Abstract
In 1992 in Manila, Philippines, a small group of activist women who identified themselves as “lesbian” marched in the annual Women’s Day celebration for the first time. In Thailand Anjaree, a national lesbian organization that has been active since 1986 campaigning for lesbian (and gay) rights, identifies its constituency as “women who love women” (ying-rak-ying). Caleri (Campaign for Lesbian Rights), a Delhi-based group formed in 1998, was the first Indian activist organization to consciously dedicate itself to foregrounding lesbian issues in the public domain. Equally apparent throughout Asia in both cities and rural areas are butch or masculine “lesbians” whose own identities are firmly located in local patriarchies as well as in global signifiers apparent in the proliferating forms of the English term “tomboy” with which they identify themselves. TB, tom, and tomboi are some of the variations used in Hong Kong, Thailand and Indonesia respectively (other terms are also used in each location). Their women partners see themselves variously as normative women, who do not fit into a marked category of sexual identity, or as different than heterosexual women because of their attraction to masculine “lesbians.” These individuals, like their activist peers, are influenced by global feminist and queer processes as well as by local processes that are negotiated to construct the particular forms of sexuality and gender evident in Asia today. These seemingly divergent subjectivities—the lesbian activists and the partners in a butch/femme relationship—appear at the conjuncture of decidedly local and global processes.
Keywords
- Sexual Identity
- Female Masculinity
- Queer Theorist
- Sexual Agency
- Sexual Ideology
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution.
Buying options
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References Cited
Adam, Barry D., Jan Willem Duyvendak, and Andre Krouwel. 1999. Gay and lesbian movements beyond borders: National imprints of a worldwide movement. In The global emergence of gay and lesbian politics: National imprints of a worldwide movement. Barry D. Adam, Jan Willem Duyvendak, and Andre Krouwel, eds. Pp. 244–373. Philadephia: Temple University Press.
Altman, Dennis. 1996. Rupture or continuity? The internationalization of gay identities. Social Text 48: 77–94.
Altman, Dennis. 2001. Global sex. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Appadurai, Arjun. 1996. Modernity at large: Cultural dimensions of globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press.
Bacchetta, Paola. 2002. Rescaling transnational “queerdom”: Lesbian and “lesbian” identitary-positionalities in Delhi in the 1980s. Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography 34(5): 947–973.
Blackwood, Evelyn. 1996. Cross-cultural lesbian studies: Problems and possibilities. In The new lesbian studies: Into the twenty-first century. Bonnie Zimmerman and Toni McNaron, eds. Pp. 194–200. New York: The Feminist Press.
Blackwood, Evelyn. 1999. Tombois in West Sumatra: Constructing masculinity and erotic desire. In Female desires: Same-sex relations and transgender practices across cultures. Evelyn Blackwood and Saskia E. Wieringa, eds. Pp. 181–205. New York: Columbia University Press.
Blackwood, EvelynBlackwood, Evelyn. 2002. Reading sexuality across cultures: Anthropology and theories of sexuality. In Out in theory: The emergence of lesbian and gay anthropology. Ellen Lewin and William Leap, eds. Pp. 69–92. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Blackwood, Evelyn. 2005. Gender transgression in colonial and post-colonial Indonesia. Journal of Asian Studies 64(4): 849–879.
Blackwood, Evelyn and Saskia E. Wieringa, eds. 1999. Female desires: Same-sex relations and transgender practices across cultures. New York: Columbia University Press.
Collier, Jane Fishburne and Sylvia Junko Yanagisako, eds. 1987. Gender and kinship: Essays toward a unified analysis. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Cruz-Malavé, Arnaldo and Martin F. Manalansan IV. 2002. Introduction: Dissident sexualities/alternative globalisms. In Queer globalizations: Citizenship and the afterlife of colonialism. Arnaldo Cruz-Malavé and Martin F. Manalansan IV, eds. Pp. 1–10. New York: New York University Press.
Elliston, Deborah. 1995. Erotic anthropology: “Ritualized homosexuality” in Melanesia and Beyond. American Ethnologist 22(4): 848–867.
Giddens, Anthony. 1992. The Transformation of intimacy: Sexuality, love and eroticism in modern societies. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Grewal, Inderpal and Caren Kaplan. 1994. Introduction: Transnational feminist practices and questions of postmodernity. In Scattered hegemonies: Postmodernity and transnational feminist practices. Inderpal Grewal and Caren Kaplan, eds. Pp. 1–33. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Grewal, Inderpal and Caren Kaplan. 2001. Global identities: Theorizing transnational studies of sexuality. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 7(4): 663–679.
Gupta, Akhil and James Ferguson, eds. 1997. Culture, power, place: Explorations in critical anthropology. Durham: Duke University Press.
Halberstam, Judith. 1998. Female masculinities. Durham: Duke University Press.
Hannerz, Ulf. 1996. Transnational connections: Culture, people, places. New York: Routledge.
Jameson, Fredric and Masapo Miyoshi, eds. 1998. The cultures of globalization. Durham and London: Duke University Press.
Johnson, Mark, Peter Jackson, and Gilbert Herdt. 2000. Critical regionalities and the study of gender and sexual diversity in South East and East Asia. Culture, Health and Sexuality 2(4): 361–375.
Jolly, Margaret and Lenore Manderson, eds. 1997. Sites of desire, economies of pleasure: Sexualities in Asia and the Pacific. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
King, Katie. 2002. “There are no lesbians here”: Lesbians, feminisms, and global gay formations. In Queer globalizations: Citizenship and the afterlife of colonialism. Arnaldo Cruz-Malavé and Martin F. Manalansan IV, eds. Pp. 33–45. New York: New York University Press.
Manalansan, Martin F., IV. 2003. Global divas: Filipino gay men in the diaspora. Durham: Duke University Press.
Mohanty, Chandra T. 1991. Cartographies of struggle: Third world women and the politics of feminism. In Third world women and the politics of feminism. Chandra Mohanty, Ann Russo, and Lourdes Torres, eds. Pp. 1–47. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Morgan, Ruth and Graeme Reid. 2003. “I’ve got two men and one woman”: Ancestors, sexuality and identity among same-sex identified women traditional healers in South Africa. Culture, Health and Sexuality 5(5): 375–391.
Morgan, Ruth and Saskia E. Wieringa. 2005. Tommy boys, lesbian men and ances- tral wives: Female same-sex practices in Africa. Johannesburg: Jacana Media.
Ong, Aihwa. 1997. Chinese modernities: Narratives of nation and of capitalism. In Ungrounded empires: The cultural politics of modern Chinese transnational-ism. Aihwa Ong and Donald Nonini, eds. Pp. 171–202. New York: Routledge.
Parker, Andrew, Mary Russo, Doris Sommer, and Patricia Yaeger, eds. 1992. Nationalisms and sexualities. New York: Routledge.
Plummer, Ken. 1992. Speaking its name: Inventing a lesbian and gay studies. In Modern homosexualities: Fragments of lesbian and gay experience. Ken Plummer, ed. Pp. 3–25. London: Routledge.
Povinelli, Elizabeth A. and George Chauncey. 1999. Thinking sexuality transnationally. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 5(4): 439–450.
Rubin, Gayle. 1992. Of catamites and kings: Reflections on butch, gender and boundaries. In The Persistent desire: A femme-butch reader. Joan Nestle, ed. Pp. 466–482. Boston: Alyson Publications.
Smith, Dorothy E. 1990. The conceptual practices of power: A feminist sociology of knowledge. Boston: Northeastern University Press.
Weeks, Jeffrey. 1999. The sexual citizen. In Love and eroticism. Mike Featherstone, ed. Pp. 35–52. London: Sage.
Wieringa, Saskia E. 1999. Desiring bodies or defiant cultures: Butch-femme lesbians in Jakarta and Lima. In Female desires: Same-sex relations and transgender practices across cultures. Evelyn Blackwood and Saskia E. Wieringa, eds. Pp. 206–230. New York: Columbia University Press.
Wieringa, Saskia E. 2000. Communism and women’s same-sex practices in post-Suharto Indonesia. Culture, Health and Sexuality 2: 441–457.
Wieringa, Saskia E. 2002. Sexual politics in Indonesia. New York: PalgraveMacmillan.
Wieringa, Saskia E. 2005. Globalisation, love, intimacy and silence in a working class butch/fem community in Jakarta. ARRS Working paper. University of Amsterdam.
Wieringa, Saskia E. and Evelyn Blackwood. 1999. Introduction. In Female desires: Same-sex relations and transgender practices across cultures. Evelyn Blackwood and Saskia E. Wieringa, eds. Pp. 1–39. New York: Columbia University Press.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2007 Saskia E. Wieringa, Evelyn Blackwood, and Abha Bhaiya
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Blackwood, E., Wieringa, S.E. (2007). Globalization, Sexuality, and Silences: Women’s Sexualities and Masculinities in an Asian Context. In: Wieringa, S.E., Blackwood, E., Bhaiya, A. (eds) Women’s Sexualities and Masculinities in a Globalizing Asia. Comparative Feminist Studies Series. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230604124_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230604124_1
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-0-230-61748-3
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-60412-4
eBook Packages: Palgrave Social & Cultural Studies CollectionSocial Sciences (R0)