that held office from 1998 to 2007, the Korean
government gestured toward the international community with institutional commitments and
national campaigns to adhere to global human rights norms (Koo et al. 2012). As a result,
numerous human rights policy measures were adopted, a prime example being the establishment
of the National Human Rights Commission of Korea (NHRCK) in 2001, under the liberal Kim
Dae-jung administration. As an independent governmental body, it was launched for the
protection and promotion of all kinds of human rights issues by conducting research towards the
assessment of the human rights afforded minority groups, including LGBT people, developing
human rights policies, and making recommendations to the relevant government branches (Koo
et al. 2012).
These state efforts to promote global human rights norms were significantly reconfigured
under the conservative regimes that held power from 2008 to 2017. A number of government
institutions and programs established by the preceding liberal administrations, including the
67
During this time, the first Korean queer film festival was held in 1997 and the inaugural Korean Queer Culture
Festival also took place in 2000 (Bong 2008).
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National Human Rights Commission and the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, were
downsized or even dismantled under the Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye governments
(Doucette and Koo 2016). The conservative political regimes used various illiberal tactics to
consolidate its power, ranging from violent crackdowns on protests to blacklisting dissenting
voices (Doucette and Koo 2016; Lee 2015). The systemic challenges against various civil society
and social movement groups, including LGBT organizations, had intensified until Park’s
resignation and the establishment of the new liberal government of Moon Jae-in in 2017.
Despite these changes in the past two decades, the South Korean government, regardless
of the political party in power, has been surprisingly consistent in the management of LGBT
issues. At the international level, the government has become increasingly integrated into the
world society and committed to global human rights norms, often with respect to LGBT issues. It
has developed various institutions and mechanisms for adopting and implementing global human
rights norms, and branded itself as a regional leader in global human rights, even during the two
conservative governments (Schwak 2016). For instance, the Korean government consistently
voted in favor of LGBT-supportive measures at the UN General Assembly while granting
refugee status to LGBT asylum seekers from countries where homosexuality is persecuted
(Human Rights Network for Minority Refugees in Korea 2017), during the conservative Lee and
Park administrations. What has also been vehemently consistent was the state’s near complete
silence on LGBT issues and default rejection of the demands of LGBT groups, creating a two-
faced human rights regime.
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Legal absence
The state’s willful silence on LGBT issues has been evident in numerous cases of legal,
administrative, and political disputes between different state institutions and LGBT groups in the
recent two decades.
Most importantly, there are no relevant legal categories in existence for gender and
sexual minorities in the areas of civil and criminal law, social welfare, and other economic and
social policies. The criminal and civil law, for instance, neither includes any definition or
discussion of “sexual orientation (sŏngjŏk chihyang),” “gender identity (sŏngbyŏl
chŏngch’esŏng),” or “gender expression (sŏngbyŏl p’yohyŏn)” nor does it have identity-based
categories such as “homosexual (tongsŏngaeja),” “gay (kei),” “lesbian (rejŭbiŏn),” “transgender
(t’ŭraensŭjendŏ),” “sexual minorities (sŏngsosuja),” or “LGBT” nor behavioral categories like
“homosexuality (tongsŏngae)” or “transsexuality.” The lack of official definition is also reflected
in the Standard Korean Language Dictionary (equivalent to Oxford English Dictionary),
published by the government-run National Institute of Korean Language. The dictionary does not
include the aforementioned words, which consequently makes gender and sexual minorities an
“undefined group.”
68
For sure, no national surveys or studies include the items of sexual
orientation or gender identity in their questionnaire, making it impossible to estimate the size and
demographic characteristics of the LGBT population.
69
Even the Korean Disease Control and
Prevention Agency (equivalent to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), which
68
Even one year after the recommendation from the Ministry of Justice’s National Action Plan on human rights, this
concern was not addressed (Newsis, Oct 9, 2019).
69
Instead, LGBT organizations themselves managed to collaborate with legal and medical experts to conduct various
community-based surveys and interview-based reports to prove the experiences of LGBT people (Chingusai 2014; Hong
et al. 2016; 2020; Jang et al. 2014; S. Kim et al. 2018; KNP+ 2017; Na et al. 2016).
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manages HIV/AIDS transmission and prevention, and healthcare of people living with HIV, does
not officially collect data regarding the patient’s sexual orientation (Na et al. 2016).
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As Korean queer scholar-activist Tari Na (2014) noted, the legal system of South Korea
is fundamentally rooted in the heteronormative family structure as well as binary gender norms,
which does not allow much room for the legal recognition of non-heterosexual and gender non-
conforming individuals. As briefly introduced in the earlier vignette, “gender” in the “gender
equality” laws and policies strictly mean binary sex, therefore it is not inclusive of gender and
sexual minorities. For instance, in 2015, the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family of Korea
declared that it would exclude sexual minorities from gender equality policies, noting that
“gender equality” is only about the elimination of disparity between women and men. Following
the order of the Ministry, Daejeon metropolitan city government had to amend the provisions for
the human rights protection in the city’s ordinance on gender equality and deleted the items
regarding “sexual minorities.”
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The manifestation of legal absence becomes even more prominent in the cases of
transgender, intersex, and non-binary individuals. For instance, every Korean adult aged over 17
are issued a national identification card that contains a unique “resident registration number,” the
first digit followed by the citizen’s date of birth indicates one’s sex in binary terms—either 1
(male) or 2 (female). The use of the resident registration number and national identity card is
ubiquitous in Korean political, social, and cultural life, and is necessary for financial
transactions, job applications, and access to any government resources. Most transgender,
70
Hence, the title of the first report on the experiences of discrimination based on HIV/AIDS status, conducted by a
Korean community group for people living with HIV/AIDS, was “Unknown Lives.” (KNP+ 2017)
71
In response, LBTI women activists held a rally to protest the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family. Citing the well-
known speech of Sojourner Truth, the activists stated: “We are LGBI women. … Without the rights of sexual
minorities, there is no gender equality. We ask: Who is the “woman” the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family speaks
of? What is gender discrimination? What is gender equality? Aren’t we women?”
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intersex and gender non-binary individuals do not have alternative options for choosing their
own self-identified gender, leaving them trapped in the “wrong number.” Transgender
individuals can apply for a legal sex change, based on an administrative guideline first set in
2006 (Trans Roadmap 2013).
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This requires one to go through a compulsory and complicated
documentation process, and the outcome, due to the lack of legal standards, is entirely dependent
upon the individual judge’s personal views. As a result, few transgender individuals attempt to
apply for a sex change, many of which are eventually dismissed (Chingusai 2014).
The absence of evidence
What are the effects of the state’s legal absence and willful silence on the lives of LGBT
people and LGBT movements? Korean epidemiologist Seung-sup Kim, an ally of the LGBT
movement, criticized the government’s lack of legal protection for sexual minorities in a
newspaper opinion piece (Kyunghyang Shinmun, November 25, 2019) It was a direct response
to the National Human Rights Commission’s dismissal of LGBT groups’ petition against a
politician’s hate speech against sexual minorities (“homosexuality is more harmful than
cigarettes”), which reasoned that “it is hard to conclude that such [hateful] remarks or election
pledges have caused concrete damage [against sexual minorities].” Dr. Kim condemned the logic
advanced by the National Human Rights Commission, and by extension, the government for
misinterpreting an “absence of evidence” for an “evidence of absence” of discrimination. Given
that the Korean government neither conducts any systematic survey or research on the
72
In South Korea, legal sex change is managed in the courts based on “The Guidelines for the Handling of Petition for
Legal Sex Change Permit of Transgender People” in Article 435 of the Supreme Court Family Relation Registration
Regulation. The guideline requires applicants to submit a psychiatric diagnosis of gender identity disorder, an evidence of
the removal of reproductive capacity and gender affirming surgery, and a consent from parents (H. Lee et al. 2018). Few
transgender individuals manage to go through legal sex change because of the high cost of gender affirming surgery and
hormone therapy, the lack of gender transition-related healthcare, and the lack of proper information (Chingusai 2014,
26).
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discrimination of gender and sexual minorities, nor includes sexual orientation or gender identity
in any national surveys on the general population, it is rather the state’s “absence of will” that
creates the “absence of evidence” of discrimination.
Indeed, various community-based survey and research projects, conducted by LGBT
organizations and allied experts, have shown that discrimination against LGBT people is
pervasive and widespread across schools, workplaces, healthcare system, and in public and
digital spaces (Chingusai 2014; Hong et al. 2016; 2020; Jang et al. 2014; S. Kim et al. 2018; Na
et al. 2016). One such space is the military. Korean male citizens between the ages of 18 and 28
are subject to perform eighteen to twenty-two months of compulsory military service. Due to the
gender-specific obligation, transgender and gender non-conforming individuals—especially
those whose assigned sex at birth is “male”— face severe challenges to complete the mandatory
conscription. Trans women on the one hand must undergo expensive gender affirming surgery to
be exempted from serving their military duty as a “man”; trans men who are willing to serve, on
the other hand, are often considered to be “disabled” and thus unfit for military service (Hong et
al. 2020; Na 2014; Yi and Gitzen 2018).
Despite these numerous empirical evidences of discrimination, the government dismisses
their existence, which is another key aspect of the silent state. In the silent state where gender
and sexual minorities are missing in law and policy, the only exception is its military law. While
there is no law regarding same-sex sexual activity between civilians in South Korea, Article 92-6
of the Military Criminal Act punishes sexual activity between men with up to two years in prison
(Bong 2008; Na 2014).
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Even in this obvious context of discrimination against sexual
73
The constitutionality of Article 92-6 has been contested several times in court, but its constitutionality has continued
to be upheld, the most recent ruling of which was in 2011 (Network for the Human Rights of Sexual Minorities in the
Military 2014).
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minorities, the state has taken no account of the institutionalized discrimination, systematic
disadvantages, and everyday violence that gender and sexual minorities experience inside the
military. An extreme case occurred in 2006 when a gay soldier in the Korean Army was “outed”
against his will by senior officers, who later required him to “submit images or videos showing
his sexual acts with other men” as “hard evidence of his homosexuality” to authorize his
dishonorable discharge (NHRCK 2006, 262-278). Likewise, a trans man who attempted a legal
sex change was asked by the judge to submit “two pictures that can visually identify external
genitalia” to proceed with his case. Despite his submission of a doctor’s note to confirm his
hysterectomy (a surgical operation to remove the uterus) to the court, the judge denied the
application without any specific reason. These two cases reveal how the state not only
systemically erases gender and sexual minorities from the legal system but also does not have
“the will to knowledge” (Foucault 1976).
The state’s decades-long persistence towards the legal absence of LGBT has led gender
and sexual minorities to remain silent. Recognizing the lack of proper legal framework, not to
mention protection, most LGBT individuals neither take issues with and publicize cases of
institutionalized and everyday discrimination nor do they seek legal or institutionalized redress.
According to the comprehensive community-based survey conducted by an LGBT organization,
only about 5% of those who experienced violence or discrimination from family, workplace, and
public institutions (n = 1,312) had reported them to the police or NGOs. It was mainly due to the
fear of disclosing one’s sexual orientation and gender identity and the perception that “nothing
would change even if I reported.” (Chingusai 2014, 31-32) Likewise, of the total 2,371 cases of
discrimination complaints reported to the National Human Rights Commission in 2017, only 12
cases were based on sexual orientation (NHRCK 2018, 99). Similarly, sexual harassment and
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violence between same-sex individuals are usually unreported; suicides of LGBT youths and
transgender and gender non-conforming people are hushed and covered up by family and
schools. Even when publicized or reported, as in the cases noted earlier, they are usually
downplayed or dismissed.
The specter of North Korea
In this section, I suggest that the South Korean state’s legal absence and willful ignorance have
been maintained, justified, and excused by the nation’s geopolitical condition, namely, the
unending Korean war between two Koreas. While liberal politicians prioritize national
reunification as the nation and citizens’ ultimate goal and use it to trivialize issues of human
rights, conservative politicians and anti-LGBT groups are concerned with the national security
threat from North Korea, and accuse LGBT movement of being “pro-North Korea,” and thereby
a threat to the national security and moral order. Both ideological sides sensationalize and make
use of the geopolitical status of the national division for their own political benefits, and in
effect, marginalize other agendas from the present and prospect of the nation’s democracy. In
other words, North Korea serves as a specter that constantly haunts the political sphere of the
post-Cold War South Korea, where its political elites hide behind and appropriate the specter to
silence the voice and existence of the marginalized such as sexual minorities. I illustrate two
manifestations of the specter of North Korea in the public discussion—or lack thereof—of
LGBT rights in South Korea, represented by the two major political camps: the liberals and the
conservatives.
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The liberal politics of postponement
South Korea’s liberal political party, currently represented by the ruling Democratic Party
of Korea (as of 2021), inherits the legacy of liberalism and democracy movement against
repressive authoritarianism. Its political leadership mainly consists of so-called “the 386
generation,” those born in the 1960s who were politically active as young adults throughout the
1980s (N. Lee 2011). As radical college students and “intellectuals” of the era, when South
Korea was experiencing a rapid socioeconomic growth amid a dictatorship, they were actively
involved in the democracy movement and developed anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist (i.e., anti-
American), and progressive nationalist (i.e., reunification-oriented) perspectives on democracy.
As they played a pivotal role in the democratic transition of the nation in 1987, many members
of the 386 generation have become the most powerful demographic group in South Korea’s
politics, economy, and society since the 1990s; some of the 386 generation members have
become a political force and took leadership in the Democratic Party. They supported the first
liberal government of Kim Dae-jung (1998-2003) and the following Roh Moo-hyun
administration (2003-2008), as well as the Moon Jae-in administration currently in power (2017-
present), serving in key governmental posts.
During the 1980s, many members of the 386 generation as well as their predecessors
paved the way for a new wave of social movements with labor movements, the peasant
movement, anti-American movements, and reunification movements. For example, both
president Moon Jae-in and the former third-term mayor of Seoul, Park Won-soon were renowned
human rights lawyers defending victims of political persecution. They nurtured the political
space for the young 386 generation. Some of the archetypical figures of the 386 generation
include Rhyu Si-min, the former Minister of Health and Welfare during Roh’s presidency, and
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Cho Kuk, the former Minister of Justice under Moon administration; both had been arrested and
detained due to their underground student activism against dictatorships. Given these political
backgrounds, it was not surprising that the newly emerged LGBT movement expressed some
hope and expectation they would break the state’s willful silence on LGBT rights upon these
liberal politicians taking leading positions in the central and local governments.
It did not take long, however, for LGBT activists to realize that the rights of gender and
sexual minorities are not to be included in these liberal elites’ vision for “democracy.” As a
precursor, in 2002, Rhyu Si-min, before his election as an assembly member, accused feminists
who raised issues on a series of sexual violence cases in a political party (later integrated into the
Democratic Party) he was leading, and said, “A tidal wave is coming and you’re digging clams.”
(Ilda, June 10, 2003). In this powerful political mockery, the efforts to bring justice to victims of
sexual violence was trivialized as nothing but “digging clams” that ignore the arrival of “a tidal
wave,” which signifies the urgent and utmost important challenges of political reform,
democracy, and reunification. This symbolic binary between a tidal wave and clam digging
regurgitated the prevalent underestimation of women’s participation and contribution within the
democracy movement of the 1980s and the subjugation of women’s rights for the sake of what
the male political leaders believed as “larger political causes” (Louis 1995; Nam 2000). The
prioritization of “larger political causes” (i.e., democracy and reunification) over “trivial” issues
(e.g., women’s rights and minority rights) has remained intact, if not more prominent, in South
Korean liberal politics. Thus, Moon Jae-in administration’s “politics of postponement” (Han
2021), epitomized in the earlier vignette (“later” that never comes), simply reiterates this deep-
seated liberal logic of the hierarchy between political causes.
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This has become repeatedly pronounced in the debate over the legislation of a
comprehensive anti-discrimination law that would prohibit all forms of discrimination based on
any grounds. First pledged as part of Roh Moo-hyun administration’s national agenda, a draft bill
of the comprehensive anti-discrimination law (pogwaljeok chabyeolgeumjibeop) was proposed in
2007, nearing the end of Roh’s term. Facing fierce opposition from conservative groups, the
liberal government removed several “contested” grounds of discrimination, including sexual
orientation, from the bill and presented it to the National Assembly. The bill expired in 2008
without coming to vote. Despite several other attempts that followed, a comprehensive anti-
discrimination bill has never had an opportunity to be voted on in the parliament since then (Kim
and Hong 2021).
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Similar instances of erasure of “sexual orientation” or withdrawal of human
rights laws and policies that include “sexual orientation” have been repeated under the leadership
of liberal politicians. In 2014, for instance, then-mayor of Seoul Park Won-soon, a former human
rights lawyer and self-acclaimed ally of women and minorities, reversed his own election pledge
and rejected the promulgation of the Seoul City Charter of Human Rights, which included sexual
orientation and gender identity as prohibited grounds for discrimination. He defended his
decision that the inclusion of sexual orientation and gender identity in the Seoul Charter “did not
reach a unanimous civic agreement” (Rainbow Action 2015). In 2018, the Ministry of Justice
deleted “sexual minorities” items from the list of “social minorities” to be protected from
discrimination, in the draft of the Third National Action for the Promotion and Protection of
Human Rights, because of the “need to build a public consensus on this matter of great
disagreement” (Solidarity for Anti-discrimination Legislation 2018).
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Five subsequent attempts to pass the bill, either from the progressive parliamentarians of Democratic Party or smaller
progressive parties, also fell through. Two of the bills proposed by Democratic Party lawmakers, in 2013, were
withdrawn in three months due to the strong setbacks from conservative Christian groups (Kim and Hong 2021).
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Korean LGBT groups and allied experts condemn the liberal Democratic Party and its
lack of will for the repeated failure to enact an anti-discrimination legislation. Korean legal
scholar Hong Sungsoo, an expert of anti-discrimination laws, noted at a press interview that the
church’s backlash is “merely a political excuse” of the liberal Democratic Party, which has had
enough seats, power, and opportunities to push for the bill (Kyunghyang Shinmun, March 20,
2021). He clearly articulated: “It is because the issues of gender and sexual minorities have fallen
behind the priorities [of the liberals].”
What, then, are the political priorities of the liberals? In 2017, President Moon Jae-in
gave his first presidential speech on his vision for inter-Korean relations to inherit and realize the
“unachieved dreams” of his liberal/democratic predecessors Roh Moo-hyun and Kim Dae-jung
(Moon 2017). On April 27, 2018, the historic inter-Korean submit between President Moon and
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un was broadcast live worldwide, as they declared the formal end
to the Korean War after 65 years and the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. This marks
one of the Moon administration’s most crucial political achievement. LGBT activists in South
Korea, however, had to face the historic news a day after the Ministry of Justice deleted “sexual
minorities” from its human rights action plan. Looking at the liberal state’s contrasting
management of the two issues—sexual minorities’ rights and reunification— many Korean
LGBT activists, who also wished for peace on the Korean peninsula, were caught with mixed
feelings. A renowned queer activist posted on Facebook, “It turned out that the anti-
discrimination legislation is more difficult to achieve than the end of the [Korean] war or
denuclearization. What an unrealistic and hazy day.”
In sum, the liberal political elites in South Korea has given the utmost political priority to
inter-Korean relations in addition to economic and political reforms for the nation’s peaceful,
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prosperous, and democratic futures.
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Gender and sexual minorities were not included in this
national vision, despite their very participation and contribution to the “candlelight revolution”
that established the Moon administration. Rather, their voices were constantly delayed and
postponed to an uncertain future behind the prioritized political goal of national reunification and
full-fledged democracy.
The conservative politics of “pro-North Korean homosexuals”
South Korea’s conservative political party, in contrast, inherits a radically different
ideological legacy of anti-communism, conservative nationalism (i.e., anti-North Korea), right-
wing populism, and corporate-friendly neoliberalism. It currently holds the name of People
Power Party (2020-present) and is the main opposition party in the South Korean parliament.
Many of its predecessors, such as New Korea Party (1990-1997), Grand National Party (1997-
2012), New Frontier Party (2012-2017), Liberty Korea Party (2017-2020), were the ruling power
aligned with former conservative presidents Kim Young-sam (1993-1998), Lee Myung-
bak (2008-2013), as well as the ousted Park Geun-hye (2013-2017).
After the Korean War, the conservatives had consistently mobilized strong anti-
communist sentiments to establish and legitimate the military regime in the 1960s. In Cold War
South Korea, anti-communism became the hegemonic political principle that overrode and
suppressed any other political ideologies (Shin 2017). Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, anti-
communism had become the ruling ideology to justify military dictatorship, the restriction on
civil and political rights, and brutal repression of opposition and progressive political activities.
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In 2018, Moon held two more summits with North Korean leader Kim and facilitated the meetings between the US
President Donald Trump and Kim, which resulted in the historic two Koreas-United States summit at the Korean
Demilitarized Zone in 2019. For sure, inter-Korean relations and the progress towards “an era of peace and prosperity”
has been one of the key political priorities of Moon administration (Moon 2021).
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The National Security Act, enforced in 1948 “to secure the security of the State and the
subsistence and freedom of nationals, by regulating any anticipated activities compromising the
safety of the State,” was the main linchpin of the authoritarian rule, which materialized in the
anti-communist ideology that instilled fear, censorship, and persecution in the everyday life of
the citizens. Numerous political dissidents, including former president Kim Dae-jung, and
members of the liberal “386 generation,” such as the aforementioned former Minister of Justice
Cho Kuk, were arrested, detained, tortured, and killed by the state under the breach of the
National Security Act, which accused them of plotting a “pro-North Korean rebellion.” Any
discussions or activities that were perceived to counter the conservatives’ dominant political
views were dismissed as actions of those harboring potential involvement with North Korea and
alleged “attempts to overthrow the government.” (S. Moon 2005)
Even after the end of the military dictatorship and democratization in 1987, the
breakdown of the Soviet Union, and the economic liberalization of communist China, the deep-
seated legacy of anti-communism has persisted, and so does its political efficacy; the very
presence of North Korea and its occasional armed provocations kept serving as the living
evidence of “evil communism.” When the liberal Democratic Party came into power and
attempted to abolish these legacies of anti-communism, the conservative political force fiercely
opposed these efforts as pro-communist.
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During the liberal Kim and Roh administrations
(1998-2008), which the conservatives often call “the lost ten years,” the conservative Grand
National Party united with other social and political blocs, such as conservative mainstream
media, evangelical protestant churches, and right-wing organizations, to form political alliance
that consolidated their force. During this time, the conservatives began to label the liberal
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As a result, most of the repressive laws and state agencies such as the National Security Act and intelligence agency
remained intact.
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Democratic Party’s various economic and political reforms, such as social welfare, state
regulation on the market economy, and human rights policies, as “pro-communist ideologies,”
and by extension, pro-North Korean political attempts to break down South Korea (Shin 2017).
Sporadic military provocations or nuclear tests reinforced the sense of national security threat,
while the liberal governments’ pro-North Korean attitudes and policies fed the conservatives’
mobilization of the specter of North Korea.
Conservative evangelical Christian churches, in this process, rose as the key opposition
against the liberal Democratic Party, utilizing the discourse of anti-communism as one of their
“primary missionary agenda” (Cho 2011, 313).
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As part of their effort, some of the Christian
fundamentalists organized themselves to block liberal government attempts to address human
rights agendas, such as the legislation of anti-discrimination law and the repeal of military
sodomy law. In 2011, for instance, they engaged in the public debate on Article 92-6 of Military
Criminal Act that stipulates the punishment of same-sex behavior. The religious leaders of the
Christian Council of Korea released a statement in defense of the retention of the military
sodomy law, and further noted in their sermons and interviews that the military law must stand
“to protect the country from the threats of the communist North Korea”; otherwise,
“homosexuality will give the North Korean communists a good chance to invade South Korea.”
(Cho 2011, 314) Further, the malicious and derogatory discourse of “pro-North Korean
homosexuals (chongbuk kei)” started to appear in public and digital spaces since 2013 (E. Kim
2021). It is now expected for any LGBT-related public event to confront hateful pickets and
verbal incitements such as “Homosexuals are pro-North Korean commies!” and “Go back to
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According to Korean theologist Min-Ah Cho (2011, 313), this development was possible because Korean evangelical
Christian churches’ growth has been in a “mutually beneficial relationship” with the conservative political force ever
since the Korean War.
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North Korea where homosexuality is allowed!” from anti-LGBT counter protesters (see Kim et
al. 2018).
By associating LGBT individuals and activism to communist North Korean threats to
national security and moral order, the conservatives has mobilized both religious homophobia
and anti-communist sentiments. In so doing, they have successfully blocked public discussions
of LGBT rights and contributed to the state’s legal absence and willful ignorance.
“The more connected, the stronger we are”
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: The rise of a solidarity project
How does the LGBT movement in South Korea navigate the political conundrum of the silent
state and its (liberal and conservative) mobilization of the specter of North Korea to erase their
voices? How do LGBT activists challenge the persistent legal absence to break the state’s willful
silence? In this section, I detail how Korean LGBT activists arrived at the rights project of
solidarity to form a moral alliance against the state and anti-LGBT forces. I argue that the
language of solidarity is not merely rhetoric in the solidarity project. Instead, the project has built
upon the longer political and cultural history of the struggles of the nation’s marginalized, and
requires tireless efforts of LGBT groups to form coalitions with labor unions, women’s rights
groups, migrant rights groups, disability rights groups, environmental groups, and other
progressive civil society actors to prioritize broad-based political organizing. Rather than a
single-issue organizing that focuses solely on the grievances of gender and sexual minorities, the
solidarity project emphasizes linked marginalization of various disenfranchised communities and
connected struggles against the silent state.
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It was the message used in the on-stage picketing performance at the 2015 Seoul Queer Culture Festival.
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Rainbow action: Building solidarity within and beyond LGBT movement
As I discussed earlier, a comprehensive anti-discrimination bill originally proposed in
2007 was significantly diluted with the deletion of seven “contested” sections, including on
sexual orientation. It was ultimately rejected by the parliament during the Lee administration. In
response to the setback, an “emergency coalition” was formed to organize campaigns and
protests that developed into Rainbow Action against Sexual Minority Discrimination (mujigae
haengdong, hereafter Rainbow Action), the largest nation-wide coalition of LGBT groups, in
2008 (Kwonkim and Cho 2011). Rainbow action has expanded from an original 20 or so
registered groups to 37 member groups as of mid-2019. It included long-established activist
organizations (such as Chingusai, Kirikiri, and Haengsongin), officials in charge of pride parades
(such as Seoul Pride), HIV/AIDS advocacy groups, LGBT college groups, social service groups
(such as those offering counseling services), legal advocacy groups, cultural groups (e.g.,
filmmakers, magazine producers, and LGBT cultural centers), religious groups (specifically
queer-friendly Christian and Buddhist fellowships), feminist and other civic ally groups, and
sexual minority and/or sexual rights committees that are attached to small oppositional political
parties.
The establishment of Rainbow Action marked a new stage in the emergence of the
Korean LGBT movement as a viable political actor. In the face of external threats from the
conservative political regimes and their illiberal and anti-LGBT setbacks, Korean LGBT groups
previously scattered and separated on the basis of distinct identities and agendas united behind
the shared goal of promoting anti-discrimination legislation and developed a strong sense of
community (Kwonkim and Cho 2011). Since the establishment of the Rainbow coalition in 2007,
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the Korean LGBT movement has focused on the issue of anti-discrimination legislation through
a strategy of domestic coalition building with the broader civil society (Kwonkim and Cho
2011). LGBT activists from various organizations and backgrounds built and maintained a strong
sense of community with a shared history of struggles under the banner of Rainbow Action in the
face of significant political and financial challenge during the conservative political regimes.
Two key moments marked such history of struggles that significantly facilitated internal
solidarity among different LGBT organizations within the Rainbow Action. Both moments
involved historic sit-it protests organized by Rainbow Action in response to the silent state’s
attempts to erase “gender and sexual minorities” in its law and policies.
First, in 2011, several LGBT groups collaborated with progressive youth groups to
pressure then-liberal Seoul’s Education Chief to draft the Seoul Ordinance of Student Rights
(hereafter Seoul Ordinance). The objective of the Seoul Ordinance was “to ensure that all
students’ dignity and values as human beings are fulfilled,” and to provide protections to
students attending elementary, junior, and high schools in Seoul. It was the first student
ordinance in South Korea to include protection on the basis of sexual orientation and gender
identity, as well as pregnancy and birth statuses. The inclusion of sexual rights incited public
controversy and mobilization and counter-mobilization from both pro- and anti-LGBT groups.
The fierce debate resulted in the first-ever sit-in protest of LGBT activists in a government
building in December 2011. Activists of Rainbow Action, aligned with various other human
rights activists, occupied the lobby of the Seoul Metropolitan Council building and urged to pass
the Ordinance, and urged in a statement, “Sexual minorities have always been around, and have
been on the streets many times; however, this is the first time we have directly faced legislative
institutions for the human rights of sexual minorities. It is because of the urgency that the rights
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of minorities like us can be recognized only through direct action.” (Joint Action of Sexual
Minorities for the Student Human Rights Ordinance 2011)
Despite the backlash from conservative groups and the reluctance of the officers of the
Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education, the Ordinance eventually passed with the full inclusion
of the clauses related to sexual orientation and gender identity, marking it as the first legislative
victory of LGBT movement. This remains one of the initial moments of “solidarity building”
within the Korean LGBT movement both internally and externally. As Korean feminist and
queer activist-scholars Kim and Na (2014) noted, it also marked the explicit expansion of LGBT
rights in association to other minority rights, in this case, the rights of students and youths. By
building solidarity with student and youth groups, Rainbow Action also managed to establish the
public visibility of sexual minorities within the progressive civil society and lay a crucial bridge
to the larger civil society and social movement groups.
Rainbow occupation: Strengthening solidarity
The second moment was three years later, in December 2014. About 40 Rainbow Action
activists launched another sit-in protest at the lobby of Seoul Metropolitan City Hall. In mid-
2014, the Seoul Metropolitan Government organized a Citizens’ Committee composed of
civilian representatives and experts to review the Seoul City Charter of Human Rights (hereafter
Seoul Charter). However, one of the charter clauses, which prohibited discrimination based on
one’s sexual orientation or gender identity, was picked up by conservative religious groups and
criticized for “promoting homosexuality.” Faced with heavy opposition, then-mayor of Seoul
and one of the frontrunners for the next presidential election, Park Won-soon reneged on his
initial support for LGBT issues and declared the Seoul Charter null and void, stating that the
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charter “is not worth pursuing if it causes social division.” Subsequently, Rainbow Action
activists staged a sit-in protest and eventually occupied the lobby of City Hall for the next six
days. Rainbow Action and the participants of the “rainbow occupation” issued a statement as
they entered the sit-in protest:
Our sit-in protest will be an important moment to identify who supports the human rights of
sexual minorities and protects the values of human rights. We earnestly ask all sexual minorities,
citizens, civil society groups who support the human rights of sexual minorities to speak up with
us. It is up to all of us to remove the black cloud of hatred and discrimination that pervades the
Korean society. … Let’s shout together so that our voices against hatred and discrimination
spread. A holler produces a louder holler. By weaving the threads of the precious support and
solidarity, we will spread our holler to open the stage for a bigger fight against hatred and
discrimination against sexual minorities. At the end of this fight, we will see a future in which
everyone is guaranteed equal rights. Our fight is only just beginning.
The “rainbow occupation” was initially organized by key member groups of Rainbow Action,
who voluntarily shared responsibilities (Rainbow Action 2015, 18-19). The intelligence center
was in charge of the daily affairs in response to rapidly changing situations, information
gathering, and communications. The media team was responsible for recording and
disseminating the situation through photos and videos. The social media team was responsible
for informing citizens of the Seoul Charter and the purpose of the rainbow occupation on social
media platforms. The “international solidarity” team informed overseas human rights activists of
the situation to gain international support. Other participants that filled the sit-in produced
handmade pickets and promotional materials. All participants shared tasks such as meal delivery,
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garbage disposal, distribution of pickets, promotion on social media, and translation of
statements. Participants shared performances, speeches, and mini lectures on human rights; a
cultural festival was held every evening as a way to keep the space. During their protest, a large
rainbow banner, reading “For sexual minorities, human rights equals life” was hinged on the
railing of the Hall’s third floor, despite the continued interference and disturbance from city hall
police guards (Nakta 2015).
In response to the call for solidarity, the sit-in protest site was soon joined by numerous
LGBT and ally groups. Four opposition political parties, and approximately 360 civil society
groups publicly issued statements of support for the sit-in (Rainbow Action 2015). An endless
number of labor activists, feminist activists, disability rights activists, migrant rights activists,
environmental activists, peace activists, progressive religious leaders, victims of state violence,
as well as non-activist LGBT citizens paid visits to the sit-in protest and delivered speeches of
support. The cost of the sit-in protest was fully covered by voluntary donations (which amounted
to more than 35,000 USD for six days) from more than a thousand citizens and supporters, the
balance of which were donated back to other “sites of struggles” for labor protesters and
disability rights activists (Nakta 2015). Due to the fierce resistance and the broad-based support
from the progressive civil society, the mayor apologized, but in vague terms, and ultimately
deferred and rejected the promulgation of the Seoul Charter.
LGBT activists did not see this as a defeat but rather as a “new beginning of the fight.”
At a post-sit-in discussion forum held by Rainbow Action, one of the most prominent LGBT
activists summarized the implications of the rainbow occupations along the lines of the
identification of “the breadth and depth of solidarity” that the LGBT movement has built in
recent years (N. Lee 2015, 152). The rainbow occupation not only identified internal solidarity
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from LGBT citizens, but also widespread external solidarity from the progressive civil society at
large. Many LGBT activists who participated in the rainbow occupation, pinpointed it as one of
the most important moments of the political history of LGBT movement in South Korea, as it
clearly indicated that LGBT rights have now become “a litmus test paper” to distinguish the
progressives and conservatives in Korean society, and that LGBT rights have been at the
forefront of the politics of human rights in South Korea. Confirming this shared perspective was
Ran, a longtime activist of Haengsongin, who, in another activist discussion forum shared her
experience of getting invited to give a “solidarity speech” at the International Workers’ Day
march of that year. She said, “we [LGBT activists] have attended labor protests for about twenty
years, and finally I felt we were welcomed among the protesters despite we were holding up
rainbow flags. It has become obvious that the support for LGBT rights has grown more than ever
before within social movement camps and progressive-minded individuals!”
Solidarity for anti-discrimination legislation: Expanding solidarity
Through two sit-in protests, the Korean LGBT movement laid and solidified the
foundation for a sense of solidarity with the larger civil society groups. The solidarity project’s
tenuous efforts to build and strengthen solidarity with a broad civil society groups came to
fruition in the re-launch of the Solidarity for Anti-discrimination Legislation (hereafter the Anti-
discrimination Solidarity).
In 2007, the government not only removed “sexual orientation” but also six other grounds
of discrimination from the proposed anti-discrimination bill: medical history, country of birth,
language, family type/situation, criminal/protective disposition history, and academic
background. The exclusion of “sexual orientation” became the center of the controversy due to
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the conservative religious opposition, which led to the establishment of Rainbow Action. In
parallel, the deletion of six other sections (in addition to sexual orientation), resulting from the
lobbying of the business community such as the Korea Enterprises Federation, brought together
various human rights NGOs to form the Collective Action for the Enactment of Proper Anti-
discrimination Law (Kim and Hong 2021). Succeeding this coalition was the Anti-discrimination
Solidarity, first launched in 2010 but gradually losing its dynamism and group cohesion during
the prolonged conservative political regime.
The re-launch of the Anti-discrimination Solidarity in March 2017 was to cease the
political momentum of political regime change after the breakdown of conservative Park
administration. It was also to take advantage of the strengthened solidarity among the
participating groups, including LGBT groups. In total of 100 civil society groups, social
movement organizations, and NGOs joined in the re-launch. They included groups for or of
women, workers, students, parents, migrants and refugees, homeless people, people with
disabilities, people living with HIV/AIDS, and LGBT people, and more, which as a whole
represents the various demands of the groups represented in anti-discrimination legislation. The
Anti-Discrimination Solidarity also involved not only human rights activists, but also a wide
range of civilians and professionals working for democracy and human rights, including lawyers,
doctors, educators, researchers, artists, and progressive politicians nationwide (Anti-
discrimination Solidarity 2017). LGBT activists played a central role as members of the Anti-
discrimination Solidarity, and because they comprised one of the largest forces among the
participating groups (at least fifteen out of the 100 participating groups were LGBT groups).
The re-launching statement highlighted how ten years of conservative regimes “rolled
back democracy and contaminated the fundamental value of human rights” and incited
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discrimination and violence against various minority groups, who otherwise could have been
protected by a comprehensive anti-discrimination law. It continued:
The inequality that anti-discrimination legislation seeks to address is that of all members of our
society, not of specific minority groups. Above all, protecting minorities such as sexual
minorities, migrants, and people with disabilities, does not contradict ensuring human rights for
all. … Anti-discrimination legislation movement is the process of rewriting the values of
democracy and human rights in the name of minorities. It is a fight against inequality, revealing
the existence of those who have been erased in the face of, and more often, in the name of “the
nation.” It is a solidarity that communicates differences, inquires the boundary of
normality/abnormality, and fights for each other’s dignity. … For one’s dignity and human rights,
and for our lives and struggles, let’s enact an anti-discrimination law through solidarity action
against discrimination toward a world of equality, democracy, and human rights!
The statement marks two important developments in the LGBT movement’s solidarity project.
First, it expanded the movement’s focus from the specific causes of “sexual orientation and
gender identity” to the general issues of discrimination, human rights, and democracy. In other
words, it broadened the horizon of the LGBT movement, that is not defined (and limited) by the
identity categories per se, but is reconfigured through linking and expanding with other minority
groups for the larger and inclusive goal of anti-discrimination. Second, by doing so, it connects
the struggles of various minority groups in front of the silent state: those whose rights have been
unrecognized, voices have been silenced, and very existences erased in the name of what the
elite politicians think of as issues of “national importance,” be they national security or national
reunification. By foregrounding the moral value of solidarity that links “one’s dignity and human
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rights” and “our lives and struggles,” the anti-discrimination movement mobilizes the connected
struggles of the marginalized, including LGBT people.
Since its re-launch in 2017, the Anti-discrimination Solidarity has been active in making
policy suggestions and running public campaigns, public education sessions, discussion forums,
as well as direct actions on the streets as a way to reach out to a greater number of civil society
groups and grassroots groups nationwide. LGBT activists have been always at the center of the
coalition’s leadership and daily activities as they continue to enact the solidarity project.
The outside of solidarity
In this section, I discuss how the LGBT movement’s solidarity project diverged from the state,
market, and international organizations. The solidarity project is in nature a moral project that
mobilizes the morality of groups and individuals for and against certain political goals; for this
reason, the solidarity project requires constant identification of whom it is in solidarity, with
whom it is not in solidarity, or with whom not to be in solidarity. In drawing these moral
boundaries, the Korean LGBT movement’s solidarity project developed a strong, even purist,
sense of progressive moralism that is aligned with various progressive civil society groups, and
by contrast, that is antithetical to the powerful authorities or entities, including the state,
corporations, and international organizations.
Retreat from the silent state
Korean LGBT activists have grappled with the question of what the state and its
persistent willful silence are to them. The repeated and accumulated experiences of being erased,
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ignored, and postponed made them develop a deep-seated sense of distrust, disappointment, and
resentment against the state and its institutions and agencies, including law and policies, even
when engaging in legislation movements like the anti-discrimination legislation movement.
In May 2016, various human rights and civil society groups gathered together to hold a
press conference to commemorate the International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia, and
Biphobia (IDAHOT). A gay activist from Dding Dong, a one and only LGBT youth crisis
support center in South Korea, in his statement, questioned the role—or the lack thereof—of the
state: “What does the government do now? Does it exist as a mere observer of all the violence
and discrimination? The state is trying to root out human rights in collusion with anti-rights hate
groups!” Highlighting the uncountable (but unnoticed) cases of LGBT youths’ experiences of
bullying, harassment, and suicide attempts, he cried out, “this situation was created because of
the government who keeps silence!” It was followed by a gay human rights lawyer, addressing
the recent attempts of verbal and physical hate crimes against Seoul Pride participants from anti-
LGBT protesters: “They blocked us, swore at us, beat us, and even sprayed bodily wastes to us.
Their malicious and violent behavior has become a social issue, but they have never been held
accountable. There were Seoul city officials and police officers at these sites of violence; but
they did nothing. Prosecutors, police, the central and local governments, who have been
relentless to minorities, did nothing. Rather, they just sat on the sidelines and assisted what was
happening.”
The experience of repeated erasure and nonrecognition during the conservative political
regimes (2008-2017) was followed by non-unfamiliar experiences of betrayal when liberal
governments regained power in 2017. Comparing the former liberal governments and then-ruling
conservative government, a longtime activist from Rainbow Action told me that there were
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neither good old days nor foreseeable bright futures. Even when the liberals end up regaining
power, he noted that the political vision of “the 386 generation,” who comprises the core group
of the liberal political party, does not include diverse voices including those of LGBT people. As
I have illustrated earlier, this turned out to be true when the former human rights lawyers of the
1980s, such as Seoul mayor Park Won-soon and President Moon Jae-in, reneged on their
political promises and abandoned sexual minorities. A progressive openly gay journalist, a rare
case in the conservative profession in the Korean context, sniffed at the idea of “regime change”
and liberal politicians’ entrances into the government offices and lamented that the two major
political parties—liberals and conservatives— “are the same in that neither of them recognizes
me as a human being, the fact that I’ve seen and experienced myself for the past twenty years.
The regime change did not critically affect the way we’re perceived in the society at all.” He
painfully continued, “In that sense, a person like me is just a foreigner. I’m living as a diaspora
in my home country. I was born here and it feels like a foreign land.” The state’s persistent
willful silence, be it run by conservatives or liberals, inculcated a deep sense of political and
social dislocation. Similarly, when I asked a queer feminist activist who was involved in legal
and policy advocacy work, “what do you think is the state to sexual minorities?”, she responded:
“The state? [silence] Too far. Too far away, even to relate ourselves.”
The organizational reaction to the silent state is the deliberate retreat from the state,
meaning the decision not to work with or be involved with state institutions or agencies. This
becomes evident in various LGBT groups’ arrangement of funding. Government funding
opportunity for LGBT groups first appeared during the first liberal administrations (1998-2008),
especially after the establishment of the National Human Rights Commission in 2001. Still
minor, these opportunities were almost entirely cut off during the conservative political regimes
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(2008-2017). However, LGBT groups noted that it also is their proactive decision not even to
apply for funding from the government. A full-time activist from Unni Network, one of the
largest and most resourceful LGBT groups in the nation, pointed out that most of the government
funding opportunities are oriented towards “social welfare groups or government-organized
NGOs” rather than progressive groups like themselves or any other LGBT organizations. Hence
she reasoned: “We cannot rely on government funding. We know that we’ll get hurt by leaning
on that.” Indeed, almost all Korean LGBT groups depend largely on membership fees (i.e., small
regular donations from supporters) for operation.
Another longtime activist from Korean Sexual-minority Culture and Rights Center also
made it clear that: “We have no relationship with the government. When we fight against the
state, we fight. It is our ‘grit (kao)’ that we don’t do things like policy suggestions or
government-funded projects.” She ensured that this “grit” to cut themselves from the government
has long been established as an organizational norm for her group, which is one of the largest
LGBG groups in the nation; the group consensus is that “once we begin engaging with the
government, we won’t be able to continue our own agenda towards our own directions.” As she
developed this question of financial independence of LGBT groups, she and her colleagues
eventually founded the first-ever LGBT-focused civic foundation, Beyond the Rainbow
Foundation, to support various LGBT groups and their activities. In other words, LGBT
movement’s solidarity project has developed an independent orientation from the state against its
willful silence, and has not regarded the state as a subject of solidarity, cooperation, or even
negotiation.
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Retreat from the market
In 2018, a group of Korean LGBT lawyers and policy researchers published the Diversity
Guideline for Creating LGBT-friendly Workplace (SOGILAW 2018). The publication indicates a
growing interest, at least from a small group of experts, in understanding and utilizing the
globalizing discourse of corporate diversity in the context of South Korea. Despite its effort to
integrate “experiences and voices of LGBT workers in South Korea,” most of the “best
practices” this guideline introduces are from global corporations abroad; only a few cases are
from the global corporations’ Korean offices. The activist-researchers also conducted focus
group interviews with several LGBT workers; however, every single example in the guidebook
illustrate shared experiences of silencing, discrimination, and lack of support system in their
workplaces, which is resonant with many other research-based reports written by LGBT groups
(Chingusai 2014; Hong et al. 2016; 2020; Jang et al. 2014; S. Kim et al. 2018; KNP+ 2017; Na et
al. 2016).
One of the activist-researchers, an openly lesbian human rights lawyer shared her doubt
on whether and for whom the guideline could be useful: “At this stage, it is not easy to expect
many Korean companies to get this guideline and even take a look.” When I probed her about
what companies would find the guidebook useful, she answered, still with doubts, “Google
Korea, Lush Korea, and IBM Korea, probably? That’d be pretty much it.” She continued that
there exists less than a handful number of companies, most of them foreign multinational firms’
Korean offices, that are already offering LGBT-inclusive policies and programs. It is the
majority of the local companies that are largely negligent when it comes to the global business
trend of corporate diversity, as she lamented. This resonated with the near lack of corporate
sponsorship in many of Korea’s Queer Culture Festivals, which are equivalent to Pride events.
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For instance, Seoul Queer Culture Festival, with its twenty-year-long history, has not received
donations from any major corporations, with the rare exception of Google Korea, Lush Korea,
and a local gay website.
What makes corporations in South Korea, which could be relatively autonomous from the
government’s official stance follow, if not endorse, the government’s willful silence? What
makes them diverge from Singapore’s prominent corporate diversity activism (Chapter 3)? South
Korea’s economic development has been built upon a symbiotic relationship between the
economic planning of the government and the private business sectors, also known as chaebol
firms. Chaebol firms are large family-owned and -managed business conglomerates such as
Samsung, SK, LG, and Hyundai Motors (Chang 2003). Despite the liberal Kim administration’s
chaebol reform policy after the 1997-1998 Asian Financial Crisis, the chaebol firms’ dominance
in the Korean domestic economy in terms of sales, assets, and employees has been fortified
during the past two chaebol-friendly conservative governments (2008-2017). Although these
chaebol firms began to be more conscious of global business trends as they have “gone global”
since the 1990s (Kim 2000), there is very little evidence on whether these Korean businesses
have followed them, especially when it comes to issues of human rights or social justice (e.g.,
labor exploitation, occupational accidents and diseases, and environmental issues).
An exceptional case was Samsung Electronics which introduced in its first Business
Conduct Guidelines in 2015 specific directions for “sustainable management” as part of the
company’s effort to be “a global corporate citizen.” (Samsung Sustainability Report 2016). This
document specifies “sexual preference” and “sexual identity” as grounds for anti-discrimination.
In other words, employees cannot be discriminated in the promotion, compensation, and
disciplinary measures. Korean LGBT activists expressed neither any expectation nor trust in the
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Samsung guideline and its potential implications in Samsung’s workplaces and beyond. Several
months after the publication of this guideline, a transgender employee of a Samsung company
was denied a sick leave for her sex reassignment surgery and soon after, when she changed her
“employee profile picture” into the one that “looks more like a woman” in the company’s online
roster, she had to leave the company. A few LGBT human rights lawyers attempted to reach out
to her to give help but they could not locate her. The lawyers suspected that she could only
mitigate any potential damage to her future career by disappearing and not reporting it to
relevant NGOs. Despite that a few LGBT employee support groups were launched in the
aforementioned foreign multinational companies’ Korean offices (i.e., Google Korea, Lush
Korea, and IBM Korea), when I contacted and visited these groups in their companies, I was not
able to meet any openly LGBT employees.
Going back to the solidarity project, many Korean LGBT groups have built supportive
relationships with labor unions. In recent years, LGBT groups and labor unions have solidified
their partnership especially as they both participate in the anti-discrimination legislation
movement. Given that the nation’s business community, largely led by chaebol firms,
contributed to block the anti-discrimination legislation in 2007, corporations, large or small,
foreign or local, are often considered as the “enemy” of the anti-discrimination movement.
Accordingly, Korean LGBT groups do not generally see corporations as a potential partner or
even an area of advocacy/intervention; corporations are usually seen as the “evil capitalist force”
that exploits and oppresses workers, and by extension, LGBT workers.
Similar to the retreat from the state, the solidarity project’s retreat from the market is
evident in the funding arrangements of various LGBT groups. Almost all major LGBT
organizations in South Korea specify their deliberate distancing from corporations in their
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mission statements or donation policies. For example, the gay men’s human rights group
Chingusai clearly stated in their webpage that “We value our financial independence. We do not
accept donations from unreliable sources or unhealthy corporations. We gently decline donations
from individuals or entities that can either jeopardize our publicity and independence or
contradict our interests.” Note again that most corporations are usually conceived as “unreliable”
entities that already “contradict” the values of solidarity that LGBT groups endorse. In sum,
LGBT movement in South Korea shares a strong anti-corporate sentiment as it sticks to the
moral values of the solidarity project, which resulted in the erasure of market and corporations at
large as potential sites for intervention or mobilization.
Conclusion
In this chapter, I documented the emergence of a solidarity project in South Korea’s LGBT
movement. The solidarity project resulted from the South Korean state’s prolonged silence on
LGBT rights. State officials and policymakers in South Korea, regardless of political
orientation— including liberals and conservatives alike— have governed the newly mobilized
LGBT people by not assigning proper legal categories, in other words, through the technique of
legal absence. The recent two decades of the legal, administrative, and political disputes between
different state institutions and LGBT groups show that the legal absence of LGBT as a
meaningful category has served as an effective governing strategy of the silent state to keep
LGBT people politically and socially invisible. The state particularly uses the geopolitical
situation of the nation in order to excuse its silence and willful ignorance of LGBT rights, despite
the growing demand both from the international society and domestic civil society. The South
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Korean state constantly justifies its continuous silence and delay in responding to LGBT groups’
rights-claiming efforts by prioritizing the unending Korean war, the ongoing national security
threat from North Korea, and the potential political turmoil this conflict raises. Similarly, rapidly
growing anti-LGBT conservative groups frame LGBT rights in association with the North
Korean security threat, disparaging LGBT people as “pro-North Korean homosexuals.”
This chapter examined how the LGBT movement in this particular global-regional-local
context navigates the political conundrum of the silent state and the specter of North Korea, and
describes how it arrived at the solidarity project as the master framework to articulate and
practice their rights. I show that solidarity is neither an organic pursuit nor a natural outcome of
an LGBT movement. Instead, solidarity is pursued and achieved through the deliberate and
relentless works of LGBT activists to make their voices heard in a political context where their
very existence can easily be erased and their demands be postponed. The solidarity project
exemplifies the context-specific resilience of LGBT activism and illustrates the expansive
direction of an LGBT movement. The legitimacy of a solidarity project comes from its moral
commitment to other connected struggles, which is believed to be returned by reciprocal moral
commitments from other civil society and social movement groups. Often, the boundary of this
solidarity project can be extended to include grassroots groups in other countries, particularly
those in neighboring Asian societies. However, the project strictly controls its boundary not to
associate itself with the state, corporations, and even international organizations as they can
threaten LGBT movement’s moral legitimacy that are firmly rooted in the relationship with other
progressive movement groups.
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Conclusion
This dissertation asked how minority groups seek and build rights in their own terms at the
intersection of local, regional, and global contexts. Drawing on cross-national comparative
ethnography in three Asian societies, I examined how LGBT activists navigate the global
discourse of human rights, negotiate with varied forms of state regulation as well as particular
political and cultural norms, and pursue rights, recognition, and entitlements in different spheres
and institutional spaces. I developed a new analytical tool, which I termed rights project, for
identifying and understanding minority groups’ context-specific efforts to articulate and practice
“rights.”
My research illustrated three cases of rights projects: an equality project in Taiwan
(Chapter 2), a diversity project in Singapore (Chapter 3), and a solidarity project in South Korea
(Chapter 4). These three rights projects showcase the striking variations of how the idea of
“rights” take different forms and meanings, and are put into action in a variety of ways in a
globalized world. These variations result from local actors’ multi-scalar interactions with global
institutions and discourses, particular sociopolitical contexts, and their relational positions within
world politics. Different rights projects grow out of specific global-regional-local conjunctures,
within which they reconstruct what “rights” mean, how they matter, and to whom they make a
difference. Below, I reflect on the implications of my research and suggest future research
directions.
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Reclaiming the global sociology of rights
My dissertation answers sociologists’ call for “a new sociology of rights.” (Somers and Robert
2008) In comparison to other frontiers of social sciences, including political science, legal
studies, anthropology, and history, as Connell (1995, 25) lamented more than two decades ago,
“the concept of ‘rights’ sits uneasily with most sociologists.” Until recently, most sociologists
have long distanced themselves from the abstract, value-laden, and normative concept of rights,
while the studies of citizenship (as an institutionalized construct, following the now canonical
work of T.H. Marshall) have “functioned as a substitute for a sociology of rights.” (Turner 1993,
176) The key conceptual challenge has been the fundamental question of “what are rights,”
which has been pursued in multiple disciplinary registers as normative rules, codified legal
doctrines, institutionalized structures, and lived experiences. Different epistemological
approaches, which I summarized as univeralism, particularism, and relationalism, have explored
this question as they privilege certain aspects of rights—be it the process of global-scale
institutionalization, specificity of local cultures, or neo-imperial implications—over others.
In this dissertation, I have attempted to reconcile these disparate scholarly enterprises. I
situate this study in the emerging collective efforts to reinstate a new sociology of rights. I took
inspiration from sociologists and social thinkers who have suggested that rights cannot be
separated from social life and power relations (Woodiwiss 2003), and must be understood not as
possessions but rather as social relations and processes “that enable or constrain action” (Young
1990, 25). Thus, rights exist “in a complex configuration of relationships and institutional
arrangements” which entail “de jure right to membership in a political community—the scale of
which can vary from local to national to global.” (Somers and Robert 2008, 413) In other words,
161
as sociologists, we must pay our due attention to how rights are socially constructed—
articulated, enacted, and achieved—in a variety of institutional spheres and spaces, and in
different scales as they are put into action. Further, I have suggested that a global, comparative,
and relational lens is particularly useful as it highlights the rich entanglement and contestations
of universalism, particularism, and relationalism in the social construction of rights.
To substantialize these intellectual pursuits, I developed a new analytical tool of “rights
project,” to conceive rights as a course of actions and interactions rooted in particular geographic
and cultural contexts. Understanding rights as a context-specific project requires a
comprehensive sociological analysis of the global and local conditions that a particular rights
project emerges from, the rights-claiming and legitimacy-building processes of such project, and
its complex political implications.
Cross-national comparison of rights projects
I pursued these questions in the comparative examination of three rights projects (Table 5).
Table 5. Comparison of LGBT rights projects in global Asia
Taiwan Singapore South Korea
State regime Precarious state
Neoliberal
authoritarian state
Silent state
State’s global
challenge
China’s rise and its
sovereignty threat
Maintenance of
authoritarian rule and
Complex historical and
present relations with
North Korea
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neoliberal market
economy
Legal framework for
LGBT people
Inclusion Exclusion Absence
Rights project Equality project Diversity project Solidarity project
Source of legitimacy
and recognition
Law and
international arena
Corporations
Local and regional
social movement allies
Key agendas
Marriage equality
movement
Corporate diversity
activism
Anti-discrimination
movement
Political implications Nationalism Neoliberalism Moralism
In the precarious state of Taiwan, combatted by the ever-increasing security and sovereignty
threat from mainland China, the LGBT movement mobilized the discourse of “equality” in a
dual sense, specifically to address the equal rights of LGBT people in the domestic sphere and to
evoke the equal status of Taiwan as a sovereign nation-state in the international sphere. In
Taiwan’s “equality project,” culminated in the marriage equality movement, LGBT activism
garnered legitimacy from international human rights standards and global allies to pursue legal
change in the courtroom, and in turn, to translate the legal achievement to the global community.
In other words, LGBT movement’s efforts to seek equal rights coalesced with the precarious
state’s efforts to seek international recognition of statehood, which made “LGBT rights” a new
symbol—and evidence— of Taiwan’s equal sovereignty.
In neoliberal authoritarian Singapore, where domestic legal routes to pursue equal rights
are impractical or ineffective, the LGBT movement forged alternative spaces of rights-making.
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In the face of the state’s political illiberalism and the legal exclusion of gender and sexual
minorities, LGBT activists turned to the neoliberal market economy that the state’s economic
and political authority is built upon. In Singapore’s “diversity project,” that unfolded in corporate
diversity activism, LGBT movement earned legitimacy and recognition from global corporations
and the business discourse of “diversity” to create an interstitial space for claiming partial
recognition and entitlements, while refraining from challenges to achieve legal rights.
Lastly, in South Korea, the LGBT movement struggled to make their voices heard in the
domestic political sphere which has largely been preoccupied with the historical and enduring
tensions with North Korea. To break their state legal absence and the use of the political
mobilization of North Korea as an excuse to postpone any meaningful discussion on their rights,
LGBT activists claimed their rights in solidarity with other marginalized groups and staged their
connected struggles against the silent state by demanding a comprehensive anti-discrimination
law. In South Korea’s “solidarity project,” the legitimacy of LGBT activism came from its moral
commitments to and relations with other civil society and social movement groups, and its
distancing from powerful authorities of the state, corporations, and international organizations.
I have shown that each rights project must also deal with complex political implications
that cannot simply be assessed as a success or a failure. Taiwan’s equality project has contributed
to the legalization of same-sex marriage, marking the first case in Asia; however, their historic
achievement cannot be fully realized without the achievement of another kind of equality, that of
their precarious nation-state within the international system. As the geopolitical tension between
Taiwan and China continues to surge, the equality project and its underlying progressive
nationalism can turn into an exclusive force. By contrast, Singapore’s diversity project avoided
pursuing legal challenges and demanding the enforcement of international human rights norms,
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and instead focused on creating an alternative space for rights-making in global corporations.
The corporate space, however, is politically limited by the authoritarian state’s vigilant
regulation. It is also politically limiting as it builds on and consolidates the prevalent
socioeconomic disparity within the neoliberal society. South Korea’s solidarity project might
seem stalled in terms of legal mobilization; their continued efforts to enact anti-discrimination
legislation, has not been successful for more than a decade under the state’s persistent silence.
Yet, the solidarity project expanded the notion of rights via coalitions with other minority
groups; at the same time, the moral nature of the project often restrains the movement’s
connection to a wider group of non-activist lay members of the LGBT community.
In sum, these three cases of rights projects show that marginalized groups’ efforts do not
simply reiterate the globalized discourse of human rights; they neither come solely from
particular local cultures, nor are they completely bound to historical relations of
colonialism/imperialism. As much as their societies are situated within the complex local-
regional-global conjunctures, the challenges, political capacities, and limits of LGBT movements
must also be contextualized in relation to them. The rights project approach becomes most useful
to examine such multi-scalar construction of rights in a globalized world.
The intellectual purchase of rights project can be extended to the struggles and challenges
of other marginalized groups in other geographic or historical contexts. For example, it is
reminiscent of the work of anthropologist Saba Mahmood (2005) who sought to explain how
piety can be an empowering state of being for Muslim women. The rights project approach could
help us better understand the different forms and meanings of “empowerment,” how they are
defined, justified, and enacted, often with contradictory implications, in workplaces
(Ballakrishnen 2021), nonprofit advocacy (Choo 2013), humanitarian aid programs (Berry 2015;
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Mojola 2014), or intimate relations (Bernstein 2007), especially those of vulnerable migrants
(Parreñas 2011; Mai 2018).
The cross-national comparative focus of my research, however, has restricted a fuller
attention to less prominent rights projects that exist in each society. In Taiwan, for instance,
some radically-minded queer activists and thinkers have taken issue with the equality project as
they see that it reiterates the Western homonormative politics and normalizes the relation
between the state and marginalized groups. Though rarely to be identified, very few LGBT
activists rejected the equality project even if they envision Taiwan’s political future differently.
Likewise, in Singapore, I have encountered some critical few who were concerned about the
corporate-based diversity project despite their admission there being no easy alternative. The
ascendency of the diversity project does not mean that pursuit of the legal challenge (e.g., to
repeal the sodomy law) is over; at the time of this writing, there are three cases pending in the
courts. All the plaintiffs have been involved in the diversity project in varying degrees. Similarly,
in South Korea, I have met an increasing number of LGBT community members who
complained about the strictly moral climate of current activism and its expansive direction for
“more solidarity,” which they perceive as diluting their issues. I have not pursued these internal
variations because of their peripheral positions in each society at the time of my research and
writing. However, future studies would benefit from looking at internal contestations, and how
different rights projects collide and compete over the goals, priorities, and strategies of the
nation-wide movement.
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Taking geopolitics seriously
I have suggested that the existing epistemological approaches—universalism, particularism, and
relationalism—co-exist, compete, and to some extent balance each other in the process of rights-
making. I emphasized that actors of rights projects strategically deploy and negotiate with them
within particular geopolitical contexts. Existing studies of human rights often focus on the
global-level institutions or local adaptations, or the colonial/imperial continuities of global-local
interactions. My research takes geopolitics seriously as a mediating terrain in which these global,
local, and relational forces collide, confront, and coalesce into the formation of different rights
projects.
My comparative findings also lead us to broaden our understandings of geopolitics. I
draw on the insights of feminist and queer scholars who have challenged the dominant definition
of geopolitics as the macro-level competition between states over territories, resources, and
geographical positions. Instead, they highlight the mutual construction of geopolitics and micro-
level “domestic” or “private” relations by looking at how such geopolitical processes as state
violence, militarization, securitization, imperialism, and settler colonialism are manifested,
reproduced, and resisted through, for example, intimate domains of marriage, reproduction, and
sexuality (Dixon and Marston 2011; Dowler and Sharp 2001; Hyndman 2004; Massaro and
Williams 2013; Mountz and Hyndman 2006; Pratt and Rosner 2006). My research joins and
complicates the growing body of work on “intimate geopolitics” (Arondekar and Patel 2016;
Barabantseva, Mhurchú and Peterson 2021; Brickell 2014; Smith 2012) to examine how rights
projects of the marginalized have become embroiled, and indeed integral to geopolitical power
relations and conflict.
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In this regard, I consider geopolitics not only in terms of a given state’s foreign policy,
international trade, or resource competition against other states, but rather in a broad sense of the
state’s relational positionality within the historical trajectory and the contemporary world politics
and global political economy. I emphasized in this dissertation that neither the global human
rights regime (represented by the UN) nor the history of former Western colonizers and non-
Western colonies can dictate the relational positionality of the state in question. In addition to
these universal and postcolonial forces, regional-scale histories and forces matter significantly.
By considering how geopolitical relations shape the conditions and contours of LGBT
rights projects in globalized Asia, my dissertation addresses how post-Cold War legacies of
geopolitical conflict within the region have been constitutive of and, to some extent, constituted
by a variety of rights projects. The three comparison sites not only represent different legal
frameworks for gender and sexual minorities but also reflect critical differences in the legacies
and features of geopolitical tensions they are part of. I have illustrated how the distinctive
geopolitical contexts of each society (i.e., precarious sovereignty in Taiwan, neoliberal
authoritarianism in Singapore, and the unfinished war in Korea) underpin the shifting
relationships among the state and marginalized groups, resulting in different rights projects.
Thus, geopolitical relations can facilitate (the equality project in Taiwan) or hinder (the solidarity
project in South Korea), and sometimes create new openings (the diversity project in Singapore)
for rights projects.
In sum, by taking geopolitics seriously as a means of understanding the politics of human
rights, my dissertation offers an improved explanation for the variety of struggles, challenges,
and possibilities facing marginalized groups at global-regional-local conjunctures. Without an
understanding of the convergence of national sovereignty discourse and LGBT politics in
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Taiwan, wherein sexual minorities coordinated with the state-led efforts of promoting the state’s
international standing in the face of ever-increasing pressure from China, it would be difficult to
see beyond the Western media’s naïve appraisal of Taiwanese legal reforms as “the beacon of
hope” for the region’s LGBT communities. Likewise important is the contradictory coupling of
authoritarianism with a neoliberal economy in Singapore, which has directed sexual minorities to
shift their focus of organizing from the law to the market, which is a key move in terms of the
proliferation of corporate diversity spaces. The geopolitical lens also helps us better understand
the case of South Korea beyond the existing cultural explanations of Confucianism or religious-
based conservatism; the enduring political and moral gravity that I called the specter of North
Korea influences both liberal and conservative politics in the nation, which overshadows the
existence of LGBT people in the public sphere on the one hand, and enables LGBT movement to
focus on solidarity as a primary source of resistance on the other hand.
Lastly, the geopolitical lens enables us to complicate the fundamental liberal assumption
of human rights, which often posits “human rights” as a global movement against conservative
collectivist cultures (e.g., Confucianism) or authoritarian politics. My three comparative cases
add much needed nuances to this liberal assumption by attesting that rights, and consequently
recognition, are constructed within the context-specific boundaries of liberalism and
authoritarianism. The equality project in Taiwan links the struggles of sexual minorities in
opposition to the “external authoritarianism” of mainland China, whereas the diversity project in
Singapore ties their negotiation to the “internal authoritarianism” of its own nation-state for
survival. Conservatives in South Korea frame the emerging presence of sexual minorities in
relation to the “old authoritarianism” of North Korea; in response, the solidarity project of South
Korean LGBT activists built broad coalitions against the “new authoritarianism” of the
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conservative political regime and right-wing groups. By broadening the understanding of
geopolitics in relational terms, my dissertation helps us locate human rights at the intersection of
local, regional, and global politics.
This dissertation further invites inquiries into the varying impact of geopolitics in shaping
the rights projects of different minority groups, keeping geopolitical conditions constant, to
establish a theory of the geopolitics of rights. For instance, given the rising tension between
Taiwan and mainland China, do the rights projects of refugees and indigenous people resemble
or differ from the equality project of sexual minorities in Taiwan? Under the contradictory
articulation of neoliberalism and authoritarianism in Singapore, do the rights projects of political
dissidents and migrant workers also pursue the similar path to the market-oriented diversity
project taken by LGBT people? In South Korea where the domestic political sphere is charged
with the specter of North Korea, do other silenced groups like people with disabilities and
victims of state violence converge or diverge from the solidarity project of sexual minorities?
While my current focus on LGBT activism prevents me from fully engaging these questions,
future research would benefit from them.
Rights projects as, and beyond, social movements
The rights project approach also joins the collective efforts of social movement scholarship in
grappling with the importance of meanings and interactions (Jasper 2010). Conventional social
movement scholarship has long focused on the question of under what conditions social
movements arise and what factors explain the success and failure of social movement
mobilization. They have identified several key sets of answers, which now have become master
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analytic categories in social movement studies: people’s grievances and discontents, social
capital and networks, resource mobilization, political opportunities, framing, group identity,
emotions, and so on. While these inquiries are still valuable, they tend to focus on using and
expanding established frameworks and often lose sight of the different arrangements of political
and cultural forces at play in the globalized world, which brings forth “unusual,” “unfamiliar,” or
“unexpected” forms of efforts to make social change.
The rights project approach directs attention to what counts as “social movements,”
“collective action,” or “resistance” and how they are understood and evaluated, from the
perspective of actors, rather than of scholars. As I have shown in this dissertation, the definition
and boundary of “social movements” can radically vary in each society, depending on a
combination of local, regional, and global conditions, as actors work towards radically different
forms of rights projects. It is indeed possible to break down a rights project and its characteristics
into the existing frameworks of political opportunities (e.g., geopolitics as a new opportunity
structure), resource mobilization (e.g., corporations as a new resource structure), or framing
processes (e.g., “equality,” “diversity,” “solidarity” as movement frames). While I am open to
such applications, one of the theoretical bargains of rights project is that it attempts to offer a
more comprehensive understanding of how actors define rights, how they make rights work, and
how rights become meaningful in action and in interaction.
Likewise, the comparative pursuit engrained within this approach departs from the
conventional comparative approach that applies pre-established frameworks of social movements
(e.g., political opportunities, mobilizing structures, framing processes) to different national and
regional contexts (see McAdam, McCarthy, and Zald 1996/2012). Rather, the very different
contexts generate the relevant grids of comparison to understand the context-specific
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construction of rights projects. In my research, I identified that legal structures, local political
and cultural norms, as well as the state’s geopolitical configurations as meaningful dimensions of
comparison in understanding the variations of rights projects in globalized Asia. It is possible
that a prominent rights project in one context becomes entirely irrelevant in another context. For
instance, the diversity project of Singapore does not seem to be effective in South Korea where
corporations are generally considered “evil.” Likewise, the solidarity project of South Korea
would not be perceived as effective in Singapore given the relative lack of a civil society in the
country. Thus, the key question that the rights project approach asks is under what conditions
certain actions and interactions become a “social movement” and how do such efforts unfold as a
“project.”
My dissertation also advances scholarship on LGBT social movements and queer politics.
On the one hand, extant studies of LGBT movements have focused on the legal aspect of “rights-
based strategies” that privilege law and policies as the main arenas in the struggles for LGBT
rights (Bernstein, Marshall, and Barclay 2009; Engel 2016; Mucciaroni 2008; Pierceson 2005).
LGBT social movements are usually seen as mainly targeting the state’s domestic legal system,
often equating legal achievements (e.g., the legalization of same-sex marriage) with the progress
of the movement and of the LGBT community in general. LGBT rights, in this field of inquiry,
are narrowly conceived as a set of legal privileges and entitlements for a particular population.
Taking inspirations from Gayle Rubin (1975), I have suggested that the struggles of gender and
sexual minorities must take into account “the mutual interdependence of sexuality, economics,
and politics” rather than be considered “in complete isolation.” (209-210) The three cases of
LGBT rights projects, therefore, illustrate how LGBT rights can take different forms and
meanings and take place in multiple spheres and institutional spaces beyond the realm of law.
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On the other hand, queer scholarship has paid increasing attention to the dangerous
liaisons between mainstream LGBT movements and the normative structures of the state and
market. Critical concepts such as homonationalism (Puar 2007) and queer liberalism (Eng,
Halberstam, and Muñoz 2005; Eng 2010) have widely been endorsed and circulated in English-
speaking academic circles. LGBT rights, in this stream of literature, often are equated with the
privilege of white middle-class LGBT individuals and are seen to come at the expense of other
marginalized queer groups (e.g., queers of color, and of working-class and immigrant
backgrounds). I sympathize with these critiques when applied in relevant contexts because they
were born out of specific geographic and historical conditions and social relations, namely in the
context of US empire and its inherent racism. My dissertation indicates that these US-based
concepts cannot be taken for granted in other contexts. For instance, Taiwan’s equality project is
not an Asian replica of the American same-sex marriage movement. Hence, it cannot simply be
regarded as another manifestation of homonationalism given the two nation-state’s different
global standings. Likewise, Singapore’s diversity project is not an Asian import of queer
liberalism, taking into account the particular relations between the state, market, and society. A
rights project approach, thus, helps us decenter the conceptual edifice of US-based queer studies
and pushes us to develop a more nuanced understanding of queer politics in a globalized world.
***
This dissertation began with a simple question: what explains the stark differences in LGBT
activism in societies with similar historical and cultural backgrounds? Some scholars would
argue that they are currently in different stages in the long process of institutionalizing global
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human rights norms. Other scholars would counter that these societies have instilled fundamental
cultural differences that deter such a universal development. Yet, others would insist that the
differences originated from deep-seated history of colonialism and imperialism. I wanted to find
the answers from the very group of people involved in LGBT activism and learn from their
perspectives, which led me to a multi-year journey resulting in this comparative research.
Revisiting the very first vignette that I used to open this dissertation, the moment of
encounter between Taiwanese, Singaporean, and Korean LGBT activists compelled me to search
for the social relations and mechanisms that shape the radical differences in LGBT activism in
the Asia region. The answers were not equated to the different legal structures and legal
“outcomes” of each movement. They were also not dictated by global discourses or local cultural
traditions. The complex arrangements of the society’s shifting geopolitics, political landscapes,
economic change, and cultural transformations shape the conditions for LGBT activists to
articulate and practice rights in context-specific ways—which I have called rights projects.
As of 2021, in total of 29 societies legally recognize same-sex marriage; most are located
in the Global North, one of the few exceptions being Taiwan. Despite being praised as a historic
achievement of Asia, Taiwan still remains the name that shall not be properly named in the
international society, and hence often noted as “the self-ruled island,” if not a “province of
China.” Thus, Taiwan’s equality project continues to realize its legal achievement, not as a de
facto state, but as an equally standing sovereign nation-state. By contrast, same-sex relations are
criminalized in total of 69 countries to this day, many of them being former colonies of Western
empires. Singapore is among the most socioeconomically “developed” in this group of countries.
However, the prospect to repeal the sodomy law in the near future appears to be as slim as the
fundamental change in the country’s authoritarian regime. It is likely that LGBT activists would
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stick to the diversity project, persevering with the state’s constant updating of regulations. Lastly,
in some countries, gender and sexual minorities live in legal, political, and social limbo. South
Korea epitomizes one such case. It is expected that the solidarity project would remain
unchanged as the major format of rights project in society. What remains uncertain is whether
and how it would be affected by broader geopolitical shifts with regard to the Korean peninsula’s
future.
In the end, my dissertation is an intellectual attempt to grasp and appreciate the context-
specific efforts and resilience of marginalized groups in making social change. The future of the
rights projects will also be shaped by these efforts on the ground, which will require more
empirical research to be conducted.
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Abstract (if available)
Abstract
My dissertation illustrates the examination of human rights and the global circulation of rights discourse. In this research, I introduce the concept of “rights project,” meaning the complex endeavor of minority groups to achieve rights, recognition, and entitlements through context-specific efforts involving the mobilization, coordination, and deployment of various resources in a range of institutional contexts. In recent decades, numerous global indicators have been developed by intergovernmental organizations (e.g., the United Nations), human rights advocacy groups, think tanks, and even businesses to measure and assess rights of various marginalized groups in different societies. Despite the global impact of these indicators, they are limited in that they conceptualize rights as a universal construct that can be quantified and compared by the global legal and policy measures. I argue that minority groups often challenge this universal notion of rights as they engage in distinct kinds of political and cultural endeavors keyed to their specific local, national, and regional contexts that I call rights projects. Varying in form and content depending on specific socio-economic and political circumstances, each rights project embraces distinct goals, priorities, and strategies and emphasizes a specific set of political principles and practices. ❧ My dissertation draws on two years of comparative ethnographic research in Taiwan, Singapore, and South Korea, including 230 in-depth interviews with LGBT activists and community organizers, and participant observation of more than 250 public events pertaining to LGBT issues (e.g., pride parades, rallies, marches, press conferences) and community gatherings of relevant LGBT groups (e.g., membership meetings, education and training sessions, strategy workshops and forums, fundraising parties, LGBT-inclusive church services, LGBT employee mixers and networking sessions). I ask what LGBT movements in different local, national, and regional contexts are fighting for, how they envision, articulate, and practice social change, and how they challenge the universal notion of rights. I suggest that LGBT rights projects currently emerging and unfolding in many parts of the world, including Asian societies, are fundamentally shaped by and operate within the larger context of state governance and global power relations. ❧ My research compares Taiwan, Singapore, and South Korea because these societies together provide divergent pathways to the social construction of rights projects, in that the sexual and gender minorities therein have been defined, categorized, and managed according to very different legal frameworks and trajectories of state management. In Taiwan, recognition has been made same-sex behaviors and relationships legal; in Singapore, these behaviors and relationships are illegal; and in South Korea, sexual minorities have remained invisible or legally absent. My analysis situates these legal structures in particular political and cultural contexts characterized by distinct forms of rights projects. My comparative analysis reveals three cases of rights projectㅡan equality project (represented by Taiwan), a diversity project (represented by Singapore), and a solidarity project (represented by South Korea)ㅡcorresponding to the three nation-states’ respective geopolitical positions, state-market relations, and prevailing cultural and political norms. ❧ In societies in which the domestic political sphere is largely preoccupied with enduring geopolitical tensions and conflicts, such as the nuclear threat that North Korea poses to South Korea and China’s ever-increasing economic and diplomatic pressure on Taiwanese sovereignty, LGBT groups must struggle simply to make their voices heard. Thus, Korean LGBT movements have asserted their rights in solidarity with other minority groups in the relatively young democracy (solidarity project), but the changes that they seek have repeatedly been postponed. In Taiwan, despite a decades-long campaign for equal treatment and recent successes in the courts, LGBT movements have realized that their aims cannot be fully realized absent the achievement of another kind of equalityㅡthat of their marginalized nation-state within the international system (equality project). When domestic legal avenues to pursue equal rights are impractical or ineffective, as in illiberal Singapore, marginalized groups must forge new spaces of resistance in order to seek recognition and entitlements. Thus, Singaporeans, faced with political illiberalism, have looked for alternatives to the legal system, such as the market-driven discourse of “diversity and inclusion,” in their search for recognition and entitlements (diversity project). Rather than being local iterations of homogenous globalized LGBT rights discourse, often associated with same-sex relationship recognition, these three cases of LGBT rights projects illustrate how marginalized groups enact, substantialize, and reconfigure their aims, priorities, and strategies simultaneously in reference to, in opposition to, and beyond the universal notion of rights. In sum, I contend that global discourse of rights is mediated and reconstructed in varied local contexts and results in different forms of rights projects, which leads to different strategies of articulating and enacting rights. ❧ This project draws on and contributes to multiple scholarly fields. First, by taking global and regional politics seriously as a means to understand sexuality politics (and vice versa), I combine theories of nation-state building, international relations, and global political economy with gender and sexuality studies. I contend that gender and sexuality-based movements worldwide are shaped by larger global and regional forces in their mobilization, coordination, and deployment of varyingㅡand sometimes contrasting and conflictingㅡideas about social change. Second, I join with other scholars in emerging field of transnational gender and sexuality studies to reconsider the utility of a range of U.S.-based concepts and assumptions. Thus, I examine multiple forms of articulating and enacting rights projects and decenter the monolithic conception of rights prevailing in the studies of global human rights and LGBT politics. Third, I advance the scholarship on contentious politics by drawing attention to efforts by marginalized groups not only in resisting the state and market forces but also in recognizing and mobilizing them for their own political benefits. I highlight the conditions under which LGBT politics converge with or diverge from market-driven neoliberalism and state-led nationalism, and its ambivalent empirical and theoretical implications. Lastly, the original research design enriches the methodological discussion of global ethnography and ethnographic comparisons. This project offers an instructive model of how we develop global and comparative knowledge without falling into Euro-American universalism or cultural relativism.
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University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses
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Asset Metadata
Creator
Jung, Minwoo
(author)
Core Title
Rights projects in a globalized world
School
College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
Degree
Doctor of Philosophy
Degree Program
Sociology
Degree Conferral Date
2021-08
Publication Date
07/29/2023
Defense Date
06/17/2021
Publisher
University of Southern California
(original),
University of Southern California. Libraries
(digital)
Tag
Asia,geopolitics,Globalization,human rights,LGBT movements,OAI-PMH Harvest,sexuality politics,social movements
Format
application/pdf
(imt)
Language
English
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Electronically uploaded by the author
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Advisor
Lichterman, Paul (
committee chair
), Parrenas, Rhacel Salazar (
committee chair
), Frank, David John (
committee member
), Kang, David C. (
committee member
), Yazdiha, Hajar (
committee member
)
Creator Email
minwooju@usc.edu,mjung@luc.edu
Permanent Link (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-oUC15672374
Unique identifier
UC15672374
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etd-JungMinwoo-9965
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Jung, Minwoo
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University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses
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Tags
LGBT movements
sexuality politics
social movements