Living a fake life to please your family?
I was reading the BBC News when I stumbled across an article called „100 Woman 2016: My sham marriage“, in which a 32 year-old Chinese woman called Ou Xiaobai talks about the struggles of being gay in China today and her convenient marriage as a solution to the immense pressure of her family and the society.
Ou Xiaobai has a girlfriend and is married to a gay man who himself has a boyfriend. She and her husband go together to family meetings or work meetings to act as a straight couple to be able to live in peace without having to come out. Many other gay Chinese couple use this concept of a convenient marriage to avoid coming out to their families.
I don’t think a convenient marriage is the right way to go as I couldn’t imagine living a fake life in front of my family just to please them. I would rather try to make them understand me but ultimately put them to the choice between me and their intolerant views. However after reading the article I decided to do some more research about how life is like for homosexuals in China as I didn’t want to base my opinion on my western standards alone as I figured that being gay is way more tolerated where I live than it is in China.
The general views in China are very strict and traditional which means that being married, having children and therefore continuing the family line is extremely important which is why many parents in China live in fear of their children being gay.
I think that convenient marriages are at least a way better option than to suppress ones true feelings which many Chinese do. They would act ‘normal’ and marry and get children as their family want them to and try their best to live a ‘normal’ but unhappy life. Choosing that way isn’t fair to yourself and neither is it fair to fake your feelings towards your husband/wife.
To get a feeling about the pressure that gay Chinese people have to face I can recommend the video linked below, in which several gay Chinese and their families were interviewed.
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