‘Queering pornography’: situating lesbian identity and sexuality in the pornoscape and sexual-scape of Hong Kong

ABSTRACT

This article intends to start a dialogue between the now globalized LGBT identity labels originated from Euro-American queer identity politics and the local experience of Hong Kong lesbians. In a three-year ethnographic research project conducted in Hong Kong, I found discrepancy between popular discourses on queer identity formation and the experience of Hong Kong consumers. Rather than relying on ‘queer pornography’ as the major point of reference and initiation, my lesbian-identified informants consumed mainstream pornographic videos depicting heterosexual intercourse presumably made for a predominately heterosexual male audience. This article examines what affects their choice(s) of pornography, to shed light on the complexity and agency of these porn-viewing lesbian subjects by not only situating them within the realm of ‘queer porn’ and globalized LGBT culture, but also teasing out the contextual limitations that gave birth to the specific form of lesbianism in the city. This enables insights into the ‘conditions of possibility for the appearance of these practices’ in the East Asian context – that is, how do these informants learn, understand, and interpret themselves as sexual beings, within the sexual culture of Hong Kong.

KEYWORDS:

• Hong Kong
• lesbian
• pornography
• queer porn
• female sexuality

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 ‘咸片’ is a local term that can be understood as ‘porno’ in the broadest sense; it includes hardcore pornographic video, but could also mean any ‘racy movie’ that features adult content or intends sexual arousal, whether or not they are Category 3 movies (similar to R-rated) in the Office for Film, Newspaper and Article Administration motion picture rating system in Hong Kong.

2 ‘Sei zai’ [四仔] literally means ‘Category 4’, a non-existent category within the motion picture rating system of the Office for Film, Newspaper and Article Administration in Hong Kong. It vaguely alludes to something that is ‘beyond Category 3’, in local language, referring to those sexually explicit materials that are not approved by government censorship and cannot be shown or sold publicly in Hong Kong.

3 ‘AV’ was originally used as the short form for ‘Japanese adult videos’, which has come to stand for pornographic videos in general, although it still points exclusively to that of Japanese origin, but in terms of circulation and the public discussion of pornography and sex, Japanese AV has absolute dominance. While the Hong Kong film industry in different eras had produced ‘softcore’ Category 3 films, there is no locally produced hardcore pornography.

4 Namely porn featuring a ‘stronger’ or more proactive actress, less ‘violent sex’, or more equal gender–power relationships.