The language of homophobia on a Chinese campus
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Banner displayed on the main campus of Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan, capital of Hubei Province, by members of the women’s basketball team:
The banner reads:
wéihù Zhōnghuá mínzú chuántǒng lúnlǐ
hànwèi shèhuì zhǔyì héxīn jiàzhí
dǐzhì xīfāng fǔxiǔ sīxiǎng qīn shí
ràng tóngxìngliàn yuǎnlí dàxué xiàoyuán
维护中华民族传统伦理
捍卫社会主义核心价值
抵制西方腐朽思想侵蚀
让同性恋远离大学校园
Maintain the traditional morals of the Chinese people,
Defend the core values of socialism;
Resist the corrosion of decadent Western thought,
Keep homosexuality far from our university campus
When a photo of the students holding the banner was posted online by the team's coach, there was widespread opposition.
"Furor in China Over Team’s Banner: ‘Keep Homosexuality Far From Campus’" (NYT, Javier C. Hernández, 4/20/17)
"Mothers united to fight against a homophobic banner unfurled at a college in China" (Mashable, Yi Shu Ng, 4/20/17)
bié ràng kǒngtóngzhě shānghài wǒmen de háizi!
别让恐同者伤害我们的孩子!
Don't let homophobes harm our children!
If only China could have such open debate of opposing opinions on other pressing social and political issues!
AntC said,
April 20, 2017 @ 10:09 pm
I notice each line on the basketball team's banner is exactly ten characters; and your pinyin gives exactly ten syllables (apart from the last).
The 'words' (between spaces in the pinyin) are nearly all two-syllable. (Again the last line rather breaks that up.)
Does a five-by-two-syllable phrase have a particular scansion or propaganda value? Does the last line's having a slightly different scansion help emphasise its propaganda message — 'the closer'?
Marnanel said,
April 21, 2017 @ 1:01 am
This is filed under "neologisms": what's the neologism here? I speak no Chinese, so I'm wondering.
Victor Mair said,
April 21, 2017 @ 6:06 am
"what's the neologism here?"
kǒngtóngzhě 恐同者 ("homophobes")
xyloph said,
April 21, 2017 @ 7:16 am
Interestingly enough, the word 恐同 follows well known and quite logical Chinese word forming rules, taking one character for each component, much like 彩电 is drawn from 彩色电视机. Homophobia, on the other hand, is a terrible neologism.
StephenL said,
April 21, 2017 @ 9:03 am
The old escape route if an unsuspecting parent found your university LGBT society membership card while doing the laundry was to claim it stood for "lady's and gent's basketball team".
Guy said,
April 21, 2017 @ 3:35 pm
xyloph,
What's your objection to "homophobia"? It follows a pattern similar to "Francophobe". Is it just that the "homo" part is only one morpheme from the neoclassical compound "homosexual"? Incidentally, one criticism of the word "homosexual" I've heard is that combines a Greek root with a Latin one.
xyloph said,
April 22, 2017 @ 4:37 am
With the word "francophobe", which I didn't even know existed, the two things combined in the word make sense the same way "hydrophobic" makes sense because something hydrophobic fears the water and a francophobe fears the French. With "homo-", I would expect a homophobe to fear "the same", which is of course not what the word means. The defining part of "homosexual" is left out when adding the "-phobe". Now I don't know how to make up a better word, but that has nothing to do with my dislike for the word "homophobe".
To contrast this with the Chinese word, I think it's very common to leave out the defining parts of words when making new shortened compounds. 电 is not the defining part of 电视机, or at least for me it isn't. There's 电脑, 电话, 电报 among others, so I feel like shortening it to the first character can lead to ambiguity. Combining it with 彩 reduces it of course. So 恐同 is essentially a direct translation of the English word, but in Chinese I am more accustomed to words that don't inherently make sense.
Pan Huiqiong said,
April 22, 2017 @ 7:15 am
In this passage, two groups of people with opposite standpoint came into view by the banner they hold in the pictures. One of them regarding homosexuality as decadent Western thought holds that it goes against Chinese traditional morals and the core values of socialism so that it should be prevented from university while the other one think that homophobes is not supposed to harm homosexuality. From my perspective, it is a mistake for us to discriminate against homosexuals, or with the reason of loving children, force misery and fear onto those people.
Sexual orientation is not a multiple-choice question, there are A、B、C for none of us to choose. Those who exclude homosexuality are in a position to accept heterosexuality but refuse homosexuality on the basis of thinking they are normal people comparing to those who are “off normal”. Students in university may be affected by those remarks and hold different ideas on this issue.
University students are somehow not an adult. They have no much experience about society and at the same time are able to believe others easily and hurt by other comments. You will not understand what means to third sex when they are repelled and teased by their classmates. They are students, in this point, nothing different form others and they absolutely have the right to obtain education.
Homophobia just like racism and sexism, resisting homosexuality blindly is not fair and responsible. It is very easy to contact discrimination but it is very difficult to be discriminated against. If they cannot be treat with objective view in such a place with enlightenment, what they will face when they graduated from university. Racism and sexism is not as seriously as before. Similarly, we will be glad to make progress on supporting homosexuality.
maidhc said,
April 22, 2017 @ 8:56 pm
Homophobia could be fear of milk and hydrophobia fear of electricity (depending on where you live).
Michael Watts said,
April 24, 2017 @ 1:01 pm
Hydrophobia wasn't a great example of a word that makes sense compositionally, since its usual meaning is "rabies".