Gender, Sexualities and Culture in Asia – serie

This book presents a historical overview of the Indonesian film industry, the relationship between censorship and representation, and the rise of Islamic popular culture. It considers scholarship on gender in Indonesian cinema through the lens of power relations. With key themes such as nationalism, women's rights, polygamy, and terrorism which have preoccupied local filmmakers for decades, Indonesia cinema resonates with the socio-political changes and upheavals in Indonesia’s modern history and projects images of the nation through the debates on gender and Islam. The text also sheds light on broader debates and questions about contemporary Islam and gender construction in contemporary Indonesia. Offering cutting edge accounts of the production of Islamic cinema, this new book considers gendered dimensions of Islamic media creation which further enrich the representations of the 'religious' and the 'Islamic' in the everyday lives of Muslims in South East Asia.

This new book illustrates how Taiwanese lesbians negotiate their lives outside patriarchal families, while seeking varying ways to maintain working relationships with their families of origin, as their notion of family distinguishes them from same sex couples in other countries. This ambivalence has a strong influence on their relational decisions as they deal with contradictions between family ties, filial piety and lesbianism.Based on individual and couple interviews with self-identified lesbian couples in stable relationships, the book offers vivid narratives of different ways in which Taiwanese lesbians have been able to make sense of their families without recognition by legislation or their families of origin.Specific issues in Taiwan raised in the book challenge the taken-for-granted understandings of same-sex relationships and review the dramatic transformations that have profoundly changed womens' position. It also offers a sensitive analysis of GLBTissues and heteronormativity, arguing that Chinese familialism can cohabite with lesbianism in the context of contemporary Taiwan.

This book considers the intersections of race, gender and class in multicultural Australia through the lens of migration to the country. Focusing on Philippines-born migration, it presents the profile and history of this minority group through an examination of their print material culture over the last 40 years. Particularly, it examines the growth of the production of Filipino cultural identity and the politics of community building in relation to the sexualisation of their acquired citizenship. Given the promotion of Australia as a modern, multicultural, Western nation in the Asia-Pacific region, the book questions the bases on which this claim stands using the example of Filipino settlement in Australia. Considering the social contradictions that continue to shape multicultural politics in Australia, it examines how the community makes sense of its migration through print material culture. The book analyses the community’s responses to their minoritisation to understand how Filipino-Australian migration— the affective and economic appropriation of women’s labour—is instructive of the social reality of millions in the global diaspora today. Based on archival and ethnographic research, this text straddles the interdisciplinary fields of gender and cultural studies, and is a key read for all scholars of Asian and Australian area studies.

This text addresses the Philippines’ historical and contemporary reproductive politics, offering a timely insight into the rich reproductive lives of Filipinos. It critically explores stories of sexuality, religiosity, and reproductive livelihoods during the immediate aftermath of the passing of the ‘Responsible Parenthood and Reproductive Health Act’ of 2012 after more than fifteen years of opposition by the Philippine Catholic Church. Commonly called the “RH Law”, it aims to provide public access to reproductive and family planning services for Filipino women and men, especially those from poorer communities who often experience unwanted pregnancies, complications from illegal abortions, and exacerbated economic hardship. This book explores the intimate and urban after-effects of globalization, and how they shape the “reproductive dilemmas” of Filipinos in Metropolitan “Metro” Manila. It constructs a balanced portrait of the country’s reproductive politics within Metro Manila’s rapidly changing terrains, showing how “reproductive dilemmas” are produced within a context that is at once fraught by conservative religious discourse and also rapidly globalizing, and where aspects of intimate lives have become both transnational and fragmented.

This book considers a burgeoning social phenomenon, compensated dating in Hong Kong, that facilitates direct commercial sex exchange between consenting females from their mid-teens through the late 20s and males from their early 20s to mid-adulthood. Informed by the transformation of intimacy, the breakdown of institutional constraints, the emergence of a new female sexual autonomy and the advancement of information technology, this book moves beyond stereotypes of sex work to look at the complexities of compensated dating. The phenomenon of compensated dating is distinctive from most other sex trades in that it involves intense emotional interactions and often extends beyond the commercial boundary. Given the dynamic, flexible and ambiguous nature of compensated dating, it has become more of a space for sexual explorations and less of a rigid model of commercial sex, at least in the eye of the participants. This book walks through how men become involved in compensated dating and alsosheds lights on how gender relations are negotiated, with important implications on what it means to be a man and a woman in contemporary Hong Kong society. It also speaks to the broader transformations of some of the key social structures and elements, particularly gender and sexualities, in the era of late modernity.

This book explores professional women’s experiences of gender in the Taiwanese workplace in the wake of the rapid transformation of the country's economy, identifying attitudes to gender in a heterosexist and heteronormative social culture. It contributes to understanding women’s relationships with their superiors and peers at work and the strategies that they have used to negotiate with these role partners to achieve their own personal and career goals. It notes that compared to women in other East Asian economies, women in Taiwan have a more consistent career trajectory and that the local women’s movement and activism has brought Taiwan a long way in improving women’s employment rights, but argues that it is too soon to claim that gender inequality has been banished from the workplace. Based on qualitative, in-depth interviews, the book explores the participants’ accounts, gendered and heteronormative practices at work, in two contexts: organisational management and everyday social encounters. It investigates gender inequality at work by focusing on women employees’ everyday experiences, and examines structural and institutional factors affecting gendered arrangements, as well as personal experiences in negotiating gender. A key read for students and scholars in gender and employment studies, this book will also be of interest to those working within the field of employment sociology and organisational culture.

This book presents a historical overview of the Indonesian film industry, the relationship between censorship and representation, and the rise of Islamic popular culture. It considers scholarship on gender in Indonesian cinema through the lens of power relations. With key themes such as nationalism, women's rights, polygamy, and terrorism which have preoccupied local filmmakers for decades, Indonesia cinema resonates with the socio-political changes and upheavals in Indonesia’s modern history and projects images of the nation through the debates on gender and Islam. The text also sheds light on broader debates and questions about contemporary Islam and gender construction in contemporary Indonesia. Offering cutting edge accounts of the production of Islamic cinema, this new book considers gendered dimensions of Islamic media creation which further enrich the representations of the 'religious' and the 'Islamic' in the everyday lives of Muslims in South East Asia.

This book considers a burgeoning social phenomenon, compensated dating in Hong Kong, that facilitates direct commercial sex exchange between consenting females from their mid-teens through the late 20s and males from their early 20s to mid-adulthood. Informed by the transformation of intimacy, the breakdown of institutional constraints, the emergence of a new female sexual autonomy and the advancement of information technology, this book moves beyond stereotypes of sex work to look at the complexities of compensated dating. The phenomenon of compensated dating is distinctive from most other sex trades in that it involves intense emotional interactions and often extends beyond the commercial boundary. Given the dynamic, flexible and ambiguous nature of compensated dating, it has become more of a space for sexual explorations and less of a rigid model of commercial sex, at least in the eye of the participants. This book walks through how men become involved in compensated dating and alsosheds lights on how gender relations are negotiated, with important implications on what it means to be a man and a woman in contemporary Hong Kong society. It also speaks to the broader transformations of some of the key social structures and elements, particularly gender and sexualities, in the era of late modernity.

This new book illustrates how Taiwanese lesbians negotiate their lives outside patriarchal families, while seeking varying ways to maintain working relationships with their families of origin, as their notion of family distinguishes them from same sex couples in other countries. This ambivalence has a strong influence on their relational decisions as they deal with contradictions between family ties, filial piety and lesbianism.Based on individual and couple interviews with self-identified lesbian couples in stable relationships, the book offers vivid narratives of different ways in which Taiwanese lesbians have been able to make sense of their families without recognition by legislation or their families of origin.Specific issues in Taiwan raised in the book challenge the taken-for-granted understandings of same-sex relationships and review the dramatic transformations that have profoundly changed womens' position. It also offers a sensitive analysis of GLBTissues and heteronormativity, arguing that Chinese familialism can cohabite with lesbianism in the context of contemporary Taiwan.

This book considers the intersections of race, gender and class in multicultural Australia through the lens of migration to the country. Focusing on Philippines-born migration, it presents the profile and history of this minority group through an examination of their print material culture over the last 40 years. Particularly, it examines the growth of the production of Filipino cultural identity and the politics of community building in relation to the sexualisation of their acquired citizenship. Given the promotion of Australia as a modern, multicultural, Western nation in the Asia-Pacific region, the book questions the bases on which this claim stands using the example of Filipino settlement in Australia. Considering the social contradictions that continue to shape multicultural politics in Australia, it examines how the community makes sense of its migration through print material culture. The book analyses the community’s responses to their minoritisation to understand how Filipino-Australian migration— the affective and economic appropriation of women’s labour—is instructive of the social reality of millions in the global diaspora today. Based on archival and ethnographic research, this text straddles the interdisciplinary fields of gender and cultural studies, and is a key read for all scholars of Asian and Australian area studies.

This text addresses the Philippines’ historical and contemporary reproductive politics, offering a timely insight into the rich reproductive lives of Filipinos. It critically explores stories of sexuality, religiosity, and reproductive livelihoods during the immediate aftermath of the passing of the ‘Responsible Parenthood and Reproductive Health Act’ of 2012 after more than fifteen years of opposition by the Philippine Catholic Church. Commonly called the “RH Law”, it aims to provide public access to reproductive and family planning services for Filipino women and men, especially those from poorer communities who often experience unwanted pregnancies, complications from illegal abortions, and exacerbated economic hardship. This book explores the intimate and urban after-effects of globalization, and how they shape the “reproductive dilemmas” of Filipinos in Metropolitan “Metro” Manila. It constructs a balanced portrait of the country’s reproductive politics within Metro Manila’s rapidly changing terrains, showing how “reproductive dilemmas” are produced within a context that is at once fraught by conservative religious discourse and also rapidly globalizing, and where aspects of intimate lives have become both transnational and fragmented.

This book explores professional women’s experiences of gender in the Taiwanese workplace in the wake of the rapid transformation of the country's economy, identifying attitudes to gender in a heterosexist and heteronormative social culture. It contributes to understanding women’s relationships with their superiors and peers at work and the strategies that they have used to negotiate with these role partners to achieve their own personal and career goals. It notes that compared to women in other East Asian economies, women in Taiwan have a more consistent career trajectory and that the local women’s movement and activism has brought Taiwan a long way in improving women’s employment rights, but argues that it is too soon to claim that gender inequality has been banished from the workplace. Based on qualitative, in-depth interviews, the book explores the participants’ accounts, gendered and heteronormative practices at work, in two contexts: organisational management and everyday social encounters. It investigates gender inequality at work by focusing on women employees’ everyday experiences, and examines structural and institutional factors affecting gendered arrangements, as well as personal experiences in negotiating gender. A key read for students and scholars in gender and employment studies, this book will also be of interest to those working within the field of employment sociology and organisational culture.

This book explores the fluid, mutable and contingent ways in which transgender men in Malaysia construct their subjectivities. Against the dearth of academic resources on Malaysian trans men, this ground-breaking monograph is rooted in the lived experiences of Malaysian trans men whose vicissitudes have mostly been hidden, silenced and overlooked. Comprising diverse age groups, ethnicities, socio-economic status, educational backgrounds and religious persuasions, these trans men reveal how they navigate life in a country with secular and religious laws that criminalise their embodiments, and the strategies they deploy to achieve self-determination and self-actualisation despite being perceived as aberrant and sinful. This book demonstrates how negotiations with constitutive elements such as gender identity, social interaction, citizenship, legality, bodily struggle, medical transitioning and personal spiritual validation condition the becomings of Malaysian trans men.

This book explores the fluid, mutable and contingent ways in which transgender men in Malaysia construct their subjectivities. Against the dearth of academic resources on Malaysian trans men, this ground-breaking monograph is rooted in the lived experiences of Malaysian trans men whose vicissitudes have mostly been hidden, silenced and overlooked. Comprising diverse age groups, ethnicities, socio-economic status, educational backgrounds and religious persuasions, these trans men reveal how they navigate life in a country with secular and religious laws that criminalise their embodiments, and the strategies they deploy to achieve self-determination and self-actualisation despite being perceived as aberrant and sinful. This book demonstrates how negotiations with constitutive elements such as gender identity, social interaction, citizenship, legality, bodily struggle, medical transitioning and personal spiritual validation condition the becomings of Malaysian trans men.

This book takes a feminist approach to analyse the lives of well-educated urban Chinese women, who were raised to embody the ideals of a modern Chinese nation and are largely the beneficiaries of the policy changes of the post-Mao era. It explores young women’s gendered attitudes to and experiences of marriage, reproductive choices, careers and aspirations for a good life. It sheds light on what keeps mainstream Chinese middle-class women conforming to the current gender regime. It illuminates the contradictory effects of neoliberal techniques deployed by a familial authoritarian regime on these women’s striving for success in urban China, and argues that, paradoxically, women’s individualistic determination to succeed has often led them onto the path of conformity by pursuing exemplary norms which fit into the party-state’s agenda.

This book takes a feminist approach to analyse the lives of well-educated urban Chinese women, who were raised to embody the ideals of a modern Chinese nation and are largely the beneficiaries of the policy changes of the post-Mao era. It explores young women’s gendered attitudes to and experiences of marriage, reproductive choices, careers and aspirations for a good life. It sheds light on what keeps mainstream Chinese middle-class women conforming to the current gender regime. It illuminates the contradictory effects of neoliberal techniques deployed by a familial authoritarian regime on these women’s striving for success in urban China, and argues that, paradoxically, women’s individualistic determination to succeed has often led them onto the path of conformity by pursuing exemplary norms which fit into the party-state’s agenda.

The book provides insights into the prevailing patriarchal system in rural Pakistan. It elaborates on the kinship system in rural Sindh and explores how young married women strategize and negotiate with patriarchy. Drawing on qualitative methodologies, the book reveals the strong relationship between poverty and the perpetuation of patriarchy. Women’s strategies help elevate their position in their families, such as attention to household tasks, producing children, and doing handicraft work for their well-being. These conditions are usually seen as evidence of women’s subordination, but these are also strategies for survival where accommodation to patriarchy wins them approval. The book concludes that women’s life-long struggle is, in fact, a technique of negotiating with patriarchy. In so doing, they internalize the culture that rests on their subordination and reproduce it in older age in exercising power by oppressing other junior women.

The book provides insights into the prevailing patriarchal system in rural Pakistan. It elaborates on the kinship system in rural Sindh and explores how young married women strategize and negotiate with patriarchy. Drawing on qualitative methodologies, the book reveals the strong relationship between poverty and the perpetuation of patriarchy. Women’s strategies help elevate their position in their families, such as attention to household tasks, producing children, and doing handicraft work for their well-being. These conditions are usually seen as evidence of women’s subordination, but these are also strategies for survival where accommodation to patriarchy wins them approval. The book concludes that women’s life-long struggle is, in fact, a technique of negotiating with patriarchy. In so doing, they internalize the culture that rests on their subordination and reproduce it in older age in exercising power by oppressing other junior women.

This book provides a feminist, critical study of how gender power relations are played out through and across multiple mediated arenas in contemporary Jordan. It departs from an understanding of women’s status in Jordan as a highly charged subject, and a view of the media as not just a locale where tensions play out, but also an important arena for contestation and resistance. The book examines the dynamic relationship between women and the media in Jordan as it manifests at three key levels: labour, representation, and activism. To do so, it engages with wider issues: the political economy of the media, regulatory and legal frameworks, Jordanian women’s economic participation, the history of Jordanian feminist activism, gender-based violence, and the political context of the Arab Spring in Jordan. Through choice case studies, the book unpacks the complex role of legal, political, and social factors in shaping women’s relationship to the media. It centres women’s experiences and highlights their agency, disobedience, and efforts to negotiate and resist the limitations imposed by Jordanian patriarchy and, in doing so, it illustrates how gender, power, and resistance interplay through and within Jordanian media.