Enacting queer feminism through reconceptualization: discursive construction of cishet identity on Chinese social media

Abstract The discursive construction of identities has been an important line of inquiry in gender studies. Previous studies have illuminated how cishet identity is naturalized through daily and institutional discourses while queer identities are consigned to the margins of patriarchal frameworks. However, our study demonstrates that in some online communities, such as the Chinese Weibo platform, there is a reversed ideology of gender and sexuality. Through a feminist critical discourse analysis of 5,000 Weibo posts (2021–2024), we examine how “cishet” is reconceptualized as a pejorative label. The term becomes metaphorically imbued with a “toxic vibe” connoting gender essentialism and patriarchal entitlement to which both cishet men and women are seen as tethered. This reconceptualization, as an overarching strategy, is enacted through four discursive strategies – authorization, moral evaluation, rationalization, and mythopoesis – that serve to delegitimize cisheteronormativity. Our study thus offers novel insights into how discursive activism in the Chinese digital sphere functions as a queer feminist praxis, repurposing identity categories themselves as tools for delegitimizing entrenched sociocultural norms. At the same time, we acknowledge that certain discourses paradoxically reinscribe gender essentialism and neoliberal logics that risk reinforcing class.