Inside the Chinese heterosexual matrix: lesbian and gay middle leaders’ experiences in Chinese schools

This paper employs feminist poststructuralist and queer theory to analyze the experiences of three gay and lesbian middle leaders in Chinese schools. Drawing on Butler’s heterosexual matrix, and Foucault’s concepts of governmentality and disciplinary power, we propose the concept of a distinctly Chinese heterosexual matrix to theorize the particular ways in which the gender-sexuality order is policed in Chinese schools, wherein Confucianist and Party-state ideologies combine to form a distinctive system of (hetero)normative surveillance and control. We argue that this matrix is defined and upheld through the overlapping mechanisms of silence and surveillance, and that the close relation between Party-state and school leadership makes it so that adherence to the matrix is uniquely institutionalized. In so doing, this paper both addresses the gap in existing research regarding the experiences of LGBT teachers and leaders in China and extends queer and poststructuralist thinking to explore its particularities in the Chinese context.