| dc.description.abstract | This thesis is a queer intervention into the gay rave culture. Around one thousand gay men converge almost every weekend, and not only young boys but also middle-aged mature men are very enthusiastic outside the rave club. A curious mind can never resist this hilarious festival which is drumming up loud interest in me for an explicatory excursion. Therefore, I crank up academic courage and tiptoe down the path to paradise and perdition as if there were only four minutes to save the WORRRRLDDDD— theirs vis-?-vis ours.
The first chapter concerns my ethnographic and theoretical journey into the gay rave culture, and I rely heavily on participant observation instead of conducting formal interviews. Their resilient courage takes me by surprise, especially when the dance music thrusts them into ecstatic motion. Despite the music and the landscape that might pull some weight, I roll my eyes and scratch my head, wondering whether or not I have to plunge into prurient details about these men’s accidental erotic encounters. My eyes glaze over! I yawn, ruminate over some leftist thinkers, and drift into insomnia. These gay villains attempt to relax the rigor of the ideals of heterosexual monogamy in our society, and they do not strain our credulity as their concrete action strikes my mind. I realize that our society is experiencing a mammoth structural change when the family is on a considerable decline, and we have every reason to solicit intimacy in public.
However, to think and live beyond the family comes with territory. The Nong-an Street gay home party is busted in 2004, and twenty-eight out of the total ninety-two men are found HIV positive. In the second chapter, I will broach this incident in terms of media representation. The glaring miscarriage of justice evident in the compulsory HIV test informs a very misguided campaign against HIV infection. To make substantial improvements and to save life, our medical authorities must profess implacable allegiance to sexual differences without sustaining a hierarchy of sexuality. The gay home party ravers actually practice safe sex, which can elude an eye of abstinence and chastity. In this chapter, I propose to acknowledge this sex culture in which gay men use great numbers of condoms. To step up measures against HIV infection, we must introduce every sexual practice to public attention. There is no need to demarcate a domain of good familial sex against a domain of bad sex outside the procreative family.
In concluding this thesis, I would engage my research in a critical dialogue with the claim to same-sex marriage as legal equality in Taiwan. The inchoate dynamics between the LGBT movement and our new President Ma will come under meticulous scrutiny. To credit Ma for gay visibility in Taipei, we must demand great responsibilities of him for policing gay rave culture. Now the queer movement is arriving at a watershed moment when the claim to same-sex marriage enjoys fair public resonance. If Ma only endorses this claim to allow marriageable gay subject to emerge, he can neutralize the sluttish resistance from the gay ravers. We have to prevent Ma from driving a wedge into the gay population, because any claim to legal equality can oppress real social diversity. My thesis concludes on a cautious note of true equal recognition. | en_US |