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Gay Thailand News & Reports July 2005--International Conference

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Gay Thailand News & Reports 2004-05
Gay Thailand News & Reports 2007

The Nation Newspaper, Bangkok

July 4, 2005

1
Asian Queer Studies Conference in Bangkok
Asian Queer Studies Conference in Bangkok ‘Queer’ conference attracts big response

By Veena Thoopkrajae
Bangkok will host the first ever “International Conference of Asian Queer Studies” from Thursday to Saturday – a huge academic gathering which is expected to shed new light on gender studies thanks to its broad spectrum of topics covering issues relating to Asian homosexual and transgender groups.

Entitled “Sexualities, Genders and Rights in Asia: 1st International Conference of Asian Queer Studies”, the conference brings scholars, human rights advocates, artists and film makers involved in researching and documenting Asian homosexuals and transgenders to meet in Bangkok in order to support academics, especially those undertaking postgraduate studies on Asian homosexuals and transgenders.
A joint initiative of the Office of Human Rights Studies and Social Development at Mahidol University in Thailand and the Australia-based AsiaPacifiQueer Network, the conference will feature over 50 speakers on LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, transgender, queer) issues, with more than 150 presentations from around the world, 70 per cent of which will come from Asian researchers.

“ We were quite shocked with the feedback as we expected around 50 papers but as we were approaching our deadline in December last year, there were as many as 120 papers submitted to our website,” said Peter A Jackson, an organising committee member.
Jackson said Asian countries including Thailand, Japan, China, and India are experiencing a boom in studies on homosexuals and transgenders. The conference will create an international forum for Asian “queer studies” which will directly benefit postgraduate researchers working on the topics.

He said one of the obstacles is the lack of support. “The discrimination is still there for those who want to study these kind of topics. There is also a lack of balanced opinions on the issue. The current problems in Thailand are the same as those experienced by western academics over the past 20 to 30 years.”

The conference is aimed at covering all facets of Asian LGBTQ and each day will have a thematic focus reflected in the topics covered in the plenary sessions as well as in the streams of panels programmed for each day. The first day on July 7 will concentrate on rights issue while the second day will have culture as its theme and the last day will focus on health issues.

In addition to supporting researchers, the 1st International Conference of Asian Queer Studies is aimed at building bridges between NGOs and academics. “It is necessary that NGOs receive accurate information from academic research if they are to work effectively,” said Jackson.

Keynote speakers will be Professor Vitit Muntabhorn of Chulalongkorn University and Professor Josephine Ho of Taiwan’s National Central University. Vitit, Unesco’s biennial Human Rights Education Prize winner in 2004, will speak on July 7 on the topic, “Sexualities, Genders and Rights in International Law: Implications for the Asian Region.” Ho, the founder of the Centre for the Study of Sexualities – Asia’s first academic institute devoted to supporting the study of same-sex and transgender cultures – will deliver her keynote address on July 8 on the topic, “Is Global Governance Bad for Asian Queers?”

Jackson said among the diverse issues, the analysis of the media, which looks at the representation of homosexuality in the media, is one of the highlights. “The stereotyping of gays is a big issue. To analyse and criticise the media is important for the promotion of rights.”
He said analysis of the Internet is another interesting topic. The Internet is one of the most popular forms of media used by the global LGBTQ community. The tremendous responses of the participants to the upcoming conference alone, shows how the group actively communicate via cyberspace.

Other topics to be discussed in the panel sessions will include social persecution and legal discrimination against sexual minorities in Asia; gay, lesbian and transgender citizenship and rights; homosexuals and transgenders in Asian cinema and literature; the globalisation of homosexual cultures; Asian homosexual diasporas in the West; and the impact of HIV/AIDS on Asian same-sex communities.
The legal recognition of sex-changes will be discussed by speakers from across Asia, including Japan, Malaysia, Thailand and Iran. Homosexual women’s issues will also be highlighted, with representatives from lesbian organisations from Japan, China, the Philippines, India, Thailand and other countries presenting panels on the rights of women who love women.

The plenary speakers on July 8 will also touch upon the status of Asia’s homosexuals and transgenders. Many people believe in the “local” or “indigenous” character of LGBTQ identities and communities within each region while the others assume that modern queer Asia is ultimately borrowing western models of gay and lesbian identity. Others emphasise the typically hybrid nature of queer identities across the planet. This panel will explore the debate.

“ Gay and lesbian studies started in America but the theory is unlikely to be applicable to the rest of the world thanks to the different cultures and historical backgrounds. The meeting will be a good chance to help to expand the database of information for Asian queer studies,” said Jackson.

The Nation, Bangkok, Thailand
http://nationmultimedia.com/2005/07/09/opinion/index.php?news=opinion_17977936.html

July 09, 2005

2
Conference shows Thailand is a gay paradise

By Veena Thoopkrajae
Despite a number of items in the news impacting negatively on Thailand’s image, such as the country being downgraded in international free-press rankings or the latest airport scandal, the country has just taken a positive step by hosting the first International Conference on Asian Queer Studies, which ends today.

Starting modestly as an initiative of the Asian National University of Australia (ANU) with the cooperation of Thailand’s Mahidol University, the conference has drawn more than 500 delegates from around the world who have participated in panel discussions and presentations on over 160 studies on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) issues.
This surge in academic studies is proof that the time has come for Asian countries to look into this issue as a relevant factor in larger political, economic and social issues. As a host coutnry, Thailand has shown the world its broadmindedness and liberal stance concerning academic studies.

The effort of Mahidol University demonstrates the willingness of Thai academics to join the rest of the world in promoting a better understanding of LGBTGQ studies.

Outside the academic world, the country already has a reputation as a friendly destination for the LGBTQ group. The gay-pride parade, an annual gay cultural event held on Silom Road, attracts tourists from all over the region.
Thailand’s Babylon bathhouse is regarded as one of the best sanctuaries for gay people from around the world. Travel guides, including those published by the Lonely Planet, have put Thailand on the world’s gay-friendly map.

Thai gays have also welcomed the move of Singapore’s “Nation Party”, held on that country’s Nation Day, to Phuket this November after the event was deemed “contrary to the public interest” in the city-state.

Many factors add to Thailand’s reputation as a friendly place for LGBTQ people. For one, the country does not place restrictions on these groups. Cases of violence against gays and lesbian groups are very rare, and there is no obvious social hatred for these groups. In addition, our laws do not discriminate against these groups. If there is a major obstacle in Thailand it is the stereotyping of these groups in the media, which seems to be a global issue for LGBTQ groups.

More importantly, homosexuals in Thailand, local or foreign, are not in any way considered criminals in the legal realm, neither are they regarded as mentally ill in medical circles. From a religious perspective, gays and lesbians in Thailand are not, as a general rule, branded as sinners.

In the social sphere, the country has benefited from LGBTQ groups both directly and indirectly. The direct gain, which no one can really argue with, has been in the field of human resources. Members of LGBTQ groups are often at the top of their chosen professions, as designers, artists, film-makers, architects, academics, business people, diplomats, athletes and even politicians.

Indirectly, Thailand’s LGBTQ groups have brought the Kingdom fame and commercial gain. Our gay-genre films including “Satree Lek” and “Satree Lek 2”, along with “The Adventure of Iron Pussy”, have been invited to various high-profile international film festivals. “Satree Lek” and its sequel also brought home foreign currency after being distributed in more than 20 countries around the world.

Such movies also offer a positive image of homosexuality in Thailand and have been fundamental in fostering the understanding of sexuality in this country and elsewhere. When it comes to tourism, the country has a reputation as a “gay paradise”. Thailand offers entertainment that is friendly and safe for LGBTQ tourists from around the world, especially those from countries in the region like Malaysia and Singapore.

On the other hand, straight people also enjoy interacting with the homosexual community. All positive signs of tolerance regarding different sexual orientations should be encouraged.

The conference, despite its academic focus, is part of a wider message that Thailand is sending to the LGBTQ world. The country has already been put on the gay-friendly map, and better understanding through the academic forum will serve to give notice that the country is truly a paradise for all, both heterosexuals and homosexuals.

Bangkok Conference 2005
http://bangkok2005.anu.edu.au/background.php

SEXUALITIES, GENDERS, AND RIGHTS IN ASIA--1st INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OF ASIAN QUEER STUDIES

7-9 July 2005


CONTENTS OD THIS ARTICLE:
1 Themes and Background
2 NEW Provisional Conference Program
3 NEW Confirmed Papers & Abstracts
4 Registration
5 NEW Venue, Accommodation & Travel
6 Scholarships
7 Country Contact Groups
8 Photo Gallery

1 Themes and Background
An international interdisciplinary conference on studies of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, transsexual, bisexual, and queer (LGBTQ) cultures and communities in Asia will be held in Bangkok, Thailand, from Thursday 7th to Saturday 9th July, 2005. The main aim of the conference is to develop linkages between research about Asian LGBTQ cultures and communities and promoting recognition and respect for sexual and gender diversity in the region. A parallel goal of the conference is to support and defend the academic legitimacy of research and teaching about LGBTQ peoples in Asia.

While having long histories and taking diverse cultural and social forms, LGBTQ peoples across Asia have been widely marginalised if not actively oppressed by homophobic cultural and political regimes. Activism to promote the rights and achieve legal recognition for LGBTQ peoples dates from the 1970s in countries such as Japan, Thailand, and the Philippines. Since the 1980s, HIV/AIDS prevention initiatives have created the cultural and political space for new forms of LGBTQ organisation in many Asian countries that previously ignored or criminalised homosexual and transgender activities. And in the 1990s, LGBTQ studies emerged as a rapidly expanding field of academic research in countries across all the continent's regions, including East Asia, Southeast Asia, and South Asia.

Nevertheless, the political gains of Asian LGBTQ activisms remain limited and tenuous and many Asian countries continue to severely limit the freedom of researchers to investigate LGBTQ topics. In some countries the recent advances in Asian LGBTQ scholarship are now being threatened by conservative academics, government officials, and others. Furthermore, much path-breaking work is being conducted by younger scholars, who often confront institutional resistance to their research and face an uncertain future in unsupportive and at times homophobic academic environments.

The conservative effects of globalisation often compete against the enabling and empowering technologies provided by the IT revolution. While this contestation is creating complex new divides amongst and within populations across Asia, it is also providing important opportunities for LGBTQ communities to strengthen their progressive presence and to extend their work. The Internet provides opportunities for affirmations of life and liberty for all populations and Asian LGBTQ communities are at the forefront of cultural and social movements using the new technologies to create novel forms of community and to forge radical modes of cultural expression. Positive expressions of queer creativity are becoming increasingly visible presences in the cultural landscapes of countries across Asia.

In order to defend the gains of recent decades it is important to take stock of the advances that have been made in LGBTQ research and activism in Asia and to enhance existing networks. It is also important that new strategic linkages between the academy and activists be developed in order to further advance the interests of Asian LGBTQ peoples in the coming years. This conference will provide an opportunity to demonstrate the richness, diversity, and international importance of Asian LGBTQ studies and it will highlight the contribution that academic research can make to promoting GLBTQ rights across Asia. The conference will place particular emphasis on the participation of early-career scholars and postgraduate students from the region. The Conference Coordinators
This conference is being organised jointly by the Office of Human Rights Studies and Social Development at Mahidol University in Bangkok and the AsiaPacifiQueer Network.

Mahidol University Office of Human Rights Studies and Social Development
The Mahidol University Office of Human Rights Studies and Social Development (OHRSD, http://www.humanrights-mu.org/) was established in 1996 with the goals of providing education and research opportunities in the area of human rights. The OHRSD aims to develop the ways and means by which human rights are transformed into social and political realities at the community, national and international levels. It does so through educating human rights practitioners, outreach programs to community and international organisations, and conducting cutting edge research on issues of crucial importance to human rights. Research supported by the program aims to both develop academic knowledge of critical concern to human rights, and provide practical applications of human rights activities in a wide diversity of fields. The OHRSD runs a Graduate Program and its Masters of Human Rights and Social Development is currently the only Masters level human rights program offered in the South East Asian region, attracting students from around the world.
AsiaPacifiQueer Network

AsiaPacifiQueer (APQ) was founded in 2000 as a collaboration between Australian, New Zealand, and other scholars who are researching queer cultures and peoples in post-colonial societies of the Asia-Pacific. APQ has organised three conferences in Australia, edited a special issue of the Internet journal Intersections, and convened dedicated APQ streams at several international conferences. Full details of APQ activities are listed at the network's website: (http://apq.anu.edu.au/). APQ's involvement in co-convening this conference emerges from the highly successful stream of six Asian queer studies panels convened at the August 2003 International Convention of Asian Scholars conference in Singapore. It was a unanimous recommendation of the more than 40 participants in that stream of panels that there is an urgent need for an international conference dedicated to the concerns of LGBTQ research in Asia.

Conference Organising Committee
(Acharn Ms) Sinith Sitthiraksa, Southeast Asian Studies Program, Thammasat University, Bangkok
Dr Mike Hayes, Office of Human Rights Studies and Social Development, Mahidol University, Bangkok
Dr Peter Jackson, Division of Pacific and Asian Studies, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University
Ms Marjorie Larney, MA Graduate from Human Rights Studies Program at Mahidol University, Thailand
Dr Mark McLelland, Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies, University of Queensland
Dr Fran Martin, Dept of English with Cultural Studies, University of Melbourne
Ms Prempreeda Pramoj Na Ayutthaya, MA Graduate from Sociology Dept, Chiang Mai University, Thailand
LL.M. Prof. Douglas Sanders, Faculty of Law, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok
Mr Therdsak Romjampa, MA Graduate from Dept. of History, Chulalongkorn University, Thailand
Mr Vitaya Sang-Arun, Director, Cyberfish Media Co., Ltd., BangkokConference Advisory Committee
(Includes Organising Committee Members)
Prof. Peter Aggleton, Institute of Education, University of London.
Prof. Dennis Altman, Dept of Politics, La Trobe University, Melbourne
Prof. Barbara Watson Andaya, Professor of Asian Studies & Director, Center for Southeast Asian Studies, University of Hawai'i,
Dr Darren Aoki, Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Cambridge, UK.
Dr Chandra Shekhar Balachandran, Chairman, Dharani Trust & Chairman, The Indian Institute of Geographical Studies, Bangalore, India.
Dr Bidisha Banerjee, Gender Studies Department, St. Lawrence University, Canton, NY
Prof. Chris Berry, Department of Media and Communications, Goldsmiths College, University of London
Dr. Evelyn Blackwood, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana
Dr Tom Boellstorff, Department of Anthropology, University of California, Irvine & Senior Co-chair of the Society of Lesbian and Gay Anthropologists (SOLGA).
Dr. Kenneth Chan, University Scholars Programme, National University of Singapore
Prof. Charnvit Kasetsiri, Southeast Asian Studies Program, Thammasat University Bangkok
Dr Wei-cheng Raymond Chu, Dept of Foreign Languages and Literatures, National Taiwan University
Prof. Lawrence Cohen, Department of Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley.
Mr. Romit Dasgupta, Discipline of Asian Studies, School of Social and Cultural Studies, University of Western Australia, Perth
Prof. Naifei Ding, English Department, National Central University, Chung-li, Taiwan
Dr Ross Forman, AHRB Centre for Asian and African Literatures, SOAS/UCL, University of London
Mr Richard Fung, Faculty of Art, Ontario College of Art and Design, Canada
Dr J. Neil Garcia, Department of English and Comparative Literature, University of the Philippines, Diliman, Quezon City, The Philippines.
Ms Mary Ellen Gidah, Centre for the Promotion of Knowledge and Language Learning, Universiti Malaysia Sabah
Dr Sharyn Graham, School of Social Sciences, Faculty of Arts, Auckland University of Technology, Auckland, Aotearoa/New Zealand
Dr Mike Hayes, Office of Human Rights Studies and Social Development, Mahidol University, Bangkok
Mr Hiroshi Hasegawa, Director, JaNP+ (Japanese Network of People living with HIV/AIDS).
Dr Russell Hiang-Khng Heng, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore.
Prof. Josephine Ho, Coordinator, Center for the Study of Sexualities, National Central University, Taiwan (http://sex.ncu.edu.tw)
Mr Hitoshi Ishida, Sociology and Sexuality Studies, Chuo University, Japan
Dr Peter Jackson, Division of Pacific and Asian Studies, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University
Dr Karen Kelsky, Dept. of Anthropology and East Asian Languages and Cultures, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign
Dr. Olivia Khoo, School of Theatre, Film and Dance, University of New South Wales, Sydney
Mr Saleem Kidwai, Independent Scholar, New Delhi
Ms Noriko Kohashi, Independent Scholar, Japan
Dr Helen Hok-Sze Leung, Department of Women's Studies, Simon Fraser University, Canada
Dr David CL Lim, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore
Prof. Liang-ya Liou, Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, National Taiwan University.
Dr Mark McLelland, Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies, University of Queensland.
Dr Claire Maree, Department of English, Tsuda College, Japan
Dr Fran Martin, Dept of English with Cultural Studies, University of Melbourne
Mr Narupon Duangwises, Princess Sirinthorn Anthropology Centre, Bangkok
Dr. Dede Oetomo, Reader, Post-Graduate Program, University of Surabaya, Indonesia.
Dr Baden Offord, Senior Lecturer in Cultural Studies & History, School of Arts, Southern Cross University, Lismore, Australia
Dr Frank Proschan, Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, Smithsonian Institution, Washington
Dr L. Ramakrishnan, Country Director, Programs and Research, SAATHII: Solidarity and Action Against the HIV Infection in India, Chennai, India
LL.M. Prof. Douglas Sanders, Faculty of Law, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok
Mr Sant Suwatcharapinun, Faculty of Architecture, Chiang Mai University.
Dr. Wolfram Schaffar, Department for Southeast Asian Studies, University of Bonn, Germany
Dr Akiko Shimizu, Faculty of Economics, Chuo University, Japan
(Acharn Ms) Sinith Sitthiraksa, Southeast Asian Studies Program, Thammasat University, Bangkok
Dr Sriprapha Petcharamesree, Office of Human Rights Studies and Social Development, Mahidol University, Bangkok
Assoc. Prof. Gerard Sullivan, Faculty of Education and Social Work, University of Sydney
Mr Hiroyuki Taniguchi, Institute for Social Science, Chuo University, Japan
Dr Teh Yik Koon, Faculty of Social and Human Development, Universiti Utara Malaysia. Sintok, Kedah, Malaysia.
Mr Chung To, Chairperson, Chi Heng Foundation, China
Prof. John Treat, Chairman, Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures, Yale University.
Prof. Ruth Vanita, Department of Liberal Studies and Women's Studies, University of Montana.
Mr Vitaya Sang-Arun, Director, Cyberfish Media Co., Ltd., Bangkok
Dr James Welker, Department of British and American Studies, Nanzan University, Nagoya, Japan.
Mr Jan Wijngaarden, Chief, HIV/AIDS Coordination Unit, UNESCO Asia-Pacific Regional Bureau for Education, Bangkok.
Dr. Sam J. Winter, Division of Learning, Development and Diversity, Faculty of Education, University of Hong Kong Mr. Ken Wong, School of Professional and Continuing Education, University of Hong Kong
Mr Huso Yi, Senior Research Associate, Institute for International Research on Youth at Risk, National Development and Research Institutes, Inc. New York, & Deputy Director, Korean Sexual Minority Culture and Rights Center, Seoul, Korea (http://kscrc.org).

Graduate Students Advisory Caucus
To further the conference objective of encouraging the participation of early-career scholars and postgraduate students, a graduate student's international advisory caucus has been set up. Current members of this caucus include:
Ms Elisabeth Engebretsen, Dept. of Anthropology, London School of Economics and Political Science, United Kingdom.
Ms Lucetta Kam, Postgraduate Student, Gender Studies, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Mr Alvin Koh, Dept of English with Cultural Studies, University of Melbourne
Mr Eng-Beng Lim, Dissertation Fellow, Critical Studies, Department of Theater, UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television & Associate Global Fellow, UCLA International Institute
Mr Jin-hyung Park, Korean Sexual Minority's Culture & Right Center (KSCRC) (http://www.kscrc.org), Seoul, Korea
Ms Prempreeda Pramoj Na Ayutthaya, MA Graduate, Sociology Dept, Chiang Mai University, Thailand
Mr Therdsak Romjampa, MA Graduate, Dept. of History, Chulalongkorn University, Thailand
Mr Katsuhiko Suganuma, MA Graduate, State University of New York at Albany
Ms Wong Ying Wuen, Postgraduate Student, Southeast Asian Studies Program, National University of Singapore

A note about "queer"
The conference organisers use the word "queer" in both its current senses. "Queer" is both a shorthand for the full diversity of homoerotic, transgender, and transsexual behaviours, identities, and cultures as well as a term describing critical forms of theory that draw on poststructuralist and postcolonial analyses. In its conferences and publications the AsiaPacifiQueer Network emphasises the need to rethink queer theory in Asian contexts, simultaneously critiquing homophobic discourses and practices in Asia and questioning the eurocentrism of Western accounts of sexuality and gender.

CONFERENCE STREAMS
Panels and papers have been programmed into several thematic streams to permit participants with specific interests to attend as many sessions as possible on the topic that is most relevant to them. The conference streams are:
Cinemas and Media
Gay Cultures
Diasporas
Health
Rights and Activism
Transgenders
Women Who Love Women

CONFIRMED PAPERS AND ABSTRACTS
As at Sunday 15 May the following papers have been confirmed for presentation at the conference. This list includes everyone who has had their abstract accepted and who has also registered for the conference. The papers are listed by alphabetical order of the presenter’s surname.
Nasirin Bin Abdillah, University of Malaya
Mapping Awk(queer)ness in the 21st Century Malaysian Literary Landscape
This paper addresses the general question of how queerness affects contemporary Malaysian Literature by examining the selected writings of new emerging voices in Malaysian Literature in English. In addition, selected contemporary Malaysian theatres, collection of essays and public opinion will be also discussed in passing. Many regard Malaysia to be a homophobic place and generally queers are denied freedom to express both sexual relations and self-determination as well as intimacy. In other words, queering in Malaysia is still very much ‘trapped’ in its cocoon of social and religious taboo, yet it is now frantically squeezing its way through so as to enable the process of queerness to ‘come out’. Therefore, there is mounting pressure to voice queerness in Malaysia, hence, creating awkwardness in expression. However, no matter how awkward it may appear, voices of queerness that were then groping in the dark are now seen traversing and breaking through boundaries. In its efforts to ‘come out and play’, queerness in the 21st century of Malaysia starts cha(lle)nging awkwardness and oddity. This paper also attempts to look at how queerness and queering are put across in this new millennium, with regard to Malaysian context, as they can take various forms of expression including political satire and social critique. An assessment is also made of the shifting and evolving trends in socio-economic political and cultural perceptions, vis-à-vis the sliding and fluid identity of the urban coming community of Malaysia.
Robert Don Adams, Florida Atlantic University
Sons and Lovers: Gay Saigon
I propose to utilize a creative non-fiction and literary critical viewpoint to consider the life of gay men in Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City), as observed and experienced by me during my two years of living there as a visiting Fulbright Professor of American Literature and Culture (2002-04). I will draw upon a creative non-fiction essay already written titled "Sons and Lovers," and will also examine a recently published and translated novel, "A World Without Women," which is the first contemporary fictional work in Vietnam dealing with the life of gay men in Vietnamese society. I have discussed my proposal with Dr. Donn Colby, who will include it in a panel he is coordinating concerning homosexuality in Vietnamese society and culture.

Edgar Atadero, Progressive Organization of Gays in the Philippines
A Transgender Health Research Project in Manila
This presentation focuses on transgenderism, discrimination and effects on the health situation of transgenders. It reports a Pro-Gay survey of attitudes, health practices, beliefs and world views of Filipino transgenders (and a comparative survey of modern gay-identified males) in some communities in the area called Metro Manila. The survey aims to draw the connections between the two-way reactions of Filipino transgenders to and with their surrounding environments on one hand and the evolution of how transgenders form their indigenous world view about sexuality, gender and health practices.

Gary Atkins, Seattle University
Encountering Babylon: Pursuing Beauty & Sexual Justice at a Globalized Gay Sauna
Gay bathhouses, Allan Berube once noted, were among the first American institutions to give that country’s gay men pride in themselves and in their sexuality by creating a ‘safety zone’ where they could communicate and be affectionate with each other. Today in Southeast Asia, one such bathhouse stands out in its reputation as a place of contact and communication among gay Asian men from throughout the region, as well as among Euro-American men. This journalistic paper examines the history and role within Southeast Asia of what has become one of the world’s best known gay bathhouses, Babylon. Relying on interviews, writings from those who have visited, newspaper accounts, and observations, it traces the sauna’s history from its inception at private social gatherings in the 1980s to the police raids conducted in 2002 as part of a Thai government social crackdown. The paper also profiles the gay Thai man who “authored” Babylon and examines his approach to constructing a gay and male space through the communication elements embedded in the sauna.

Chandra Shekhar Balachandran, The Dharani Trust, Bangalore, India
“ We don't do data, we only do action-based work.” - Why NGOs Need Data Capacity and How to Provide it to Them.
Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) often work with resource limitations (trained personnel, computing resources, analytical tools) that can prevent effective gathering, interpretation and use of data in their programs. Further, there is also a widely prevalent misconception that doing field work is somehow more important than data collection, while in reality the two should be inseparable, because data can (a) help set and guide the direction of field-work, (b) help determine effectiveness of field work, and (c) allow results to be disseminated in a manner that can be widely understood. This paper surveys a broad range of issues surrounding data needs and challenges in the NGO sector dealing with HIV/AIDS and STD/STI intervention and service work in India. Data gathered by NGOs in India are often plagued with problems such as incomplete data, inadequate or faulty sampling, and haphazard recording. While some of these problems are due to constraints of field work, others are due to misunderstanding or inadequate training on data collection, whether of quantitative or qualitative data. These hinder data use in the sector as a whole. The types of data that NGOs invariably generate are too often not even recognized as data, much less used as data. Shared data and shared resources can greatly help resource-strapped NGOs develop robust data infrastructure to better deliver their services to their beneficiaries. The Dharani Trust has undertaken a collaborative initiative called DataMatters (www.dharanitrust.org/datamatters/) with SAATHII (a HIV/AIDS NGO) and Servelots Infotech (P) Ltd. (a software company) to develop a sustainable data capacity building endeavour. The paper will conclude with a description of the broad contours of this initiative.
Robert Baldwin, Asia Pacific Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS, Bangkok
MSM Positive Prevention: Role of Males Who Have Sex With Males Living with HIV/AIDS in HIV Prevention
Males who have sex with males (msm) living with HIV/AIDS (MSMLWHA) have a unique and vital role to play in preventing the spread of HIV in our region. Although recent research in Bangkok has indicated posssible high levels of HIV among local msm there is a lack of relevant research in this area. Positive msm could be said to be largely invisible. This closed door session for HIV+ msm, facilitated by APN+ (Asia Pacific Network of PLWHA), will provide an opportunity for positive msm to identify & discuss the issues of living with HIV/AIDS in the Asia Pacific Region and their role in preventing the further spread of HIV. The results of this workshop will be reported back to the larger conference.
Bidisha Banerjee, Independent Scholar
Creating a Lesbian Utopia: Reading the Queer Subtext of Mira Nair’s India Cabaret
India Cabaret is Mira Nair’s documentary about the lives of cabaret dancers and prostitutes at a seedy nightclub called Meghraj in Bombay. In my analysis I wish to focus on the queer subtext of the film and demonstrate the working class woman’s body as the site for resistance to patriarchy, class oppression and heterosexuality. While heterosexuality is constantly at the forefront of the women’s lives, I suggest that the homoerotic bond that even tends to the homosexual between the women, allows them to escape the tawdriness of their lives to a large extent and to seek comfort and a safe haven in each other’s company. The women’s bodies thus function in two very different ways as spectacularized objects during the dance scenes and as mediums of conveying homoerotic desire in the scenes depicting the women interacting with each other. While the former is strictly performative and an act, the latter is more meaningful and gives them a sense of community and belonging that is denied them in their daily lives due to the harsh ostracism faced by the women in society. Through the dual function of the body as represented in the film, I want to posit a new feminist framework which accounts for a corresponding duality in their experience that portrays them as both exploited and having a certain agency. I thus problematize the simple binarism of exploited victim and liberated woman as theorized in both radical and pro-sex feminist paradigms.

Edgar Bauer, Independent Scholar
Magnus Hirschfeld: ‘Panhumanism’ and the Sexual Cultures of Asia
Magnus Hirschfeld (1868–1935) was the most prominent figure of the sexual emancipation movement of his time and arguably the first queer theorist avant la lettre. His scientifically most significant contribution was the ‘doctrine of sexual intermediaries’ (Zwischenstufenlehre), according to which all human beings are intersexual variants, i.e. composites in different and irrepeatable proportions of both the masculine and the feminine sexual poles that as such have no real existence. Since the proportions combining the two poles vary from one another at the different descriptive levels and can alter or be altered in time, Hirschfeld’s ‘doctrine’ purports the dissolution of sexual categories that subsume individuals into pre-established sexes or genders. Against the background of his emancipatory and sexological work, the paper examines Hirschfeld’s assessment of the diversity of sexual conceptualisations in Asia as depicted in his book Die Weltreise eines Sexualforschers, that was published in 1933 and constitutes one of the most important documents of the nascent sexual ethnology. The book is a report of the trip around the world he decided to undertake while lecturing in America in 1930/1931, and that enabled him to have a first-hand experience of the sexual cultures in Japan, China, the Philippines, Java, India, Egypt, Palestine and Syria. During this trip, Hirschfeld attained a deeper understanding of his own Jewishness and developed a more comprehensive view of the ‘panhumanism and cosmopolitanism’ he had always strived for.

Ronald Baytan, De La Salle University
Redefining Man: Homo- and Hetero/sexualities in Philippine Cinema
Feminism and gay activism have radically changed the landscape of desire and the nature of sexual identity in the Philippines, and we can see this phenomenon very clearly in the movies. Now more than ever, the dichotomy lalake/bakla (roughly translated: heterosexual/homosexual man) is ever becoming unstable. What constitutes a lalake identity? How have the Filipino films in the last twenty years redefined the lalake in relation to the bakla? This paper intends to explore these questions through a reading of selected Filipino films from 1980 to 2004, namely: Manila by Night (City after Dark, 1980), Macho Dancer (1988), Ang Lalake sa Buhay ni Selya (1998), Sa Paraiso ni Efren (1999) and Liberated 2 (2004). I intend to show how the said films have deconstructed the lalake/bakla dichotomy, how the concept of being a ‘man’ (lalake) is redefined from the optic lens of homosexuality, and how Filipino filmmakers have interrogated the bonds between the bakla and his lalake and between the lalake and his lalake friend. This study is part of a larger project that seeks to explore the relationship between gayness and cinema in the Philippines in the last twenty-five years.

Anne Beaumont-Vernon, University of Essex
The Road to Transition: Transgender in Britain and in Thailand
This paper forms an integral part of my PhD thesis, which is a cross-cultural comparative analysis of the transitioning process of male-to-female transsexuals in Britain and kathoey in Thailand. In this paper I explore the various stages that the typical British TS experiences on the road to transition, as compared to the more easily facilitated transition of the kathoey in Thailand. Characteristically, the British transsexual women in this study reported having felt ‘different’ from a very early age, and by some chance or serendipity, discover that they fit the popular description of ‘a woman trapped inside a man’s body’. The discovery of transsexualism can be itself typically so traumatic or distressing that the individual will either decide to try and ignore the problem, or suffer in silence in the hope that it will ‘go away’. This means that the transsexual individual in Britain is commonly physically fully matured long before they seek help. The experience of the Thai kathoey is in striking contrast with that of the British TS.

Chris Berry, Goldsmiths College
The Wedding Banquet Effect: Gay = Modern in Asian Cinema?
The global box office success of The Wedding Banquet has inspired a host of follow-up films, and it has been claimed as the founding film for the trend known as Queer or Gay Asian Cinema. Examples of films in The Wedding Banquet mode include the recent Rainbow from Thailand and Arisan from Indonesia, as well as the earlier Broken Branches from Korea and various Japanese films including Okoge and Twinkle. It has not escaped the attention of critics that not only do these films display upper middle class lifestyles but also that they represent a post-Stonewall Euro-American model of gay identity. This takes the argument one step further by noting that these two tropes are combined to produce a more distinctive rhetorical effect in the context of East and Southeast Asian metropolitan participation in globalized modernity. A post-Stonewall gay identity does not just occupy the same social and textual space as globalized modernity in these films but also actually signifies the ability to accept a post-Stonewall gay identity on the part of others and sustain a gay lifestyle on the part of the protagonists signifies the attainment of the globalized modernity so desired by the ruling classes and their adherents in metropolitan East and Southeast Asia. Ironically, this confirms the derogatory stereotypes displayed in commercial mass cinema, at the same time as it may be a powerful rhetorical tool for placing leverage upon the ruling classes.
Kiran Bhairannavar, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi
Sexuality and the Politics of Space: A Study of Gays in New Delhi City of India
Space is a basic entity for expression of one's sexuality. A strong Patriarchal set up and a skewed construction of Masculinity in the Indian social set up makes space highly heterosexualised one. However amidst this heteronormative patriarchal set up there have been and there are sexual minorities - Gays, Lesbians, Kothis, Giriyas, Hijras, Bisexuals, Transgendered (about five million of them!), who continue to face discrimination, stigma and harassment from their straight counterparts. Moreover article 377 of Indian Penal Code (IPC) criminalizes homosexuality, making things worse. My paper, through 20 conversational interviews of Gay men in New Delhi, explores the interrelationship between space and homosexuality. It tends to find out how objective space is snatched away from this invisible community thus obstructing the creation of social spaces. Examining the politics of space and identity, it tends to explore the role of organizations and groups in creating safe spaces for the community. The paper looks into how Spaces of home, workplace, public spaces and society at large are appropriated and controlled by the heterosexual majority thus marginalizing gays to suffering, discrimination and harassment. It also examines the role of Article 377 IPC in aggravating the situation and issues of citizenship. Further it looks into the role of Cyber Revolution and the efforts of various advocacy, support, and human rights groups, and their (political) struggle in creating safe spaces for gays thus bringing a ray of hope to reduce the plight of this Community in the capital city of India.

Maylei Blackwell – Paper title to be confirmed.
Mark Blasius, University of NY
Sexual Relationships and their Political Recognition in an Intercultural Context.
This roundtable will consist of a number of brief written contributions by its members toward the goals of: a) analyzing the distinctive lgbtq partnership issues within the cultures from which the participants come or in which they live; b) making some cross-cultural comparisons—drawing parallels, pointing out divergences, and suggesting theoretical generalizations—based upon these issues and the cultural and legal problems that arise from them; and c) addressing some international questions that arise from recognition or lack thereof for lgbtq partnerships, for example, with respect to human rights law, immigration and choice of co-residence (taking into account the socio-economic status of the partners and the heteronormative ideologies of cultures), etc. With the participation of the audience, a cross-cultural dialogue will emerge, placing cultural specificity in the Asian region at the center, but taking into account global Asian diasporas, and the non-Asian partners of Asian lgbtq’s. It is intended that the roundtable will generate a number of co-authored and single authored papers, articles, or book chapters.
Tom Boellstorff, University of California
Geographies of Belonging: Spatial Scale, Queer Subjectivities, Queer Rights
Because they are embodied, sexuality and gender are often represented as highly local phenomena. Yet like other aspects of culture, sexuality and gender can be produced through multiple spatial scales. In this talk, I draw from research in Indonesia to examine how sexuality and gender are produced though translocal (in particular, national and global) spatial scales. I discuss some methodological and theoretical challenges encountered when studying the translocal production of sexuality and gender. I explore how such translocal regimes of sexuality and gender shape subjectivities and communities, and the implications of translocal regimes of sexuality and gender with regard to rights, tolerance, and affirmation. The talk will focus on how queer sexual and gendered subjectivities enter debates over national belonging when such subjectivities are seen as ‘modern’ and thus distinct from ‘traditional’ or ‘local’ conceptions of gender and sexuality.

Carolyn Brewer, Murdoch University
Online Publication: The Experience of Intersections
Intersections: Gender, History and Culture in an Asian Context is a refereed electronic journal conceived as an interactive forum for research and teaching in the area of Gender Studies in the Asian region. Placed at the junction of historical and contemporary concerns, Intersections emphasises the paramount importance of research into the region’s multiple historical and cultural gender patterns—patterns which are crucial for the understanding of contemporary globalised societies, where identities and social relations are constantly being negotiated against the background of dominant narratives. In this sense the journal crosses disciplinary, cultural and gender boundaries. At the same time, Intersections is intended as a means to explore innovative ways of presenting research using new technologies. As such Information Technology is not seen as an end in itself, but as a place where oral, written and visual history can tangibly cross paths allowing for new connections to be made. Ten issues of the journal have now been published and it is timely that some of the positive and negative aspects of the online publication of such a journal are analysed. My paper will explore the positives and negatives involved in the web-based publication of Intersections. I will discuss issues associated with the design and publication of the journal as well as exploring intellectual property rights and copyright issues associated with a journal that has international exposure.

Denis Byrne, Dept of Environment and Conservation (NSW)
Mapping Queer Heritage
What archaeological, architectural or other physical traces of the history of homosexuality might survive in the Asian landscape and should we do anything about recording or conserving them? These ‘traces’ might include ‘traditional’ meeting/cruising places, historic venues, the dwellings of notable authors, activists or other personalities. This paper takes a preliminary look at what queer Asian cultural heritage might look like and how it might be included in the cultural heritage conservation framework that already operates in the region.
The tendency of 20th century Asian governments to deny that homosexuality is indigenous to their culture, rather than a decadent Western import, is reflected in the invisibility of homosexuality as a theme in heritage recording. The low profile or underground nature of homosexuality in the 20th century may mean that its heritage traces are ephemeral in nature and difficult to map in the urban and rural landscape. However, a new interest in ‘intangibility’ in the field of heritage studies internationally, and a growing recognition of the heritage of minority cultures and marginalised or oppressed groups, may make this a good moment to begin to record queer heritage in Asia.
Erma Eugenia Capucion, Women Supporting Women Centre, Quezon City, Philippines
When Images Talk: A Question of Lesbian Aesthetics
It is expected that everyone has realized that the visual arts is one form of language, communication and in a deeper sense a form of discourse or discussion. In the contemporary view of art, its presentation or curatorship provides enhanced if not additional meaning to the creations, meaning that may go beyond or even extend beyond the intentions of the artist. Furthermore, additional meanings are formed by the audience who each have different perspectives and views of the work of art that is informed by their own personal experiences and opinions. In my research work for my masters thesis, the question frequently came up about the validity of the lesbian as subject in the visual arts. I received very strong arguments that if my work as a lesbian artist contain this subject then it becomes propaganda. But no arguments were made about propaganda versus art. The problems that an art practitioner faces are multi-layered when one uses the label, lesbian artist. As it is, art as a discourse is already laden with controversial debates, and it becomes more complicated when the label lesbian is thrown into it especially in a country like the Philippines. This paper will not provide a ready answer, but will instead aim to present research materials, quote references, point out cross-references of established academicians, critics, and artists, to support the argument for a lesbian aesthetic.

James Caspian, University of Westminster
Transgender in the People’s Republic of China
I will discuss the situation of transgendered people in China with particular reference to: estimated numbers of operations; the attitude of Chinese culture towards TG people, including religion, family and cultural mores; TG people and employment; civil rights and the legal situation, e.g. ability to live in their new gender role, right to marry, legal status, right to change gender on identity documents; access and affordability of medical services; support; attitudes in the media; TG networks and what doctors and TG people themselves have to say about the current situation. Chak Lui Chan, Chinese University HK
‘ Interesting’ Gender-Crossing: A Case of Cantonese Opera in Hong Kong
‘ Faan-Chuen’ is known as gender-crossing in the public understanding of Cantonese Opera. The performers can explicitly ‘do gender’ on-stage which subverts the stability and naturalized myth of gender identities. However, the reading of those Faan-Chuen performers (‘male female impersonator’ and ‘female male impersonator’) is always to subtly re-stabilize their ‘natural sex’ while emphasize their ‘crossing’. In this article, I will use a TV program about a famous Faan-Chuen male impersonator Yam Kim-Fai to question the representation/reading of s/he in the TV program. Why is Faan Chuen so ‘interesting’? How can the public take the pleasure (it can be erotic) and keep on placing the act of gender-crossing as Other?

Connie Man Wai Chan, Women’s Coalition of HKSAR
Survey on Discrimination on the Grounds of Sexual Orientation for Women in Hong Kong
This is a very crucible moment for every LGBT in Hong Kong, because the Hong Kong Government is going to conduct a review on its policy dealing with the problem of discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation! Measures are emerging to protect women from sexual orientation discrimination in Hong Kong. Although women are now enjoying an umbrella of the Sex Discrimination Ordinance, there is no law that specifically outlaws discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.
Women Coalition of HKSAR (WC) conducts initial research into the nature and extent of sexual orientation discrimination in Hong Kong. The central purpose of this report is to call attention to the extent of sexual orientation discrimination in Hong Kong, and to increase the awareness of those actors who can most effectively combat such discrimination, concerns about discriminatory behaviors in the police force, in the health service, and in the business and education environment, in the family and in the public areas.
Kenneth Chan, Nanyang Technological University
Rice Sticking Together: Desire and the Cinematic Representation of Caucasian-Chinese Relationships
This paper examines the narrative structure and cultural rhetoric of contemporary diasporic Chinese cinema that deals specifically with gay interracial relationships between Chinese and Caucasian men, a form of what some would call the ‘rice-and-potato’ relationship. By examining films from Hong Kong, the United States, Australia, and Britain, I would argue that these films, in seeking to reject the Madame Butterfly power dynamic, move toward a cultural nationalist ideological argument. This is particularly evident, for instance, in the narrative progression of documentaries, like Banana Queer and Rice and Potatoes, professing to offer insight into this social phenomenon; or in narrative shorts, such as Yellow Fever and Fall 1990, that espouse to highlight the racial discrimination of the diasporic Chinese minority even within gay communities. However, though this argument has its political place, the fluid and complex notion of desire, in spite of its historicity, confounds and disturbs this identity politics by queerly resisting its rhetorical insistence. A number of more recent films from the U.S. register a kind of utopian possibility that, despite its idealism, present a paradigm of desire that negotiates the racism and stereotyping faced by gay Chinese minorities in Western nations, without negating the presence and hope of this desire.
Kit Sze Amy Chan, Hong Kong Shue Yan College
On the Edge of Culture: Sex and Sexualities in Taiwan and Hong Kong Science Fiction
Modern science fiction frequently involves themes of sex, gender and sexuality. It is no coincidence that science fiction has always been the site for gay, lesbian and queer voices. Ursula Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness, Joanna Russ’s Female Man and Mary Percy’s He, She, It are most well-known Sci-Fi novels that deal with ideas like androgyny, third-sex, homosexuality or even trans-species sexualities. One of the most important characteristics of science fiction as a literary genre is that it enables its authors and readers to explore not only the world and human beings as they are, but also as they could have been in the other time-space or might be in a futuristic setting. The focus of this paper is to argue that both being on the margin of mainstream culture, queer theory and science fiction perhaps can make a perfect couple in fighting against the patriarchal, heterosexual society. This paper will discuss the sex and sexualities in Hong Kong and Taiwan Science Fiction along with the development of gay, lesbian and queer movement Authors discussed include: Chi Ta-wei, and Lucifer Hung from Taiwan and Tam Chien from Hong Kong.
Vinay Chandran, Swabhava Trust, Bangalore, India
“ It's not my job to tell you, it's okay to be gay”: Medicalisation of Homosexuality
The homosexual in India is studied as a criminal in legal discourse, a sick person in medical discourse and a sinner in religious discourse. These three systems of knowledge have had had a far-reaching impact in the attempts to understand who the homosexual is in contemporary India. This paper traces the emergence of the homosexual in medical categories in the west and looks at how that western category has been uncritically accepted as a part of the discourse of the Indian mental health profession. It examines the definitions of homosexuality in the Indian context and how the worldview of the mental health professional in India is formed at the intersections of the discourses of law, medicine and religion and how that worldview finds expression in 'treating homosexuals.' Finally it looks at how this worldview, which medicalises the homosexual, is being questioned by the emergence of the discourse of queer rights. The effort has been to trace out the categories right from their origin in western medical discourse to their deployment in contemporary Indian settings. In addition, for the purpose of understanding the contemporary 'meaning' attached to homosexuality, the paper looks at empirical data gathered from interviewing clinical psychologists, psychiatrists, sexologists, and counsellors with a view to ascertaining medical responses to homosexuality. The paper specifically looks at the allopathic medical system because of the number of homosexuals who have been 'treated' for their homosexuality by professionals in the mental health field.

Hong-cheng Maurice Chang, University of Milan
“ Made in Taiwan: Gay Rights of the Western Body with Oriental Soul”
Last October, it was reported that the Taiwan Government was preparing legislation to legitimize gay marriage. If the new law is passed it would make Taiwan the first country in Asia to recognize marriages between people of the same sex. This presentation gives a brief view on gay rights developments and a clear picture on the proposal to recognize same-sex relationships in Taiwan. During the discussion it will be explained that the proposal is a "solemn proclamation," or even a political slogan. It will also be discussed how Asian societies, more specifically the Chinese societies, integrate the idea of same-sex marriage with the traditional family system and the stigma of not having offspring and legal strategies for gay rights movement in Taiwan.

Pei-Jean Chen, National Chiao-Tung University
‘ Queer’ that Matters -What is Queer Culture in Taiwan?
This paper is an analysis of the term ‘queer’ in Taiwan, which’s phonetic Mandarin transliteration is ku‚er;. I will explore the genealogy and deployment of the term ku‚er in the Taiwanese context, examining its use in social discourse and in cultural representation and artistic creation. During the early-to-mid 1990s, lesbian and gay student associations mushroomed on university campuses all over Taiwan, and some lesbian and gay studies courses began to be taught in the major universities. Out of this emergent lesbian and gay academic culture came the localized translation of the 1990s English reclamation of ‘queer.’ ‘Queer’ was first time transliterated as the Chinese word ‘ku’er’ in the magazine ‘Isle Margin’ by Chi Ta-Wei and other scholars in 1994.1. Before the transliteration, ‘queer’ has been translated to another Chinese word and showed up in some researches and discourses. When ‘queer’ was transliterated to ku’er, the term’s insistence and intention in some way has been changed through the translation/transliteration. All discussions and annotations of the word enrich its meaning and definition in Taiwanese context. So, the paper will work on how is the word ‘queer/ku’er becomes a genre and represent in the academic field, social discourse, artistic works, and subculture.
Yu-Xin Chen, National Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu, Taiwan
Passionate Friendship: Schoolgirl Romance and Female Homosexuality in May Fourth Era China
This essay argues that homoerotic schoolgirl romance in the May Fourth China compellingly testifies to the tension between the publican intellectuals‚ expectant experience of Westernization and anxious wrestling with given mechanisms of surveillance on women‚s intimate relationships. As metropolitan theorization of sexology flooded into intellectual debates, the concept of homosexuality was keenly translated and discussed. Unlike mostly Euro-American sexologists that categorized women with same-sex desires with fixed (homo) sexual identity, Chinese intellectuals tended to view women‚s same-sex desires as temporary and situational. As Liberal New Women writers illustrated juvenile intrafemale liaisons as painful processes of self-discovery with catastrophic ending due to social pressures, it can be observed that the structure of local homophobic hegemony was emerging. The second half of the essay focuses on western-styled boarding school for girls, a seemingly liberating modern institution that oftentimes occasions such tension. Whereas the school enables girls to realize and express their affections and desires for other girls, it is entrenched by disciplines brought by Christian church and undercurrents of homophobic discourses developed in the local community. Along with several other pieces of proto-T/po schoolgirl romance, Eileen Chang’s Tongxue shaonian do buqian (My Prosperous Classmates) is read, in particular, as a telling example of enduring feelings between westernized female intellectuals, happily within and poignantly without the sheltering world of boarding school. The boarding school in May Fourth Era, in sum, revealingly saw the dynamic interaction between local and western forms of suppression of women’s dissident sexualities.

Song Pae Cho, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Playing in the Dark: Korean "Gay" Men and "Gay" Korean Bathhouses
Gay experience and urban modernity are uniquely intertwined, with the latter providing the staging ground for sexual experimentation and openness in ways that permit a kind of emergent gay democracy. Within the urban setting, gay men have had the opportunity to meet other men and create social practices and institutions that constitute the “gay experience.” Among these varied practices has been the practice of “public” sex, queering the often marginalized and abjected spaces of urban settings such as deserted lots, parks, and public bathrooms into a stage for sexual encounters and connections between men. Even though the mainstream gay and lesbian movement in South Korea has often disparaged these spaces in favour of more “formal” rights and markers of “gay citizenship,” in this paper, I argue that it is, in fact, the “wild” and “unregulated” spaces that often exist only provisionally and both within as well as outside the field of gay commodification, that we can see the practices of gay democracy and public gay society-making. Using ethnography from “gay” bathhouses in Seoul, Korea, I argue that these spaces where queer desire sometimes takes us by surprise can open ourselves up to the pleasure of inter-class and inter-generational contact as well as the possibility of imagining other forms of sociality. However, they can also reveal the limits of Western notions of “gay identity,” and “gay community.”

Wei-cheng Chu, National Taiwan University
Queer(ing) Taiwan and Its Future: From an Agenda of Mainstream Self-Enlightenment to One of Sexual Citizenship?’
I offer here first and foremost a glocal analysis of the noteworthy emergence of a lesbian and gay (or in local terms, tongzhi) movement in the 1990s Taiwan. Taiwan’s example may strike as particularly intriguing in the mainstream prominence enjoyed by the cultural representations of tongzhi and the coverage of tongzhi issues. My theory is that the emergence of Taiwan’s tongzhi movement at that historical conjuncture, and the specific form it has taken, in effect depends upon what I call a ‘self-enlightening’ agenda pursued by the mainstream Taiwanese society since the democratization process starting in the late 1980s. That is why the gradual halt of this agenda in the late 1990s also coincides with the cooling-off of the movement, as its prosperity had been very much a mainstream media effect and the mainstream attention to tongzhi issues was then apparently on the wane. As if to further prove this, certain contingent developments in the mainstream politics since 2000 has given a new spur to the movement by inducing what can be called a ‘civic turn’ of it, as issues of (minority) citizenship and civil rights for tongzhi are now openly on the agenda. I will also examine this most recent development with the purpose of showing the local limitations of this largely imported discourse as well as arguing for its possible significance in terms of local political future which now centers on a zest for ethno-nationalism.

Hang Kuen Chua, Universiti Sains Malaysia
The History of the Lesbian, Gay & Trans-sexual Communities in Malaysia
Homosexuality has been a feature of Malaysian society. The written record of male homosexuality in Malaysia can be traced back to as early as the British colonial period. Despite the social and legal barriers that have been put up by the British and the present sovereign state, the homosexual/gay/queer subcultures manifest themselves under the multiple influences of industrialization, urbanization, and globalisation within the diverse local socio-cultural and repressive political environment over the years. This paper explores the characteristics, organizations, movements as well as discourses of these subcultures throughout the course of their development. The PT Foundation (formally known as Pink Triangle) and other virtual groups will be specifically referred to in the discussion of the contemporary gay/queer subcultures in Malaysia. This paper will also discuss the relationship among the gay/queer and transsexual and lesbian communities, with specific reference to transsexualism in Malaysian society. The impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemic on these perceived high-risk groups in Malaysia will also be covered.

Donn Colby, Harvard University
Using Social Networks to Reach MSM for HIV Prevention in Vietnam
Background: Research has shown that Men who have Sex with Men (MSM) in Vietnam have a high risk for HIV infection. There are now HIV prevention projects specifically targeting MSM in 2 cities in Vietnam, with more planned in the near future. Methods: 40 in-depth interviews and 3 focus group discussions were held with self-identified MSM in Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), Vietnam, in early 2004. The information gathered was used to help develop a peer-educator based HIV prevention program. Results: MSM in HCMC can be categorized into two broad groups: bong kin and bong lo. Bong kin are outwardly masculine and due to social stigma often hide their sexual orientation. Bong lo assume a feminine gender; wearing female clothing, jewellery, and make-up, and using feminine mannerisms. Both socialize mostly within their own group. Bong Kin usually have other bong kin as sexual partners, while the sexual partners of bong lo are usually heterosexually-identified men. Both group engage in risky sexual behavior, such as unprotected anal sex or oral sex with ejaculation; and hold many misconceptions about their risk of HIV and STDs. Water-based lubricants are rarely used. Bong lo often face discrimination in society, such as not being allowed entrance to entertainment establishments and difficulty in finding a job.
Conclusions Peer educators can use social networks to contact and provide educational materials to MSM. Better knowledge about and access to water based lubricants are needed. Many MSM still face discrimination.

Nerida Cook, University of Tasmania
Public Perceptions of Tom and Dee in Thailand
There are now a number of highly informative studies of the experiences and self-identities of tom and dee in Thailand, as well as of characterisations of tom, dee, kathoey and gays in the public domain, such as in various media and in academia. However there is still little systematic work on how members of the general Thai public perceive and understand tom and dee, gay and kathoey individuals. This paper presents findings from focus group interviews conducted in Bangkok in the mid-1990s to begin to fill this lacuna. The focus group study explored both how these various categories (tom, dee, gay, kathoey) are constructed in the public imagination, and how focus group participants sought explanations for these non-normative sex-gender identities in relation to their views of contemporary Thai society. The focus group findings on tom and dee will be presented and briefly compared with the views of tom and dee themselves (collected at the same time) in order to explore commonalities and differences between ‘outsider’ and ‘insider’ constructions. The comparison aims to develop preliminary data on the degree to which public discourses are appropriated by, contributed to, or shared by tom and dee; and ways the public perceptions fall short of the latter’s understandings. The broader purpose is to examine the everyday perceptions, both sympathetic and prejudicial, that tom and dee face on a daily basis, since everyday interactions are highly significant in the ability of tom and dee to exercise choices regarding self expression and lifestyle options.

Rebecca Lynn Cross, University of Texas
Gloria Anzaldua
Radical Chicana lesbian feminist Gloria Anzaldúa wrote extensively about La Frontera, the borderlands, and the transient and permanent residents of those areas. She described the ambiguous, unsettled space between the borders as nepantla, and those who guide others through that spatial chaos as nepantleras. At their best, transgendered people make ideal nepantleras because they all qualify as ‘wounded healers’, or those whose past or on-going experience makes them particularly empathetic to others entering nepantla. Anzaldúa described the process of passing through nepantla as acquiring conocimiento, a consciousness rooted in self-awareness and wholeness, often found in indigenous traditions. In this regard, she qualifies as curandera, or people’s healer. By practicing conocimiento, transgendered people find healing for themselves as well as become healer/guides for others, both straight and transgendered, thus becoming cultural resources, as opposed to social anomalies.
Glenn Cruz, The Library Foundation, Manila, The Philippines
Promoting Health among Men who have Sex with Men Through Affirming Diverse Sexuality and Community
The Library Foundation (TLF) is committed to prevention of sexually transmitted infections among men having sex with men (MSM), including HIV. In 2002, with help from International HIV/AIDS Alliance, TLF conducted peer outreach education to 200 gay and bisexual men in Metro Manila through the Healthy Interaction and Values Workshops - full-day seminars on sexuality and sexual health. Designed to be participatory, the workshop determined dynamics of sexual networking in MSM venues, facilitated improvement of risk awareness to STI/HIV, raise issues on self-esteem, sexuality comfort and community mutual support to enable individuals towards safer sexual behaviour. But among those who participated, attending the workshops generally was seen to be a resolve towards acknowledging one's sexuality. While baseline knowledge was higher compared to other population sentinels, reported safer sexual behaviour among MSM was generally lower. Divisiveness among different sexual/gender expressions challenged efficient implementation of the project but its immediate outcomes included improvement of attitudes towards one's own and others' gender and sexual expressions.

Brian Curtin, Raffles LaSalle International Design School
Thailand’s Gay Male Sexual Cultures and the Problem of Visual Representation
This paper addresses the issue of Bangkok as a supposed paradise for gay men by examining the visual imagery of internet and print advertisements produced by male go-go bars and massage venues. I draw on Peter A. Jackson’s essay Tolerant but Unaccepting: The Myth of a Thai ‘Gay Paradise’ but am less concerned with foreign misconceptions of Thai social life than the semiotic currency of this sexualized imagery, which I examine in terms of a dialectic between the production of and resistance to forms of stereotyping. That is, the forms of stereotyping which can inform the assumption of a paradis‚. Following Jackson, the notion of paradise‚ is understood as the result of a purported absence of homophobic restrictions and, further, the effect of orientalist interpretations of Asian male sexualities and commercial sex. I trace the terms by which my examples of visual imagery can be implicated in discursive processes of stereotyping and demonstrate the multiple levels on which meaning can operate through context and questions of desire, race and spectatorship. The aim of this paper is to employ the visual image as a central means of marking and contesting knowledge of ‘Thai’ sexual cultures.
Nikos Lexis Dacanay, University of the Philippines
Globalizing Gay Culture in Virtual Space: the Case of the Virtualized Gay Identity
My paper is about the virtualization of the everyday experience of the city and how the expression of gay identity is implicated in the setup. I want to understand the complex relationships between the influence of the global phenomenon of virtual space to the internationalization of gay identity and the re-modification of the concept of such an identity in the local understanding of sexuality. There has been much talk about the internationalization of American-modeled gay lifestyle and this would presume to indicate a globalization of modern gay identitiy. My argument is that the operations of sex and gender in Thailand and Philippine societies may be different from Western societies. The concept of gay identity is redefined when we observe how homosexuals in both Thailand and the Philippines live their lives in the seemingly virtualized gay spaces that in the cities. I will look at gay identity and its complexities in the age of virtual spaces. How has virtual space affected Thai and Filipino homosexuals' ways of living a gay lifestyle? What are the ways by which gay-identified men define their sex/gender against the backdrop of the globalization of the virtual, the incipient internationalization of Western-modeled gay culture, and the particularistic histories of local sex/gender order? My emphasis is the concept of global gay identity as a product of international gay spaces in the Philippines and Thailand, and how this identity is being renegotiated when Filipino and Thai homosexuals regard their local and traditional understanding of gender and sexuality.

Peter Dankmeijer, Empowerment Lifestyle Services
Education on LGBT Issues in a Global Context: Opportunities in Asia
In 1997, during the Amsterdam Gay Games, Empowerment Lifestyle Services organized an international workshop on LGBT education. The workshop took place in the context of a cultural event organized by Amnesty International and was financed and supported by HIVOS. Thanks to this, we were able to invite speakers from all over the world. We expected education about LGBT issues to be quite different all over the world, due to cultural, religious and political differences. So the participants were very surprised to discover that—apart from obvious differences_we still have a lot in common when providing education about LGBT issues. At the end of the workshop, we concluded it would be useful to create a global network to facilitate continuous exchange on LGBT education. Peter Dankmeijer started building this in 2003-2004 by interviewing organizations around the world. The interviews were meant as a needs assessment. A website (www.lgbt-education.info) was started and will be developed into a platform for this network. In this presentation, Dankmeijer will give an overview of the results of the needs assessment and will suggest how specific Asian needs for education about LGBT issues are different or similar to needs in other parts of the world. A discussion after this presentation will focus on how transnational collaboration on educational campaigns and projects can improve our work.
Romit Dasgupta, University of Western Australia
‘ Homosocial Desire’ versus ‘Heterosexual Hegemony’ in Corporate Japan
The shift in research focus from lesbian and gay studies to an emphasis on ‘queer’ has brought out questions about the ways in which everyday, ostensibly heteronormative spaces and practices may in fact be inter-laced with dynamics of (usually un-acknowledged and un-articulated) same-sex desire. One area which has been the focus of research attention has been spaces of male-male homosocial bonding and interaction. As work on institutions such as the military or sports clubs has revealed, a public face of aggressive unambiguous heterosexuality may well have an underlying subtext of what Sedgwick describes as ‘homosocial desire’.
Corporate organizations are good examples of spaces where outward hegemonic heteronormativity may often be undergirded by what Michael Roper refers to as ‘circuits of homosocial desire’. In the case of Japan, hegemonic corporate masculinity, as embodied in the figure of the white-collar salaryman has been premised on an ideology of the male as heterosexual husband and father. Yet, at the same time, the success of this model of masculinity also depended heavily on the male employee prioritizing homosocial attachment to his colleagues and the organization, over heterosexual attachment to his family. Using material from interviews with younger corporate sector employees, as well from popular culture texts, this paper draws attention to the ways in which dynamics of ‘homosocial desire’ inform the individual’s negotiations and engagements with corporate masculinity.

Carlos Decena, Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies
Towards Cross-Regional Dialogue: Perspectives from the Americas
(United States) will identify key issues in LGBTQ research in specific Latin American countries and among Latino/as in the United States. Apart from providing APQ Bangkok 2005 attendees with information about ongoing research and activism, the panel will end with questions and topics to stimulate cross-regional dialogue between scholars in the Asia/Pacific region and those working in the Americas.
Naifei Ding, Jen-Peng Liu & Amie Parry, National Central University, National T’sing Hua University
Faking Gender: Violence and Baseness from 1970s Lesbian Pulp to 1990s Queer Gothic Fiction’
Taiwan’s second upsurge of entertainment industries and sex cultures coincided with the US military presence and backing for the post-49 KMT regime. These industries and cultures are the setting for the emergence of representations of T-po (gendered lesbian) relations and communities. By the 1970s, sensationalist media reportage pathologized homosexuality, and medical discourse followed suit. This was part of a larger state-driven campaign for moral tooling designed to discipline bodily appearance just as sexual cultures were proliferating within the informal sectors of the state economy. Our paper analyzes, firstly, the critical reception of early lesbian and gay fiction in Taiwan. It then turns to how representations of T-po bodies in 1970s melodrama struggle with institutionalized representational forces while at the same time constructing new strategies that are in dialogue with both state technologies and T-po lesbian communities and cultures. Lastly, it looks at how some of those strategies from early pulp fiction, especially their use of vampire imagery, are reconfigured in 1990s narratives that coincide with the establishment of GLBT social movements.
Serge Doussantousse, Independent Researcher
A Gender Minority in Lao PDR: Transgenders or Kathoeys
Background: Lao PDR, a country bordering Thailand with comparable cultural traits. One similarity shared by both countries is the number of visible transgenders, called Kathoey. Although there is little research on Kathoey in Laos, it has been observed that several Kathoey in Vientiane and Savannakhet have already been infected with HIV. A feasibility study was conducted in Vientiane (Capital of Lao PDR) and Savannakhet with a convenience sampling.
Methods: 11 self identified Kathoey were interviewed in Vientiane and Savannakhet early 2004. The interviews used a semi-structured questionnaire and cover various topics including sexual identity, sexual behaviour, HIV knowledge, demographic factors, and perceptions about discrimination.
Findings: Contact with Kathoey is easy; Discrimination seems minimal in the society and family. A growing number of Kathoey is involved in prostitution: they receive money from their foreign partner/ clients but have to pay their Lao boy friends. Their sexual practices are comparable to MSM's. Their knowledge on HIV transmission is still limited. Homosexual and transgenders are two different groups with strong sub-culture. Those men have chosen in their early teen to become the second women, as they called themselves. They work in most of women activities: Hair-dresser, restaurant, Entertainment facilities and seems well integrated in the Lao community.
Recommendations: The understanding of Kathoey's integration in Lao society help at designing program targeting them. Kathoeys must participated at every level of the research from planning to analysis.

Robyn Emerton, University of Hong Kong
Half Full or Half Empty? Legal Status and Activism of the Transgender Community in Hong Kong

Gender reassignment surgery has taken place in Hong Kong since the mid 1980s, and has always received public funding. At the administrative level, various concessions are made towards post-operative transsexual persons, which undoubtedly facilitate their every day lives. These include the reissue of identity cards, passports and driving licences in their chosen gender. However, there is no means for them – or for transgender persons more broadly – to change their birth certificates. This denies them full legal recognition (including marriage) in their chosen gender, and renders them vulnerable to prejudice and discrimination, which is still sorely rife in Hong Kong. In some other countries in Asia, transgender persons have successfully campaigned to claim their right to legal recognition, using the courts and legislature to good effect. Examples to be discussed include Singapore, Japan and the Philippines. By contrast – although the transgender community is now achieving more visibility in Hong Kong and is slowly becoming more politically active – the issue of legal recognition has never been raised before Hong Kong’s courts or legislature. This paper will offer some preliminary observations on why this may be the case – and also shed some light on the paper’s title!

Elisabeth Engebretsen, London School of Economics & Political Science
Lesbian Identity and Community Making in Beijing: Towards a Queerer Type of Ethnography
LGBTQ communities cross-culturally are often understood to participate in a process of gay globalization originating in Euro-American cultures. Local LGBTQ cultures are accordingly adopting ‘Western’-based gay identity politics and lifestyles, with the significance of local conditions remaining largely underestimated. Another common approach emphasizes that contemporary LGBTQ cultures outside ‘Western’ locales creatively adopt those global images of queer cultures that fit into existing specific contexts, and discard those that do not. Based on ongoing fieldwork among lesbian communities in Beijing, I discuss how lesbians make sense of the global images of lesbian lifestyles and queer cultures now available to them through new media and technology, to create a lesbian sense of community and identity–collective and individual–and which ultimately takes a highly China-specific context as its structural basis. I suggest that a more constructive way of understanding LGBTQ community- and identity-making, now increasingly globalized and imagined similarly across cultures, may be not by regarding what happens in different locales as variations over a Euro-American originating gay cultural project, but rather, by paying keen attention to the processes of how everyday meanings and knowledges are continually created, re-created, contested and imagined by lesbians in the specific locales in question, and on that basis attempt to theorise the interconnections with global flows of gay cultures. I hope to contribute towards debates about queer studies’ relevance in cross-cultural contexts, and how we can best theorise identity politics and processual change in the age of globalization.
John Erni, City University HK
Queer Pop Asia: Toward a Hybrid Regionalist Imaginary
Popular images of queers‚ in Asia are taking a number of specific forms, which are in turn constituting new and significant (urban) contexts across the region. These forms index particular kinds of queer desire for visibility. This paper first briefly sketches the contour of queer popular culture in Asia, including the specific academic and intellectual discourses built around it. It then explores some important forms through which Asian queer‚ and pop‚ converge, including the consistent, almost nonchalant, blurring of the line between homosociality and homoeroticism, the performativity of drag as an open political allegory, and the beautiful, often feminine, youth narratives. Moving out, around, and rapidly, these cultural productions have a way of coalescing into syncretic queer practices across Asia. The fertile historical and political ground of Taiwan will be discussed as an important space of hybrid convergence at this moment.
Ross Forman, School of Oriental and African Studies
Catamite Coolies and Chinese Sodoms: British Investigations into Chinese Labourers‚ Sexuality in the 19th & 20th Centuries
A common accusation levelled against Chinese labourers brought to various British colonies at the end of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century was that they were undesirable because of their penchant for pederasty. From sites as geographically disparate as Guiana and Malaya and South Africa, there emerged a discourse about ‘catamite coolies’ that typed Chinese labourers as problematic and promoted their repatriation over more usual patterns of settlement at the end of their indentures. Often relying on testimony from missionaries or other interested parties and often focusing on the role played by cross-dressing troupes of Chinese actors (who were presumed to serve as male prostitutes), British officials carried out a number of investigations into ‘unnatural vice’ in mining compounds and plantation settings. These investigations yield important historical information about colonial understandings of Asian sexualities and patterns of sociability. This paper offers an overview of these inquiries, focusing especially on the 1906 investigation into Chinese labourers in the Transvaal, whose ramifications were so explosive that Winston Churchill actually uttered the word ‘sodomy’ in Parliament. The paper considers what the moral and political implications of Asian male-male sexuality in workers’ enclosures were; what developmental theories of homosexuality were invoked (for instance, the claim that working-class men from Northern China learned about sodomy by sleeping in close proximity to one another during the cold winters); and how the workers were and were not able to represent their subjectivities through interpreters within the legalistic environment in which these colonial investigations were conducted.

Rory Gallagher, Cambridge University
Shifting Markets, Shifting Risks: Male and Transgender Tourist-orientated Sex Work in South-East Asia
HIV prevention policies and research in South-East Asia have focused predominantly upon female, brothel-based; sex work. The rapidly growing male and transgender tourist-orientated sex industry is characterized by more; forms of sex work (in bars, nightclubs, massage parlours, restaurants and hotels for example), making the mapping and definition of commercial especially problematic. Consequently these economic, social, political, medical and imaginary geographies remain largely unexplored by scholars and marginalized in HIV policies; lacunae that urgently require attention. If appropriate HIV prevention programs are to be formulated, a theoretical framework must be developed that can accommodate the burgeoning numbers of male and female tourists who engage in sexual-economic exchanges with male and transgender sex workers, and the complex interplay between the gendered, raced and economic powers involved in these encounters.
This paper will draw upon primary fieldwork conducted in Phuket, Thailand and Bali, Indonesia in order to analyze in which particular spatial, symbolic or situational contexts unsafe sexual practices are most prevalent, and to identify measures that can be taken to reduce the incidence of these risky sexual behaviours. It concludes that HIV prevention policies must engage with the shifting intersections between tourism, sex work, sexuality, sexual behaviour and sexual health in the twenty-first century. Specifically, they must respond to the growing heterogeneity of sex workers and tourists, and the variety of sexual-economic exchanges now involved.

J. Neil C. Garcia, University of the Philippines
The Postcolonial Perverse: Hybridity, Desire, and the Nation in Federico Licsi Espino, Jr’s Lumpen
Over the last century, literary renderings of the Filipino nation have invariably been heterosexual and nativist. The national polity, as imagined by many Filipino writers, typically excludes both the perverse and the culturally ‘impure’. As a consequence, the vision of a national awakening such texts purvey essentializes the postcolonial situation into the unworkable polarities of Self and Other. The paper will examine the various ‘dissident’ spaces made available by the inclusion of perversion and hybridity into the national imagination. The world of Espino’s novella from 1985 is peopled by perverts and racial and/or ideological half-breeds: hustlers, thieves, cross-dressers, hermaphrodites, closet cases, and apparitional and racially ‘mongrelized’ characters. Their erotic lives, colorful, complex and helplessly enmeshed, transpire in the midst of political strife in the Philippine capital: student protests, marches, and ‘disappearances’ typical of the period right before and during Martial Law rule. According to the novel, the country’s official political economy is regularly challenged by its ‘underground’ economy of desire, in which other struggles and agencies may be seen to exist. Here, the downtrodden traffic in perverse gratification, both for material and erotic ends. In this world, the disenfranchised are able to indulge their own desires while reversing the customary order of things. As a postcolonial text, Lumpen not only admits to the possibility of imagining a Filipino nation constituted of cultural and political hybrids; it also gestures towards the idea of a nation whose liberation lies in its embrace and celebration of the ‘impure’ and/or the ‘perverse.’

Andrea Goh, Melissa Say, Gerald Tan, Frederick Tong, Nanyang Technological University
Probing Pink Porn: The perceived value of sexual content for homosexual and heterosexual audiences
Singapore law requires consideration of the literary, artistic, social, cultural, educational and scientific value of media content in deciding whether it is objectionable. Responses to structured depth interviews with 40 adults aged over 30 (equal numbers of homosexuals and heterosexuals) were analysed to determine the perceived value of sexual content targeted at homosexual and heterosexual audiences. Input from lawyers, media practitioners and members of the Media Authority’s various committees was also analysed.

Gayatri Gopinath, University of California at Davis
“ Bollywood Spectacles: Queer Diasporic Critique in the Aftermath of September 11th”
In the years following the attacks of September 11th, 2001, South Asian racialization in the U.S. has taken place through curious and contradictory processes. Even as the “indefinite detentions” and deportations of Arabs, Muslims and South Asians continued unabated, the last three years saw the veritable explosion of interest in Bollywood cinema among non-South Asian audiences. How can we account for this heightened visibility and “discovery” of Bollywood cinema, at precisely the moment when South Asian communities in the U.S. are being more intensely surveilled, policed and terrorized by the state than ever before? This paper argues that the ubiquity and popularity of Bollywood outside of India at this particular moment of U.S. imperialist aggression and global hegemony bears close scrutiny, as it reveals a great deal about the complex interrelation of multiple nationalisms and diasporic formations in the context of globalization. In order to fully unpack these connections, I suggest the necessity of what we can term a “queer diasporic” frame of analysis that pays attention to the intimate connections between disparate diasporic and national locations and their convergence around heteronormative gender and sexual ideologies. This is a particularly urgent and necessary project in the context of South Asia, given the centrality of the diaspora to the material and ideological maintenance of Hindu nationalism in India, and in light of the unholy alliance between the Hindu Right in India and the current Bush regime in the U.S.

Sharyn Graham, Auckland University of Technology
Bisexual and Transgender Intersections in South Sulawesi, Indonesia
This paper analyses the intersections between bisexuality and transgender in South Sulawesi, Indonesia. While there are no equivalent indigenous terms, there are cognate identities and experiences that make such an examination valid and fruitful. The paper is divided into four main sections. After a brief introduction, section one sets the scene by introducing readers to South Sulawesi. This section also examines prevailing ideas of gender and sexuality in the region. I argue that gender is a salient notion in South Sulawesi and that there are very clear models of what is expected of girls and boys when they grow up. I also posit that gender is a holistic concept, constituted by various factors, including biology, sexuality, roles, and behaviours. In the second section I introduce two gendered identities which fall outside normative models: calabai‚ (transgendered males) and calalai‚ (transgendered females). Through the narratives of key informants, the identity and subjectivity of these individuals is revealed. In the third section I recount specific examples of bisexuality and transgender intersections. A critical analysis of these intersections reveals much about representations and understandings of desire, sexuality, and gender. The theoretical contributions which arise from this analysis are proposed in the fourth section. I argue that the conceptual categories imposed by rigid Western terminology are rendered problematic when considering the intersection between bisexuality and transgender. As such, in South Sulawesi experiences of bisexuality and transgender must be explored from a perspective which allows appreciation of their coalescence.

Ed Green, University of New South Wales
Living In Rural Areas of Indonesia—The Experience of Gay Men
In his recent doctoral study of Indonesian gay men, Richard Howard (1996) noted ‘that young men recognizing a same sex desire have moved from smaller villages to the city to explore their homosexuality and to avoid the pressure to marry’ (p.354). Howard also claimed that for the gay men in his study, ‘men may express both homosexual desire and behaviour’ but unless they married they were unable to see themselves, or be seen by others, as ‘real men’ (laki asli) (p. 345). This paper, based on interview data gathered from a small sample of Indonesian gay men living outside metropolitan areas questioned how they saw themselves and experienced their lives. How did they express and experience (gay) desire? Did they interact with, resist, or simply bypass the conformity and parochialism and the religious orthodoxy of the communities within which they live? The men in this study did come under pressure to marry or to see themselves as less of a man. But they did perceive themselves as men and they had no intention of conforming to the pressure from family and society to marry. Nor did they intend moving to the city to avoid such pressures. This paper asserts that not all gay men in Asia live in cities and that many chose not to forsake their non-urban lives and instead found strategies to live their lives in their own way.

Weiguo Gu, Chi Heng Foundation
PFLAG Organizing in China: Recent Experiences
Concerned about the lack of a support network for the marginalised LGBT people in China such as the Gay movements in the US, the Chi Heng Foundation has started to organise a Chinese version of PFLAG.
Currently the work focuses on two projects: The first is the construction of a PFLAG website in Chinese to be used as a starting point to introduce PFLAG to the general public and get like-minded activists united to work towards the elimination of discrimination and prejudice against gays, lesbians and other sexual minorities. The other is the compilation of a book which consists a of collection of original articles written by accepting family members and friends of lesbians and gays recounting how they came to be accepting. It is hoped that such a book will enlighten the misinformed public and increase their understanding of LGBT people.

Yaqi Guo, Beijing Gender Health Education Institute
The Rapid Development of the LGBT Communities in China
During the 1980s, homosexuals in China were undercover: only personal relationships existed. The emergence of AIDS brought the existence of ‘homosexuality’ to the general public for the first time, but it also misled people to think that homosexuals are filthy, horrifying and contemptible. Due to the neglect shown towards homosexuals, some LGBT volunteers started to work on publicity and behavior-intervention against AIDS in the 1990’s. At the same time, small groups of people providing help to homosexuals also came forth. These were the initial LGBT communities in China. Entering the new millennium, groups of volunteers mushroomed in LGBT communities of many places and organized a variety of activities. In 2003, Beijing Gender Health Education Institute organized a series of activities among homosexuals in Kunming, Nanjing and Beijing to share experiences and to build the foundation for further development of local communities.

Odine de Guzman, University of the Philippines
Between Women: Toward a Political Economy of OFW Sexuality
My research focuses on female ‘overseas Filipino workers’ (OFW) in selected Asian countries and on how the experience of labor migration in an increasingly globalized world has impacted on their lives. By way of a textual analysis of the workers’ cultural productions such as letters and narratives—oral and written—and case studies, I hope to examine the ways by which migrants interrogate, and even subvert, the usually stringent employer and sending- and receiving-states regulations as these impinge on the personal and sexual. Specifically, this presentation is an exploratory analysis of the relationship between neo-liberalism, labor migration and sexuality as these are played out in the everyday experiences of Filipino migrant domestic workers. It examines how this triad bears upon the political economy of an OFW sexuality in light of the growing number of migrant domestic workers who enter into same-sex relationships, possibly as counter-recourses to intimacy and affect given migration regulations such as the mandatory pregnancy tests, the growing incidence of HIV/AIDs among OFWs, if not apparent articulations of latent desires subsumed under socio-cultural dictates in the home country.

Judith Halberstam, University of Southern California
" Comparative Female Masculinities"
Recent anthropological work on "same-sex female desire" has been rightly hesitant about using the term "lesbian" for variations on same sex desire found in different parts of the globe. Where anthropologists have used a Euro-American template to read and study same sex female desires in non-Western contexts, they have run the risk of obliterating alternative sexual economies and taxonomies. My paper will look at comparative renderings of "female masculinity," a non-identitarian model of gender, and will ask whether we can draw any kind of meaningful parallels between "tombois" in Indonesia, onabes in Japan, T's in Taiwan, toms in Thailand, marimachas in Mexico and tomboys in the Philippines, just to give a few examples. My paper is less an account of these different models of gender variance and more of a search for a methodology for studying gender variance in a comparative framework.

Makoto Hibino, Kansai Queer Film Festival
What is Necessary For Us, For Our Queer Movement in Japan?
I have some proposals for creating changes both in the communities and in majority society. 1: Ignoring minorities is not only a problem for heterosexuals. We should think there are lesbians and gays in every classroom. In this same way, we should also think that there are bisexuals in every LG community. But unfortunately the title of the pride in Tokyo is ‘Tokyo Lesbian and Gay Parade’. The problems exist also inside our communities. 2: Some gay activists think homophobia is the greatest concern. However struggling against homophobia is not enough. Homophobia is only part of the binary gender system. Challenging the whole binary gender system is important. We need to remember that sexual orientation, gender identity, gender role/expression and sex are one thing, one part or one side of one thing. 3: The mainstream society, queer communities and ourselves are under the Japanese emperor system Tennou-sei. People want to/tend to think as if all have the same thoughts and that there are not different opinions within the community. People customarily tend to follow the authority, and do not accept their responsibility, because they think they only follow the authority. In the past, this kind of the Tennou-sei led to the invasion of Asian countries. Inside Japan, many queers feel strangled by ‘silk floss’. To say "NO!" clearly and publicly is very difficult inside both queer communities as well as mainstream. Struggling against the Tennou-sei is necessary, in order to create a new society which respects personal rights and supports the diversity of ourselves.
Brian Ho, University of Putra Malaysia
Other People’s Stories
This is a qualitative research project looking at all gay, lesbian, bisexual and transexual clients attending a private psychiatric and psychotherapeutic practice in the heart of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. It looks at the attendees’ demographics, ethnic origins, reasons for seeking professional help, diagnosis and outcome. Similarities and differences in this population compared to the heterosexual counterparts are discussed.

Josephine Ho, National Central University Taiwan
Gender Embodiment: Transgender Body/Subject Formations in Taiwan
‘ A soul trapped in the wrong body’ is a common description employed by trans subjects to explain their unusual condition. This self-characterization includes two important premises: that the body and the soul (or identity, self-image, etc.) are two separate and independent entities whose correct alignment makes up the effect of gender; and that the soul occupies a higher position than the body, to the extent that any mismatch between the two is to be resolved by modifying the body (through cross-dressing, hormonal therapy, SRS, or other procedures) to match the soul. The body-soul imagery may help illuminate the awkward situation of trans subjects by graphically presenting the often contradictory feelings and images that trans subjects have to negotiate as they move through social space. Yet the simple graphic of the body-soul imagery also tends to obscure the manifold differences among trans subjects, differences that may very well affect the credibility of their claim to ‘a soul trapped in the wrong body.’ More importantly, the imagery further conceals ‘the daily effort of doing gender in everyday interactions that all of us engage in.’ The present paper presents the various ways in which Taiwanese transgender subjects have forged out of limited social means and support their own constructions of gender and identity. As the contradictory and disharmonious body/identity of the transgender subjects struggles to assert itself despite existing gender stereotypes and prejudices, their self-reflexive project of doing gender are also constantly ‘trans’-gressing/’trans’-forming existing gender/sexuality categories.

Loretta Ho, University of Western Australia
Engaging the Gaze of the Gay Community in Beijing
My research explores the form of identity being assumed by the emerging same-sex ‘communities’ in Beijing. The research seeks to evaluate whether self-identification as tongxinglian, gay or lesbian, implies an allegiance to ‘shared’ values, ‘group’ identity, and ‘solidarity’. It also examines to what extent Chinese gay/lesbian networks and social groups have been influenced by hegemonic ‘global gayness’, or whether they remain localised and unique in response to local conditions. This paper presents aspects of my post-fieldwork findings of the same-sex community in Beijing from a female, heterosexual gaze, which is mediated by assumptions, or possibly misconceptions, about the Other. I will show how this vantage point, together with the reflected and reflective gaze of the gay community, shapes the narratives of the gays and lesbians that I have communicated with and interviewed. I argue that an appreciation of ways of seeing in the field is central to understanding how epistemology of the same-sex ‘community’ in Beijing is imagined, represented, and constructed in an atmosphere which marginalises and silences their experiences.
Peter Trung Thu Ho, Asian Community AIDS Services, MSM Education and Outreach Program, Toronto, Canada
The Use and Evaluation of irice.org: An Internet HIV Outreach Targeting Asian MSM
The purpose of this presentation is to introduce audiences with 'how to' develop and implement a volunteer-based, on-line HIV education and outreach project. iRice.org, the Internet website was designed to provide information on HIV/AIDS on the issues of social dynamics and isolations, more recreational/educational space for Asian MSM on-line; and to increase positive Asian image on-line. The presenter will also discuss about evaluation and process at the end.
Guo-Juin Hong, Duke University
Theatrics of Cruising: Bath Houses and Movie Houses in Tsai Ming-liang’s Films
This paper looks at gay cruising in films by Taiwan’s internationally famed director, Tsai Ming-liang. I focus on three films, namely, The River (1995), What Time Is It There? (2001), and Goodbye, Dragon Inn, Goodbye (2002), and locate a few significant cinematic moments, hoping to show a peculiar movement of desire in Tsai’s film works. I call it a theatrics of cruising because the intricate stagings of those activities through chance encounters_be it intentional or misunderstood, comic or horrific, consummated or interrupted_are a hide-and-go-seek game that flirts with the film viewers and frustrates their visual participation as much it does the characters in the films. Never in any straightforward manner, this theatrics of cruising encourages a reconfiguration of cinematic space; a space, I will attempt to argue, that effects a different visual economy similar to the Deleuzian notion of deterritorilization and reterritorialization. A re-vision, then, of the cinematic space and its identificatory processes is made possible by such a theatrics at work; at play, too, but perhaps more than a tease.

Yuri Horie, Osaka University
Women’s Activism Against Homophobia: Christian Discourse in the Non-Christian Society of Japan
Japanese society is often described as a ‘tolerant’ society toward lesbians and gays, due in no small part to Christianity’s marginal status and limited cultural influence. Yet, Christian churches in Japan continue to exclude lesbians and gay men, and church members have internalized discriminatory consciousness based on the heterosexism present in Japanese society at large. In this paper, I analyse a case involving the United Church of Christ in Japan (UCCJ/Kyodan), the largest Protestant denomination in Japan. When a seminarian who had come out as a gay man took the examination for becoming a pastor in 1998, the backlash led to the spread of homophobic discourse within the Church. Although in Western churches lesbians and gays working together have constructed resistance movements in reaction to such problems, in the case of UCCJ/Kyodan, heterosexual women and lesbians united in response to the situation. These women recognized the (hetero)sexist roots of this homophobic discourse and, drawing on their history of activism against sexism, were motivated to form a movement to resist it. Gay men, on the other hand, remained silent. In its analysis of this case, this paper will describe (1) the reality of the ‘intolerance’ toward lesbians and gay men in Japan, elucidating that in the current climate that discrimination is concealed rather than non-existent; and (2) potential and limits of women’s activism against homophobia.
Cliff Ip, University College London
How Should Hong Kong Court Rule on the Constitutionality of Gay Sex?
My paper is based on my master dissertation, submitted for MA Human Rights, University College London. It argues Hong Kong (HK) court should strike down statutory provisions which criminalize certain gay sexual acts. It first identifies the recognition of homosexual rights in various supranational and domestic courts, e.g. The European Court on Human Rights and the Canadian Supreme Court. Their arguments are examined. HK should follow these courts in scrutinizing and limiting the conventional morality claim --- the claim that homosexuality is immoral according to conventional or popular beliefs --- and in not deferring too much to the legislative body. It then casts doubt on a general cultural relativist argument, as, for example, advocated by Prof. Joseph Chan. If the last point is wrong, homosexuality may still be compatible with Confucianism, the influential school of thought in Hong Kong, because I) the latter can be “re-interpreted” to protect homosexuals‚ interests and II) other Confucian places take homosexual rights more seriously than HK. If the author is still wrong and Confucian thoughts do balance against gay rights, then a compromise solution which proposes that certain provisions be struck down is also proposed.
Hitoshi Ishida, Meiji Gakuin University
The 3-D Rigid Structure (1990s) and The Flexible Network (1950s): Two Interpretative Frameworks on Marginal Sexualities in Post War Japan
The purpose of this paper is to consider interpretative frameworks on marginal sexualities (‘non-normative sexualities’), directory comparing the Flexible Network Frameworks of the 1950s and the the 3-D Rigid Structure of the 1990s in Japan. During the 1990s, communities of men who love men and feminized men deployed terms derived from Anglophone gay and transgender activist discourse, and began to reflectively differentiate themselves as ‘gay’ and ‘MtF’ (male-to-female transsexuals). One result of the emergence of this new discourse of ‘sexual minorities’ was that various marginal sexualities became fixed in a rigid three-dimensional framework dependent on a combination of three axes (biological sex, gender identity and sexual orientation). Now this framework is hegemonic on discourse on marginal sexualities in Japan today. Compared with this 1990s framework, the 1950s framework was very different indeed, as can be found when analyzing the hentai (perverse) magazines discourses of the time. The hentai magazines tended to treat men who love men and feminized men interchangeably. Significantly, these two categories were often regarded as being representatively related to other perverse sexual desires such as sadism/masochism and pederasty/uranism in ad hoc rules. Therefore personal narratives of perverse sexual desire in this framework were characterized as having a process of bricolage within a flexible network. In this paper I will suggest that these two frameworks of sexuality in postwar Japan represent a change over a period of about 40 years from a flexible network to a rigid structure.
Lorna Quejong Israel, Women & Gender Institute, Miriam College, the Philippines
Inserting Lesbians in Non-Lesbian Spaces: Spectacularisation in Media Coverages of the Pride March
Recently, Filipino lesbians have gained visibility made possible by the LGBTQ community and curiosity on lesbians. This has opened options and drawbacks, which need to be critically scrutinized. Current visibility tend to either render lesbians as spectacles should they assert their self-defined identity as lesbians or to subsume them under hetero-normative claims. Either way, lesbians would find themselves between the conveniences afforded by recognition in hetero-normative regime and the limitations posed by identities. This panel seeks to present the everyday claims or denials that lesbians have to make both from the hetero-normative public & within themselves in order to generate effective, cost-efficient and fun ways of promoting lesbian politics without undermining their integrity.

Marou Izumo, Independent Scholar
Notes from Chanbara Queen: a queer critique of 1950-1960 Japanese cinema
In this presentation I present my work Chanbara Queen (Pandora, 2003) which offers a queer critique of mass produced popular, swashbuckling movies from the Golden Era of Japanese cinema in the 1950s and 1960s. In particular I will focus on the portrayal of drag kings/drag queens in imaginary Edo period settings and gender representations therein. I will also discuss the fanatic consumption of those films by the Japanese public. Films to be discussed include Hanagasa Wakashu (The Young Man in the Flowered Hat, 1958) starring Misora Hibari, the greatest singing star of the post-war period, and Yukinojoo henge (The transformations of Yukinojoo, 1963) featuring the eternal screen beau, Hasegawa Kazuo.

Luke Jacques, Murdoch University
Queering the Culture: Does Gay Discourse Change if We Take Cross-cultural Communication Seriously?
Body Theory has been an area of growth, ambivalence and politics in the last twenty years, yet the graft with ‘Asianness’ remains unstable. Beyond generalized tropes of Orientalism, close textual analysis is required to understand the sexualized context of the non-Western gay male body. My paper works through the multiple readings of gay Thai bodies and the opportunity that this study provides for contemporary Cultural Studies. Through relevant textual analysis, an examination into cultural meanings, readership practices, and appropriation by Western media culture probes the relationship between images of gayness‚ and Thai gay identity. This paper investigates the semiotic construction of queer discourses in both Thai and Western popular images for both the Thai and western reader. Within Thai popular culture the Thai gay body is read differently from a Thai national or Western expatriate perspective. This particular analysis exposes remnants of Western Orientalist discourses that construct the Thai gay‚ male body as a highly sexualised, commodified and exoticised site for Western surveillance and consumption. A critique of how gay is translated, embodied and defined within representations and images in Thai popular culture demonstrates that Thai queer communities resist neo-colonialist discourses by selectively appropriating particular Western gay terminology and identities in order to create distinctly Thai discourses of gayness

Sachin Jain, Mumbai University

“ Anti-sodomy Laws in India: Harassment & Socio-Cultural
Aspects”
This paper delves into the roots of India's anti-sodomy laws full of vague and archaic terminologies. I have discussed social factors like patriarchy, the ebb of socialism and embrace of capitalist ways, satellite television, the internet, a booming economy, over a billion people, a breakdown of the joint family system, urban migration, Bollywood cinema the omnipresence of alternate gender identities like Hijras, Kotis etc. and the tenuous relationship they share with the modern gay movement. The paper enumerates the effects of anti-sodomy laws in India: exploitation, extortion, verbal harassment, the perception of gayism as a fancy western decadence, Recent issues like the peddling of pornography, MMS technologies in mobile phones, the cheap availability of spycams, the advent of adult television in India are discussed. Effects of criminalisation: invisiblisation, misinformation, condoning of and apathy to violence against que