“I’m not a lesbian; I’m just a freak”: A Pilot Study of the Experiences of Women in Assumed-Monogamous Other-Sex Unions Seeking Secret Same-Sex Encounters Online,their Negotiation of Sexual Desire,and Meaning-Making of Sexual Identity

This pilot study looked to examine the experiences of women who are “undercover,” the meaning-making of their sexual identity, how they came to negotiate their same-sex sexual desires alongside their primary other-sex unions, and their experience of a secret, compartmentalized life. The study sought to understand their experiences as well as their meaning-making in the course of maintaining a public heterosexual persona while balancing their secret desire for sex with women. The thirty-four women in this study report lifelong incidence of attraction to and encounters with other women as well as men. They are not transitioning toward a lesbian identity nor experiencing fluidity; rather, clandestine encounters are part of an ongoing means to negotiate their opposite-sex marriages. For them, our culture’s limited notions of sexual identity are less than useful. It was important to their self-concept that their sexuality be understood in terms of its intensity and their desire for frequency and diversity of acts. They defined themselves on their own terms and by their sexual personalities and inclination toward what they considered “hypersexuality” or “freakiness.” Despite conventional ideas that women are emotionally driven in their extra-relational affairs and need to “fall in love” to participate in extra-relational sexual activity, all of the women were clear in their desire to limit their association with their same-sex partners to sexual encounters only.     

More Than a Sex Machine: Accomplishing Masculinity Among Chinese Male Sex Workers in the Hong Kong Sex Industry

Situated in the masculinity and deviance literature, this article examines a “deviant” masculinity, that of the male sex worker, and presents the ways men who engage in sex work cope with the job. Based on in-depth interviews of Chinese male sex workers (n = 18) in the Hong Kong sex industry, I argue that the stigma management techniques these men employ are simultaneously gender strategies they use to accomplish masculinity. It is through this process that they negotiate a masculine identity within the hierarchy of masculinities in order to become “respectable” and “responsible” Chinese men.     

Sex Talk: Discourses About Female Bodies in Hong Kong Media

Sex and Chinese culture appear to be at odds with one another. Sex talk, however, has been on constant supply in Hong Kong media in the past decade. Considering that Chinese culture prefers to conceal, rather than reveal, sexual matters, this study probes into the phenomenon which sees the proliferation of sex-related debates and controversies in news media in this predominantly Chinese society. Two cases about photobooks of female models were used to illuminate the dominant discourses regarding female bodies in Hong Kong media. Since 2009, photobooks featuring teenage models in sexy poses have become standard provisions in the annual Hong Kong Book Fair. In 2015, a 6-year old girl participated in the production of a photobook. It soon caught the attention of critics who questioned the sexual connotations of a few pictures. Despite the decision to recall all copies, the incident provoked debates on child pornography and a rare discussion about sexual agency. This study has identified various discourses in mainstream news media and social media. It was found that morality and money are two keywords that best summarize how Hong Kong responds to sex matters, while changing media technologies are opening up space for alternative views.     

The Return of the Native: Globalization and the Adaptive Responses of Transmigrants

The intent of this study is to examine the adaptive responses of Hong Kong transmigrants and their transnational and transcultural practices in terms of their consequent behavioral and emotional patterns. Their transnational practices and relative adaptability can be explained with Robert Merton's (1957) “strain theory.” More specifically, the study aims to identify, describe, and explain the variety of behavioral patterns and modes of emotional manifestations of adaptation of Hong Kong returnees, and to identify their individual and collective strategies of adaptation to help them solve their adjustment and integration problems in their adopted countries.     

Eternal Mothers or Flexible Housewives? Middle-aged Chinese Married Women in Hong Kong

How do Hong Kong Chinese women position themselves in relation to this stigmatized social category of “si-nai” (middle aged-housewives) and the prevailing norms and values regarding women’s roles? The case of middle-aged, married women in Hong Kong provides empirical support for an alternative understanding of the identity of adult woman and helps to problematize conceptualizations of women’s identity as centered on their mother roles. The narratives of these twenty-six women show the fluidity of their roles as mothers (and wives). These roles change with reference to social context, life circumstances, and life course. Many middle-aged women have tried to resist becoming “mad housewives” and have learnt to be “flexible housewives” by actively decentering their role as mothers.     

Xenophobia, ethnic community, and immigrant youths' friendship network formation

Immigrant youth often rebuild their friendships and other social networks after arriving in a new country. The difficulties involved can threaten their psychosocial development. Formation of social networks needs to be understood within the macro sociocultural context that shapes the experience. Nonetheless, the current literature on social network formation rarely captures that context. Knowledge about immigrant youths' social network, for example, is often embedded in assimilation, ethnic identity, and adaptation literature. This paper examines how the sociocultural context enables immigrant youth to rebuild their friendship networks. A critical ethnography was conducted in the northwest region of the United States. Sixteen Taiwanese immigrant youth and their parents (N = 13) participated in the study. Data collection consisted of semi-structured in-depth interviews, a demographic questionnaire, and participant observations. The findings showed that because of limited English proficiency, the youth kept at a distance from American peers to avoid nervousness and embarassment. Further analysis, derived from xenophobia, found that limited English proficiency increases segregation between American peers ("we") and immigrant youth ("the other"). The English as a Second Language program inadvertently perpetuates the immigrants' sense of "otherness" and increases the odds of their becoming targets of discrimination. A protective factor for these youths is living near an ethnic community because the inclusion of coethnics increases new friendship networks. Knowledge about the teen culture in coethnics' countries of origin (China, Hong Kong, or the United States), also influences their selection of friends.     

Return Migrant or Diaspora: An Exploratory Study of New-Generation Chinese–Canadian Youth Working in Hong Kong

The circular movement of migrants between their homelands and adopted countries has problematized the previous linear understanding of return migration. However, the concept of circular migration tends to apply to migrants whose movement is enabled by their extensive pre-migration connections with their homelands. In this paper, we report findings of a study on a group of new-generation Chinese–Canadian youth working in Hong Kong. Although, like many return migrants, this group of young people had economic reasons for moving to Hong Kong (their parents' homeland), they do not position themselves as return migrants. Instead, they have kept a strong Canadian identity by maintaining unique friendship circles and perceiving Canada as a home to which they will one day return. We highlight in this paper some implications of their experiences for transnational migration studies.     

Personal Spiritual Values and Quality of Life: Evidence from Chinese College Students

Values are guiding principles in our life. While some studies found spiritual values to be “healthier,” Sagiv and Schwartz (Eur J Soc Psychol 30:177–198, 2000) showed that people holding non-spiritual values were higher on affective well-being. We examined the predictive power of these two types of values with a longitudinal data set collected from Chinese students mainly in Hong Kong. Structural equation modeling revealed that spiritual values (as well as family income) positively predicted quality of life a year later. Non-spiritual, self-enhancement values, did not show any association. Results suggest that developing spiritual values may promote well-being through enabling individuals to find meaning and purpose in life.     

Age differences in the likelihood of destructive anger responses under different relationship contexts: a comparison of mainland and Hong Kong Chinese

This brief report examined how the likelihood of destructive anger responses varied with age across relationship contexts. Seventy-six older adults and 100 younger adults from Hong Kong and Mainland China reported their responses to anger-eliciting scenarios elicited by a kin, a close or a casual friend. Results indicated that compared with their younger counterparts, older Hong Kong Chinese were less likely to report direct aggression toward kin, but older Mainland Chinese were more likely to do so. Older Hong Kong Chinese were less likely to report malevolent and fractious motives than were younger Chinese across all relationships; Older Mainland Chinese were less likely to do so only in friendship. Findings have implications for conceptualizing age-related emotion regulation across relationships and cultures.     

The impact of AIDS/sex education by schools or family doctors on Hong Kong Chinese adolescents

Despite the rapid increases of HIV and sexually transmitted infections (STIs) in East Asia, the sex-related knowledge among Chinese adolescents is limited and the standard of sex education is both variable and inconsistent in Hong Kong. The aim of this study is to review the overall effectiveness of the school-based or doctor-based sexual health education currently provided for Hong Kong adolescents. In 1999 - 2000, a large survey on youth risk behaviours was carried out among 15 - 18-year-old students from 21 secondary schools. Of the 8,039 questionnaires, 377 students (4.7%) admitted sexual experience. Multiple logistic regression showed that students who had received school AIDS education were found to be less likely to have sexual intercourse in the past 3 months (odds ratio, OR 0.5; 95% confidence interval, CI 0.3 - 0.9) or use drugs or alcohol before the previous intercourse (OR 0.5; 95% CI 0.3 - 0.9). They were twice as likely to discuss emotional (95% CI 1.4 - 4.0) or puberty issues (95% CI 1.1 - 3.0). Although not statistically significant, sex education by family doctors showed a similar pattern. This result provides the strongest available evidence that school-based sex education programmes can modify sexual behaviour, which, in turn, reduces risk among Chinese students.     

Promoting Service Leadership Qualities and Well-Being among University Students: Evaluation Findings in Hong Kong

Service leadership education initiatives have been launched in Hong Kong to meet the emerging demand for service leaders and enhance university students’ well-being through nurturing not only competence but also good character and caring disposition. However, rigorous evaluation work based on validated assessment tools has not been adequately carried out to examine whether student well-being and service leadership qualities would increase after the learning process. Using a one-group pretest-posttest design, this study investigated the effectiveness of a credit-bearing subject entitled “Service Leadership” implemented in one university in Hong Kong. Based on the responses of 114 participants (49.1% boys, Age = 20.21 ± 2.96 years), it was found that students showed improvement in service leadership knowledge, attitude, and behavior after taking the subject. In addition, their life satisfaction and positive youth development attributes as indicators of well-being also significantly increased. Furthermore, the increase in well-being among students was closely associated with their attitudinal and behavioral changes but not knowledge acquisition. The present findings imply that a formal curriculum-based leadership course can be a promising way to promote student service leadership qualities and well-being.

     

Quality of Life of the Hidden Youth in Hong Kong

Hidden youth was a phenomenon which originated in Japan and later spread to Hong Kong. The youth were described as being in a state of social isolation, marginalization, and prone to emotional disturbances. This may imply that they were suffering from a poor quality of life. However, direct contact with the hidden youth found that some of them are satisfied with their lives. The present study aims to investigate the relationship between the hidden youth’s quality of life and their period and level of social withdrawal. A total of 588 of the hidden youth took part in the study. With the use of mean plots in ANOVA, correlation analysis, regression analysis, and mediation analysis, it was found that the longer the period of social withdrawal, the better the quality of life. The positive correlation between the two variables was mediated by positive emotions derived from social support. On the other hand, as the level of social withdrawal increased, the quality of life decreased. The negative association between the two variables was mediated by negative emotions caused by low levels of social support and a high sense of loneliness. These findings suggest that being “hidden” is the preferred lifestyle of young people and it should not be regarded as a problem that undermines their quality of life.     

Click here for HIV status: Shifting templates of sexual negotiation

In the last decade, many aspects of gay social and sexual life have moved online. This article explores how the increasing use of the internet as a way of organizing gay sex is shaping sexual and risk subjectivities. It investigates how online cruising is mediating investments in, and tensions between, different HIV prevention ethics in Sydney, Australia – in particular, those that operationalise HIV status disclosure as a precursor to casual sex, and those that don't. One popular online cruising site, Manhunt.net, is the first socio-sexual context in Australia in which participants are routinely asked to indicate their HIV status for sexual purposes, as a design feature of participation. The article grapples with the implications of this development for socio-sexual community. Different sites install culturally specific HIV prevention ethics, which users negotiate in different ways. Online interfaces also generate particular ‘affective climates’ in the sense that they produce new experiences of connection and isolation and create new practical challenges around self-presentation for participants. Affective climates are technologically mediated, and are co-produced and shared by HIV-negative and HIV-positive individuals, among others. Some online formats may be contributing to a new state of ‘seronormativity’ in gay culture, in which the politics of the ‘template’ or the ‘format’ will become increasingly significant. Participants can also be seen to be engaging in reflexive processes around different styles of participation in this environment and their effects on others, suggesting educational possibilities.     

I crashed the boat and wept: Localizing the “field” in critical geographic practice

Geographers often practice “fieldwork” for research, physically traveling between field and the academy. While critical scholars have contemplated their positionality in the field, what gets overlooked is how academic constructions of their “field” can discount indigenous peoples’ knowledges of “home.” Because academics’ representations of “the field” affirm the subject/object binary, this ontology allows indigenous peoples’ knowledges to be criticized in their emotional expressions of their homelands. In this paper I describe my practices of “field” work to disrupt this ontology—and in so doing, what emerges is my deeply emotional engagement with this “field,” produced through the network of materialities and beings with whom I worked. Network ontologies allow more space for discussing the emotional and affective experiences of a field site, including researcher uncertainty and responsibility. Attending to both conscious and unconscious motives to action is a more rigorous critical practice, and representing emotions can at once benefit research goals (emotional engagements leading to new insights), and lead to new politics of knowledge production and representation: such as opening a space for indigenous peoples to be recognized as legitimate spokespersons about their own beloved landscapes.     

Constructing sacred space under the forces of the market: A study of an ‘upper-floor’ Protestant church in Hong Kong

In Hong Kong, over half of the Protestant churches are located in the upper-floor units in commercial and residential buildings. Because of their physical locations, these churches are sometimes dubbed ‘upper-floor churches’. Unlike those that occupy stand-alone religious buildings or dwell in church-run schools and social service centres, these are often invisible in the landscapes of the city. Through analysis of a case study, this paper aims to explore the spatial practices that a Protestant community has adopted in acquiring, representing, and ritualising a business unit in a residential high-rise for building up their church. Our analysis of the case study shows that in a metropolis like contemporary Hong Kong, the construction of sacred space is full of tensions between utilitarian calculations and concerns of human relations and religious values. While the congregation had been very creative in transforming a commercial unit into a religious site, it did not show much awareness of the oppressive powers of the capitalist market and had a strong tendency to represent its spatial practices as commodities for consumption.     

Partnerschaften von Sexualstraftätern

Intimate relationships of convicted and released sexual offenders have hardly been the topic of systematic research. This article presents a systematic review of this topic. Only nine articles were found in a systematic literature search which investigated this topic with qualitative and quantitative methods. These studies were dominated by the determination of multiple deficits in the sexual offenders, such as intimacy and empathy problems, high frequencies of conflicts and aggression in the relationships as well as social isolation of the female partners. The female partners of sexual offenders also showed a high tendency to denial and minimization similar to the offenders and blamed the victims for the offence. The women seemed to like their status as a “martyred wife” and gave their husbands a “second chance in life”. However, the currently available studies have barely investigated the “sexual offender couple” and the dynamics of their relationship to elucidate stabilizing factors. In a pilot study on the topic of “partnerships of sexual offenders” 17 “sex offender couples” were questioned by interviews and questionnaires to collate the dynamics of the partnership, which was published in the Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy. In the quantitative results it was found that the female partners of sex offenders predominantly demonstrated an insecure preoccupied attachment style and this influence on the relationship stability is discussed. Further studies are needed in this field of research to gain detailed data of “sex offender couples” for relapse prevention and therapeutic implications.     

The influence of Confucianism: a narrative study of Hong Kong teachers’ understanding and practices of school guidance and counselling

School guidance seeks to promote the whole person growth of students. It is regarded as an integral part of an educational programme. In Hong Kong secondary schools, a team of teachers are responsible for school guidance. This article examines how guidance teachers made sense of their caring work in general and specifically the counselling services they offered to students. With the use of a narrative analysis and personal experience methods, the study explores the experience of guidance teachers in counselling. Twelve in-service teachers who had enrolled in the Postgraduate Diploma in Education programme at the Hong Kong Institute of Education were interviewed. The influence of the Chinese philosophy of Confucianism, emerging as a theme from the data, was prominent, as its key principles were incorporated into the teachers’ personal systems of counselling. The findings illuminate the influence of Chinese culture in Hong Kong schools. Implications for the promotion of culturally responsive approaches to counselling and culturally competent practices for helping are discussed.     

On listening to “The Scarlet Tide” (by T Bone Burnett and Elvis Costello) from Cold Mountain: a movie song and its afterlife

This article examines how the emerging concept of affective space can be applied to movie soundtracks, with particular reference to “The Scarlet Tide” written by T Bone Burnett and Elvis Costello for the film Cold Mountain (dir. Anthony Minghella 2003) and the implications this has for the place of religion in film culture. The article explores how affective space works with the experience of individual listeners and the wider social context. Both affective expressions can shape how this track is received and integrated into a process of meaning making. The article concludes with an assessment of some implications that this discussion has for understanding the social nature of music, religion, and spirituality.