The Public Discussions On Private Affairs: Discourse Analysis Of Lesbians On An Internet Community

With the development of virtual communities on the internet by the end of last century, Chinese online-lesbians have come into public. They get to know each other, make friends, share information and discuss issues on lesbigay. The author chooses one of the online lesbian communities, and uses keywords'frequency count and text analysis as methods. The author explores the following questions: first, what do Chinese lesbians concern? Are they aware of their rights as their western peers? Second, although sexual orientation is private, why does it come to the public and why is it discussed warmly? Third, are there any significant differences of lesbian's attitudes on the in-group/out-group issues, private/public realm, and different political circumstances?Keywords count shows that those abstract universal values, such as freedom, equality, right, are among the most frequent words in the discussions on rights, and that t/p, marriage and discrimination are the hottest topics. When analyzing the data deeply, the author finds that online lesbians in the chosen community have agreed with each other in three aspects: (1), the relations between lesbian couples should be equal. (2), Lesbian groups should enjoy the same marriage rights as the heterosexual. (3), lesbians should not be discriminated or excluded. One related discover is that there is no difference between lesbians'concepts about the right on in-group relations and on out-group ones.However, they still have different opinions on some issues. First, different lesbians have different attitudes in private and public realms. In the private realm, everybody respects individual's choices while in the public realm they often argue which one should be put ahead, the individual or the group? Second, political circumstances have great influences on lesbians'attitudes on right according to the political extent of a topic. If the topic is less political, the influence is not clear, while the influence is significant if the issue is more political. Third, there are two types of identities of lesbians. One is group orientation, and the other is individual. The latter just identifies with"I am a lesbian", whereas the former not only considers herself as a lesbian but also identifies with"we are lesbians". Different identity orientations will bring different viewpoints to the group affairs. Besides, we find that whether a private affair come into public discussions depends on whether the topic could refer to shared values. If it could, the private affair will be brought into public discussions.