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Although Taiwan, Hong Kong, and China broadly share common social and cultural norms rooted in Confucian values and culturally Chinese family ideals, they have developed distinct political and economic trajectories since 1949 that have created very different possibilities for LGBT movements. Coming from the conservative political, social, and moral milieu of the 1950s through the 1970s, in the 1980s and 1990s, these societies witnessed a blooming of sexually alternative, even queer, cultural productions, commercial venues, and political activism, together with distinctive “gay,” “lesbian,” or tongzhi identities, among other self-identification labels. By the late 20th century, flows of people, ideas, concepts, and relationships had grown increasingly salient for emerging terms of identification and modes of organizing in all three societies. The diverse combinations of democracy, socialism, authoritarianism, and postcolonialism have shaped the content and direction of sexuality-based identities and sexual rights movements in these three societies. How explicitly these communities pursued visibility and claimed sexually specific identities, however, varied significantly both internally and in comparison across the three societies. The shared histories have created significant commonalities across the region; yet the different degrees of physical and societal openness and the extent of access to domestic and foreign interlocutors in these three societies have produced striking differences in LGBT citizens’ ability to claim diverse rights and protections under multifaceted forms of sexual citizenship.

In recent decades, the efflorescence of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) movements has created powerful inroads for sexual rights in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa. While conditions for LGBTI people vary considerably between and within countries, activists across the region are reshaping political, legal, and social understandings of gender and sexuality through their advocacy, both by seizing opportunities and navigating periods of backlash and repression. Over the years, activists have established domestic movements and have expanded their reach to articulate demands in regional and international forums. Their work has challenged the universality of models developed in other parts of the globe and has generated new tactics to respond to religious, familial, and state-sponsored prejudice. At the same time, questions of representativeness, accountability, and strategy have been raised by constituencies and longtime activists alike, inviting critical assessments of movement politics in the region.