ABSTRACT
Much of the literature concerning the reproduction and transformation of kinship, marriage, and household organization in modern Asian societies focuses on cross-cultural variation in hegemonic expressions of gender and sexuality that are commonly referred to as “heteronormative.” This term is typically intended to emphasize the heterosexual relations and desires that are normative in the sense that they are: (a) enjoined upon most (if not all) members of society by means of institutionalized moral expectations that are internalized (more often than not unconsciously) as sentiments, dispositions, and embodied practices through socialization processes and the structures and lived experiences of everyday life; and (b) statistically prevalent throughout society. Gender and sexual diversity does of course exist within – and not merely across – Asian societies, including societies characterized by one or another form of heteronormativity. This chapter engages that diversity, focusing mainly on same-sex relations, transgender practices and identities, and the ways these and attendant phenomena have been informed by different kinds of globalizing forces.We shall see that there is considerable variation in Asian societies with respect to the conceptualization of non-normative expressions of gender and sexuality, that the relative status (prestige/stigma) accorded individuals involved in same-sex relations and/or transgender practice varies a great deal from one society to the next, and, more generally, that in some societies, sentiments and dispositions bearing on gender and sexuality are relatively pluralistic, whereas in others this is decidedly not the case.More broadly, we shall see that the emergence of new (“modern”) subject positions and sex/gender subjectivities in many parts of Asia has involved processes that appropriate global terms, styles, and overall identities but usually do so in ways that are heavily informed by Indigenous categories and their interrelations, key features of which continue to serve as templates for the localization of things global with respect to form and content alike. Especially in recent years, scholars have spilled much ink on the pros and cons of the vari-
ous terminologies used to designate institutionalized roles and identities that involve one or another type of departure from gender normativity. Along with other scholars, I use the umbrella term “transgender” for this purpose, even though the term is employed by different scholars in different ways. Concerning the prefix “trans,” Aihwa Ong (1999: 4) writes that it “denotes both moving through space or across lines, as well as changing the nature of something” – as in transformation or transfiguration – or going beyond it – as in transcend – be it
a bounded entity or process, or a relationship between two or more phenomena. As for “transgender,” RikiWilchins observes that it “began its life as a name for those folks who identified neither as crossdressers nor as transsexuals – primarily people who changed their gender but not their genitals … The term gradually mutated to include any genderqueers who didn’t actually change their genitals: [such as] crossdressers … stone butches, and hermaphrodites … [and] people began using it to refer to transsexuals [some of whom do change their genitals] as well” (1997: 15-16). Evelyn Blackwood’s (2005) conceptualization of transgender builds onWilchins’ definition, although she also employs the term transgendered in its broadest sense to designate anyone who is “transgressively gendered,” to borrow Kate Bornstein’s (1995: 134-135) phrase. Many scholars underscore that in someWestern contexts these umbrella terms have certain
meanings and connotations that are of questionable relevance elsewhere. Such meanings and connotations include the empirically erroneous idea that all variants of transgendering necessarily entail same-sex relations, and vice versa. They also include the equally problematic notion that behavioral transgressions, even in the straightforward definitional sense of practices that transcend or cross boundaries, are typically stigmatized. More generally, even cautious and qualified usages of terms such as “transgender” have their limitations, which is why some scholars prefer to avoid them altogether. Towle and Morgan (2002), for example, contend that “transgender” is a trendy signifier that is too encompassing to allow for the kinds of fine-grain distinctions called for in particular ethnographic and historical contexts, and that its utilization inWestern writings (especially in semi-popular accounts) is often heavily freighted with nostalgia for a romanticized past, exemplified by contemporary non-Western Others and their forebears, that may have never existed. Arguably more relevant is that the last two to three decades have seen a dizzying succession of terminologies utilized in scholarly writings dealing with what Manalansan (2003) glosses as “gender insubordinate subjects,” and that so too in all likelihood will the next few. A final set of introductory remarks has to do with the term “pluralism.” I use this term to
refer to social fields, cultural domains, and more encompassing systems in which two or more principles, categories, groups, sources of authority, or ways of being in the world are not only present, tolerated, and accommodated, but also accorded legitimacy in Max Weber’s sense. Legitimacy – however much contested and in flux for reasons delineated by Antonio Gramsci – is thus a sine qua non for pluralism, which means by definition that pluralism is a feature of fields, domains, and systems in which diversity is ascribed legitimacy, and, conversely, that diversity without legitimacy is not pluralism. Pluralism in gendered fields or domains, here abbreviated as “gender pluralism,” includes
pluralistic sensibilities and dispositions regarding bodily practices (adornment, dress, mannerisms) and embodied desires, as well as social roles, sexual relationships, and overall ways of being that bear on or are otherwise linked with local conceptions of femininity, masculinity, androgyny, intersexuality (hermaphroditism), etc. Particularly in gendered fields and domains, pluralism transcends and must be distinguished from dualism inasmuch as more than two principles, categories, groups, etc. are usually at stake and accorded legitimacy (e.g. not simply principles constituting categories of heteronormative female-bodied individuals and their male-bodied counterparts). By this definition, sexual pluralism, premised minimally on a concept of relatively “benign sexual variation” (Rubin 1984: 283), is included under the more encompassing rubric of gender pluralism.
