# Huang and Brouwer, ‘Coming Out, Coming Home, Coming With’, 2018 > [!cite] > Huang, Shuzhen, and Daniel C. Brouwer. ‘Coming Out, Coming Home, Coming With: Models of Queer Sexuality in Contemporary China’. *Journal of International and Intercultural Communication*, vol. 11, no. 2 (2018), pp. 97–116. https://doi.org/10.1080/17513057.2017.1414867. > [!abstract] > The authors investigate coming out and coming home as models of queer sexuality for contemporary Chinese queer subjects. Through semi-structured interviews with 13 Chinese queer subjects, the authors investigate the distinctness of the coming-out and coming-home models, their points of dissonance and consonance, and the ways in which queer subjects take them up (partially or fully, temporarily or enduringly), revise them, or reject them. Finding that interview narratives exceed the normative parameters shaped by these two models, the authors elaborate a third, distinct model—coming with—which better accounts for how some contemporary Chinese queer subjects are crafting livable lives --- ‘Composed of six females and seven males, the members of our interview population all self-identified as gay (*tongzhi* 同志) or lesbian *(lala* 拉拉).’ [[Huang and Brouwer, ‘Coming Out, Coming Home, Coming With’, 2018|(Huang and Brouwer 2018, 99)]] ^81f578 ‘Several days before the 2015 Chinese Lunar New Year, a video titled *Coming Home* soared to popularity on Chinese social media. Released by PFLAG (formerly Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) China, an organization that has been advocating for a U.S.-style of coming out among Chinese LGBTI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex) subjects, this video targeted parents of Chinese queer subjects. Despite the fact that the Chinese government eventually forced the website hosting the video to break its link because of its gay-friendly content, the *Coming Home* video received over 250 million page views (Bachhuber, 2015).’ [[Huang and Brouwer, ‘Coming Out, Coming Home, Coming With’, 2018|(Huang and Brouwer 2018, 97)]] ‘Fangchao’s father scolds him when he comes out: “Since you have already come/gone out, don’t come home again!” (PFLAG China, 2015).’ [[Huang and Brouwer, ‘Coming Out, Coming Home, Coming With’, 2018|(Huang and Brouwer 2018, 97)]] ‘With this pithy statement, the scriptwriter makes conspicuous the opposing relational models of *coming out* versus *coming home* for Chinese queer subjects. There is a play on words (*chuqu* 出去) in the dialogue to mean both coming out (as a queer subject) and going out (as in leaving the family). This video weaves together simultaneous movements away from and toward the family: *coming out* takes on the meaning of leaving the family in order to gain sexual freedom; *coming home* (*huijia* 回家), on the other hand, brings to mind the idea of coming back to the family, reining in and covering queer desires in order to stay close to the family. In this rendering, coming out is antithetical to coming home: if you come out, then do not think about coming home again.’ [[Huang and Brouwer, ‘Coming Out, Coming Home, Coming With’, 2018|(Huang and Brouwer 2018, 97)]] ‘She tells Fangchao to visit the family during the Chinese New Year, a time when most Chinese people partake in reunion dinners with their family. “No matter who you are, you are still our son,” she says. The story ends with the parents accepting their gay son because of family love.’ [[Huang and Brouwer, ‘Coming Out, Coming Home, Coming With’, 2018|(Huang and Brouwer 2018, 98)]] ‘The messages of this video are clear: dear parents of Chinese queers, remember how much you love your children and be sure to invite them to come (back) home; dear Chinese queers, come out and then wait for your parents (probably your mother) to invite you to come home.’ [[Huang and Brouwer, ‘Coming Out, Coming Home, Coming With’, 2018|(Huang and Brouwer 2018, 98)]] ‘As a mode of analysis, critical rhetoric is an orientation rather than a systematic or methodical processing of data—a mode of analysis that attunes us to forms of domination and freedom and exercises of power and ideology, and silences and absences as well as those dynamics that are spoken, present, or manifest (McKerrow, 1989).’ [[Huang and Brouwer, ‘Coming Out, Coming Home, Coming With’, 2018|(Huang and Brouwer 2018, 100)]] ‘Transnational LGBTI movements privilege a queer politics that is oppositional and confrontational, with an emphasis on the visibility of sexual identity.’ [[Huang and Brouwer, ‘Coming Out, Coming Home, Coming With’, 2018|(Huang and Brouwer 2018, 100)]] ‘Transnational queer discourse’s emphasis on a homosexual identity and the politics of visibility has become a new discursive resource that Chinese queer subjects can draw on in order to fight for their sexual freedom. It risks becoming a new hegemony that Chinese queer subjects might be expected to embrace to become intelligible members in a transnational LGBTI imaginary—a form of peer pressure, to use the words of our interviewee Ada, that Chinese queer subjects face.’ [[Huang and Brouwer, ‘Coming Out, Coming Home, Coming With’, 2018|(Huang and Brouwer 2018, 100)]] ‘According to a 2016 nationwide survey conducted through collaboration among a public relations company, a market research firm, and three LGBTI organizations based in mainland China, only 3% of gay and bisexual men and 6% of lesbian and bisexual women are totally out.2 In fact, 34% of gay and bisexual men and 12% of lesbian and bisexual women surveyed were never out to anyone. The survey also found that family is the primary site of struggle among Chinese queer subjects.’ [[Huang and Brouwer, ‘Coming Out, Coming Home, Coming With’, 2018|(Huang and Brouwer 2018, 101)]] ‘At rates of 75% and 81%, gay and bisexual men and lesbian and bisexual women reported that their primary source of distress was family—much more than social recognition and legal protection. Of those surveyed, only 19% of gay and bisexual men and 25% of lesbian and bisexual women said that they had come out to “some family members” (WorkForLGBT, 2016). This survey clearly shows that family is still the primary source of reference—and, for many, distress—for queer subjects in China.’ [[Huang and Brouwer, ‘Coming Out, Coming Home, Coming With’, 2018|(Huang and Brouwer 2018, 101)]] ‘\[…] the family institution is the most difficult terrain to navigate.’ [[Huang and Brouwer, ‘Coming Out, Coming Home, Coming With’, 2018|(Huang and Brouwer 2018, 101)]] ‘The most profound struggle that Chinese queer subjects face is, hence, not in a “public,” sociopolitical domain; instead, it is located in their “private” lives—in the precarious, lasting negotiations with their intimate families, especially their parents.’ [[Huang and Brouwer, ‘Coming Out, Coming Home, Coming With’, 2018|(Huang and Brouwer 2018, 101)]] ‘The Chinese term for “coming out” is 出柜 (*chugui*), which literally translates as “exiting the closet.”’ [[Huang and Brouwer, ‘Coming Out, Coming Home, Coming With’, 2018|(Huang and Brouwer 2018, 101)]] ‘Coming out is not without risk, of course, as Jane conveys: When I came out to my parents, there were some moments when my father was very tough. He said something very heartless, like “breaking off relationship between father and daughter,” “\[I would] break your leg,” “don’t you ever enter this door,” and “I would live my own life, don’t ever come to see me again!”’ [[Huang and Brouwer, ‘Coming Out, Coming Home, Coming With’, 2018|(Huang and Brouwer 2018, 101)]] ‘The United Nations Development Programme’s (2016) report Being LGBTI in China revealed that in comparison to school, the workplace, and religious communities, “families have the lowest degree of acceptance for \[gender and sexual] minorities” (p. 16) and, “while … \[queers] wish to open their hearts to, and be accepted by their families, they continue to experience discrimination, emotional and psyc\[h]ological pressures, and often even violence” within families (p. 34). In such conditions, it is easy to understand why coming out may seem impractical or even impossible.’ [[Huang and Brouwer, ‘Coming Out, Coming Home, Coming With’, 2018|(Huang and Brouwer 2018, 102)]] ‘However, several take up coming out in partial and revised ways or reject it altogether as unimaginable, unfeasible, or unsustainable. Partial and revised uptake is mediated by several factors, including the cultural principles of *pulu* (铺路) and *suzhi* (素质). Repeatedly during the interviews, the two popular discourses of *suzhi* (“quality”) and *pulu* (“path-paving”) emerged as the parameters or preconditions of coming out. The discourse of *suzhi*/quality is essentially a class issue related to the emergence of a “rainbow economy.” Increasingly, Chinese queer subjects are interpellated into the consumerist position of being “out and proud.” But not all queer subjects answer the hail of interpellation as good consumers. Economic difference predicts whether one is a good consumer, and thus a proper queer or not. Those who do not or cannot afford to be good consumers are sometimes condemned as lacking “culture,” or described as “low quality” (*di suzhi*), and thus not qualified to be a “good homosexual” (see Rofel, 2007, pp. 103–106).’’ [[Huang and Brouwer, ‘Coming Out, Coming Home, Coming With’, 2018|(Huang and Brouwer 2018, 102)]] ‘However, some, like Yaqing, a 19-year-old self-identified *lala* who was working at the metro station in Nanjing, China, showed keen insight into class differences with regard to the issue of coming out: I remember when the CEO \[chief executive officer] of Apple came out, everybody was talking about it. I remember how people responded to it: this is something of the rich. I think when you are financially well off, people think that \[being gay] is OK. If you are not, then play no tricks—get married and have children!’ [[Huang and Brouwer, ‘Coming Out, Coming Home, Coming With’, 2018|(Huang and Brouwer 2018, 102)]] ‘Collectively, the interviewees described a process whereby, by preparing oneself through quality living and financial success, the queer subject also prepares their parents and others to better respond to the difficult, disruptive speech act of coming out.’ [[Huang and Brouwer, ‘Coming Out, Coming Home, Coming With’, 2018|(Huang and Brouwer 2018, 102)]] ‘For some, it is only after a path of quality living has been paved that a queer subject can or should think about coming out. In this vein, Dave remarked: “I am now paving my path out \[*pulu*], but I have not mentioned anything about *tongzhi* \[gay].”’ [[Huang and Brouwer, ‘Coming Out, Coming Home, Coming With’, 2018|(Huang and Brouwer 2018, 102)]] ‘Norman, a business professor, discusses the relationship between economic consideration, filial piety, and coming out. On the one hand, he kept telling the first author that the only reason why he had not come out was that he did not wish to break his parents’ hearts. On the other hand, he asserted that “people who are not successful yet or those who are not rich are not qualified to talk about \[being] gay,” stressing path-paving via financial success as a precondition for the possibility of coming out.’ [[Huang and Brouwer, ‘Coming Out, Coming Home, Coming With’, 2018|(Huang and Brouwer 2018, 102–103)]] ‘The *pulu*/path-paving discourse suggests a “two-step model to coming out” (Kam, 2012, p. 99)—first, to stand up as a “successful” member of society, leaving the issue of sexuality unaddressed, and then to come out as an “outstanding” (*youxiu*) daughter/son but “less desirable” queer subject.’ [[Huang and Brouwer, ‘Coming Out, Coming Home, Coming With’, 2018|(Huang and Brouwer 2018, 103)]] ‘The conveners of a journal forum on “Queer Politics in China” posed the question of what forms of homonormativity are emerging in contemporary China, with homonormativity defined, in Lisa Duggan’s germinal rendering, as “a politics that does not contest dominant heteronormative assumptions and institutions, but upholds and sustains them, while promising the possibility of a demobilized gay constituency and a privatized, depoliticized gay culture anchored in domesticity and consumption” (quoted in Moreno-Tabarez et al., 2014, p. 125).’ [[Huang and Brouwer, ‘Coming Out, Coming Home, Coming With’, 2018|(Huang and Brouwer 2018, 103)]] ‘For Chinese children of any sexuality, “coming home” is an everyday expression referring generally to a strong sense of obligation to travel to their parents’ home for important holidays and landmark events.’ [[Huang and Brouwer, ‘Coming Out, Coming Home, Coming With’, 2018|(Huang and Brouwer 2018, 103)]] ‘While all Chinese children are subject to the force of coming home, for queer subjects the experience of coming home is distinctly precarious.’ [[Huang and Brouwer, ‘Coming Out, Coming Home, Coming With’, 2018|(Huang and Brouwer 2018, 103)]] ‘\[…] importantly, Chou articulates his intervention as a decolonial response to the increasing encroachment of coming-out normativities (see Kam, 2012, p. 93).’ [[Huang and Brouwer, ‘Coming Out, Coming Home, Coming With’, 2018|(Huang and Brouwer 2018, 103)]] ‘Premodern Chinese literature primarily records homosexual behavior between men. There is a well-established body of Chinese literature from premodern times that demonstrates a rich tradition of male homosexual behavior in ancient China. In this literature, homosexuality is mainly constructed as sexual practice, rather than as an identity (Chou, 2000; Kong, 2011). Indeed, in premodern Chinese society, there was not such a clear boundary between homosexuality and heterosexuality as identity-based orientations. In particular, it is salient to note that same-sex activities were primarily a lifestyle or a hobby of the upper class in premodern Chinese society. In this sense, homosexuality was understood as a social role and a manner of social relations.’ [[Huang and Brouwer, ‘Coming Out, Coming Home, Coming With’, 2018|(Huang and Brouwer 2018, 104)]] ‘In conventional Chinese culture, one’s sexual normativity is less defined by one’s sexual preference than by one’s willingness and ability to fulfill one’s filial duties—in particular, the duty to reproduce (Chou, 2000, pp. 24–25).’ [[Huang and Brouwer, ‘Coming Out, Coming Home, Coming With’, 2018|(Huang and Brouwer 2018, 104)]] ‘In other words, one’s sexual deviance is not determined primarily by the sex of one’s sexual partner(s) but by the (lack of) adherence to the ascribed filial duty of bearing children.’ [[Huang and Brouwer, ‘Coming Out, Coming Home, Coming With’, 2018|(Huang and Brouwer 2018, 104)]] ‘According to the Confucian logic in Chinese society, having same-sex desires does not absolve one from the responsibility of engaging in heterosexual activities that ensure the continuation of the family’s bloodline.’ [[Huang and Brouwer, ‘Coming Out, Coming Home, Coming With’, 2018|(Huang and Brouwer 2018, 104)]] ‘During the ongoing reform era (1978–present), socialist China has become increasingly neoliberal.’ [[Huang and Brouwer, ‘Coming Out, Coming Home, Coming With’, 2018|(Huang and Brouwer 2018, 104)]] ‘Neoliberalism valorizes the notions of privatization and personal responsibility (Duggan, 2003), placing economic responsibility on the individual citizen and making individuals responsible for their own social conditions (Wingard, 2013).’ [[Huang and Brouwer, ‘Coming Out, Coming Home, Coming With’, 2018|(Huang and Brouwer 2018, 104)]] ‘Neoliberal reforms have had significant effects on the family and marriage in contemporary China, as, for example, concerns about the aging population and pension crisis become increasingly prominent. In a neoliberal voice, the state declares that the elderly belong to their children, redirecting support and care for the elderly from the socialist state to the family. Such privatization also means that the patriarchal family institution is replacing the state “as the chief monitor of people’s private lives” and “an effective agent of social control over non-heterosexual subjects” (Kam, 2012, p. 90).’ [[Huang and Brouwer, ‘Coming Out, Coming Home, Coming With’, 2018|(Huang and Brouwer 2018, 104)]] ‘Historically and generally, for queer subjects the everyday language of “coming home” communicates an expectation or obligation to remain close to the family and to maintain familial piety and harmony by reining in and concealing queer desires. More specifically, the model of *coming home* prioritizes one’s biogenetic family and familial piety (especially to one’s parents) as an ethic, and prescribes the exercise of “reticent poetics” in order to maintain the harmony of social networks as an aesthetic (we elaborate on “reticent poetics” below). In this model, the family is indispensable, and the reconciliation of homosexuality and heterosexual marriage in one individual is imaginable and, indeed, authorized by historical fact and tradition.’ [[Huang and Brouwer, ‘Coming Out, Coming Home, Coming With’, 2018|(Huang and Brouwer 2018, 104)]] ‘In this model, the family is indispensable, and the reconciliation of homosexuality and heterosexual marriage in one individual is imaginable and, indeed, authorized by historical fact and tradition. The most well-known practice of coming home in the mainstream media in mainland China involves a gay man marrying an oblivious heterosexual woman, and practicing his same-sex desires occasionally (and not publicly).’ [[Huang and Brouwer, ‘Coming Out, Coming Home, Coming With’, 2018|(Huang and Brouwer 2018, 104)]] ‘A press release for the 1998 Chinese *tongzhi* conference in Hong Kong questioned some of the key assumptions and dynamics of transnational LGBTI movements: The les-bi-gay movement in many Western societies is largely built upon the notion of individualism, confrontational politics, and the discourse of individual rights. Certain characteristics of confrontational politics, such as coming out and mass protests and parades, may not be the best way of achieving *tongzhi* liberation in family-centred, community-oriented Chinese societies which stress the importance of social harmony. (quoted in Chou, 2000, p. 278)’ [[Huang and Brouwer, ‘Coming Out, Coming Home, Coming With’, 2018|(Huang and Brouwer 2018, 105)]] ‘Extending this critique, Chou (2000, p. 96) argues that the main concern of Chinese parents is less about their offspring’s same-sex physical behavior or intimacy and more about their offspring’s identification as lesbian or gay, as each of these labels is “a sexed category that privileges sexuality at the expense of his or her position in the family-kinship system, thus making the child a nonbeing in Chinese culture.”’ [[Huang and Brouwer, ‘Coming Out, Coming Home, Coming With’, 2018|(Huang and Brouwer 2018, 105)]] ‘The “best” way of achieving *tongzhi* liberation, Chou (2000) argues, is the coming-home strategy, which considers family relations and social harmony as equally important as one’s sexuality—if not more so. Liu and Ding (2005, p. 30) distill the three main characteristics of Chou’s coming-home strategy: “(1) non-conflictual harmonious relationships\[;] (2) non-declarative practical everyday acts\[; and] (3) a healthy personality that is not centred on sex(uality).”’ [[Huang and Brouwer, ‘Coming Out, Coming Home, Coming With’, 2018|(Huang and Brouwer 2018, 105)]] ‘Importantly, Chou’s contemporary activist recuperation of *coming home* narrows and intensifies the historical version in several ways. First, Chou makes more room for affirming queer sexuality, at least for queer subjects themselves; second, he places sexuality and family harmony in a “negotiation” relationship rather than subjugating sexuality to family harmony; and, third, he endorses staying single as an ideal strategy for negotiating the family and sexuality.’ [[Huang and Brouwer, ‘Coming Out, Coming Home, Coming With’, 2018|(Huang and Brouwer 2018, 105)]] ‘As a way of affirming the existence of queer sexuality but abiding by a principle of tacit communication about it, Chou’s *coming-home* model endorses the cultural practice of introducing one’s same-sex partner to one’s family and friends as a “close friend,” thereby leaving the issue of sexuality unconfronted.’ [[Huang and Brouwer, ‘Coming Out, Coming Home, Coming With’, 2018|(Huang and Brouwer 2018, 105)]] ‘Some, like Ada, Jane, Yaqing, and Gao, employed an explicit verbal style of coming out to their family. However, it is more common for queer subjects to communicate their sexuality to their family in a more subtle and indirect way. At the core of this indirect, subtle style of communication is what the interviewees call a strategy of “not laying it bare.”’ [[Huang and Brouwer, ‘Coming Out, Coming Home, Coming With’, 2018|(Huang and Brouwer 2018, 105)]] ‘For example, Zien, a 33-year-old *tongzhi* who lives with his parents in a rural town, told the first author how his father had known about his same-sex desire without him declaring his sexual identity: But my parents might have this awareness, knowing that I am this kind of person, because my boyfriend is with me, and we are business partners. Once, my father asked me: “Do you just want to be with him for your whole life?” … In fact, my *xinghun* partner, her family probably had known that she and her friend are like this; \[they] just did not lay it bare.’ [[Huang and Brouwer, ‘Coming Out, Coming Home, Coming With’, 2018|(Huang and Brouwer 2018, 105–106)]] ‘Other interviewees revealed that they, too, thought that their parents knew of their same-sex desires, even though they never intended to tell their parents about their sexuality. For instance, Xiaoye, a 30-year-old *lala* who engaged in *xinghun* (形婚 or a “contract marriage” between a lesbian woman and a gay man) about a year before our interview, believed that her father knew that she was not going in the “right direction.” Responding to a question from her father, she answered: “I am also working hard to present toward the direction you want me to go, but there is only so much I can do.”’ [[Huang and Brouwer, ‘Coming Out, Coming Home, Coming With’, 2018|(Huang and Brouwer 2018, 106)]] ‘In contrast to the explicit, declarative style of knowing sexuality through coming out, some queer scholars note that issues of sexuality are more often communicated by an overall comprehension of the context (see Chou, 2001; Kam, 2012; Liu & Ding, 2005). This communication style is what Liu and Ding (2005) call “reticent poetics.” Focusing on Taiwanese society, Liu and Ding argue that “reticence” (*hanxu*) is the dominant aesthetic-ethical value that regulates the communication process of sexuality in a Chinese context.’ [[Huang and Brouwer, ‘Coming Out, Coming Home, Coming With’, 2018|(Huang and Brouwer 2018, 106)]] ‘Quoting from the scholar Tsai (1998), they explain: the poetics of reticence as one of the aesthetic ideals of a Chinese literary tradition is a mode of writing wherein “the real message tends to go beyond the actual words of the text.” Reticence (*hanxu*) literally means both “holding back” (*han*) and “storing up” (*xu*), and has been variously translated as “conservation,” “reserve,” and “potentiality.” (Liu & Ding, 2005, p. 34)’ [[Huang and Brouwer, ‘Coming Out, Coming Home, Coming With’, 2018|(Huang and Brouwer 2018, 106)]] ‘he discerned the two different ways of producing parental “knowing” about one’s queer sexuality—dropping hints versus verbalizing one’s sexual identity—as cultural differences between China and the United States. Coming out privileges telling over feeling and voice over silence. In comparison, Zien, Xiaoye, and Macky express confidence that the conditions of knowing about their queer sexuality are satisfied by their practice of “reticent poetics” in a culturally specific Chinese context.’ [[Huang and Brouwer, ‘Coming Out, Coming Home, Coming With’, 2018|(Huang and Brouwer 2018, 106)]] ‘The coming-home model emphasizes that, for many Chinese queer subjects, parents are not an optional choice, a relationship that they can choose to leave or risk destroying in different phases of their lives; rather, they are always an integrated part, people who are always in the visions of their imagined future.’ [[Huang and Brouwer, ‘Coming Out, Coming Home, Coming With’, 2018|(Huang and Brouwer 2018, 107)]] ‘Against either the confrontational, explicit, political visibility of *coming out* that privileges sexuality and the reticent, filial piety of *coming home* that privileges family harmony, some Chinese queer subjects, like Jane, employ what we call a *coming-with* approach that *combines the preservation of space for one’s queer sexuality with tactics that stay with the family either by cultivating parental harmony or actively interrogating heteronormative family structures*.’ [[Huang and Brouwer, ‘Coming Out, Coming Home, Coming With’, 2018|(Huang and Brouwer 2018, 107)]] ‘In Jane’s case, she both introduced her same-sex partner to her family and invited her mother to participate in the decision-making of her same-sex relationship. She also tried very hard to get involved in the everyday life of her second girlfriend’s mother, who at first was against their same-sex desire because of her Christian beliefs, but later accepted Jane’s relationship with her daughter and Jane as a close family friend. In this case, Jane is both out and actively committed to staying within and caring for the family relational network. In her practices, Jane brought her queer desire to the heteronormative home space and invited a representative of the heteronormative family to participate in her queer relationship.’ [[Huang and Brouwer, ‘Coming Out, Coming Home, Coming With’, 2018|(Huang and Brouwer 2018, 107)]] ‘Zien’s narrative about his *xinghun* illustrates how the family can be a site of active transformation. Zien was reticent about his sexuality but believed that his parents knew. For a long time, Zien’s parents gave his boyfriend, who was introduced to them as his “business partner,” a difficult time, showing their disagreement with what they tacitly understood to be a same-sex relationship. After Zien’s engagement to a lesbian woman, a reassurance that he would fulfill his marital obligations, his parents started to loosen up: “Sometimes \[they] even made jokes \[with my boyfriend], treating him like their kid.” In Zien’s case, the tension between his biogenetic family and his same-sex partner eased precisely because of his participation in *xinghun*; instead of excluding his same-sex relationship after he entered a hetero-marital relationship, his family included his same-sex partner as part of the family and tacitly agreed to Zien’s involvement in both a hetero-marital relationship and a same-sex relationship.’ [[Huang and Brouwer, ‘Coming Out, Coming Home, Coming With’, 2018|(Huang and Brouwer 2018, 107–108)]] ‘While a *xinghun* marriage between a woman and a man may seem like a complete capitulation to parental happiness, the interviewees who practice it routinely narrate it as a way of preserving queer sexuality: it provides evidence of a minimum commitment to the public performance of a hetero-marriage while simultaneously opening up space for a queer family structure with a same-sex partner. Rather than intersecting with the heteronormative family, the same-sex relationship is significantly sequestered away from surveillance by and interference from parents *because* of the public performance of (“fake”) heterosexuality through *xinghun* (Huang, 2018). While *xinghun* does not directly confront the heteronormative family and demand it to transform, it characterizes *coming with* by affirming both sexuality and family.’ [[Huang and Brouwer, ‘Coming Out, Coming Home, Coming With’, 2018|(Huang and Brouwer 2018, 108)]] ‘Chou posits homophobia as a Western phenomenon, originating from elsewhere and circulating to a Chinese nation that is historically and naturally “tolerant” of non-normative sexuality as long as queer subjects fulfill their heteronormative obligations.’ [[Huang and Brouwer, ‘Coming Out, Coming Home, Coming With’, 2018|(Huang and Brouwer 2018, 108–109)]] ‘As Liu and Ding (2005) and Kam (2012) expose, Chou’s decolonial and nationalistic impulses ultimately leave national culture and familial dynamics cordoned off from critique. Several queer scholars (e.g., Engebretsen, 2009; Kam, 2012; Liu, 2010; Liu & Ding, 2005) are skeptical of the innocent “coming-home” strategy proposed in Chou’s works. The “silent tolerance” in Chinese sexuality that Chou proposes, Liu and Ding (2005, p. 33) argue, is a cultural myth: it is a reticent homophobia that represses, disciplines, and keeps queer subjects in place. Without abandoning family, culture, and nation, this assessment opens them to further critique.’ [[Huang and Brouwer, ‘Coming Out, Coming Home, Coming With’, 2018|(Huang and Brouwer 2018, 109)]] ‘Another combination in this style is to come out and agree to a public performance of marriage, in the form of a wedding banquet, to a person of a different sex. Gao, a 35-year-old self-identified *tongzhi,* narrated this version of coming with, acquiescing to his parents’ desire for a wedding banquet with a woman but never seeking a marriage certificate and rarely seeing his lesbian banquet co-performer afterwards.’ [[Huang and Brouwer, ‘Coming Out, Coming Home, Coming With’, 2018|(Huang and Brouwer 2018, 109)]] ‘Some closeted Chinese gay men, who are reticent about their own sexuality, bring home gay friends to suss out and/or challenge their parents (see Bie & Tang, 2016, p. 359). Along these lines, our interviewee Dave, who is not out to his parents, performs this labor of attitude-testing, explaining: “I am just trying to change the way they think—on those things that they think are not relevant to them, or just different perspectives … Mentally, I want them to accept a diverse model like this first.”’ [[Huang and Brouwer, ‘Coming Out, Coming Home, Coming With’, 2018|(Huang and Brouwer 2018, 110)]] ‘The local knowledge and practices of Chinese queer subjects, especially as shown in the *coming-with* model we have discussed here, do not necessarily mean a distortion or rejection of queerness. Rather, they mean that the notion of “queer” is not fixed and is constantly contested and transformed by what is “Chinese” (Liu, 2010, p. 297).’ [[Huang and Brouwer, ‘Coming Out, Coming Home, Coming With’, 2018|(Huang and Brouwer 2018, 110–111)]] ‘Here we echo Liu (2010) in arguing that queerness can be expanded, revised, and transformed by the everyday practices of Chinese queer subjects. When visibility is imagined as speaking up, silence and reticence appear as failures of queer subjectivity. However, such a reductionist account fails to capture the complexity of queer experiences and reflects the Western bias in mainstream queer theory and politics. As noted by Foucault (1978), there are many silences, and not all silences are the same. Bringing to the fore the complications about (not) coming out for queer subjects in contemporary China, we show how the experiences of Chinese queer subjects have challenged the simple equation between “breaking silence” and empowerment (Carrillo Rowe & Malhotra, 2013).’ [[Huang and Brouwer, ‘Coming Out, Coming Home, Coming With’, 2018|(Huang and Brouwer 2018, 111)]] ‘As is evident in our interviews, for most Chinese queer subjects, the family is necessarily a negotiation partner that Chinese queer subjects try to engage with rather than move away from. The family is the space where negotiation and transformation happen; there is no “safe ‘elsewhere’” (Gopinath, 2005, p. 153) outside of the home space for such transformations to occur. Thus, instead of coming out and turning away from their family, and instead of coming home and leaving the heteronormative family uncontested, many Chinese queer subjects prefer a coming-with approach in order to integrate both familial belonging and sexual identification—a third path that is neither total rejection of nor total subsumption under the family. In such a model, the family is both the object and the location of potential transformation for Chinese queer subjects.’ [[Huang and Brouwer, ‘Coming Out, Coming Home, Coming With’, 2018|(Huang and Brouwer 2018, 111)]] ‘Using census data from 2011, Zhang Beichuan, a queer scholar in China, estimates that there are approximately 16 million heterosexual women who are married to gay men in China (“Gay marriage,” 2012; see also Bie & Tang, 2016, pp. 351–352, 358–365).’ [[Huang and Brouwer, ‘Coming Out, Coming Home, Coming With’, 2018|(Huang and Brouwer 2018, 111)]]