Through a meta-literature review, this paper examines the changing contours of Chinese sociology of homosexuality in contemporary China. It unfolds the different theoretical orientations and methodologies that construct the modern male homosexual subject under major socio-economic and political changes. Chinese sociology of homosexuality started in the reform era and has been dominated by Western knowledge production and the political ideology of the communist party-state. Fused with the bio-medical model and the state's modernization project in the 1980s-1990s, the sociological study adopted a functionalist and positivistic approach with surveybased methodology in the main which focused on the etiology of homosexuality. A new transnational knowledge production of sociology of homosexuality has formed since the 2000s which has shifted towards a constructivist/ post-structuralist approach and reflexive qualitative methodology. The new sociological study examines the rise of male (as well as female) homosexual identity in China, questions the hetero/homosexual binary and discusses how an individual makes sense of homosexual identity to form same-sex intimate relationships. By tracing the epistemology of homosexuality in contemporary China, this paper rethinks the dominance of the Western construction and the role of the state in shaping the knowledge of homosexuality and proposes alternative spaces for theorizing Chinese sexual identities, desires and practices.
This article seeks to investigate the complexity of the working experiences of female prostitutes in Hong Kong, using an oral history approach. Based on 13 in-depth interviews, I depict my respondents as performing the skilled emotional labour of sex in exchange for their clients' money. Looking at the ways in which the women manage the job, the self and the business, I argue that their major problem is not with the commercial transaction (that is, the content of the work itself), nor with the 'conflict' between their personal and work selves, but with the social stigma, surveillance and dangers at their workplaces. Inspired by a post-structuralist conception of power and identity formation, I propose a women-centred lived-experience feminist approach in the hope of filling the gap between the bipolar imageries of 'sexual slavery' or 'sex radical' that have been thrown up in the feminist debate over the meaning of prostitution. This approach emphasizes the inter-relationships among women's lived experiences, the micro-sites of social surveillance and the macro-condition of wider society. Although Hong Kong female prostitutes are not 'political' in fighting for their rights and benefits, they have tended to take the path of micro-resistance in combating societal domination. They negotiate an identity of the 'prostitute' that is sensitive and flexible to different institutional areas that seems to jeopardize the neat binaries of madonna/ whore, good girl/bad girl, victim/warrior, conformist/radical. This allows them to create their own space to work and survive.
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