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Titles:
(To return to 'titles' menu, use 'back arrow' in tool bar.) Sharon Chalmers Enough about me! What do you think of my research? (Self)reflexivity and ethnographic research among lesbians in Japan. Antonia Chao Banjia/Moving House: A Materialistic Analysis of Taiwan's Lesbian-Transgender Identity Formations from the 1950s to the Present Romit Dasgupta Between Binaries: Male Friendships and 'Homosocial Desire' in Japan Sharyn Graham Hunters, Wedding Mothers, and Gender Transcendent Priests: Conceptualising Gender Among the Bugis of South Sulawesi, Indonesia Christine Helliwell Engendering Sameness Olivia Su-Lin Khoo Critical Regionalism: Locating Gender and Sexual Difference within the New Asia Fran Martin Re-orienting Theory: Reading Queer Fiction in Chinese Andrew Matzner 'This is who I am': Using Oral Narratives to Study Transgender Lives in Hawai'i Johanna Schmidt Transnational Identity Negotiations: Gender, Ethnicity and Samoan Fa'afafine Heather Worth Bad-Assed Honeys with a Difference: South Auckland Fa'afafine Talk About Identity |
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Sharon Chalmers
Enough about me! What do you think of my research? (Self)reflexivity and ethnographic research among lesbians in Japan. |
| In this paper I would like to raise a number of questions about the relationship between feminist and postmodern notions of (self)reflexivity, and textual production. To do this I will be drawing on some of the issues and problems that emerged over the period of compiling and publishing my research on lesbian subjectivity within Japanese society. Despite the humour in the title of the paper there are some extremely complex issues involved in the extent to which a researcher becomes involved in the research process. What further complicates this question is how questions of insider-ness, outsider-ness and those places in-between play themselves out in diverse cultural contexts? Concepts of insider and outsider while universal are also culturally and historically specific. In Japan, the socio-linguistic notions of inside (uchi) and outside (soto) are integral to its social system. This is exemplified by the word for foreigner, gaijin (literally meaning an outside person) and the significance of widespread Japanese cultural practices to identify with various 'inside' groups. At the same time, same-sex female eroticism as lived experience is not visible, indeed, it is often described as something brought from the outside (read, the West, or, more specifically the US). So, how does a lesbian gaijin do research in this cultural context, and what is at stake for both the women who choose to be involved and the researcher herself? |
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Antonia Chao
Banjia/Moving House: A Materialistic Analysis of Taiwan's Lesbian-Transgender Identity Formations from the 1950s to the Present |
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Over the past decade, two competing models have gained increasingly strong currency in the field of queer studies: the model of globalisation (or that of transnationalism) and the model of cultural citizenship. While problematising the Eurocentric tendency inherent in the globalisation scheme, the cultural citizenship model essentialises nonetheless a sense of 'cultural belonging' which is nearly irreplaceable for any 'cultural queer.' In the field of China Studies, scholars have prioritised unanimously the over-determining efficacy of 'the family' (or 'patrilineal ideology') in molding queer identities. While recognising the significance of patrilineal regulation in producing both straight and gay subjectivities in Chinese society, this paper is meant to be a critique of the family model as mentioned above. Based on ethnographic research with Taiwan's 'first generation of lesbians' (i.e., lesbians born around the year of 1949), it examines the material base upon which a typical Taiwanese family can be constructed-an analytical aspect that has been generally overlooked by both queer and China scholars. It also takes into analysis the specific historical and political context of the 1950s to the 1970s-a period of time that is now commonly termed 'White Terror' which penalised, among other things, transgender acts and wearing drag (qizhuang yifu).
Antonia Chao received her PhD in cultural anthropology from Cornell University (USA) in 1996. She is now assistant professor of sociology at Tunghai University, Taiwan. She has published several essays in both anthologies and periodicals on Asian-Pacific queer communities as well as sexuality studies in the field of China Studies. Her other on-going research project deals with the social significance of Chinese diaspora taking place in Taiwan around the year of 1949. She is at present working on a book project dealing with the contemporary formations of Taiwan's lesbian communities. |
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Romit Dasgupta
Between Binaries: Male Friendships and 'Homosocial Desire' in Japan |
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In the area of Japan studies, recent scholarship has uncovered the richness and complexity of experiences of gender and sexuality, historically. Moreover, despite conscious efforts through instruments of state and society to regulate these expressions, 'queer spaces' which disrupt binaries of male/female, heterosexual/non-heterosexual, mind/body, etc. have continued to exist, not only at the margins, but also at the centre. These 'queer spaces' engage with the dominant discourse of gender and sexuality in varying ways (subverting, being co-opted, being dominated, resisting, masking, hiding). One of these 'betwixt-and-between 'spaces which disrupt binaries, is the arena of same-sex friendships, where the heterosexual, homosocial, 'homophysical', and homoerotic often intersect in slippery and ambiguous relationships.
This paper, drawing on Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's notion of 'homosocial desire' and recent research by Japan studies scholars (Gregory Pflugfelder, Paul Schalow, Oary Leupp, etc.), discusses representations of male-male friendship and homosocial desire (both acknowledged and un-acknowledged) in popular culture, within the context of a dominant discourse of hetero-normative patriarchy, which has been axiomatic to the industrial-capitalist project in Japan. Romit Dasgupta lectures in Japanese and Japanese Studies in the department of Asian Studies at the University of Western Australia, and is also working towards a Ph.D. from Curtin University in the construction of masculinities in Japan. Recent publications include, 'Performing Masculinities? The "Salaryman" at Work and Play', Japanese Studies, vol. 20, no. 2, 2000, pp. 189-200. Research interests include Japanese youth and popular culture, constructions of genders and sexualities, and spaces of same-sex/gender friendships. |
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Sharyn Graham
Hunters, Wedding Mothers, and Gender Transcendent Priests: Conceptualising Gender Among the Bugis of South Sulawesi, Indonesia |
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In this paper, I wish to examine how the Bugis conceptualise gender and sexuality. In doing this, I believe that significant contributions can be made to the way in which western discourses approach the notions of gender and sexuality. The Bugis entertain four distinct gender categories, in addition to a meta-gender identity, the bissu. Calalai are biological females who perform many of the roles and functions of men. They work in the rice fields alongside men, smoke cigarettes, and marry women. No one would suggest, however that calalai are men, and nor do they wish to become men. Increasingly, calalai are referring to themselves as hunter, a word reappropriated to mean females who erotically desire women. Calabai are biological males who perform many of the roles of women, and yet by wearing ultra feminine attire, such as mini-skirts, they transgress the boarders of appropriate behaviour for women, and thus are never considered as women, nor do they wish to become women. The calabai have an institutionalised role in Bugis society in the organisation of weddings, and are frequently referred to as indo' boting (wedding mothers). Bissu are hermaphroditic beings who have a very close connection to the spirit world. They are in a sense outside of the Bugis gender system, and yet remain intimately within it. There are four notions which come through from a study of gender and sexuality in South Sulawesi. Firstly, there are more than two gender categories. Secondly, gender is not directly, or necessarily, related to biological sex. Thirdly, one must consider the relationship of gender to sexuality, as opposed to trying to analyse them as two distinct entities (cf. Jackson An Explosion of Thai Identities). Fourthly, gender is not something that is fixed. On the contrary, like sexuality, gender is something that can change depending on other life experiences. It is these four notions that I would like to concentrate on in this talk with the aim of contributing to the varied ways in which gender and sexuality can be conceptualised.
Sharyn Graham is currently finishing her Ph.D. in Anthropology and Asian Studies at the University of Western Australia under the supervison of Drs Lyn Parker and Greg Acciaioli. Her topic concerns the conceptualisation of gender amongst the Bugis of South Sulawesi, Indonesia. Of particular interest are the identities of gender transcended priests (bissu), female men (calalai), and male women (calabai). |
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Christine Helliwell
Engendering Sameness |
| A fundamental characteristic of the contemporary western sex/gender model - as pointed out by a range of scholars, including Judith Butler and Thomas Laqueur - is the dimorphism which it institutes between man/male and woman/female. Within this discourse male bodies, genitals, psyches and behaviours are represented as profoundly different from - and in many respects opposed to - female ones. This contrasts markedly with the situation found in many other societies - including many in Southeast Asia - where sameness, even identity, between men and women is stressed. This paper argues that the unquestioned equation of gender with a concern for difference has led to serious problems in much western sex/gender theory, and has caused many western scholars to seriously misunderstand the character of gender relations in a range of societies. Through an examination of gender in one Southeast Asian society that of Gerai, in Indonesian Borneo - I analyse some of the implications of exploring gender via a discourse of sameness rather than of difference. |
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Olivia Su-Lin Khoo
Critical Regionalism: Locating Gender and Sexual Difference within the New Asia |
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I have been engaging with Malaysian online lesbian communities on the Intemet in order to gauge their response to the treatment of homosexuality in Malaysia, and to the Anwar Ibrahim case in particular. In terms of my larger project (a PhD thesis on the Asian exotic and on representations of Asian femininity), my main concern, in this study on Malaysia, was how gender functions in constituting a critical regionalism for Asia. Malaysia is an interesting example to look at, in terms of its status as a multi-ethnic, multi-religious nation with a significant Malay-Muslim (ruling) majority; and also, because it now stands at an interesting point in its development as a nation tied to the new information technologies (through its development of Cyberjaya - a new 'intelligent city' being built next to Kuala Lumpur). Looking at the case surrounding the conviction of former Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim for sodomy, I want to situate Malaysia's stance on homosexuality within the nationalist and regionalist discourses which situate Malaysia within the 'New Asia'. Anwar's trial was not just about his sexual practices, just as debates about homosexuality are never just about sex, but involve other issues - national politics for example. The competing versions of 'Malaysianness' and 'Asianness' being offered by Mahathir and Anwar play out a tension which suggests a need for a critical regionalism which is also concerned with the issues of gender and sexual difference. Mahathir's discourses of nature and 'naturalness' (on which the development of Cyberjaya are being premised), inflect his longing for a return to an organicist notion of Asia. Anwar Ibrahim, on the other hand, represented a reformed 'New' Asia - or an 'Asian Renaissance'. Thus, his legal and political silencing was also the quelling of such a new regional grouping, as well as the (official) silencing of homosexuality in Malaysia.
Theoretically, I am interested in constructing regionalism as a new kind of grouping through visuality and cross-cultural exchange-a visuality which can also be mobilised on the Internet. Political discourse on the Net by online Malaysian lesbian communities can operate as a site of cultural production, one which can interrogate the heteronormative gender politics of the public sphere, and the role of women in the new Asia. A region is a space articulated in relation to other spaces, but what is being juxtaposed, imbricated or elided when we look at Asia as a (queer?) region on the Internet? Olivia Khoo is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of English with Cultural Studies at the University of Melbourne. Her research interests include Asian exoticism and regionalism, and contemporary visibilities of Asian femininity. She has published articles in Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies (Vol. 14, No. 3, 1999), Intersections (No. 4, September 2000), and in Diaspora: Negotiating Asian Australia (UQP, 2000). She also has a chapter entitled 'Sexing the City: Malaysia's New Cyberlaws and Cyberjaya's Queer Success,' in Mobile Cultures: New Media and Queer Asia (edited by Chris Berry, Audrey Yue, and Fran Martin; forthcoming). |
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Fran Martin
Re-orienting Theory: Reading Queer Fiction in Chinese |
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Lesbian and Gay Studies have produced some of the most sophisticated intellectual tools for the analysis of culture, subjectivity and representation to be found anywhere in contemporary humanities scholarship. But, when scholars trained in the analytic techniques of queer theory and based in Australia or other locations ostensibly 'outside Asia' turn our attentions to 'Asian cultures,' the use of these critical tools immediately becomes highly contentious. My paper addresses the vexed-and, I suggest, often mis-framed-question of 'Western theory, Eastern texts.' I will argue that sustained engagement with contemporary theory as it is produced both 'here' and 'there' need not lead to the global triumph of 'Western thought.' It can, on the contrary, expose the limits of theory as it is written in Australia, the US and elsewhere, and lead to the transmutation and productive hybridisation of theory itself. Further, I suggest that the sophisticated techniques of queer theory cannot strictly be considered foreign to 'Eastern contexts' when, for example, in Taiwan the languages of deconstruction, postmodernism and gender performativity are utilised extensively and productively by local intellectuals in analysing the practice and representation of contemporary sexualities. My argument will be illustrated by a textual and cultural analysis of lesbian gendering in a short story by the late prize-winning Taiwanese author Qiu Miaojin, 'Platonic Hair' (Bolatu zhi Fa, 1990).
Dr. Fran Martin has published critical essays on lesbian and gay sexualities in contemporary Taiwan in Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique, GLQ, Communal/Plural, Intersections and Critical InQueeries, and her work has appeared in Chinese translation in Chungwai Literary Monthly and Youth Literary. She wrote the foreword for Taiwanese author Ta-wei Chi's most recent short story collection, Fetish (Lianwupi, Taipei, 1998). Her anthology of ten of her own translations with critical Introduction, entitled Angelwings: Contemporary Queer Fiction from Taiwan, is forthcoming with Hawai'i University Press, and her translations of Taiwanese fiction have also appeared in Positions and antiTHESIS. She is currently co-editing a collection with Chris Berry and Audrey Yue entitled Mobile Cultures: New Media and Queer Asia. She was awarded her Ph.D. in Cultural Studies for a thesis entitled 'Situating Sexuality: Queer Narratives in 1990s Taiwanese Fiction and Film' in 2000, and currently lectures in the Cultural Studies program at the University of Melbourne. |
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Andrew Matzner
'This is who I am': Using Oral Narratives to Study Transgender Lives in Hawai'i |
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In this presentation I will describe the methodology and theoretical underpinnings of my recently completed book O Au No Keia: Voices From Hawai'i's Mahu and Transgender Communities, which is a collection of fifteen in-depth oral histories. My talk will address three points. First, while research on transgenderism in various parts of the world has exploded in recent years, virtually no research has been carried out in Hawai'i. Therefore, the aim of my book project was to begin to create an understanding of transgenderism in the Hawaiian context by giving precedence to the first-person accounts of informants. Second, a crucial issue in a life history project is the dynamic tension inherent in the power-sharing between those who tell their stories and the researcher who, in the end, possesses final editorial control. Thus, I will also discuss the nature of the relationships between myself and my informants, and what steps were taken to address the issue of exploitation. Finally, life histories are beneficial to the study of transgenderism in Hawai'i because of their use in grounded theory. That is, patterns and significant issues emerge from the careful study of oral narratives. This in turn leads to a more informed position from which to generate future research questions and topics.
Andrew Matzner is an independent researcher whose area of interest is transgenderism in Asia and the Pacific, with an emphasis on Thailand. His writing has appeared in the Harvard Gay and Lesbian Review, Off Our Backs, Transgender Tapestry, and the Bangkok Post. Andrew is the author of O Au No Keia: Voices From Hawai'i's Mahu and Transgender Communities (Xlibris, 2001), and is currently working on a book about transgenderism in Thailand. |
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Johanna Schmidt
Transnational Identity Negotiations: Gender, Ethnicity and Samoan Fa'afafine |
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One of the stated aims of the APQ project is 'to explore queer perspectives on the circuits of understanding which imagine Australia [and New Zealand?] both as a site from which to challenge gender/sex differences in the Asia/Pacific and as a hybridised location whose popular and intellectual cultures increasingly reflect the aspirations of the diasporas from "The Region".'
The research I am currently engaged in resonates strongly with this aim, in that I am investigating the impact of migration from Samoa to Auckland on the identities of Samoan fa'afafine, while also considering how the incursion of 'Western' culture into Samoa, through various routes, has changed the lived experience of fa'afafine. In this research, I suggest that both Auckland and Samoa are 'hybridised' locations. This particular paper results from my initial three month fieldwork period in Samoa. It will address some of the questions that were raised during this period in relation to the various discourses (popular and intellectual) that flow between and through Samoa and 'the West' in relation to sexuality and transgenderism. In particular, I will examine issues such as: the impact of Western media texts about fa'afafine in Samoa; Samoan wariness of palagi researchers, especially in the areas of gender and sexuality, in light of what I have come to think of as 'the Mead legacy'; and the problems of translation between Samoan and Western terms and concepts. As well as these more theoretically driven concerns, I will also talk about some of the very real problems and opportunities that I encountered as a single female palagi research in a small Pacific nation. Johanna Schmidt is a palagi New Zealand woman with no children (yet) and have lived in Auckland (which has the largest Polynesian population of any city) most of her life. She has just started on her PhD in Sociology at the University of Auckland, the institution that she thinks of as 'home'. Her current research on fa'afafine represents the continuation of work that examines how various gender expressions 'challenge' (whether intentionally or not) hegemonic Western norms. This is paralleled with an equally long-standing interest in popular culture. |
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Heather Worth
Bad-Assed Honeys with a Difference: South Auckland Fa'afafine Talk About Identity |
| Fa'afafine, Samoan for 'the way of a woman', are not, according to the Pacific anthropologist, Niko Besnier, 'representatives of femaleness as a coherent and unitary category, but rather they align themselves with specific instantiations of womanhood in various contexts' (1994:308). Besnier has described this phenomenon in the Pacific as gender-liminality: 'the adoption by certain individuals of attributes associated with a gender other than their own' (1994:285), avoiding terms such as 'berdache': 'transsexual', or 'gay' or 'homosexual' because he argues, they 'at best capture only one aspect of the category and at worst are completely miscontextualized' (1994: 287). But what does being fa'afafine mean to young Samoans living in South Auckland, the world's biggest Pacific Island city? This paper explores the narratives of a group of young fa'afafine, who spoke in seemingly contradictory ways about their sex and gender, often in the same sentence or two changing from female to male pronouns and back again at will. At the same time the paper will place this talk in the context of: the postmodern theorising of sex, gender and sexual orientation in the West; the Pacific Island diaspora to New Zealand; the effect of globalisation and the influence of black American dragculture; their ambivalent relationship to the gay community. |
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The construction of this AsiaPacifiQueer website has been funded by the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Cultural Development Fund.
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