Homo(sexual) socialist: Psychiatry and homosexuality in China in the Mao and early Deng eras

Abstract

This article focuses on the relationship between psychiatry and homosexuality in the People's Republic of China from the Mao era to early Deng era (1949–c.90). I argue that, entangled with the multi-centred global psychopathological regime of homosexuality, the psychiatric discourse in China perpetuated a medicalised concept of homosexuality from the Mao period through the early Deng years. This article further situates homosexuality in Mao's China in the socialist camp to call for a decentring historiography of modern homosexuality. It also contributes to the understanding of the continuity between the Mao era and the Deng era.