Tonghzi
Politics of Same-sex Eroticism in Chinese Societies

This book describes in detail the evolution of homosexual life and culture in various Chinese societies including Hong Kong and Taiwan. Deriving from the communist term for 'comrade', Tonghzi is the most popular contemporary Chinese word for lesbians, bisexuals, and gay people. But terms such as gay, lesbian, and queer are Anglo-Saxon in origin, with specific histories that do not exactly capture the indigenous features of Chinese same-sex relations. Tonghzi implies and includes much more. S/Mers, transvestites, fetishists, and members of the Chinese sexual counterculture who may be quite heterosexual are also tonghzi since the term not only embodie the sexual (legitimising same-sex love), it also denotes the political (sharing the goals of combating heterosexism) and the cultural (reappropriating a Chinese identity).