Speaking the ‘L’ Elsewhere: Queering Women on TV in a Global China

Research dedicated to queer Chinese fan activities that are both practised by and devoted to nonheterosexual-identifying women has been relatively rare. Academic attention to the transcultural, cross-racial queer women-centered imaginaries prevalent in contemporary Chinese cyberspace has been limited. To fill this gap, this chapter examines the fans’ desire and subjectivities in one of the most popular queer fandoms dedicated to the American lesbian TV drama The L Word. It also presents the author's five semi-structured, in-depth interviews with Mainland China-born female audiences/fans of Western queer media. Situating the fans’ gossip and discussions in the most prosperous time for queering women on TV (between 2005 and 2016), the analysis reveals a queer-women-concerned globalising process in which Western LGBTQ cultures have been simultaneously normalised and contested by Chinese media consumers of gender/sexual minority identities to criticise and negotiate with their local heteronormative realities. © 2024 selection and editorial matter, Jamie J. Zhao and Hongwei Bao; individual chapters, the contributors.