Queer Asias: Genders and sexualities across borders and boundaries

Queer Asias

One of the earliest scholars to address “global queerness,” gay rights activist and academic Dennis Altman (1996, 1997) promoted a “new sexual politics” directly tied to U.S. influence. Since that time, numerous scholars (e.g., Bacchetta, 2002; Cruz-Malave and Manalansan, 2002; Grewal and Kaplan, 2001; Halperin, 1996; Jackson, 2000, 2009; Manalansan, 1995, 2003; Puar, 2001; Wilson, 2006) have argued the importance of locally specific expressions of genders and sexualities in the making of so-called global queer identities, rejecting gay liberation models rooted in the 1969 Stonewall riots. In an early nod to the complexities of global sexualities, sociologist Ken Plummer (1992: 18) urged scholars to pay close attention to the “international connectedness yet local uniqueness” of diverse sexualities. Transnational feminist scholars Inderpal Grewal and Caren Kaplan (2001) carried this idea further, arguing that the global and local thoroughly infiltrate each other, creating “transnational sexualities” shaped by diasporic movements, political economies of state, and the disjunctive flow of meanings produced across these sites.

Scholars (e.g., Blackwood, 2005; Manalansan, 1995) working in an Asian context have stressed the dangers of uncritically and universally applying Euro-American models of liberation to Asian queer/sexuality knowledge production. Anthropologist Evelyn Blackwood (2005: 222) warned that “even the use of ‘transnational’ as a frame for exploring sexualities and gender makes it extremely difficult not to rely on and privilege Western understandings of sexualities.” The emergence of transnational queer/sexualities underscored the uneven ways in which sexual subjectivities are constructed across and in between nations or beyond national dictates altogether (Champagne, 1999; Grewal and Kaplan, 2001; Povinelli and Chauncey, 1999). Blackwood (2008, 2010: 3) points to the uneven way “circuits of queer knowledge” are received, identifying an “asymmetrical reception of global and national discourses,” in this case by Indonesian activists and non-activists, “which produces not homogeneous national or international queer identities but a plethora of dynamic subjectivities that exceed any simple categorization.” ²

With the founding of the AsiaPacifiQueer (APQ) Network in 2000, a group of Australia-based scholars challenged the “multiple exclusions” they have encountered in researching trans and same-sex cultures in Asia and, in their words, “inscribe[d] queer studies within Asian studies and equally importantly … locate[d] Asia, and the non-West, within queer studies” (Martin et al., 2008: 2). ³ From a decolonial perspective, APQ scholars intervene in the hegemonic dominance of U.S.-centric queer theory by “placing side-by-side the largely separate histories of queer studies in each Asian country” (Martin et al., 2008: 9). By incorporating “local Asian queer perspectives,” APQ scholars seek to construct new theories and knowledges coming from “queer studies in Asia” (emphasis in original, Martin et al., 2008: 2, 4).

In the 2010s, scholars (Chiang and Wong, 2017; Yue, 2017) have collaboratively proposed thinking about “queer Asia” as method or critique—following cultural theorist Kuan-Hsing Chen’s (2010) “Asia as method”—as a means of reconfiguring queer and Asian knowledge production. “Asia as method” centers frameworks and approaches from within Asia and reimagines Asian societies, meeting points, and people’s subjectivities in order to displace Euro-American-centric theories (Chen, 2010). Queer Asia as method or critique responds precisely to the lack of queer epistemologies from within Asia and continues APQ’s aims to advance queer inter-Asian referencing (Chiang and Wong, 2017; Yue, 2017). Broadening this frame, queer feminist scholar Gayatri Gopinath (2018: 30) theorizes queer sexualities from a regional perspective, creating “an alternative mapping of sexual geographies that links disparate transnational locations and allows new models of sexual subjectivity to come into focus.”

Building on Gopinath, queer Asian scholars Chiang and Wong (2016: 1646) argue for a “queer regionalism” that attends to the “various scales of queer sexualities that traffic within and circulate historically and geographically across Southeast Asia, Australia, imperial China, and contemporary Sinophone cultures.” ⁴ In addition to—and indeed, potentially co-existing with—the concept of “transnational” embraced by queer/sexuality scholars in previous years, the regional concept offers the chance to recuperate areas that are left out of critiques of U.S. empire and European colonial modernity in queer studies, such as semicolonial China and transcolonial Taiwan (Chiang and Wong, 2016).

Using queer Asia as method together with queer regionalism invites us not only to rethink queer Asias in the plural, but also rework the theories, categories, and politics put forward in the last 30 years. Similar in some ways to APQ, the “Queer” Asia collective emerged from the “academic alienation” they experienced from both queer conferences and area studies conferences (Luther and Loh, 2019: 2)—a consequence of the coloniality of queer theory. Scholars in the “Queer” Asia collective “attempt to wrestle theory away from high academia into negotiation with public culture built through mediations with art, film, literature, performance, and activism” (Luther and Loh, 2019: 12). The “Queer” Asia collective’s imperative to decolonize epistemologies and knowledge production is epitomized by Chiang et al. (2018) in their groundbreaking introduction to the TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly special issue, “Trans-in-Asia, Asia in Trans.” Chiang et al. (2018) posit that trans bodies and embodiments crucially reinvigorate studies and writings about Asia (trans-in-Asia) and in turn, perspectives of Asias and Asians significantly reconfigure transgender studies (Asia-in-trans).

The collaborations and transformations in queer Asias over the years have always included trans and gender nonconforming lives, issues, and cultures. Indeed, the Asia Pacific Transgender Network (APTN) had already been formed in 2009 to promote trans advocacy and strengthen the networks of organizations supporting trans people in the Asia Pacific region (Kang, 2019). However, “trans Asias” as a framework has only recently gained momentum with Chiang et al.’s (2018) work. Important here is the issue that gender and sexually variant individuals in Asian contexts do not always insist on clear distinctions between gender identity and sexual orientation, which are prevalent in Euro-American contexts. Chiang et al. (2018: 308) note that such individuals “continue to remain entangled even in the face of the globalizing pressure to become separate.” Their work also raises the larger question of whether or not trans Asias and queer Asias might potentially converge and diverge and under what conditions these frameworks might do so. Although addressed to a certain extent by some of the articles in this special issue (see David, 2021; Ho, 2021), this remains an ongoing issue for scholars who locate themselves under trans Asias and/or queer Asias to contemplate and research further.

Contributions

Expanding the aforementioned conversations, the articles in this special issue challenge how subjects of queer Asias, such as transpinays (transgender Filipinas), josō (male-to-female crossdressing) individuals, and tomboy (masculine-identified) Filipino and Indonesian domestic workers, shape and are shaped by media, capital, migration, social movements, transnational discourses, and political governance. Drawing on ethnographic data, they reveal the shifts taking place in queer politics, activism, theorizations, and (re)categorizations. The four articles speak to one another by investigating the interconnections between queer, “trans”, Asia, Asian subjects, and social institutions across Japan, Taiwan, Indonesia, Hong Kong, the Philippines, and the U.S.

Traversing the humanities and social sciences, this special issue incorporates queer and critical sexuality studies, transgender studies, feminist and gender studies, sociology, anthropology, cultural studies, and Asian studies. It takes stock of where U.S.-centric queer theory and Asian genders and sexualities meet and pushes for categories, politics, activism, and theories that are neither and both from these frameworks. Boundaries and border crossings inherently pose a challenge: to make sense of new kinds of categories, politics, activism, and theories while at the same time not letting go completely of the old. They offer the potential to simultaneously recuperate previous categories, politics, activism, and theories while adapting them to contemporary contexts.

In using the term “Queer Asias,” we refer to such multidirectional crossings—both the acts of crossing over and crossing back—that transpinays, josō individuals, and tomboy migrant domestic workers constantly engage in. It also incorporates spaces where they occur, such as the Tokyo crossdressing scene, Hong Kong LGBT events, parades, and pageants, and transnational Taiwan queer gatherings and anti-LGBTQ+ movements. Emerging from this special issue are similar concerns about whose queer theories, categories, and politics we are looking at and drawing on and what they imply for queer Asian knowledge production. It is significant to note, too, the positionalities and vantage points of the contributors who are variously based in, trained in, have come from, and have complex connections with Asia and the U.S.

Emmanuel David demonstrates how contemporary Philippine gender and sexuality categories are constructed by transnational flows of ideas and capital. The invented category “transpinays” combines the English prefix “trans” and the Tagalog word “pinay” (woman), which does not easily map onto Euro-American categories of gay or transgender. Drawing on interviews with upwardly mobile trans Filipinas, David demonstrates how variously placed social actors attempt to clarify, and in some cases “mess up,” the boundaries of terms and identities. He argues that “transpinay” sits in juxtaposition to categories used in transnational LGBT discourse (“gay,” “homosexual”) and the widespread and flexible Filipino term bakla, used commonly and sometimes derogatorily for someone who is crossdressing, effeminate, and homosexual. The self-conscious action taken by an activist organization of Filipina trans women to create a term incorporating both global and local meanings, exemplifies the connections, cultural flows, and reclaimings among national, regional, and global (Western) identities.

Michelle H. S. Ho’s article in this issue grapples with trans Asias and queer Asias, as she traces the entanglements of gender and sexuality categories used by young Japanese individuals. Where some of David’s participants readily embrace “transpinay” to signal their alignment with transnational trans discourses, Ho’s interlocutors, josōko/otoko no ko (young amateurs who take up male-to-female crossdressing) in Tokyo, complicate precisely these discourses. What do categories do and how do they figure in trans people’s everyday lives? Ho answers this question by tracing gender and sexuality categories, such as “toransujendā” (transliteration of transgender), “josō” (male-to-female crossdressing), and “otoko no ko” (boy/male daughter). Based on interviews and participant observation in the contemporary josō scene, Ho (2021: 2) contends that such categories “are not only imbued with power, but also circulate and function affectively” for josōko/otoko no ko by offering new meanings for their practices, interactions, and subjectivities, and in doing so intervene in transnational sexuality and transgender studies.

Francisca Y. K. Lai’s participants—Filipino and Indonesian migrant domestic workers in Hong Kong—take up various strategies of organizing and advocating LGBT rights in their host country. Lai’s comparative analysis of the LGBT activism and migration experiences of these women addresses the complications that are brought out by queer inter-Asian referencing. Based on observations of LGBT events, parades, and pageants, and interviews with their organizers, Lai finds that their diverse expressions of pride are not only determined by discourses of visibility and coming out, but also by their migration experience, ties to their home country, and international solidarity and experience with activist groups. Contending with the flows of inequalities and knowledges among the three Asian countries, Indonesia, Hong Kong, and the Philippines, Lai advances queer inter-Asian referencing and suggests the need for more complex understandings of pride discourses as they travel and take root across borders.

Ying-Chao Kao’s examination of how U.S.-centric queer theory has influenced queer struggles in Asia draws on decolonial critiques of queer. Kao poses and answers the following questions.: What has queer homonormativity done to Taiwanese queers endeavoring for equality? Who facilitated the glocalization of homonormativity? What unintended colonial effects/affects has this produced in Taiwan? Kao adopts a decolonial lens to examine transnational culture wars against marriage equality and tóngzhì-friendly education, drawing on participant observation in U.S.-Taiwan queer gatherings and anti-LGBTQI+ movements in transnational Taiwan. Ultimately, Kao posits that while queer theories help to contest the heteronormative sex hierarchy and procreation-centered biopolitics, their glocalized expansions in Taiwan have unconsciously colluded with imperial epistemology by disrupting queer theories and practices, undermining indigenous queer subjectivities, and constantly “backwarding” Asian queer struggles in sex-political and temporal discourses. All of these colonial effects have exacerbated the local queer difficulties that Taiwanese gender and sexual minorities are facing, and enlarged the symbolic gap between queer Asias and queer Euro-America.

In constituting “queer Asias,” these articles grapple with various kinds of crossings, notably crossing over and back across categorial, political, activist, and theoretical borders and boundaries in the Asias. By addressing multiple shifts in identities, ways of being and doing, and (im)possibilities, queer Asias in these articles reconfigure how we make sense of both older, existing, and entrenched gender/sex cultures as well as newer, developing, and not-yet-existing everyday practices and intimacies. The articles in this special issue call for scholars to tell the stories of gender and sexually diverse individuals as they emerge in the moment, even—and especially—if they challenge established queer theories, politics, and categories. To do so is to confront what we know and make way for what will come next.