Locating sexual politics and gendered lives: East Asian perspectives

This special issue brings together 11 articles on gendered lives in East Asia written by East Asian scholars. Despite recognition of this region’s economic ascendancy and increasing awareness of its significance in terms of global geopolitics, it is still treated as marginal to academic, including feminist, research in the West,¹ of concern only to area specialists. In Western public consciousness, East Asia is still subject to an orientalizing gaze whereby its cultures and peoples are seen as exotically other, even as some of its cultural products are embraced and adopted by Westerners; such racialized ‘othering’ is gendered, often contradictory and rarely has much to do with the actuality of East Asian lives. The articles published here offer insights into everyday gendered and sexual practices in East Asia as well as negotiations with and struggles against gendered and sexual injustices – injustices hardly confined to this part of the world but which have particular local specificities. We include articles on and/or from mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan and South Korea as well as Singapore, which, while geographically in South-East Asia, is a Chinese-majority society.

A quick glance at the issue’s contents will reveal that the majority of articles deal with mainland China. This is hardly surprising given the size of the country, its population and its university sector. Moreover, there is a need for a better understanding of China given its increasing regional and global influence. At a time when China is much in the news for largely negative reasons, these articles provide alternative narratives to the media focus on totalitarian governance, human rights abuses, aggressive ‘wolf warrior’ diplomacy and, of course, the origins of the pandemic. They offer analyses of the everyday lives and aspirations of Chinese citizens, who are more often concerned with negotiating the challenges and opportunities they face in a rapidly changing society than with the limitations imposed by an authoritarian state – though they can be swiftly be made aware of the latter if they overstep certain boundaries (see, for example, Guo and Yin, this issue). The Chinese authors whose work is featured here engage in critical analysis of their society, but offer more nuanced and varied accounts than those available in international media, making interventions into cross-national academic conversations about both conformity with and resistance to normative gendered and sexual practices.

China exists within a region that has a long history of social, cultural and economic connections between neighbouring countries and with more distant regions. This history has resulted in some commonalities across East Asia, but also significant differences in cultural legacies as well as in forms of governance and politics. Added to this are varied extra-regional influences, especially from the mid-19th Century onwards. Unlike South-East Asia and South Asia, however, East Asia was only partially colonized by European powers. British colonialism has left its mark on Singapore and Hong Kong and contributed to their distinct local identities and their self-promotion as global cosmopolitan cities. In the case of China, military defeats, unjust treaties and the imposition of foreign concessions (effectively colonial enclaves governed under extra-territoriality) are remembered in terms of the ‘century of humiliation’, which also included Japanese occupation in the 1930s and 1940s. Japan, having learnt from China’s misfortune, began a project of modernization and militarization in the late 19th Century while also seeking to preserve and sometimes (re)invent a distinctive cultural heritage (Vlastos, 1998). Japan’s gains in military might enabled it to colonize both Korea and Taiwan, as well as, later, to invade China and then, in WWII, much of Asia. These histories matter and are drawn on in the images constructed through nationalist and popular ideologies, notable among which are Japan’s sense of its cultural uniqueness (see Khor and Kamano, this issue) and the ‘Chinese Dream’, China’s project of reclaiming its rightful place in the world and demonstrating the superiority of ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’ over capitalist liberal democracy.

Since the end of the Asia Pacific and Korean wars in the mid-twentieth centuries, East Asia has undergone tremendous social change. Japan recovered quickly from the consequences of defeat in WWII, both rebuilding its economy and redefining its national image. South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan experienced rapid economic growth and transformation, joining the rich (post)industrial world and accomplished in decades what took the Western world a few centuries. The rapidity of this transformation and the complexity of its social consequences led the Korean sociologist Chang Kyung-Sup (1999, 2010) to coin the term ‘compressed modernity’ to capture not only the speed of change but the ways in which old and new, local and global influences co-exist and impact upon each other. Japan, where modernization began earlier, has been seen as experiencing ‘semi-compressed modernity’ (Ochiai, 2014). China, with its history of revolution, Maoist communism and then the socio-economic transformation produced by market reform and its integration into global capitalism, has its own version of compressed modernity. This has been theorized by Yingchun Ji (2017) as mosaic modernity, wherein conflicting socialist and capitalist elements rub up against various other traditional, modern, local and global components that make up the complex shifting picture of Chinese society (see also Ji et al., this issue).

We see this special issue as a specifically East Asian response to calls to decolonize, de-imperialize or de-Westernize knowledge production (see, for example, Chakrabarty, 2008; Bhambra & Santos, 2017; Chen, 2010; Iwabuchi, 2014), including feminist knowledge (for example, Connell, 2015; Giraldo, 2016; Lugones, 2010; Moletsane, Haysom, & Reddy, 2015). Drawing together articles on East Asia, written by East Asians we hope will facilitate ‘inter-Asia referencing’ and comparison (Iwabuchi, 2014) rather than using ‘the West’ as the benchmark against which the rest of the world is compared and Western conceptual tools as the only possible means of engaging in academic analysis. This does not mean we should totally reject Euro-American theories; to do so, as Iwabuchi notes, would be ‘unproductive or even absurd’. Rather, he argues for a ‘subtle spatio-temporal translation’ when we apply theory to specific contexts (2014, p. 45) and ‘promoting dialogue among diverse voices and perspectives derived and developed in Asian contexts’ (2014, p. 47). The same should apply to feminist approaches. The central concepts we and our contributors are using – gender and sexuality – are Euro-American in origin and difficult to translate into Asian languages, yet it would be very difficult to do without them. The authors featured in this issue adopt different strategies in relation to Western concepts and theories. Some frame their arguments using Euro-American perspectives but nonetheless do so in ways that illuminate local specificities, such as Day Wong’s analysis of Hong Kong’s cross-dressing and trans communities and Altman Peng’s techno-feminist approach to the work of China’s beauty app developers. On the other hand, Yingchun Ji and colleagues make use of their locally developed conceptualization of mosaic modernity and mosaic familialism in discussing Chinese lesbians’ marriage strategies while Xiaoying Qi, as in her previous work (Qi, 2014), foregrounds the analytic utility of indigenous Chinese concepts, here applied to understanding orientations to ageing. Diana Khor and Saori Kamano explicitly locate their contribution within critiques of Western knowledge claims while at the same time engaging with transnational debates on same-sex marriage. Irrespective of the approach their authors take, the articles in this issue reveal something of the complexity of East Asian societies, the differences within them, their differences from each other as well as what they share.

Shared characteristics include the heritage of Confucianism, but this has had variable impacts at different historical junctures and in different cultures; Confucianism has undergone a number of revisions and reinventions over time, not least in China where it was repudiated as feudal in the Mao era, but rehabilitated in the 21st Century as marketization rendered Marxism less salient and ‘Chinese characteristics’ became more central to legitimating the Communist Party’s rule. Confucianism emphasizes familial hierarchy and harmony and can therefore provide ideological underpinnings for patriarchal social arrangements. East Asian societies can be seen as patriarchal in the classic sense of being characterized by hierarchies of both gender and generation. While rejected by many Western feminists, the concept of patriarchy still has currency and relevance for many Asian scholars. That being said, patriarchy is not, and never has been, uniformly influential across the region and some aspects of patriarchal ‘tradition’ are not ancient in origin but are relatively recent inventions or reinventions (Sechiyama, 2013). Despite this variability, East Asian states tend to endorse family ties as the basis of social order and governance, from the Chinese party-state’s conceptualization of family as the basic ‘cell’ of society (Sigley 2006) to the recording and regulating of citizens through family registers rather than as individuals, for example the Japanese koseki (White, 2018), to Singapore making marriage a condition of access to affordable housing (Teo, 2013). East Asian governments all pursue familialist policies and adopt narrowly heteronormative definitions of family. Not only does this justify minimal welfare provision and place enormous burdens on families, particularly on women (Chang and Song, 2010; Chang, 2014), but it is also bolstered by an appeal to ‘Asian values’, implicitly or explicitly contrasted with the alleged individualistic values of the West. Yet, as Emiko Ochiai argues, ‘rather than being a direct expression of cultural values (“Asian” or otherwise) familialist social systems are primarily products of socioeconomic conditions and policy decisions made in specific historical settings’ (2014, p. 217).

This heteronormative familialism has profound implications for gender relations and sexualities in East Asia and is a thread that runs through many of the articles in this issue, from the centrality of family relationships to the understanding of ageing discussed by Xiaoying Qi to the problems encountered by those who do not conform to the familial ideal. In Confucian thinking, the most unfilial of acts is to have no offspring and within East Asian societies marrying and producing offspring have been, and often still are, seen as familial and civic duties. Yet historically East Asian societies did not have particular taboos against same-sex intimacies, which could be accommodated, more often among men, once family obligations were fulfilled (Hinsch, 1990; Sang, 2003). Asian societies have not, on the whole, explicitly outlawed same-sex practices though Singapore and Hong Kong’s colonial administrations did so. Singapore retains this law (ironically in terms of protecting local sensibilities), while Hong Kong repealed it in 1991. From the early reform era until 1997 China criminalized homosexuality without naming it under a catch-all law against ‘hooliganism’ and also categorized it as a mental illness until 2001 (see Kong, 2016). This background and history – the lack of taboos and legal prohibitions on the one hand and the importance of ensuring family continuity on the other – offers two rationales for failing to grant rights and protections to sexual minorities. Being anything other than conventionally heterosexual can be seen as conflicting with ‘Asian family values’ or, alternatively, a history of ‘tolerance’ can be invoked to claim that such protection is unnecessary – as Diana Khor and Saori Kamano argue in the case of Japan. Paradoxically, as they demonstrate, Japanese ‘tolerance’ is deployed to claim a unique and superior approach to sexual and gender rights while at the same time protecting a highly patriarchal heteronormative order embedded in the koseki family registration system. In some Japanese municipalities it is possible to register a same-sex partnership, but this has little or no legal recognition. It does, however, seem to have meaning, as Khor and Kamano found, for those who have a registration certificate.

It is difficult to obtain even basic protections against discrimination for queer and trans people in East Asia. Even in Taiwan, lauded as the first place in Asia to allow same-sex marriage, it has not been easy. Ting-Fang Chin’s analysis of the narrative strategies of those opposing change reveals how they were able to present it as a threat to family life and even to heterosexuals’ sense of selfhood. Where queer activists had sought to rewrite the legal definitions of family and familial relationships, the outcome was less radical – a separate law covering same-sex partnerships rather than a redefinition of marriage. The campaign did, however, shake previously taken for granted assumption about the normative life course – itself an achievement. Marital rights matter in East Asia because families are so central to both one’s legal standing and to everyday social life. In much of East Asia, as more people remain single for longer, it has become easier to live a semi-clandestine queer life as a single person. This is less possible in China where marriage is near compulsory and remaining single is stigmatized, especially for women (Ji, 2015; To, 2015), and can become a source of family conflict. One strategy for coping with this that has received much scholarly attention is xinghun marriage, variously conceptualized as contract, cooperative or performative marriage between a lesbian and a gay man (Choi & Luo, 2016; Engebretsen, 2017; Liu, 2013; Wang, 2019). Recourse to this strategy, as Yingchun Ji and colleagues’ research found, is unequally distributed. It is more often considered in more remote regions and small towns in China, and when daughters are financially dependent on their parents, where women are most likely to feel compelled to marry. More privileged, economically independent women living in major cities find it easier to avoid marriage and may even move abroad to escape parental pressure.

Such findings underscore an important aspect of any feminist analysis, the need for an intersectional approach. Social class and, in China’s case, inequalities between regions are shown in a number of the articles to mediate gendered effects. This is apparent in Yiran Wang’s analysis of the varied ‘passionate aesthetics’ adopted by Chinese lesbians. It is not only a matter of marriage strategies but also access to communities of support and new ideas about sexuality, which are more available in bigger cities and especially the more metropolitan coastal areas. It is much easier to live an unconventional life, in East Asia as elsewhere, with the economic, social and cultural resources that facilitate such options. This is also underlined in Day Wong’s analysis of the hierarchies within the trans community of Hong Kong, where better off trans women have more opportunities to live as women and to undergo surgeries if they choose, while working class cross-dressers are more restricted in their choices and also in the spaces they can comfortably frequent in the city. Wong also alerts us to the dangers of imposing Western LGBTQ+ categories onto East Asian lives. Even where individuals use identity categories such as transsexual, transgender or cross-dressers, as among Hong Kong trans community, they may not have precisely the same meaning or imply the same social positioning as would be the case in, for example, Europe or the USA.

Decades ago the feminist anthropologist Michelle Rosaldo (1980) cautioned against interpreting other societies’ gender arrangements through our own cultural lenses, warning us that what looks familiar in another society is unlikely to be a precise replication of our own localized practices. We should bear this in mind in interpreting what we might broadly categorize as lesbian, gay or queer lives, practices and communities in East Asia. So, for example, Yiran Wang notes that the Chinese lesbian ‘T’ (masculine) role blurs the distinction between lesbians and trans men and does not perfectly fit under any of the LGBTQ letters – it is not L, T or Q as these categories might be understood elsewhere, but is specific to its cultural context. Even accomplished, experienced and culturally sensitive Asian researchers can find themselves out of step with their research participants’ understandings of gender and sexuality as evidenced by Shawna Tang’s and Denise Tang’s reflexive account of working with older, masculine-identified Singapore lesbians. They were wrong-footed by the way their participants positioned them and by disjunctions between participants’ perspectives and their own sensibilities, acquired in part through academic debates originating in Western countries – for example in not sharing the same assumptions about ‘correct’ gendered pronoun use. In discussing these issues, Tang and Tang highlight the relational dynamics of the research encounter, not only in terms of differences of class and age but also of queer embodiment, and to how these play out in interactions between researchers and participants from differing (intra)Asian backgrounds.

Ideas and identities associated with gender and sexuality travel through cultural exchanges between interconnected locations, but they change as they do so. The beginnings of homosexual and lesbian identities in East Asia can be traced to engagements with ideas on sexuality imported from overseas, beginning in the early 20th century (Chiang, 2010), but were never adopted wholesale without modification and have since diversified. Sinophone cultures have developed their own lexicon, with the term tongzhi, Chinese for ‘comrade’ (literally same will), becoming a common queer self-identification. This term spread to mainland China from Hong Kong and Taiwan. Lesbian-specific terminology, such as Lazi and Lala, along with masculine and feminine lesbian roles, variously T and Po (Taiwan), TB and TBG (Hong Kong) and T and P (mainland China) seem to have originated through the adoption and modification of Western terminology, modified again each time these concepts travelled to new locations. So even when ideas and concepts are derived from Euro-American cultures they continue to be translated and redefined through inter-Asian connections and transmission – and they continue to spread unevenly as indicated in the varied identities ‘lesbians’ from differing Chinese locations adopt (see articles by Yiran Wang and Yingchun Ji et al.).

We may live in a globalized world, but not everyone has the same access to trans-local cultural and social capital and foreign ideas, or necessarily wishes to engage with them. In another context, Pei-Chia Lan identifies two levels of global-local entanglements, ‘those between societies with intersecting histories and often under asymmetrical relations of power’ and how ‘the local society as an uneven entity receives, engages and negotiates with these entanglements in a dynamic and disparate manner’ (Lan, 2014, p. 534). These will have differential consequences within local societies and may both reflect and reinforce local inequalities, in terms of those who have access to the ideas and commodities that are seen as part of a ‘modern’ and cosmopolitan lifestyle – as evident in the hierarchies reported by Wong in the Hong Kong trans community and by Yiran Wang among Chinese lalas.

Changes in gender relations in East Asia and feminist engagements with them evince similar unevenness of global and local influences and change is not always unidirectional or progressive. China represents an interesting case here since the introduction of a market economy and ‘opening up’ to the outside world has resulted in a retreat from Maoist ideals of gender equality. Even in the Mao era, ideas about ‘natural’ differences between women and men persisted and gender inequality was never eradicated, but in the post-Mao era there has been a re-emphasis on the naturalness of gender differences, on women’s domestic responsibilities and increased discrimination in the labour market (see, for example, Evans, 2008). Now even the Maoist revolutionary slogan ‘women hold up half the sky’ can, as Xiaoying Qi suggests, refer to women’s role as managers of the domestic sphere rather than their (purportedly) equal contribution to building socialism. At the same time, there has been a degree of freeing up of personal sexual lives and a sexualization of culture such that China has become, as Everett Zhang puts it, ‘a sexier place’ (2011, p. 108). In conjunction with neoliberal ideas of success through individual endeavour and the development of a consumer economy, this has led specifically to new forms of feminine subjectivity, increasingly sexualized ideals of femininity and the sexualization of young women’s labour (see, for example, Evans, 2008; Liu, 2016; Rofel, 2007). Women’s sexuality and their sexual objectification create opportunities for entrepreneurial success for some and exploitation for others.

One of the effects of the re-emphasis on sexualized femininity and a neoliberal consumer economy is the growth of the beauty economy in China (see, for example, Yang, 2011). This has affected women of all ages, but unevenly. Whereas some research has found older women eagerly embracing the pursuit of fashion and beauty, which was not available to them during their Maoist era youth (Yang, 2011; Sheng, 2021), the older women interviewed by Xiaoying Qi eschewed such pleasures, once again revealing the patchiness of change and the effects of class and regional differences within China. It is younger women who are likely to experience the most pressure to buy into the beauty culture since physical attractiveness is seen as offering opportunities in both the job market and the marriage market. It is these conditions, along with the importance of self-presentation on social media, in China as elsewhere, that has created the market for beauty apps, which enable instant modifications of photographs taken on mobile phones. Altman Peng’s article focuses on professionals who have been involved in designing and marketing one of the leading apps in China, revealing the taken for granted assumptions about gender underpinning their work and also the culturally specific standards of beauty built into the app’s functions. He also highlights the gendered division of labour within the industry, which is said to provide career opportunities for women through the development of a female-oriented product yet limits them to lower paid, lower status roles, reinforced by beliefs in women’s lesser technological literacy. That these beauty apps are thought to be empowering for women illustrates the extent to which individualistic neoliberal ideals of feminine success have penetrated Chinese society.

There are numerous ways in which women’s bodies, and access to them, are commodified within China’s sexual economy (see Ho, Jackson, Cao, & Kwok, 2018; Zurdorfer, 2016), and this is related to ideals of masculinity as well as femininity. In China’s increasingly unequal and highly competitive society, the successful performance of masculinity requires money, which is strongly associated with access to beautiful women. A large reservoir of unfulfilled male lust for both money and sex helps account for the success and profitability of China’s PUA (pick-up artist) culture in China. This is another foreign import that has been localized under conditions specific to China and where, as Chao Guo and Haiyin Yin explain, entrepreneurs selling advice on seducing women can make a small fortune. If they stay within the boundaries of what is allowable by the state, they may also accrue fame and media exposure. Guo and Yin also develop a critical stance on ‘entrepreneurial C-fem’, defined by Wu and Dong (2019) as a form of Chinese feminism where women seek to capitalize on their sexual assets and men’s desires to ensnare a rich husband – and which has also created opportunities to make money by purveying advice on how to achieve these ends. Guo and Yin argue that while this is the converse of PUA, it shares and buys into the same troubling gender politics. From the economic success of these activities and the ways in which their successful proponents become public celebrities, it would seem that the party-state is content to permit, or even foster, profiting from men and women manipulating each other’s anxieties and desires provided that, in so doing, they steer clear of anything deemed ‘pornographic’.

A similar point could be made about the camgirl phenomenon, where young women engage in online live streaming for the entertainment of men, working long hours in which they earn only a fraction of the profits their labour generates. Having worked as a camgirl as well as interviewing others who did so, Yilin Wang gives us an insider perspective on what this work involves. This is aspirational labour that seems to promise a chance of a glamorous occupation, economic success, even becoming an internet celebrity. But aspiration ultimately becomes desperation. Precisely because they cannot legally do anything explicitly sexual during streaming, camgirls must put a great deal of emotional labour into wooing and retaining sponsors, big brothers, the main source of their (and the platform’s) income, involving playing humiliating games, making themselves vulnerable and constantly facing the fear of rejection and loss of both their emotional investment and the income it produces. This shows us, as Wang says, the dark side of digital China.

It is no coincidence that much of this monetization of femininity and female sexuality is digitally mediated, as East Asia is the most digitally connected region in the world. Capitalist East Asian societies were pioneers and early adopters of much digital technology. While China was not originally among these, it has advanced rapidly and is now a major player globally. The party-state is now promoting ‘digital China’, an informatisation of China’s economy and society, whereby all forms of digital data will be integrated. This is seen as a contributor to economic growth and a prestige project underlining China’s technological capabilities. China’s people also take pride in this, and not only those involved in the high-tech industries, as among the professionals Peng interviewed. For example, the inability to buy anything other than with a smartphone app is seen as a sign of China’s advanced modernity rather than a nuisance or, indeed, a threat. Yet this informatisation leads to the concentration of vast quantities of data in the hands of an authoritarian state, greatly increasing its powers of surveillance over its citizens (Zeng, 2016). The internet, however, also provides some opportunities for resistance and for interchanges of ideas that it might not be possible to air in conventional media. Much Chinese feminist activity takes place online, an important avenue for sharing information and building solidarity (Wang & Driscoll, 2019), which is particularly important in a society that does not permit public protest. China’s more radical netizens are adept at evading censorship and the constraints of the ‘great firewall’, but do not always succeed. Feminist websites and accounts have frequently been blocked, most recently in April 2021 when several feminist channels were abruptly shut down as well as individual feminists’ Weibo accounts.

Throughout East Asia, as elsewhere in the world, the internet has been widely used for political campaigning and for coordinating protest, for example in Hong Kong in 2019. One of the most striking examples of digitally enabled protest is provided by Jieun Lee and Euisol Jeong’s account of Korea’s 4B movement, which began from communities of women engaged in online battles with misogynistic men but developed into resistance to Korea’s heteronormative, familialist and pro-natalist culture. Where forms of resistance to patriarchal heteronormativity described in other articles in this issue tend either to avoid direct confrontation with the normative order or channel it into conventional political campaigns, what Lee and Jeong describe is far more assertively confrontational – an explicit refusal of marriage, romance, (hetero)sexual activity and childbearing and any compliance with patriarchal institutions or expectations. 4B feminism strikes at the heart of cherished East Asian values. No one reading this article could continue to hang on to the stereotype of the submissive Asian woman!

In conclusion, we hope that these articles while only covering a small selection of gendered and sexual issues and practices in East Asia, at least offer readers some insight into this region. We also hope that they may start a conversation on how we might move forward with the project of decolonizing and de-Westernizing knowledge, of rethinking the ways in which we approach the study of gender and sexuality and link it in with wider global issues such as neoliberal capitalism and geopolitics. While East Asian contributions to discussions on decolonizing knowledge have arguably been less influential than those from elsewhere in the post-colonial world, we see East Asia as providing an ideal location from which to challenge Western knowledge precisely because of its specific history, late transition to capitalism and the specific forms that capitalism takes in Asia, from the familialist structures underlying the Korean variant (Chang, 2010) to China’s ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’, which tethers ‘economic reform to neoliberal capitalism’ (Rofel, 2007, p. 111) under the Communist Party’s authoritarian rule. Thus, we cannot, for example, assume that capitalism operates in the same way everywhere or that neoliberalism has precisely the same consequences for gender relations or feminism as it has in the USA or Europe.

China is a case in point, where neoliberal individualism seems to co-exist with a strong collectivist ethic both in relation to family ties and a collective Chinese national identity. Where individualism and collectivism are conventionally seen as opposed to one another, in China they are mutually reinforcing. The neoliberal self-responsibility required by the marketization of the economy and its integration into global capitalism is fostered by a collective pride in China’s rise and the experience of improvements in living standards over recent decades. Conversely, working hard for individual success and embracing enhanced consumption opportunities (essential for economic growth) are seen as contributing to the furtherance of the collective good – China’s inexorable progress towards taking it’s ‘rightful’, pre-eminent place in the world order and reversing the ‘century of humiliation’. Thus, the party-state has succeeded in harnessing individual aspirations to the Chinese Dream, seen as promoting both China’s greatness and the happiness and self-realization of its citizens. It is in this context that we should understand gendered and sexual practices and subjectivities in China, and the negotiations, accommodations and resistances that these involve as each individual pursues their own Chinese dreams.

This is but one example of the ways in which paying attention to specific local conditions can serve to re-orient universalizing assumptions about neoliberal capitalism. There is much more to be done to decolonize and de-westernize knowledge production. This should not only be the responsibility of those working from the periphery, from outside the Euro-American axis of intellectual hegemony. We need those already privileged by their location to listen, take heed and take action. There are simple things that can be done to make a start: stop assuming that theories generated in the West have universal applicability, avoid writing about British or American experiences without noting their localized, provincial specificity and, importantly, challenge the asymmetrical referencing practices that pervade Anglophone academic publishing. As we have noted elsewhere (Jackson & Ho, 2018), scholars from outside the metropole are often obliged, by reviewers and publishers, to reference Western work while much less citation occurs in the opposite direction. Western writers are expected only to know about their own part of the world, are allowed to be unreflexively parochial and rarely even consider research from beyond the Euro-American world as relevant; scholars from elsewhere, however, are expected to cite the Western literature in addition to that on their own countries/regions. They may even be asked by reviewers to justify writing about ‘elsewhere’, as we and colleagues have been, whereas few reviewers would ask, for example, why a research study was undertaken in the USA (see Jackson & Ho, 2018, p. 1265).

More work from East Asia, and from beyond the Euro-American sphere in general, is now being published in international Anglophone journals than in the past, but it needs to be cited and included in transnational academic discussions rather than being treated as of only local relevance. There are signs, especially in some feminist work, that this is beginning to happen, but we have a long way to go. As feminist scholars concerned with combating inequality and injustice, we cannot afford to exclude most of the world from our conversations. It is important to foster dialogue and collaboration across cultures, especially in times of global crises and political turbulence and when we are confronting harsh political realities.

Notes

1. We use the terms Western and the West deliberately as these are the terms East Asians themselves use and against which they often define themselves, and because East Asian countries do not fit easily into alternative classifications, such as ‘global North’ versus ‘global South’. For a more extended exposition of this argument, see Jackson and Ho (2020, pp. 14–15). See also Khor and Kamano’s article in this issue.