Homohysteric engagement and male bonding: Male Chinese sports fans and athletic bromances

Peng, Altman Yuzhu, Liu, Fengshu and Wu, Chunyan (2025) Homohysteric engagement and male bonding: Male Chinese sports fans and athletic bromances. In: Gender, Intimacy, and Class in a Changing China: The Individual and Social Change. Routledge, pp. 55-72.

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Abstract

Based on interviews with male college students who watch sports games on a regular basis, this research examines how young Chinese men consume sports games through the lens of mediated bromance. The analysis foregrounds a seemingly paradoxical phenomenon, where male sports fans contextually appropriate and delegitimise the homoerotic undertone of mediated athletic bromances to navigate their sports consumption. This phenomenon is indicative of young people’s everyday experiences in post-reform Chinese society, where the market economy and the paternal state simultaneously craft conflating gender norms and values. The findings shed light on the dialectical relations between consumerism and nationalism in China’s post-socialist gender politics and their manifestations in the context of its orthodox sports fandom culture.

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