Sexualities

Hong Kong gay men have always been subordinated under heterosexism and the disciplinary notion of hegemonic masculinity in the straight world and hegemonic cult gay masculinity in the gay world. Dominance, however, is not securely held, but must constantly be won. Under the postcolonial administration, Hong Kong gay men are not enthusiastic about the political sphere of life; rather, they have tended to shift from institutional politics to cultural politics. Cultural space has become the primary location for the production of texts that disrupt the norm of hegemonic heterosexuality under the commodity logic of capitalism. Moreover, using their own forms of embodied cultural capital, Hong Kong gay men tend to take the path of micro-resistance in combating societal domination. This can be seen from their engagement in public sex and in their involvement in the commercial gay scene. Based on the ‘voices’ of 34 Hong Kong gay men, this article argues that Hong Kong gay men negotiate a gay identity that is sensitive and flexible to different institutional arenas; this allows them to strive for sexual freedom and create their own space for social interaction and sexual desire.

Plummer (1995) argues that we are living in a time of ‘new sexual stories’. This, combined with arguments that we are seeing the advent of the ‘sexual citizen’, who refuses to be marginalized on account of his or her sexuality, produces new sexual subjectivities that demand recognition and respect. In this article, we report on an investigation of a sexual story that is not new in itself but one that is yet to be fully explicated. This story is one involving dominance and submission. A hermeneutic phenomenological analysis (Ricoeur, 1981) of World Wide Web sites concerned with sadomasochism was conducted to examine the discursive resources drawn on in this paradoxical world. The findings are discussed in relation to the ‘transformation of intimacy’ (Giddens, 1992) and rise of the ‘sexual citizen’ in late modernity.

Latino male bisexuality has been studied for the most part with a focus on men who have sex with men (MSM) and with little attention to sexual desire. The goal of this article is to present a comprehensive understanding of how sexual desire is organized, enacted through sexual activity, and interpreted in the sexual lives of bisexually-active Latino men. To achieve this aim, an analysis was made of 18 sexual histories of bisexually active Latino men who participated in a two-year ethnographic study. Four configurations of sexual desire were constructed to reflect what was found in this population of bisexually-active Latino men: (a) lifetime homoerotic desire and casual sex with women; (b) lifetime heteroerotic desire, but commercial sex with men; (c) lifetime heteroerotic/transgender desire; (d) lifetime sexual desire for women and men. These configurations are explored in detail in this article. The analysis presented here is intended to offer insights into the overall study of Latino male bisexuality and into the foundations for the design of HIV and STI prevention programs directed toward bisexually-active Latino men and their partners.

Considering the intersection between managerial discourses, sexuality and contemporary cultural resources such as lifestyle magazines, this article reflects critically on the extent to which the discourses and techniques associated with the management of bureaucratic organizations have been incorporated into the (self-)management of sexuality and sexual relations. Locating its concern with sexuality within critical social theory, the article develops a critique of the work of those who emphasize the postmodernization of sexuality and the informalization of management. Drawing on recent research involving an analysis of management texts and lifestyle magazines, as well as a series of semi-structured interviews, it argues that contemporary cultural discourses on sexuality, permeated as they are by references to managerial imperatives such as efficiency and effectiveness, serve to arrest the inter-subjective aspects of eroticism (Bataille, 1962; Rose, 1995) and to reduce sexual relations in the contemporary era to yet another aspect of the ‘reflexive project of self’ (Giddens, 1992).