Founr of Che gay datg app Blued optimistic about overseas expansn after US listg | South Cha Morng Post

Contents:

• TO SURVIVE, CHA’S BIGGT GAY DATG APP BEME A PHARMACY
• CHE GAY DATG APP BLUECY FOCED ON ASIA AFTER IPO
• GAY ASIAN DATG SE

TO SURVIVE, CHA’S BIGGT GAY DATG APP BEME A PHARMACY

Homosexualy is legal the untry, but LGBTQ people have no accs to many legal rights such as marriage and discrimatn protectn. Lnched 2012, Blued is a datg app primarily for gay ers.

Fka (formerly known as Aloha) is a Tr-like datg app for gay ers. Illtratn by Timo LenzenFeatureBlued, one of the biggt gay datg apps the world, has succeed bee plays by the ever-shiftg l for L.

Cha — brgg together a mory muny whout by Timo LenzenPublished March 5, 2020Updated March 12, 2020Like many gay Che growg up at the turn of the lennium, Duan Shuai began his long, liberate procs of g out onle.

CHE GAY DATG APP BLUECY FOCED ON ASIA AFTER IPO

Then he’d go to QQ, the new stant-msagg service and onle fom, and type the Che word for “homosexual” — tongzhi, or ra.

Onle, he stumbled to a world where he fally felt he belonged, a place where gay people like himself sought kship and nnectn. To faiarize himself wh Cha’s burgeong gay culture, he listened to the talks by the genr-studi scholar Li Yhe on the popular televisn channel Hunan TV; read “Crystal Boys, ” a novel about gay youth Taipei by the Taiwane wrer Bai Xianyong; and equented onle chat rooms for gay men like Boy Air, BF99, Don’t Cry My Friends and the lol Tianj Cool, where he met his first boyiend, a graduate stunt five years his Duan me of age, so did the Che ter. Whereas Duan once sought out gay muni small groups and quiet bars, today, as a 33-year-old workg publishg Beijg, he n jo gay meet-ups on WeChat; follow blogs and g-out stori on Weibo, a Twter-like platform; and, perhaps most ccial, he n nnect and fd partners on Blued, a gay social workg app.

GAY ASIAN DATG SE

The pany’s slogan, “He’s Right Next Door, ” embodi s ethos: to brg together gay men om all segments of Che society to one digal esystem.

But acrdg to a Uned Natns timate, ls than 5 percent of gay Che choose to e out. It is easily among the most popular gay datg apps the world. It is a tech pany a society that has been transformed by ee-market reforms, but also a gay tech pany operatg unr a one-party ernment wh an ambiguo stance toward L.

Internatnally, Cha has publicly volized s support for gay rights at the Uned Natns, statg that oppos all forms of “discrimatn, vlence and tolerance based on sexual orientatn. ” But domtilly, gay marriage and adoptn by same-sex upl are not allowed, and there are no known openly gay public figur the ernment or explic forms of legal protectn agast L.

Shanghai’s annual Pri Ftival has n openly and unhred for the last 11 years, and yet the ernment routely censors gay ntent the media. In Beijg, the popular gay club Dtatn hosts regular drag performanc while the movie theater down the street screens the Freddie Mercury bpic, “Bohemian Rhapsody, ” wh s gay ntent cut out. “The le is not that you’re not allowed to be gay, ” says Ben Mason, Blued’s former ternatnal marketg manager.

” Gay muni mt navigate the same nfg terra that all civil-society groups Cha do, learng to read the unpredictable and shiftg tis of relaxatn and ntrol, a cyclil procs that scholars of Che polics ll fang/shou (“openg up and tighteng”) one hand, the rise of the Che ter, facilated by the last three s of market reforms, has allowed for unprecented nnectn and visibily for gay muni Cha. Popular Che shows wh gay story l were removed om screeng s. One gay-datg app, Zank, was shut down by the ernment, and a lbian-datg app, Rela, disappeared shortly after.

Followg one of the bans, Blued scbbed homosexualy-related words like “gay” and “tongzhi” om s Che webse, changg the official pany scriptn to “The World’s Leadg Intert-Based Social & Health Edutn Network. By stayg wh the mercial and public-health sectors and amg the fight for gay regnn terms of bs, the pany, unr the learship of s founr and chief executive, Geng Le, has cultivated a mory muny ee of polil activism. Visibily, all while avoidg any kd of explic agatn for gay rights.

Insi, looks like “any other tech-start-up, ” says Sifan Lu, Geng’s former personal assistant, “but jt slightly gayer. His rise om closeted p to out tech mogul has been wily documented the media: He grew up the early ’90s, when homosexualy was still prosecuted as “hooliganism, ” punishable by tentn or even time at a labor mp.

In 2000, unr the psdonym Geng Le and wh the help of a dg book he bought lled “The Oriental Kg of Web-Makg, ” he created a webse for gay men to nnect, exchange personal stori and share rmatn on everythg om safe sex to gay lerature, namg Danlan: “light blue, ” after the lor of the water off the Qhuangdao ast. Like the sea — faraway, yet full of possibily — Danlan would be a sanctuary for gay men to exprs their hop and fears.

Che relig tradns like Buddhism and Confucianism do not overtly nmn homosexualy, which means that cultural attus are more malleable there than other Asian untri like Indonia or the Philipp.

Nor was homosexualy nsired by thori to be a nt Wtern import; on the ntrary, is wispread and regnized Che history and culture. A term still ed today to refer to gay relatnships — duan xiu, or “cut sleeve” — om a story “The Book of Han, ” an official history of the Han dynasty that was pleted the send century, which the emperor wak om a nap to fd his male lover still asleep on his robe, and tenrly cuts off his sleeve to avoid wakg Cha began to turn toward the Wt the late 19th century, also absorbed a pathologizg view of homosexualy as an illns — an attu that would not soften aga until a century later, wh the troductn of Deng Xiaopg’s open-door policy the late ’70s, which opened up markets and enuraged the liberalizatn of Che society.