AsiaPacifiQueer

front cover

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Title Page

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Copyright Page

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Table of Contents

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pp. v-vi

Introduction

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pp. 1-28

In July 2005, in the tropical atmosphere of Bangkok’s wet season, the largest-ever gathering of queer studies scholars in Asia took place. Six hundred academics and activists from across the region, from Colombo to Seoul and from Tehran to Singapore, converged to deliver and listen to papers presented at “Sexualities, Genders, and Rights in Asia: ...

1. Embodied Masculinities of Male-Male Desire: The Homo Magazines and White-Collar Manliness in Early 1970s Japan

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pp. 29-45

The first specialized, commercially marketed, professionally produced, and nationally distributed magazines catering exclusively to men who loved men—or homo, as these magazines’ readers were called—appeared in the early 1970s in Japan. Starting with the publication of Rose Tribes (Barazoku) in 1971 and followed in quick succession ...

2. Lilies of the Margin: Beautiful Boys and Queer Female Identities in Japan

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pp. 46-66

Interest in and research on genders and sexualities that transgress heteronormativity in Japan has been increasing steadily since the early 1990s, both domestically and abroad. Over the same period, the representation of transgressive gender and sexual practices in Japan’s shōjo manga (girls’ comics) has attracted far greater academic attention. ...

3. Grrrl-Queens: Onē-kotoba and the Negotiation of Heterosexist Gender Language Norms and Lesbo(homo)phobic Stereotypes in Japanese

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pp. 67-84

In contemporary Japan, elements of the Japanese language such as personal pronouns, sentence-final particles, and verb inflections are said to constitute gendered language use, and the notion of “women’s language” (joseigo/onnakotoba) and “men’s language” (danseigo/otoko-kotoba) continues to mold contemporary notions of gender-appropriate speech. ...

4. Politics and Islam: Factors Determining Identity and the Status of Male-to-Female Transsexuals in Malaysia

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pp. 85-98

The Western definition of male-to-female transsexuals, that is, men who want to undergo sex-change operations to become women, may not be appropriate in the Malaysian context. In Malaysia, the local term mak nyah refers both to men who want to have the surgery as well as to those who are comfortable keeping their penises and who do not seek surgical sex change. ...

5. Recognition through Mis-recognition: Masculine Women in Hong Kong

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pp. 99-116

For years I have noticed how my many masculine-styled female friends cause scenes in women’s washrooms, are addressed as men by shopkeepers, and are scrutinized from head to toe by strangers on the street. More than once, my own androgynous gender presentation has resulted in similar public mis-recognition. ...

6. Being a Young Tomboy in Hong Kong: The Life and Identity Construction of Lesbian Schoolgirls

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pp. 117-130

Tomboy (TB) is a term that goes back to at least the sixteenth century, when it was used to refer to a “wild romping girl” who “behaves like a spirited or boisterous boy.”¹ In numerous fictional stories, tomboys are represented as girls who dislike dresses and feminine characteristics but are spirited and adventuresome, like to move freely, and are drawn to activities associated with boys. ...

7. The Romance of the Queer: The Sexual and Gender Norms on Tom and Dee in Thailand

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pp. 131-148

Lila Abu-Lughod has advocated caution in the popular tendency among anthropologists to valorize cultural practices as acts of resistance.¹ Abu-Lughod explains that in the post-1960s atmosphere of fascination with revolution and resistance, anthropologists have been tempted to see pervasive counterhegemonic meanings and acts ...

8. Bad-Assed Honeys with a Difference: South Auckland Fa'afafine Talk about Identity

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pp. 149-162

In the last twenty or so years, much Western theorizing has been fixated on questions of identity and its peculiar capacity for difference, ubiquity, and endurance. Identity (and difference, too) has permanence; the embodiment of sexual difference makes identity as a woman distinct from identity as a man. ...

9. Villa, Montano, Perez: Postcoloniality and Gay Liberation in the Philippines

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pp. 163-180

In the Philippines, American colonialism and continuing global neocolonialism must be seen as the ascendancy of a regulatory regime that is both juridical and productive. While it hierarchizes and marginalizes its many different subjects (and abjects), it also enables certain subjectivities and/or positionalities to exist where previously they did not exist. ...

10. Bading na Bading: Evolving Identities in Philippine Cinema

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pp. 181-196

The homosexual occupies a paradoxical position in Philippine cinema. On the one hand, he is everywhere—as a beautician, dancer, talent manager, guest relations officer, couturier, artist, teacher, dancer. On the other hand, his life in all its lived complexity is perpetually absent in the national cinema because of the Filipino hetero-patriarchal culture’s fear ...

11. Representation, Politics, Ethics: Rethinking Homosexuality in Contemporary Korean Cinema and Discourses

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pp. 197-216

In this chapter, I try to reconsider the significance of the historical moment of the mid-1990s for queer studies and cinematic discourses in Korea today. However, when the national label is brought to an issue like homosexuality, I meet a specific problem. In most academic writings about LGBTQ issues written in Korea, ...

12. Lesbianism and Taiwanese Localism in The Silent Thrush

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pp. 217-234

In 1990, Ling Yan’s novel The Silent Thrush (Shisheng Huamei) won first prize in the prestigious Independent Evening News (Zili Wanbao) One Million Fiction Contest for “Native Soil literature” (bentu wenxue). Silent Thrush was one of the first Taiwanese novels to bring together the themes of Hoklo ethnic heritage and lesbian sexuality.¹ ...

13. How to Be Queer in Taiwan: Translation, Appropriation, and the Construction of a Queer Identity in Taiwan

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pp. 235-250

In their 1995 essay, “What Does Queer Theory Teach Us about X?” Lauren Berlant and Michael Warner note that queer theory is “less than five years old” and ask, “Why do people feel the need to introduce, anatomize, and theorize something that can barely be said yet to exist?” Two lines down, they quip, “Queer is hot.”¹ ...

14. King Victoria: Asian Drag Kings, Postcolonial Female Masculinity, and Hybrid Sexuality in Australia

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pp. 251-270

Asian drag kings in Australia are mobile parasites who dwell at the threshold of many borders: as migrants between Asia and Australia, as racialized lesbians in a predominantly white queer scene, as performers between genders and sexualities, and as subjects of knowledge between disciplines and theoretical frameworks. ...

Contributors

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pp. 271-274

Ronald Baytan is an associate professor of literature at De La Salle University- Manila, where he teaches creative writing, Philippine literature, and queer/gender studies. He is the author of The Queen Sings the Blues: Poems, 1992–2002. ...

Index

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pp. 275-278

back cover

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