Sex and Desire in Hong Kong

The anthology provides an exemplary methodological model of community-based research through the authors' studies on sexual and erotic attitudes and practices of gay men and middle-aged women in Hong Kong over the last fifteen years. This collection focuses on issues that have major scholastic contribution to the field, namely, the voices of women on issues of sex and desire, and the investigation of multiple sex relationships among Hong Kong men and women. It also addresses clinical psychological issues and sex education topics that serve to enrich the current state of sexuality studies. The book reveals the social changes, trends, movements, and processes in Hong Kong and across China, thereby highlighting the reality of coloniality and how our experience of desire/ sexuality is conditioned by broad, global and socio-political forces.

Petula Sik Ying Ho is an associate professor in the Department of Social Work and Social Administration at the University of Hong Kong.

A. Ka Tat Tsang is a professor of social work at the University of Toronto.

"Refreshing, courageous, pleasurable, transgressive — these words that Ho and Tsang use to describe the heterogeneous narratives of Hong Kong citizens who have shared their desires and needs with them equally apply to this creative and inspiring text. Their challenges to Western feminist, queer, and economic theories are the most insightful I've read in a long time. This book is a model of how to combine empirical research with theoretical reflection in its expansive approach to sex, desire, identity and money. I love that they focus not only on those clearly marginalized in the sexual order of things but also on those socalled ‘normal’ people who turn out to engage in 'deviance' in their own way. Whether discussing middle-aged housewives, inter-racial gay couples, or young cybersavvy women, Ho and Tsang eschew simple binaries (the West versus the East) while insisting on respect for the historical specificities of their informants' lives. This book is an inspiration for scholars who hope to provide interventions in the name of erotic justice." — Lisa Rofel, University of California, Santa Cruz

"The authors offer detailed and candid reflections on the struggle and challenges they face in their research, offering a rarely documented and fascinating glimpse into the process of academic knowledge production. They pay particular attention to the colonial and postcolonial contexts in which they work, the challenges posed by language and translation when writing about sex, as well as the creative solutions they continually seek to ensure a space for subjugated voices, a progressive opening of space, and a progressive privileging of the speaking subject." — Helen Hok-Sze Leung, Simon Fraser University

"This is a highly innovative, unique and thought-provoking book that defies easy categorization. Ho and Tsang reveal the mundane as extraordinary and the extraordinary as mundane as they traverse multiple disciplinary and theoretical boundaries to challenge assumptions about desire, bodies, and sexuality." — Nicole Constable, University of Pittsburgh

Part I. On elite discourse and everyday language
Introduction to Part I
1. Lost in translation: Sex and sexuality in elite discourse and everyday language

Part II. Body: Penis, vagina/clitoris, anus
Introduction to Part II
2. The things girls shouldn't see: Relocating the penis in sex education in Hong Kong
3. Beyond the vagina-clitoris debate: From naming the genitals to reclaiming the woman's body

Part III. Identity: As gay, as si-nai, as mother, as patient
Introduction to Part III
4. Male homosexual identity in Hong Kong: A social construction
5. Beyond being gay: The proliferation of political identities in colonial Hong Kong
6. Breaking down or breaking through: An alternative way to understanding depression among women in Hong Kong
7. Desperate housewives: The case of Chinese si-nais in Hong Kong
8. Eternal mothers or flexible housewives? Middle-aged Chinese married women in Hong Kong

Part IV. Relationships: Marriage, multiple sex partners, interracial relationships
Introduction to Part IV
9. The (charmed) circle game: Reflections on sexual hierarchy through multiple sexual relationships
10. Not-so-great expectations: Sex and housewives in Hong Kong
11. Negotiating anal intercourse in interracial gay relationships in Hong Kong

Part V. Desire: Money, happiness and the self
Introduction to Part V
12. Money in the private chamber: Strategies for retirement planning among Hong Kong Chinese women
13. Cyber self-centres? Hong Kong young women and their personal websites