Queer Sinophone Malaysia: Language, Transnational Activism, and the Role of Taiwan.

Unlike the queer formations resulting from racialised organising especially those in the Global North, this paper demonstrates the ways in which language, especially Chinese, is often a more functional identity marker than race or ethnicity in the community lives of LGBT Malaysians. This is evident in how queer advocacy groups are publicised as language-specific entities, calling themselves 'Chinese-speaking', 'English-speaking', or 'Malay-speaking', in urban cities such as Kuala Lumpur. One might see this use of language as a proxy of an existing racial configuration (the state-endorsed categories of Malay, Chinese, Indian, and Other), simply accommodating participants' linguistic preferences. However, my findings suggest the opposite is true. Drawing on interviews with Chinese-speaking queer Malaysian activists in Malaysia and Taiwan, this paper argues for the significance of Chinese in pushing forward their agendas in the illiberal setting locally and in mobilising LGBT Malaysians across the Chinese-speaking world. In doing so, it works towards an articulation of queer Sinophone Malaysia, highlighting the multiple trajectories of queer development locally as well as Malaysia's place in the global circuit of queer cultural formations. Methodologically, it overcomes the humanities bias of Sinophone research by demonstrating how qualitative methods can effectively capture the present localisation of Chinese languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]