Trans-in-Asia, Asia-in-Trans

Queer Asias: Genders and sexualities across borders and boundaries

“…By using “Asias” rather than “Asians,” we highlight contested regions of heterogeneous cultures, languages, and populations whose shifting boundaries incorporate diasporic and transnational flows of people, images, and ideas. We demonstrate the way that queer, queer feminist, and transgender perspectives critically shape the study of Asias and Asians, in the same way that Asian studies decenters the Euro-American biases of queer and trans scholarship (Chiang and Wong, 2017; Chiang et al, 2018).…”

“…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.…”

“…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).…”

Editorial introduction: androgynous bodies and cultures in Asia

“…Alongside this are attempts to advance transgender studies in Asia, such as the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies (IACS) special issue "Trans/Asia, Trans/gender," which illustrated the inter-referencing of trans communities across India, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Australia (Martin and Ho 2006, 185). More recently, guest editors of the Transgender Studies Quarterly special issue "Trans-in-Asia, Asia in Trans" have contended that just as trans perspectives are important for those of us invested in studying Asia, Asian perspectives are equally significant for intervening in studies of trans and gender nonconforming embodiments (Chiang, Henry, and Leung 2018). Together, the impetus of Queer Asia as method and what might be called "Trans Asia as method" propel us to advance scholarship in exciting new ways and it is this that we bring to the table with our focus on androgyny as a site of analysis.…”

Categories that bind: Transgender, crossdressing, and transnational sexualities in Tokyo

“…Following this, categories like josō and toransujendā are not neutral and the ways in which individuals embrace, reject, or reinvent them should be investigated. In his ethnography of the category “transgender,” Valentine (2007: 15) contends that “gender” and “sexuality” themselves are “neither self-evident experiences nor natural explanatory frameworks.” To complicate things, gender and sexuality are not always disentangled in Asian contexts (Chiang et al, 2018). I therefore regard josō and toransujendā as important sites for thinking overlapping gender and sexuality categories in the Japanese context.…”