Finding a voice,fighting for rights: the emergence of the transgender movement in Hong Kong 1

Abstract

This paper is intended to provide a space for reflection on Hong Kong’s transgender movement at its current stage, with particular reference to the objectives and activities of the Hong Kong Transgender Equality and Acceptance Movement (‘TEAM’). Established in 2002, TEAM was the first organized group of transgender people and supporters in Hong Kong. First, the paper examines the emergence of the transgender movement in Hong Kong, situating the stated objectives of TEAM in the broader social, legal and political context in Hong Kong. It then considers the successes and limitations of TEAM’s activities to date, measured against its objectives. Finally, it examines why Hong Kong’s transgender community has not yet fought for the right to legal recognition of their gender identity, as have transgender individuals and transgender movements in many other countries around the world. In the Asia‐Pacific region these include Australia, Japan, the People’s Republic of China, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea and New Zealand. Through interviews with members of TEAM, the paper questions whether legal recognition is indeed a concern and/or priority for Hong Kong’s transgender community, and, if so, what prevents Hong Kong transgender people from claiming their right to legal recognition in the courts or through the political process.     

Complicating cosmopolitanism: Ethno-cultural and sexual connections among gay migrants

ABSTRACT

Contemporary migrants are described as “connected migrants,” as they maintain multiple connections using digital and social media. This article explores how this leads to processes of cosmopolitanism and/or encapsulation in a particular group, voluntary gay migrants in Belgium, focusing on the intersection between ethno-cultural and sexual identifications and connections. Drawing on in-depth interviews, the cosmopolitan outlook of the participants becomes clear, as their national and ethno-cultural connections are relatively weak while they identify more strongly with cosmopolitan LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer) culture. However, while more salient, sexuality is not all-defining either, bespeaking their rather privileged position as a group of migrants who are self dependent and not strongly encapsulated in ethno-cultural nor sexual communities, with neither minority identity causing excessive stigmatization. As a consequence, they use digital and social media to simultaneously connect to different social spheres, although most do manage their self-presentation to avoid the clash or “collapse” of different social contexts online.     

Rethinking social movements through retranslating the economy

Abstract

This paper not only gives an overview of the transgender word in contemporary Japan but also attempts to illustrate the male to female cross‐dressing (MTFCD) community in Shinjuku, Tokyo, which plays an important role in the overall transgender world and how people in the community think and live, by conducting comprehensive fieldwork. The MTFCD community consists of amateur cross‐dressers and their patrons, and it is formed around about ten bars/clubs in Shinjuku. This community differentiates itself from the gay community in their customs and consciousness; they tend to recognize gender based on gender performance rather than biological sex, which is usually accepted for distinguishing sex. Therefore, a MTF cross‐dresser with feminine performance is considered as a ‘woman,’ regardless of one’s physical and biological conditions. Because of this recognition of gender based on gender performance, people in the community are able to develop the ‘quasi‐heterosexual’ relationships as men and ‘women.’     

Locating Transgender Within the Language of Queer in Teacher Education

Queer is difficult to pin down conceptually; it is willfully disruptive, intentionally destabilizing everything from identity to knowledge to politics to power. The intent of this article is to illuminate some of the ways teacher educators are conceptually connecting queer to transgender identities and experiences in their classroom curriculum and pedagogical strategies. The data discussed in this article refers to three courses designed for pre-service teachers and include transgender content. A syllabus analysis and interviews illuminated the various ways queer is being conceptualized in different ways by each teacher educator. Trans identities and experiences were affirmed to various degrees through the participants’ conceptualizations of queer as an identity, queer as an embodiment/expression, queer as an analytical approach, and queer as a political project. Fundamental to the instructors’ understanding of queer was an intentional subversiveness, an affinity for non-conformity and disruption, and a commitment to anti-assimilationist practices. Furthermore, the participants saw trans and queer connecting through a common gender socialization experience and social positioning outside gender norms, and through a mutual vulnerability to heteronormativity as a system of oppression—particularly those who are both trans and queer.     

Reframing Schooling to Liberate Gender Identity

Gender and gender identity are policed by the social environment in myriad ways. For those who challenge normative binaries, they can be positioned to experience different forms of violence. Though mindsets, social movements, and changes in policies have spurred material, social, and economic gains for those who challenge expectations of gender identity binaries, schools continue to inherit dichotomous messages about gender identity. On one hand, schools are expanding anti-bullying policies by enumerating gender identities, shifting names of Gay-Straight to Queer and Sexuality Alliances to attend to intersectional identities, addressing gender identity concerns in professional development trainings, but the field of teacher education has yet to systemically and longitudinally address gender identity for students from pre-K to university levels. As a result, educators are left ill-prepared about how to affirm and recognize gender identity in coursework, curriculum, and pedagogy. As we come to understand how and in what ways schools foreclose possibilities for students to experience gender identity self-determination, shifts in awareness can open up possibilities for schools to honor and liberate gender identities.     

Prurient Interests: Sexuality,Ideology, and Popular Communication

The popular communication media provide a site where the contradictions between conservative and progressive cultural ideologies about sexuality (and concomitantly about power, gender, and social control) are enacted within an endless series of narratives. These narratives fulfill the economic requirements of the culture industries by an increasing focus on the sexual, including sexualities outside the mainstream. This seemingly progressive move is undermined by a variety of strategies, either within narrative outcomes or at the level of production. Such strategies offer a conservative reading that highlights the negative consequences of sexual insubordination. In the meantime, the popular press provides a platform for conservative ideologues who write about sexuality in the media without the benefit of serious research or expertise. They influence public policy while we in the academy are reluctant to seek a popular venue to discuss our work.     

Beyond the ‘feminization of masculinity’: transforming patriarchy with the ‘feminine’ in contemporary Japanese youth culture

Contemporary Japanese society has seen the emergence of aesthetically conscious young men who employ ‘feminine’ aesthetics and strategies as ways of exploring and practising new masculine identities. In this paper, I explore the significance of this emerging trend of male beauty by observing and analysing the expressions, strategies and intentions of those young men who have taken to aesthetically representing themselves in these ways. This cultural trend is often described as the ‘feminization of masculinity,’ echoing the gendered articulation of rising mass culture in terms of the ‘feminization of culture,’ which acknowledges aspects of the commercialization of masculine bodies in Japan of the 1990s onward. While this view successfully links important issues, such as femininity, beauty, and the gendered representation of the self in a broader context of capitalist culture, it does not sufficiently convey a sense of agency in the young men's lively practices of exploring and expressing new masculine values and ideals. Rather than viewing ‘feminization’ simply as a sign of commodification, I argue that these young men strategically distance themselves from conventional masculinity by artificially standing in the position of the ‘feminine’, where they can more freely engage in the creation of alternative gender identities. From this point of view, the use of the phrase ‘feminization of masculinity’ often implies a fear and anxiety on the part of patriarchy over the boundary‐crossing practice that seriously challenges the stability of gendered cultural hegemony. Moreover, such anxiety driven reactions easily merge with nationalist inclination, as those threatened tend to seek the consolidation of patriarchal/hegemonic order by eliminating ambiguities and indeterminacy in cultural/national discourse. I conclude that the cultural hegemony of contemporary Japan could better sustain itself by incorporating non‐hegemonic gender identities, which would allow it maintain an open space for critical imagination and effectively diffuse an obsessive and ultimately self‐destructive desire for transparency/identity.     

Becoming Canadian: Immigrant narratives of professional attainment

We investigate how economic immigrants in Canada negotiate their identity in the process of “becoming Canadian” through an analysis of public texts. Drawing on the master narrative framework, we examine the interplay between individual and societal narratives as immigrants grapple with the tension between notions of “desirable” immigrants as those that are well integrated professionally and the reality of facing career related barriers. Among those whose success stories align with the master narrative of professional attainment there was little questioning of this expectation, thereby allowing it to remain invisible. Among those who had not (yet) achieved work related success in the receiving country, they tended to engage alternative narratives elaborating on the antecedents, outcomes, and barriers to labor market participation. Despite the countering nature of these alternative narratives, they strengthen the societal expectation of professional success as a key pathway to inclusion, thereby reinforcing the rigidity of this narrative. We contribute to literature on the social construction of national identity by examining the process of becoming national and the role of labor market participation in immigrants’ perceptions of inclusion in their new society. Our study highlights the importance of including immigrants’ voices in the construction of a more inclusive society, which may aid in breaking down exclusionary narratives of national identity.     

State power,prostitution and sexual order in Taiwan: towards a genealogical critique of ‘virtuous custom’1

This paper considers, by way of conjunctural analysis and genealogical investigation, the policed culture of sex under the regulatory regime of ‘virtuous custom’ as sustained by the now defunct Police Offence Law (abrogated and replaced by the Social Order Maintenance Law in 1991) between the 1950s and 1990s. It attempts to trace the historical process whereby the social/sexual order came to be established in postwar Taiwan, thus articulating the cultural specificity of gendered/sexual subjectivities as formed within that particular geo‐political terrain. Examining the police technology as well as the official/journalistic discourse of sex, this paper demonstrates that ‘virtuous custom’, a nationalist ideological construct predicated upon the Confucian sage‐king paradigm, operated as a norm of sex whose boundary was secured through the policing of non‐familial/non‐marital sexualities, arguing further that both female sexuality and male homosexuality have been historically regulated by the state through its banning of prostitution. As the normative regime of ‘virtuous custom’ has become even more hegemonic due to the rise in recent years of anti‐prostitution state feminism, contesting the new social/sexual order on the grounds of its ideological operations and practices represents the most challenging task for progressive sexual and gender politics in Taiwan today.     

“I will not hate myself because you cannot accept me”: Problematizing empowerment and gender-diverse selfies

ABSTRACT

While selfies of beautiful cisgender women are declaimed by mainstream media as narcissistic and facile, some body-positive feminists and queer theorists argue that selfies can be empowering. They claim self-representation by traditionally stigmatized people can challenge normative presentations of beauty and gender. This article problematizes “empowerment” as a definitive and/or productive frame and argues instead for observation and analysis of “privilege” in situated practice. In this article I combine analysis of a collection of online cultural artifacts (including nonbinary selfies on Tumblr) and interviews with a small group of trans* social media storytellers to explore theoretical tensions between gender fluidity and identity fragmentation across multiple social media sites and practices. Gender-diverse digital self-representation encompasses both “consistent” androgyny, nonbinary, agender, and so on, and “emergent” presentations-in-flux. I assert that the ongoing iteration of self across social media—implied by self (re)presentation—can have simultaneous and contradictory political significance. I conclude that networked interpersonal complications frame understandings of empowerment, as perhaps they always have done.     

‘Dad's Back’: Mapping Masculinities,Moralities and the Law in the Novels of Margery Allingham

Crime fiction was, in its ‘Golden Age’ form, a new product of the interwar middlebrow. It was a particular and very popular way in which conservative-modern problematics about the domestic and about human emotional relationships but also about criminality and the law were talked through. This article examines the novels of Margery Allingham as an exemplar of this genre with reference to her own professional and gender identity as well as the broader cultural context. Crime fiction was one of several kinds of crime (particularly murder) stories, both fictional and ‘real life’, which circulated between the official discourses of the law and middle-class culture. This discussion explores Allingham's treatment of masculinities and of sexuality. It argues that narrative techniques that used the Gothic problematized the interrelationships of morality, modernity and history, and also inflected the pleasures of leisure reading with wider ‘middlebrow’ concerns about the gendered status of the modern citizen and more diffuse cultures of punishment and social responsibility.     

Queer Marxism in Taiwan

Abstract

This paper refutes the dominant assumption that Taiwan, unlike Mainland China, has developed a greater degree of tolerance for non‐normative sexual expressions as a result of its democratization. Recent legal and cultural changes indicate that Taiwan’s democratization consists of tendencies and repressive countertendencies. At the same time, this contradictory development has uniquely enabled a body of indigenous Marxist writings that mobilizes different senses of ‘queerness’ to demonstrate that the official celebration of diversity and human rights has actually further alienated and disempowered sex workers, promiscuous homosexuals, gay drug‐users, and other social subjects that are considered to be a threat to the liberal‐democratic order. I offer a reading of the critical writings of Josephine Ho, Yin‐bin Ning, Ding Naifei, and Wang Ping since the 1990s to explain why Queer Marxism in Taiwan is founded on a strong a‐statist discourse. I argue that a Queer Marxist intellectual practice emerged in Taiwan because liberal pluralism, institutionalized in what these critics call ‘state feminism,’ has failed to redress effects of social exclusion that (1) persist not despite of, but precisely because of, post‐martial law liberal reforms, and that (2) diverge in significant ways from individual experiences as members of officially defined minority groups (women, aborigines, migrant workers, or homosexuals). If social structuration is not always synchronic or isomorphic with state‐engineered legal changes, this difference also provides the occasion for Queer Marxists to interrogate the intellectual division of labor between feminism, assumed to be the analysis of gender as a non‐pluralizable category, and queer theory, assumed to be the analysis of sexuality as a non‐singular but personifiable category. Only by distinguishing between social relations and social identity can we comprehend how the rise of the Taiwanese Independence Movement played a key role in the naturalization of homosexuality as a fictive ethnicity, to which Queer Marxism developed as a historical response. As a geopolitically specific analysis of the aporia of substantive personhood, the Queer Marxism in Taiwan I re‐historicize is also a significant contribution to Marxist critique of liberal formalism that is of use to readers across the globe.     

Desire: A History of European Sexuality. By Anna Clark/Sexuality in World History. By Peter N. Stearns

ABSTRACT

The present article uses Nell Dunn's Up the Junction (1963) to explore class, gender and the city in the 1960s. It focuses on three elements: the book's representation of post-war, urban working-class identity; the place of gender and sexuality within that representation; and, finally, Nell Dunn's own position as a middle-class observer. It argues for the continuing relevance and dynamism of class as a social referent in post-war, ‘affluent’ Britain. The article also explores the meaning of ‘slumming’ in the context of the mid-twentiethcentury city, against the background of ‘affluence’ and the emergence of the ‘permissive society’. What becomes particularly apparent in both contexts is the importance of femininity and female sexuality in the representation of mid-twentieth-century London, whether in terms of the portrayal of working-class women or the position of the middle-class author.     

Understanding Interpersonal Manifestations of “Reverse Discrimination” Through Phenomenological Inquiry

This article reports on a study that explores the ways individuals describe being the targets of ‘reverse discrimination’—times when those traditionally discriminated against turn the tables against majority group members. Using an inductive, phenomenological form of inquiry, the study examines 104 narratives of ‘reverse discrimination’ (based on race, gender, age, and sexual orientation) collected as part of a larger study on uncertainty in oppressive forms of communication. Five essential themes are explicated: (1) being an (innocent) target; (2) discrimination due to cultural norm violations; (3) shifting power dynamics; (4) a case of mistaken identity; and (5) effects of reverse discrimination. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of the study, as well as implications for future research.     

The left‐wing movement in Malaya,Singapore and Borneo in the 1960s: ‘an era of hope or devil’s decade’?

Abstract

The 1960s was a period of Leftwing resurgence in the world. As Britain was disengaging from its empire, the ethnically plural societies she had generated within her protectorates and colonies in Malaya, Singapore, Sarawak, North Borneo and Brunei threw up anti‐colonial movements that began struggling towards self‐determination and national independence. These movements manifested the ideologies of communism, socialism, nationalism and communalism. As British imperialism began planning its retreat, the competition for power among the local movements became intense. In Malaya, the largest of the five colonial territories, the communist party launched an armed rebellion in 1948 in the name of national liberation and independence, but made little headway. As Singapore and Malaya were closely linked and ruled, Britain introduced emergency rule in both territories. Most leftwing parties disappeared. Nationalist and communalist parties in Malaya emerged and eventually succeeded in securing national independence from Britain in 1957. Singapore was given a measure of limited self‐government in 1955, while Sarawak, North Borneo and Brunei were gradually awakened towards self‐government. Leftwing parties re‐surfaced in Malaya, and in Singapore, Sarawak, North Borneo and Brunei in the 1950s and 1960s, and made some headway in parliamentary elections. This paper presents a historical account of their resurgence, which was however short‐lived.     

Signs of transcendence? A changing landscape of multiraciality in the 21st century

The relation between multiracial identity selection and psychological outcomes related to the self and well-being was explored among minority/White biracials spanning four different mixed-race groups (n = 201): Black/Whites, East Asian/Whites, Latino/Whites, and South Asian/Whites. The mixed-race groups showed considerable variability in their selection of multiracial identity categories and different patterns of identity selection, as well as a higher overall representation of transcendent identity (i.e., identity that challenges traditional notions of race) than reported in previously published studies. Our findings demonstrated that biracial identity selection, especially when differentiating between identities that are socially validated or not socially validated by others, was related to a person's level of multiracial identity integration, identification with Whites, perceived discrimination from Whites and non-Whites, and psychological well-being. Identity selection groups did not significantly differ from each other in levels of self-concept clarity or identification with their non-White racial group. Theoretical implications for extending a multidimensional model to other mixed-race groups and redefining race as a social and cultural construction are discussed.     

Intercultural adjustment and friendship dialectics in international students: A qualitative study

Despite the accelerating increase of international students on American campus, there is still a lack of in-depth understanding of how these individuals make sense of their adjustment journey or how they construct meaning concerning their friendship development experience. Existing adjustment research tended to focus primarily on the motivational goals of adjustment or the type of friendship network patterns (e.g., host national network, co-national network, or multi-national network) but did not probe deeper into the narratives of international students’ identity-change adjustment processes or the quality of their friendship networks. Using identity negotiation theory as a guide, this study utilized an interpretive methodology to examine the adjustment narratives and friendship stories of 20 international students. The findings revealed three themes: a variety of intercultural adjustment patterns and with a predominant upward trend or M-shaped adjustment trend, the role of cultural expectancy and personal time sense in intercultural friendship development, and identity shock issues and friendship dialectics. The findings have implications for the study of intercultural adjustment process and friendship development pattern especially concerning the intercultural friendship dialectics of feeling visible versus invisible, communication openness versus closedness, and feeling like a guest versus feeling like an alien.     

Expecting penises in Chatroulette: Race,gender, and sexuality in anonymous online spaces

ABSTRACT

As a femme woman of color, I employ critical autoethnography based on my participant observation within Chatroulette for a qualitative study on how online impressions through web cameras with strangers are formed in quick bursts of time. Chatroulette’s anonymity adds interesting context for impression creation in an online environment that emphasizes ocularcentrism of the embodied self. This article adds to methodologies of self-care for the qualitative researcher by positioning the issue of self-care in the online field, where “regular” interactions based on race, gender, sexuality, and more may leave autoethnographers from marginalized communities especially vulnerable. This study complicates the conceptual boundaries of “audience,” “participation,” and “observation” for online autoethnographic research. This research contributes to impression formation theory by focusing on the importance of the body in immediate, one-time impression constructions with conversational partners online. Race, gender, and sexuality impact online communication, even when a word is not even said.     

Negotiating women’s social space: public debates on gender in early modern Kerala,India*

Abstract

The paper argues that the formation of modern gender identities in early‐twentieth‐century Kerala was deeply implicated in the project of shaping governable subjects who were, at one and the same time ‘free’ and already inserted into modern institutions. Because gender appeared both natural and social, both individualising and general, it seemed to be a superior form of social ordering compared to the pre‐existing order of caste. The actualisation of a superior society ordered by gender was seen to be dependent upon the shaping of the fully‐fledged individuals with strong internalities and well‐developed gendered capacities that would place them in distinct social domains of the public and domestic, as ‘free’ individuals, who, however, were bound together in a complementary relationship. While this model still remains dominant in Kerala, by the 1930s, the public/domestic divide came to be blurred with the rapid spread of disciplinary institutions. Womanhood came to be associated not with a certain domain but with a certain form of power. This legitimated the entry of Malayalee women into public life, undergirded the much‐discussed ‘Kerala Model’ of development, and still holds up the highly ambiguous sort of ‘liberation’ elite Malayalee women have experienced. It has also strongly influenced the specific shape the resistance to patriarchy has taken in Kerala in the twentieth century.