Read more of
Enzo Cho'Gath's ongoing Queer Corner series.
Queer Corner: Fondling through the Bamboo Gloryhole
When I first read
Kissing in a Bamboo Closet by Jarrod S.Chlapowski over at the Huffington Post, I was uneasy.It wasn’t terribly written, and it echoed a lot of my own
sentiments with regards to gay life in Korea. There truly is a closet in Asia
that is nearly incomprehensibly difficult to understand to many young Westerners.
Though I grew up in the bible belt with gay-hating parents and a heavily
condemning family, America still had quite a bit of media that showed, at the
very least, that gay people are a real thing that exist and are real.
In Korea, for many young gays, it’s different. I’ve known
about homosexuality from a very young age, even if it was a slur at the time
that I learned about it. The narrative that I often hear from older Koreans is
often that they had no idea what it meant to be gay; they didn’t understand
that men can solely be attracted to other men, and that women could be solely
attracted to other women. It was an invisible sin for many years in a country
whose technological development was so rapidly outpacing the social evolution
that we now see occurring.
Many of the gay Koreans I met, especially in the southern
sections of the country, hours outside of the cosmopolitan Seoul, shared that
although their first attractions to men were at a young age, their first
male-on-male sexual experiences occurred in the army. Cloistered away from
society for nearly two years, surrounded by men and often forced to share both
shower and bed with comrades, many men are so bathed in hormones and male flesh
that it becomes a common act to ‘help a brother out’ and engage in anything
from mutual masturbation to actual intercourse. Talk about a good friend,
right?
But these experiences force gays even further into shame.
Straight men who engage in these acts do so out of desperation, or out of a
sense of group loyalty. Fraternities in the US also use acts of male-on-male
sex as a means of power and oppression against pledges and younger members. So
what about the participants who enjoy the acts? How much further must they
strive to hide the fact that what should only be an act of duty is actually
enjoyable to them?
Thus we see some of the outlining of the so-called Bamboo
Closet. What sort of name is that, anyways? Orientalism much? It is undeniable
a fact that gay life and culture is uniquely Korean. But I don’t really even
remember seeing that much bamboo in Korea. Why don’t we be more specific and
call it something like the ‘Semiconductor Closet’ (their number one national
export) or the ‘Wireless Telecommunications Equipment Exporting Closet’, or
maybe even the ‘Kimchi Closet’? Just the idea of a kimchi closet makes my nose
itch.
But that’s the reality of the situation. Mr Chlapowski wrote
an interesting article on some of his observations about Korea but the whole
thing fell pretty flat for me. He writes from an extremely privileged
perspective that is very common when Westerners go to Asia and critique the
culture without ever really understanding it. He is too busy rubbing himself in
self-satisfaction as he mutters to himself, “Oh yes, you are changing the
world, oh yeah, that’s the spot, you impressive world-changer.”
He barely comments on the role of traditional Confucianism
in daily life, especially for those that live outside of Seoul. He seems to
fundamentally misunderstand the traditional role of Jongro- it is popular
largely among older Korean gays because it is where closeted, married Korean
men went to find gay prostitutes, young boyfriends (often money-less high
school dropouts from the countryside) and each other. Because it was always a
popular area for drinking, it was easy for gay men to hide among the bars and
find other men seeking sexual partners. Telling your wife that you’re going for
drinks in Jongro triggered nothing unusual in a country where 회식 (‘company dinner’) figures so prominently in the life of
the salaryman.
Mr Chlapowski refuses to engage on the life of the truly
closeted young possibly because it is so complex and hopefully he recognizes
his own ignorance on the subject. Koreans can be notoriously close-mouthed and
nervous around foreigners and there is nothing that will make them quiet more than
an unknown white guy, wandering around their own, few safe spaces, asking
questions about something that remains so strange and shameful to many gay
Koreans.
Interviewing some bartenders and activists in Korea may
provide the Huffington Post with a few interesting facts about gay life in
Korea. It’s a light, shallow and very perfunctory glance at something
incredibly complex and painful for many people. The pressure and pain that
every member of a family faces when difference is encountered is something not
to be made light of, but Jarrod seems to ignore all of those dynamics with
little more than a brief, cast-aside mention of the importance of family
dynamics.
Such a desultory account of a short time in a complex
country is little more than groping around in the dark, hoping to find a few
interesting stories to grab on to and then boast about later. Nearly half of
the article revolves around his personal account of bragging about kissing
another foreigner in public. Wow, man, great job. You’re super brave for
kissing on a train platform. Next in line for ambassador, I presume?
In the end, though his account occasionally hits on a few
truthful points, his portrayal of the Bamboo Closet is broken, at best, and
downright fallacious at worst. An activist? The last thing Korea needs is
random foreigners swooping in and telling them how to live their lives and
improve their country. It’s not Saudi Arabia, after all. Because America did
such a good job swooping into the Middle East and telling THEM how to live
their lives and improve their countries, right?
Jarrod says that he cares what happens in his world. I would
agree that the lives of LGBT humans all over the world are a concern because so
many are denied their human rights. Yet his calling himself a social scientist,
bragging about his work and publishing compliments that people throw at him
does little other than stroke his own ego. He isn’t saving the world; from far
outside and away, he’s fondling progress through the bamboo gloryhole.
.jpg)
