"We Gather Together We Collaborate Together": Exploring the Challenges and Strategies of Chinese Lesbian and Bisexual Women's Online Communities on Weibo

Abstract

In China, lesbian and bisexual women face intense stigma and difficulties developing relationships with each other. Although prior research has shown that online communities help LGBT people connect and exchange social support, few studies have explored the challenges Chinese lesbian and bisexual women face when initiating, growing, and sustaining such communities, in an atmosphere of platform censorship of LGBT-related content and intense discrimination from non-LGBT people. To address this gap, we interviewed 40 Weibo users in China, four bloggers and 36 followers of their blogs, who self-identified as lesbian or bisexual women. We found that a key technique these bloggers used to initiate their online communities was helping followers publish posts seeking support, sharing personal experiences, and seeking offline relationships. Then, their followers built relationships with bloggers by journaling their daily experiences as lesbian or bisexual women via private-messaging channels. As the communities' members grew more attached to them, bloggers and their followers began to work together to protect themselves from external threats, including Weibo's censorship and non-LGBT+ infiltrators' harassment. However, such attachment to the communities sometimes might lead to conflicts within them, which in turn prompted many members to leave, raising questions about the communities' long-term prospects. Our findings foreground important design considerations for those seeking to help lesbian and bisexual women in China and other discriminatory environments to develop safe online communities.