酷儿 / QUEER (QOO)
Risograph Zine
China is home to the world’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) population. Until a decade ago, LGBTQ people were an invisible and hidden population in Chinese society. Although legal persecution was repealed in 1997, discrimination against LGBTQ people still exists.
While not directly prohibiting LGBTQ-related programmes, the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television of China censors them as unsuitable for the general population. The same censorship is applied on the web and on social media apps, making it hard for anybody to access LGBTQ related content. Such discrimination against LGBTQ people has wider implications for all of society.
When you search the term 酷儿 (Queer) on the Chinese Wikipedia, there is only a short paragraph description on how the word is synonymous with “weird and different from the usual”, but no information on the history or specific social context of the term (as is with the English Wikipedia). In fact there is a popular brand of non-carbonated beverages in China called 酷儿 (Queer or Qoo) that has more information on Wikipedia and has nothing to do with LGBTQ culture.
I want to use this happy and naive 酷儿 Queer brand to subvert the censorship and LGBTQ content that China is covering, and bring into light the restrictions and suppression that censorship poses towards marginalized voices.
