Updated programme:

The Contemporary China Centre at the University of Westminster presents a workshop on 

Changing Subjects: Male Sexualities and Masculinities in Asia

Friday 5 November, 2010, Westminster Forum, University of Westminster, 5th floor, 32-38 Wells Street, London, W1T 3UW 

The diverse new male sexual and masculine identities of Asia’s burgeoning economies suggest radical re-formations of the male subject in recent years. The figure of the cool, sleek and fashionable ‘metrosexual’ man, for instance, in his various national incarnations, adorns magazine covers and billboards across Asia’s megacities. His sophisticated, prosperous and charming looks are emblematic of a seemingly more androgynous model of twenty-first century manhood, of ambiguous sexuality, that displaces earlier, more macho versions.  At the same time, the figure of the gay male has emerged in countries across Asia, diffracted in various forms, through social and activist group efforts, gay dating websites, and commercial and cultural venues and events that celebrate queerness. Metrosexual, straight or gay, these figures inflect the assumptions, processes and practices of Asia’s modernities with a range of gendered characteristics that derive from transnational circulations of meaning, often associated with self-interested desires and consumer practices. 

Male sexualities and masculinities in Asia, however, may not be what they appear to be from media images, particularly to the ‘Western’ eye. To many outside Asia, most countries in Asia appear to be, or are assumed to be becoming ‘Westernised’. Yet, ethnographic research shows that men who identify with attributes of transnational, gay, metrosexual and other identities also simultaneously identify with locally and culturally embedded notions of gender that interrupt the neat outlines of discursive renderings. This is not to suggest that these images do not signify change, they do, but the important issue is the kind of change they signify. Change does not require the teleology of modernisation/ Westernisation arguments. Investigation of men’s subjectivities through what they say and do shows that what their performances mean to them can be very different from what the observer thinks. Asia’s male sexualities and masculinities emerge from locally situated as well as globally mobile notions of gender and sexuality.

Moreover, although many men in Asia can undoubtedly now explore a greater range of sexualities, this does not mean that the emerging sexual discourses and practices are necessarily more just or egalitarian. Closer inspection of gendered and sexual discursive depictions and everyday social relations often reveal asymmetric ‘power geometries’ still rooted in widespread assumptions about biomedical causes of masculinity and femininity. Seen in this light, the increased diversity of male sexual expression and practice in Asia has drawn attention away from the ongoing, and many would argue increasing, gender inequity between men and women. During this process, reflecting wider shifts in socio-economic policies and practices, it seems that collective struggles for gender equality in countries in Asia, as elsewhere, have been overtaken by scholarship and activism that foreground group identities coalescing around sexual orientations, practices and experiences (metrosexual, gay etc.). This workshop, then, seeks not only to contribute to understandings of how notions and practices of sexualities and masculinities mutually interact to produce and regulate the sexual, gendered male subjects/subjectivities emerging in contemporary Asia, but also to think beyond them to consider their relational effects on wider configurations of sexuality, gender and power within and across Asian countries and cultures.

MORNING SESSION
10:00–10:10	Welcome—Dr Derek Hird (University of Westminster)
10:10–11:25	Dr Will Schroeder (University of Manchester)
‘For Fun: Affect and Belonging in Contemporary Gay Beijing’
	Discussant: Dr Carolyn Williams		
11:25–11:40	Tea and Coffee Break 
11:40–12:55	Dr Paul Boyce (Institute of Education, University of London)
‘The Object of Attention: Same-sex sexualities in small town India and the contemporary sexual subject’
	Discussant: Dr Akshay Khanna (University of Sussex)		
12:55–13:55	Lunch Break

AFTERNOON SESSION
13:55–15:10	Dr Jonathan Mackintosh (Birkbeck, University of London)
		'Historicising the "Feminisation of Masculinity" in Japan'
	Discussant: TBA
15:10–15:25	Tea and Coffee Break    
15:25–16:40	Dr Derek Hird (University of Westminster)
‘Contesting white-collar norms: Gay metrosexuals and homosocial yingchou in contemporary China’
	Discussant” Professor Henrike Donner (University of Goettingen)
16:40–16:45    Break
16:45–17:30	Summing up and closing discussion—Professor Harriet Evans (University of Westminster)


All welcome. This workshop is free. For enquiries or to reserve a place, please contact

Dr Derek Hird
Email: [log in to unmask]
 
Contemporary China Centre, Department of Modern and Applied Languages
University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, London W1B 2UW
http://www.westminster.ac.uk/asian-studies