Everyday erotics in urban density: an ethnography of older lesbian and bisexual women in Hong Kong

Abstract

Lesbian spaces, in terms of their social, cultural, sexual or political purposes, have been dwindling in recent years within global North lesbian geographies. For this article, I would like to put forward a historical analysis of social spaces in Hong Kong through a qualitative ethnographic study of 12 older lesbians and bisexual women aged 60 years and above. Expanding upon Yue and Leung’s theoretical assertion of disjunctive modernity and urban neoliberalism, I proceed to develop my argument that lived experiences in an urban environment diffuses and decenters the assertion of one’s lesbian identity and sexual subjectivity across time and space. Under the British colonial era, the assertion of one’s Chinese womanhood as independent and modern intersects with rapid industrialization and social transformations which lead to culturally-specific spatial practices in locating lesbian desires. I call this mode of spatial practice as everyday erotics in density to describe the way of navigating sexual desires in relation to urban development, where becoming a woman with lesbian desires mean not only carving out one’s alternative erotic space but also disengaging with traditional gender roles in one’s life course and redefining gender and sexuality for an older generation of women.

Keywords:

• Chinese women
• colonialism
• gender and sexualities
• Hong Kong
• older lesbians and bisexual women
• spatial practice

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank all her participants for their sharing first and foremost. She would also like to thank Pearl Wong and Phi Lip for their collaboration and assistance in this project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This project received funding from the General Research Fund under Hong Kong SAR Government Research Grants Council (Project Ref.: 17636116).

Notes on contributors

Denise Tse-Shang Tang

Denise Tse-Shang Tang is an interdisciplinary ethnographer who focuses on inter-Asia gender and sexualities. She is the author of Conditional Spaces: Hong Kong Lesbian Desires and Everyday Life (Hong Kong University Press, 2011). Her articles were published in The Sociological Review, Crime, Media, Culture, Media, Culture & Society, and GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies. She is one of the editors (with Stevi Jackson and Olivia Khoo) for the Palgrave MacMillan book series Gender, Sexualities and Culture in Asia.