3 - Generational masculinities: two generations of Chinese gay men in Hong Kong

Summary

Introduction

Hong Kong has experienced enormous transformation in the past few decades: from a British colony to a special administrative region of China, from an industrial society to an international financial centre, from extreme poverty and working-class dominance to affluence and an expanded middle class, and from deprivation to adequate social service provision. What is the dominant form of masculinity, and how has it changed over time in parallel with such socioeconomic and political transformation? How do Hong Kong gay men negotiate with that dominant form and gay masculinity? What does it mean to be a Chinese man or a Chinese gay man? Was it more difficult to be gay in the past than it is today? This chapter attempts to answer some of these questions by examining two distinct generations of Hong Kong gay men. In so doing, it bridges the gap between masculinity studies and generational sexuality studies. There is a large body of literature on masculinity but little is known about generational masculinities, and few studies in this area focus on heterosexual men (for example, Inhorn and Wentzell, 2011; Català et al, 2012; Hearn et al, 2012). Similarly, there is a burgeoning literature on generational studies (for example, Strauss and Howe, 1991; Inglehart, 1997; Glass, 2006) and generational sexuality studies are emerging (Plummer, 2010), but few studies in these areas focus on generational masculinities. This chapter seeks a dialogue between these two bodies of literature. It examines the cross-generational continuity and change in masculinity in a non-Western locale to uncover the interplay between the personal and the social, the local and the global to inform a broader international understanding of masculinity. More specifically, it examines continuity and change for men with a marginalised (sexual) identity negotiating the male role in Hong Kong over time by comparing and contrasting two generations of gay men using a life course approach: those born before the 1950s and those born after 1990. Both generations have had to accomplish the ideals of Chinese masculinity – breadwinner masculinity centred around the family in the past and neoliberal entrepreneurial masculinity centred around education, work and family at present – of which responsibility and respectability are two key dimensions.