Not man enough! Queer Asian masculinities at the field site

ABSTRACT

In this article, we grapple with the ways in which our embodied masculinity affects how we learn about and tell the stories of our older lesbian respondents. Our encounters at the field site have prompted us to think through our methodological practices and epistemological positions, a prompting conditioned by the feminist and queer methodological traditions we are schooled in. Following queer feminist methodological emphasis on attending to the shifting subjectivities of researchers and participants and the concomitant affective registers of the field site, we explore what we call the ‘masculine dynamic’ between researchers and respondents that hover playfully at the contours of our research encounter. Using ethnographic vignettes and reflection notes, we ask after the interplay of masculine embodiments and performativity at the field site, and what this dynamic might mean for producing a ‘knowable’ yet largely ‘invisible’ group of older masculine women in Asia.

KEYWORDS:

• Butch
• lesbian
• masculinity
• queer Asia
• Singapore

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore were selected as research sites for a larger comparative ethnographic project on older lesbians and bisexual women, of which this article only addresses fieldwork in Singapore. The reasons for comparing these three research sites were multi-fold. Two were British colonies and one Japanese, and all were ‘Asian Tiger’ economies, now developed with Taiwan trailing behind in GDP per capita. Chinese ethnicity is dominant in the three societies. On the cultural front, Confucian values and beliefs are common in these societies. Taiwan has been known for its recent progressive attitude towards LGBT communities while Singapore still criminalizes homosexuality. Homosexuality is decriminalized in Hong Kong, yet social stigma remains for most LGBT persons.

2. One older lesbian respondent we interviewed was not Chinese but has lived in Singapore for over 20 years.

3. 君子, junzi, is usually translated as ‘gentleman’ or ‘cultured gentleman’ and refers usually to an elite man who behaves honourably in terms of Confucian precepts

4. She recalls getting in touch only when she needed his identification documents for her daughter’s school registration.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the General Research Fund under the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong [17636116].

Notes on contributors

Shawna Tang

Shawna Tang is Lecturer in Gender Studies at the Department of Gender and Cultural Studies, University of Sydney. She researches and teaches at the juncture of sexuality, gender and race. Her twitter handle is shawnatang.

Denise Tse-Shang Tang is Assistant Professor in Cultural Studies at Lingnan University. Recent research on inter-Asia gender and sexualities include ethnographies on old and elderly lesbians in Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan and trans men in Hong Kong and Thailand. Her twitter handle is deni5050.