Growing old and queer in Taiwan: Torn between two worlds of family and gay lives

In Chinese culture, filial piety for a son is defined as producing an heir to propagate the paternal line. For Taiwanese gay men, ‘coming out’ as ‘gay’ may be interpreted as a refusal to produce a male heir, and thus... [ view full abstract ]

In Chinese culture, filial piety for a son is defined as producing an heir to propagate the paternal line. For Taiwanese gay men, ‘coming out’ as ‘gay’ may be interpreted as a refusal to produce a male heir, and thus constitutes a major conflict within their family. Without the support of family, being gay often means aging without care by family. Drawing from oral history interviews of fifteen elderly gay men, the author investigates how Taiwanese elderly gay men experience their old age within this cultural context. The findings show that for those Taiwanese elderly gay men who married, producing an heir to carry on the family name is considered their duty of a son and insurance for one’s old age. However, gay men who married often have a segregated but double life. Elderly gay men developed various strategies to strike a balance between the two worlds and rituals of passage in their constant moves of in-and-out. A moral boundary is developed between the duty of a husband and the right to be gay, as a participant defines ‘when my children get married’ as the end of his family responsibility and the start of his gay life. Second, those Taiwanese elderly gay men who decided not to marry would have to adopt various strategies to cope with pressure from the family. Leaving home is the most common strategy they used. Being a queer is to become a person in continuous forms of diaspora for these gay men who deviate from the norms of family ethics. The findings challenge the taken-for-granted dichotomy of being gay and getting married in contemporary gay discourses. For these Taiwanese elderly gay men, being gay and fulfilling family responsibility is not incompatible but coexists.