‘Queering pornography’: situating lesbian identity and sexuality in the pornoscape and sexual-scape of Hong Kong

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article intends to start a dialogue between the now globalized LGBT identity labels originated from Euro-American queer identity politics and the local experience of Hong Kong lesbians. In a three-year ethnographic research project conducted in Hong Kong, I found discrepancy between popular discourses on queer identity formation and the experience of Hong Kong consumers. Rather than relying on ‘queer pornography’ as the major point of reference and initiation, my lesbian-identified informants consumed mainstream pornographic videos depicting heterosexual intercourse presumably made for a predominately heterosexual male audience. This article examines what affects their choice(s) of pornography, to shed light on the complexity and agency of these porn-viewing lesbian subjects by not only situating them within the realm of ‘queer porn’ and globalized LGBT culture, but also teasing out the contextual limitations that gave birth to the specific form of lesbianism in the city. This enables insights into the ‘conditions of possibility for the appearance of these practices’ in the East Asian context – that is, how do these informants learn, understand, and interpret themselves as sexual beings, within the sexual culture of Hong Kong.