Li and Xu fell love a untry where gay marriage and surrogacy are illegal. Their stggle – and succs – is part of a growg trend<br>
Contents:
- TO SURVIVE, CHA’S BIGGT GAY DATG APP BEME A PHARMACY
- HOW A CHE GAY DATG APP BLAZED A TRAIL TO THE US STOCK MARKET
- FOUR YEARS, TWO NTENTS: A GAY CHE UPLE'S JOURNEY FOR A SURROGATE SON
TO SURVIVE, CHA’S BIGGT GAY DATG APP BEME A PHARMACY
HONG KONG -- Growg up homosexual a small cy southern Cha, "J.L." ed to feel alone the world. There were no gay bars his * chinese gay dating *
Cred...Illtratn by Timo LenzenFeatureBlued, one of the biggt gay datg apps the world, has succeed bee plays by the ever-shiftg l for L.G.B.T.Q. Cha — brgg together a mory muny whout activism.Cred...Illtratn 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.
HOW A CHE GAY DATG APP BLAZED A TRAIL TO THE US STOCK MARKET
Then he’d go to QQ, the new stant-msagg service and onle fom, and type the Che word for “homosexual” — tongzhi, or ra.Offle, Duan had known for a long time that he was different — and he knew no one else like him.
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 senr.As 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.
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.[The Che Inter Is Flowerg.
FOUR YEARS, TWO NTENTS: A GAY CHE UPLE'S JOURNEY FOR A SURROGATE SON
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.G.B.T.Q.
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.G.B.T.Q. 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.