Just for Fun

Abstract This article investigates queer socializing among elderly working-class queer men in Shanghai through two ethnographic examples. The first concerns the men's parodic redeployment of socialist revolutionary repertoire. By framing it as ‘just for fun’, the men precluded a politics of resistance, but this frame sometimes exceeded itself when play became a critique of the state. The second example focuses on how the ‘just for fun’ frame constrains the men's outlook on queer friendship, which was perceived as volatile and relegated as nothing—just play. However, communal activities such as commensality create a subjunctive world where this constraint could be potentially transgressed. I argue that the ‘just for fun’ frame operates as a form of self-entrapment, deliberately placing constraints on the men's queerness. This article challenges the tendency in queer scholarship, including queer anthropology, to politicize and idealize queer play.