“£40m for any man who can turn my gay daughter straight: Father’s shock offer after lesbian wedding ceremony” by Mail Foreign Service.
In Hong Kong, a wealthy playboy’s daughter has taken to a different kind of lifestyle than what he was expecting. After Gigi Chao’s lesbian marriage in France, father Cecil Chao announced a reward of 40 million pounds to whichever man that makes his daughter straight. Reading the comments underneath the article made it very clear that most people are outraged by the “marriage bounty” (Mail Foreign Service). Clearly, money can’t buy you everything. The fact that this playboy father publicly announces his rejection for his daughter’s lifestyle proves his intolerance and pure desperation. In Hong Kong, where they’re from, gay marriage is not accepted. I’m not quite sure of the social taboos or the range of acceptance in Hong Kong but perhaps straying from the sexuality norms is not acceptable. In a society that doesn’t have an active awareness campaign and/or very clear populations of LGBT communities, it is very unlikely that individuals will be accepting of, in this case, a lesbian couple. I’m sure the father’s promiscuous heterosexual active lifestyle is part of the reason he is so openly against the lesbian couple.
The South is also often considered an area and culture that is very intolerant of different types of lifestyles especially when it comes to sexuality. In Sweet Tea, homosexual African American men tell their stories of their gay partners. Bob’s story hits close to home; he attended Emory University upon meeting his partner. About his mom’s contact with his interracial partner, he says “Although my mother has been in contact with white people, she had never been in intimate contact with them; she was in a more subservient role” (Johnson 434). Its interesting that his first thought went to race and not much is said about his mother reacted to his sexuality. Perhaps homosexuality was more taboo at this time?Talking about California, Bob says “Because if you think about it back in the 70’s, the civil rights movement had just come into vogue, and in Berkeley it was the in thing to have these interracial meetings” (Johnson 434). The vast difference between his home experience and the diversity he experienced during his time of California portrays a geographical and cultural difference in topics of race of and sexuality. In the South in the 60’s and 70’s, racism was omnipresent. But on the west coast, it was the “in thing” to mix with people of other races. It seems that the other parts of the nation seem to have been more accepting of a broader range of ideals that stray from the social norm while the south maintained its rigidity.
But at the present moment, in Atlanta, I beg to differ. I think this part of the South has opened their minds and hearts to accept to LGBT. I also think that homosexuality is now more of an issue than race. Racism is still present in the South but most likely just as much as it is anywhere in the U.S.
Sometimes I wonder what it would be like if their was no accepted traditional gender role to follow; that going to a bar meant hitting on whoever caught your eye whether it be guy, girl, or whatever else. I think we’d be a much more tolerant kind of humanity, with more love and compassion for all types of people in all parts of the nation and world. But that’s all a hypothetical really..
[1] Mail Foreign Service. “£40m for any man who can turn my gay daughter straight:
Father’s shock offer after lesbian wedding ceremony.” News. Mail online. 26 Sept. 2012. Web. 6 Oct. 2012
[2] Johnson, E. Patrick. Sweet Tea: Black gay Men of the South. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina 2008. Print.
The article titled,“£40m for any man who can turn my gay daughter straight: Father’s shock offer after lesbian wedding ceremony” that you mentioned above is something that I can totally relate to. Since I am from Asia as well, I can relate to the reality of this scenario. If someone in India has a net worth as high as that of Cecil Chao’s (the father of the story), he too would have done the same thing. In various Asian countries, “social status” or “social reputation” as a very integral aspect of leading a lavish lifestyle. Sometimes to the extend where one’s life choices are dependent solely on what others may think of that choice. This man seems to be well known in Hong Kong, and his daughter having not followed “traditional” norms of sexuality would now lead him to face critical consequences as a result of her personal choice. He perhaps felt that his business, lifestyle, and social status would be adversely affected since his daughter wasn’t considered “normal”anymore. In such a scenario, he decided to spend “some” of his dollars towards “rectifying” his daughter in order for him to lead a “normal” life with dignity in Hong Kong.
Merstar: great use of our class readings! I love how you connected Johnson’s “Sweet Tea” to a contemporary news story. I also love how perfectly you quote and cite the readings. Really helps the reader follow your argument. Now for your content: your suggestion of a gender free zone where desire was desire without judgement is intriguing. Some would argue that this is a description of bisexuality, and I think they would be right in some ways, but I don’t think that is a positionality that escapes judgement (from straight and gay folks).