The Last Rainbow: Advocacy of Anti-DV Queer Rights NGOs in Post-COVID China

In 2019, the Chinese government perpetuated a nationwide crackdown on domestic LGBTQ+ activism, leading to the mass shutdown of NGOs and civil societies, the suspension of social media accounts, and the persecution of rights activists. Nevertheless, a minimal number of organizations survived the purge and continued their activism in a semi-underground manner. Particularly, anti-gender-based-violence organizations, especially those focusing on domestic violence, are the most susceptible to state control. In 2020, the government promulgated the “Anti-Domestic-Violence Code,” co-opting anti-DV activism into a vessel for nationalistic propaganda. Meanwhile, the Code’s hyper-focus on heterosexual cisgender women and nuclear families systematically excludes the LGBTQ+ individuals - arguably the community most vulnerable to DV - from legal protection. Against such a grim socio-political backdrop, how does anti-DV queer activism progress in China in the post-COVID era? In this paper, I thematize the work of the last surviving anti-domestic-violence queer rights NGO in China. I seek a comprehensive analysis of their advocacy methods and strategic malleability under authoritarian state sanctions. Through an emic, anthropological approach, I investigate three aspects of their work. Firstly, through ethnographic analysis, I will holistically represent their daily workflow, highlighting their usage of anonymity, decentralization, and spontaneity to circumvent state scrutiny. Secondly, via network analysis, I will examine how the organization weaves together a coalition of surviving activists and activism units that is both guerrilla and consistent, centrifugal and centripetal. I argue that the network’s ostensibly paradoxical functionality renders its work malleable, securing a foolproof self-defense mechanism against the forceful but rigid policing attempts. Thirdly, I will conduct a media analysis of the digital content (“Self-Media”) the organization creates, including but not limited to written works, videos, and archives. I contend that the state’s suppression of freedom of expression induces a fluid, non-binary, relational brand-new queer lexicon, one that is agentic rather than subsumed, generative rather than consumptive. Through digital presence, the organization manages to cultivate a queer subculture that centralizes anti-gender-based violence, underground activism, and a reservoir of shared trauma and personal histories.