Sex Love And Feminism In The Asia Pacific

This book explores feminism, the women’s movement and gender relations in the Asia Pacific region. Through a comparative analysis of ten countries, both Asian and Western, it examines important issues such as attitudes towards feminism, family relations, sex and same sex sexual relations, abortion rights, nudity and pornography.

‘Sex, love and feminism’ are three aspects of the rapidly changing gender relations that shape young people’s lives in the Asia Pacific region. Much has been written about rapidly changing countries in Asia, most recently China and India. With the global spread of capitalist production and neo-liberal ideologies, the claim that the rest of the world’s women are treading the path to enlightenment and development forged by women in the West has been revived. This book explores that contention through a comparative analysis of the attitudes of young middle class urbanites in ten countries: the USA, Australia, Canada, Japan, Thailand, South Korea, India, Indonesia, China and Vietnam. Drawing on detailed empirical research, the study describes and compares attitudes towards the women’s movement, sexual relations and family arrangements in the countries considered. It explores young peoples’ image of feminists and what they feel the women’s movement has achieved for women and men in their country. The book discusses young people’s attitudes to controversial gender issues such as role reversal, sharing housework, abortion rights, same sex sexual relations, nudity and pornography. Through a comparative analysis of the gender vocabularies by which young people understand gender issues, the book highlights the role of differences in history, culture, economics and political leadership. These influence attitudes to gender relations, the status of women and the political programs of the women’s movement in different countries. Whilst there are striking parallels between countries and even across the whole sample, those similarities do not fall neatly into a simple dichotomy of the ‘west versus the rest’.

This book brings together a group of innovative scholars examining the contemporary issue of effecting gender and sexuality justice in the context of Asia, consonant with engendering a just, equitable and sustainable development for all. These grassroots initiatives are woven through three complementary sections of the book: gender justice in Asia, sexuality justice in Asia, and finding resolutions through conflict. The book foregrounds strategies that aim to call out and challenge existing gender and sexuality injustices with regard to women and the LGBTIQA+ community by: assessing the efficacy of gender mainstreaming policies through micro-credit schemes for women in East Java, Indonesia; proliferating the signifiers of the hijab (veil) by postmodern Malay-Muslim women or ‘Hijabistas’ within the consumerist culture of Malaysia; making visible the injustices of the Syariah legal system for non-Muslim women, and ground-breaking legislation that could potentially recognise same-sex marriages in Thailand; privileging the narratives of gay women diplomats within the highly masculinised field of diplomacy in the Asia-Pacific region; foregrounding the narratives of Filipino gay men, intimate partner violence among young Indonesian Christian young people, masculine-identifying lesbians in Singapore, young LGBT people in rural Vietnam, and a Chinese-Muslim Malaysian female-to-male transgender person; and proposing new ways of becoming an inclusive church through the radical act of befriending persons living with HIV and AIDS in Southeast Asia. This book celebrates diverse and inclusive voices and strategies of gender and sexual agents of change in envisioning and bringing to fruition a just and transformative society for all. It is of interest to students and scholars researching gender and sexuality in areas of development studies, international relations, socio-legal studies, and literary studies.

This book examines the Red Love vogue that swept across the Asia-Pacific in the 1920s and 1930s as part of a worldwide interest in socialism and follows its trails throughout the twentieth century. Encouraging both political and sexual liberation, Red Love was a transnational movement demonstrating the revolutionary potential of love and desire.

In recent years, the slogan "women's rights are human rights" has become a central claim of the of the global women's movement. Human Rights and Gender Politics: Asia-Pacific Perspectives examines the critical issues raised by this embracing and expansion of the human rights discourse by feminists worldwide. This volume challenges the conventional, ungendered and male-centred analysis of the politics of human rights and addresses the future of global feminisms. It is essential reading for all those interested in learning more about human rights and women's rights in the Asia-Pacific region.

This book presents new trends in writing about women in Southeast Asia, applying concepts of power in unusual areas. What really are the impediments to women sharing power? How do Vietnamese ideals of romantic love that effectively subordinate women to men? Frank interviews explode the myth that marital rape does not happen in Indonesia. There are historical and contemporary examples of the liberating influence of new work for women, and the story of how the Indonesian state spread the message of family planning. And delving into the discipline of cross-cultural women's studies itself is a considered perspective on power relations between the Western scholar and the Asian women she is studying.

This book paints a vivid picture of women's active involvement in reshaping intimate and public sexual life in East Asia. In bringing together exciting new feminist research on sexuality from East Asia and making it available to a wider audience, East Asian Sexualities unsettles stereotypes, rectifies lack of awareness and demonstrates that East Asia matters. The chapters address the diversity and variety of everyday sexual lives and sexual politics in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea and Japan. They range from workplace sexual cultures, trans-national sexual relations, the conditions of sex-work and the emergence of new sexual desires, cultures and movements. The contributors highlight the gendered and sexual consequences of globalization and rapid social change. In doing so, they engage with western debates on late modernity while also exploring the contested understandings of modernization and westernization in the East. This is a collection which illuminates the local situations in which women's sexual lives are lived and offers fresh perspectives on global issues.

Through detailed studies, this collection of writings by academics and activists explores the emergence of contemporary lesbian and butch/femme relationships and communities throughout Asia and their location within the context of nationalist struggles, religious fundamentalism, state gender regimes and global queer movements.