Rethinking Gay Visibility

This paper draws on theories of visual culture to posit a paradigm of 'gay visibility' for legal studies. It demonstrates that visibility is critical to gay life and politics, but that it operates as a paradox because it simultaneously advances and undermines minority rights and identity. It then analyzes the ways in which this paradox emerges in the Hong Kong case of Cho Man Kit v. Broadcasting Authority. It concludes by underscoring the need for courts and critics to recognize, and to foreground, the complexity of the visual dimension of sexual minorities in legal analysis.