Of longing and waiting: An inter-Asia approach to love and intimacy among older lesbians and bisexual women

Introduction

We crossed the road to Gin Mama’s flat with her lesbian daughter, 59-year-old Gin after having a sumptuous meal of sashimi, fried rice noodles, clam soup and Chinese cabbage. Gin Mama, wearing a men’s dress shirt tucked in neatly into her trousers, with her left hand holding onto the handrail and climbed up the dimly lit steep stairway. Gin held her arm on the right side, asking us to take our time and watch our steps. We went inside the flat, took off our shoes, pulled up rattan armchairs and wooden stools together to form a circle in the living room. Gin offered us tea and we sat down to begin our interview.

This study attempts to broaden research on older lesbians and bisexual women through ethnographic interviews and participant observation conducted in Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan. Rather than only focusing on identity formations, experiences of discrimination or healthcare needs, I am writing, recalling narrative accounts, analysing words and meanings through a series of questions aiming at complicating cultural notions of love, romance and intimacies, that were brought up within interstices of connected histories, gender roles and marginalized sexual subjectivities. This paper first asks a question albeit simple in its wording, what defines love and intimacy for Chinese women who were born from the early 1930s to the late 1950s? How do expressions of masculinity affect the way same-sex intimacies are formed in previous generations? What are the inter-Asian references where gender and sexuality meet, intersect and influence each other in the cultural imagination and eventual materialization of women’s lesbian desires (Iwabuchi, 2013)?

In understanding same-sex intimacies formed by and between older women, I find it critical to first do away with the usual suspects in defining, affirming and substantiating female same-sex desires. By shedding limitations of contemporary discourse on sexual identities, the paradigm of understanding same-sex desires and intimacies among women expands and fills in the gap in literature on older and elderly lesbians’ sexualities. As an emerging field, gay and lesbian gerontology tends to focus on clinical and social issues surrounding ageing and ageing bodies. In an extensive literature review spanning 25 years, Fredriksen-Goldsen and Muraco highlight earlier research that focuses on giving voice to older lesbians and gay men as ‘navigating a stigmatized identity through crisis competence’ (Fredriksen-Goldsen and Muraco, 2010: 402). Later research speaks to evolving lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) identity-driven social movements and the role that sexual identities play in the life experiences of older LGBT adults.

Current studies on LGBT-specific health needs and services, social support networks and families tend to gain more traction in influencing policy initiatives in countries with LGBT approaching mainstream visibility. But research remains limited in geographical span and in its scope. Bisexual men and women and transgender people are understudied in ageing populations. There is a lack of empirical data about older LGBT persons in societies where same-sex relationships or same-sex sexualities do not attain social or legal recognition. As a result, it is difficult to trace and locate older LGBT persons among community-based organizations in health and social services serving elderly communities.

Limited research exists on the lives of older lesbians and gay men in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore. As early as in 2001, Chao’s anthropological research on a Taiwanese community of older Ts (tomboys) and Pos (femmes) sheds light on sex and intimacy, queer kinship and caregiving (Chao, 2001, 2008, 2017). Kong’s Gay and Grey study of 14 Hong Kong gay men aged 60 and above investigates notions of coming out, families, ageing bodies, erotic and social spaces (Kong, 2012, 2019). On the performativity of tombois in West Sumatra, Indonesia, Blackwood illustrates how the tomboi identity is ‘a bricolage’ of local, national and transnational cultural forces (Blackwood, 1999: 199). Sinnott (2004) reminds us that gender and cultural differences are more significant issues for Thailand’s toms and dees instead of sexual identification.

For this paper, I will first outline the methodology used for this study. Based on my ethnographic data, I will elaborate on the moments of longing and waiting as redefining modern notions of love and intimacy across time and spatial dimensions. Then I will bring up a methodological episode where inter-Asian referencing intersects with Chinese modernities to illustrate how gender and sexuality meet, intersect and influence each other in the cultural imagination and eventual materialization of women’s same-sex desires (Iwabuchi, 2013). The last section will examine the politics of butchness as protection and as a form of politeness. Being butch runs as a continuous theme throughout this article. I contend that older Chinese lesbian and bisexual sexualities in three Asian societies are linked through multiple understandings of Chinese modernities and its implications for social institutions such as work, marriage and family in everyday life.

Based on ethnographic interviews and participant observation with Chinese women who were born from the late 1930s to the late 1950s in Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan, I investigate how same-sex desires and practices were actualized within a historically contingent and culturally influenced understanding of gender roles within a social order that is often conflictual and contradictory. The lack of a clearly defined sexual identity and an absence of a language to name oneself has prompted some to stay private and others to be tactful. A revisionist understanding of women’s same-sex intimacies remain critical if not consequential to one’s exploration of same-sex desires and eventual engagement in lesbian relationships.

A methodological note

Recruitment of informants was extremely challenging for this study. Visibility of older lesbians and bisexual women in media representations and LGBT rights-based Pride events is scarce. Initial criteria for the study were to target women with same-sex romantic relationships, aged 60 or above, who have lived in Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan for an extended length of time. Although I did not intend to limit my recruitment to women of a certain cohort, those who responded to participate in this study ended up being born from the early 1930s to the late 1950s. The study aimed to recruit informants with diverse backgrounds, including class, race/ethnicity, level of education, level of income, immigrant generation, health and family status. Two research collaborators signed up to be part of this project in the early stages of the project. One collaborator is well published on issues of identity, families and motherhood concerning Singaporean lesbians. ¹ Another collaborator is an expert on the everyday lives of older and elderly Ts and Pos in Taiwan. ² From 2016 to 2018, I primarily relied on a non-probability snowball sampling method to solicit potential informants through community gatekeepers, LGBT organizations, social media platforms and personal networks. My previous studies with Hong Kong lesbian and bisexual women’s communities has allowed me to gain sufficient trust and rapport for gatekeepers to refer informants for this study. In Taiwan, I have solicited the assistance of Tongzhi Hotline Association to assist with recruitment and interviewing informants due to my inability to speak the local Hokkien/Min-nan language. Three informants are currently living in the city of Taipei. One informant lives in the city of Tainan while another informant resides in Kaohsiung. In Singapore, I relied on my research collaborator to organize meetings with local individuals who might have leads to how to approach older lesbians and bisexual women.

I have chosen to collect data in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore in an attempt to investigate how connected histories, Asian Tiger economies and common Confucian values affect the way older lesbians and bisexual women form sexual and romantic relations within a wider and comparative societal context of family, peers and the public. Global flows of information, people, culture and capital are increasing. Historical migratory patterns within Asia and across continents have continued for centuries, with new cultural understandings of intimacy being introduced, resisted, co-opted or localized. There is a need to establish inter-Asian referencing in knowledge production (Iwabuchi, 2013; Roy and Ong, 2011). Iwabuchi argues that inter-Asian referencing, in terms of being attendant to academic scholarship, data collection and analysis in neighbouring Asian countries, is key to generating ‘innovative knowledge production’ (2014: 47).

Being based in Hong Kong, I first immersed myself in community events and private gatherings with the hope of presenting my research project to lesbian and gay communities, connecting with interested individuals and stakeholders. I made three visits to Singapore and Taiwan each. I took an approach of ‘living in the community, taking part in usual and unusual activities’ with the purpose of collecting data in a systematic way for research (Dewalt and Dewalt, 2002: 4). In the end, I had numerous extensive informal conversations with women who fit into the research criteria but very few agreed to participate in formal in-depth interviews. Signing a consent form appeared to be foreign and audiotaping of an interview ascertained to be daunting. Written notes and casual chats were more acceptable. For this article, I draw on 12 formal interviews in Hong Kong, five in Taiwan and five in Singapore, in additional to participant observation. Rather than aiming for any form of generalization or claim of representation, I observe how three separate but interconnected Asian societies have an impact on shaping the social conditions of a small sample of older Chinese women with same-sex desires who were born from the late 1930s to the late 1950s in Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan.

Of longing and waiting

Time is often mentioned by informants as an element to measure when to come out, if ever, to families, friends and colleagues. Informants recounted stories of long waits relating to fear of being found out as a woman with same-sex desires. Time is hence used as a qualifier for rejecting or establishing intimacy. Some alluded to their own internalized fear being facilitated, manifested and dissipated through a process of waiting. The notion of waiting is often closely associated with feelings of anticipation, anxiety and at its worst, fear. Informants rarely mentioned the term ‘homophobia’ in this study unless they were familiar with the discourse of LGBT rights. Most informants mentioned fear of being known for their sexual feelings towards other women at certain points in their lives. Kehoe’s 1984 study of American lesbians over the age of 60 has shown that most lesbians were ‘deeply closeted’ and remained so for most of their lives (Kehoe, 1989: 21). Even when they had seen more lesbian and gay visibility as they aged, they have chosen ‘to persist in the same dissimulations out of habit’ (Kehoe, 1989: 23).

Gin Mama’s narrative at the beginning of this essay alerts me to historically contextualize, to redefine and to broaden contemporary notions of love and intimacy. Having lived in one neighbourhood north of Taipei during formative years of her youth and adulthood, Gin Mama emphasized her locale and the social networks that she formed as integral to her romantic relationships. She referred to her group of friends as ‘the gang of thirteen’. They had known each other since the age of 17 and remained close to each other until their early thirties when some of them moved away, married or had children. Gin Mama herself married at the age of 24 years and still remained as part of the group until she left for Japan to work in her thirties. She did not return until 12 years later, having left her daughter Gin to be solely responsible for her younger sons. She described the group fondly as a group of ‘hooligans’ who worked in the day and gathered at night to ‘fight for their turf and girlfriends’. The group was characterized by their androgynous clothing and their ‘notorious clout’ in the neighbourhood. I asked Gin Mama about her romantic relationships and she gave snippets of her letter-writing practice, ‘I have always written letters. Like having penpals in every place, in Kaohsiung, in Taichung. I wrote them letters usually after meeting the girl only once. So I had a girlfriend in each place!’ The farther physical distances between places have encouraged the practice of writing letters. Now in her eighties, Gin Mama viewed heterosexual marriage as part and parcel of one’s life. She further elaborated, ‘It’s good for my girlfriends to be married. They are busy. I am busy. We get together when we can’.

Our visit at Gin Mama’s flat was not restricted to having only Gin Mama as an informant. There were five of us present at the time of the interview, Gin Mama, Gin, myself as the researcher, Amy as the Hokkien/Min-nan translator and Yi-Jun as the interview transcriber. Gin also identifies as a nutongzhi. ³ We were able to approach her mother for an interview because of her bridging efforts and her belief in having her mother’s story told. The interview episode was multi-lingual with layers of linguistic and cultural translations of specific colloquial terms under particular historical contexts. One of the most surprising, rich and at moments, tense interactions were often caught between the daughter–mother’s conversations.

Gin: If I ask you to choose between Auntie Lui at the temple or the “liar” who lives at Tianmu or Auntie Ah Fa, who would you choose?

Gin Mama: I’ll choose Auntie Lui of course.

Gin: Fine, at least you have sense. Finally!

She turned to me and explained,

Auntie Lui waited for my ma for three years. She told my ma that she would not get married if my ma came back from Japan and live with her. Well, my ma did not and Auntie Lui ended up getting married. You know, she gave my ma money to spend when she travelled to Mainland China more than a decade ago. They have coffee together once in a while. Auntie Lui is a really good woman!

Gin Mama’s story is full of longing and waiting in relation to her fulfilment of sexual desires, close intimacy and longtime companionship. The duty to wait goes both ways. Love was measured by extended lengths of absence. Years of waiting were expected and commonplace in her social world as letter-writing is the only accessible form of communication across distances. Gin Mama performed her traditional gender role as a married woman, a wife and a mother, simultaneously had same-sex relationships while donning an ultra-masculine appearance. Gin Mama can be seen as both deviant and conventional at the same time.

Gin Mama grew up in the last stage of Japanese colonial administration and she also travelled to work in Japan for 12 years. ⁴ The impact of those 12 years on her sexual life was minimized. Unlike travel literature on sexual experimentation and the liberation of women, Gin Mama appeared to have most of her sexual life immortalized in her young adulthood in Taiwan. She never dated after she returned to Taiwan and has only kept in contact with old friends among whom some of them are her former girlfriends from the time before she left for Japan. Although she only meets up with these old friends or former girlfriends infrequently, she appears content with minimal contact. Rather, she challenged my presumption of keeping relationships alive through frequent contact. She reminded me of ‘the longing and the waiting’ that kept romance flourishing and ‘in waiting’ is where intimacies can be ‘properly admired’. Curious about her position on romance and intimacies, I asked Gin Mama for clarification. The idea of intimacies being ‘properly admired’ is explained by her perception of appropriate courtship behaviour for a ‘T’ in Taipei in the 1960s. ⁵ Earlier ethnographies on butch lesbians and masculine-identified women have clearly illustrated the intricate embodiments of butch masculinity where notions of caregiving, nurturing, assertiveness, narcissism and suffering can exist contradictorily and simultaneously within the social construction of butch identities. For Gin Mama, same-sex intimacies are only ruled as desired when a process of longing and waiting is in order.

Early marriage was also a common theme among the informants. Most informants mentioned their marriages briefly, as if mentioning their former husbands would devalue their same-sex desires. Some informants talked about their partners being married. Gin, in reflecting upon one of her major relationships, mentioned that ‘it is for her own good that my ex got married (to a man)’. She continued,

I have never thought that two women can be together for life. I have never heard of two women being with each other for life! If she doesn’t get married to a man, how will others see her? How can she continue to live? I wanted her to get married. I wanted her to be truly happy, to have a good life, to have less stress. We didn’t contact each other after she got married. But after some years have passed, I was able to establish relations with her son. She has a daughter and a son.

Gin’s particular view of getting married to a man as a betterment of her ex-girlfriend’s welfare might have been perceived as settling for the situation. Yet it is out of Gin’s duty to care for her former girlfriend beyond their relationship and in return, a justification made by Gin that no two women could have stayed together for long in those days. Chao’s extensive studies of a group of older Ts and Pos included the notion of care as ethics. Here, I see Gin’s framing of care as extending Chao’s analysis to include not reciprocity of care through friendships and relationships between women, but rather, an act of self-preservation that is justified through letting go of one’s desire to be together. Here, a higher order takes precedence over sexual desire. Gin’s specific understanding of letting go and justification of normality for her then girlfriend is to attain life ‘as normal as possible’ (Yau, 2010: 3). The next section turns to an inter-Asian methodological account that demonstrates the intersections of Chinese modernities and masculinities.

Conjuring up Hong Kong

In Singapore, it was exceedingly arduous to locate informants for this study. ⁶ Unlike Hong Kong and Taiwan, Singapore is the only research site in which homosexuality is still illegal (Yue and Leung, 2015). Legislation in Taiwan protects the rights of LGBT in the workplace and in schools (Sanders, 2015). Same-sex marriage was also legalized in 2018. Under British law, homosexuality was a crime of buggery until 1990 in Hong Kong (Sanders, 2015). Still in terms of LGBT visibility, all three sites have emerged as queer Asian cities, with a particular nod towards Taipei as the representative city of Taiwan (Yue and Leung, 2015). Taipei hosts the region’s largest annual Pride parades with attendance often exceeding tens of thousands (Wen, 2014). In 2014, Singapore’s Pink Dot pride event attracted 26,000 participants (Aw, 2014). Whereas Hong Kong’s parallel event attracted around 15,000 in 2015 (Grundy, 2015).

A 60-year-old working-class Singaporean informant, Joey, reminisced about her travels and work experiences across Asia. She was proud of her adventures in both love and work,

I fooled around and have had less than 100 but more than 50 girlfriends, including one-night stands. For those relationships that lasted 1.5 years or longer, there were about ten relationships or so. I consider myself as having four good wives. They are still all good friends with me. I can call them up anytime and chat.

As Joey spoke loudly in a public space where the interview took place, friends dropped by and patted her on the shoulder while some giggled when she acknowledged their presence. Masculine in appearance, Joey was exuberant about her ability to attract attention in public. She spoke candidly about her passions in life, ‘sex and motorcycles’ along with working in precarious jobs that required ‘a certain degree of fierceness’. She worked as a driver, a trader, a hostess, a bartender and a manager in karaoke bars and nightclubs in Hong Kong, Japan and Singapore. Same-sex romantic relationships with co-workers were commonplace. Even though she has a daughter from a short-lived relationship with a man, Joey denied that she was in love with him. Rather, she was adamant about ‘falling in love with the Kawasaki motorbike’ that he had.

Throughout the interview, Joey repeatedly proclaimed, ‘Of all places, I like Hong Kong the most’. This act of proclamation happened at unlikely moments, as if she suddenly got caught up with my social location as a Hongkonger. I asked her why and she explained, ‘Hong Kong was new. It’s a fast place with fast people. Messy but fierce’. Then, we would continue our interview until another moment sprang up, another proclamation made. Counting back the years, Joey worked in colonial Hong Kong during mid-1970s. The city was on the brink of bourgeoning capitalism and a developing local identity that celebrated cultural hybridity. Cosmopolitanism was on the rise along with a new form of Chinese modernity that has differentiated Hong Kong culture from that of its neighbours of Taiwan and Singapore. In studying the rise of public culture in these three sites, Chun argues that different compositions of racial and ethnic origins resulted in varying relations where ‘nationalism, colonialism and market capitalism interact’ (Chun, 2013: 48). As the colonial administration worked to downplay the significance of Chinese nationalistic forces at play, ‘a de-politicization of public culture’ and a de-nationalized cultural space allowed for the emergence ‘of some kind of transnational, intercultural logic’ in Hong Kong culture (Chun, 2013: 48).

Drawing upon Leo Ou-Fan Lee’s (1999) comparative analysis of pre-World War Two Shanghai and post-war Hong Kong’s rise of urbanity, Chun summarizes the geopolitical location of Hong Kong aptly as

the free market port (that ushered in a modern worlds system driven primarily by utilitarian imperatives) established a depoliticized vacuum (vis-à-vis competing Chinese nationalisms) that facilitated (if not actively promoted) the absorption of a foreign (non-indigenous) modernity) that likewise became the basis of its cosmopolitan culture. (Chun, 2013: 63)

In describing a past Hong Kong as a place that is contradictory in its nature, ‘new’, ‘messy but fierce’, is naming modernity as if modernity is what it is, with obvious forces at play. One can interpret the messiness as an absorption of foreign cultural elements that feeds what Chun puts, ‘a depoliticized vacuum’, or a description of a city that is developing its indigeneity in relation to a form of British colonialism that is different from that in Singapore.

In Joey’s bringing up of Hong Kong in her lived experience as the best place to work and stay momentarily, in her cultural imagination of the city’s offerings in the past and in her current repetitive conjuring of the place in the presence of a researcher from Hong Kong, she engages in a self-conscious shift to assessing ‘Chinese modernities’ (Martin and Heinrich, 2006: 117). Martin and Heinrich call us to heed attention to ‘a plurality of “Chinese modernities”’ where ‘various versions of Chinese-language-based culture not only grow out of different modern histories, they record distinct experiences of colonialism, and they bear differential relations to territorial and political “Chineseness” and to other (Soviet, European, Japanese, American) formations of modernity’ (Martin and Heinrich, 2006: 117). The conjuring of Hong Kong from a Singapore-based subject contains messages that at first glance, appears to build affinity across the table at the hawker centre yet on a deeper level, is a calling up of comparative modernities that possess a relation to British colonialism. By proclaiming her distinct liking for a place both near to and far from her lived experience, Joey immediately recalls the travels she made in her early days, working in bars and nightclubs where both female co-workers and male clientele came from different yet interconnected parts of Asia. As Chinese modernities reflect each other in Joey’s account, we are reminded of her sexual adventures as short-lived and as varied, pointing to both living in precarity and in fluidity.

Joey’s masculinity is expressed through the telling of her brazen adventures and the manner in she narrated the stories to us in public. Throughout the interview, she stressed her ‘freedom to move’ and ‘to pick up and go’. Similar to Gin Mama, their increased level of mobility was often first seen as irresponsible to family members who were left behind. It can also be perceived as characteristic of ‘tom masculinity’ (Sinnott, 2004: 146). It is necessary to consider the complex processes in becoming butch and the cultural environment enabling the formation of a butch identity.

Butchness as a form of protection and politeness

Ethnographies of lesbians or women with same-sex desires have often alluded to the politics and performances of butch–femme gender roles in everyday life (Chao, 2008; Davis and Kennedy, 1994). A slight departure from earlier research on tom–dee identities and relationships, Sinnott (2012) adopts an inter-Asian lens to study Korean pop influence on the emergence of new sex/gender categories for young queer Thai women’s expressions of soft masculinities and their impact on romantic relationships. Butch–femme gender roles are analytical and aesthetic categories for use in comprehending the formation of lesbian communities and sexual subjectivities. While it is common to perceive butch–femme relations as integral to the development of lesbian histories, it is worthwhile to revisit the intricate reasons for particular forms of embodiment and gender expressions.

Being and becoming masculine for women with same-sex desires are often associated with raising lesbian visibility and expressing defiance of otherwise conventional gender roles. As 65-year-old informant, Ah Fun described, ‘It is also about protecting myself and protecting others’. Having grown up in the squatter area of Diamond Hill, Ah Fun began working as a child labourer at the age of 11,

My family sent me to the factory to make candles. I usually go to school in the mornings. It’s actually just a make-shift school. You know, not a real school, when I come to think of it nowadays. It’s a room on top of what we would call an illegal structure now (Laughter). Run by a Buddhist nun … In the afternoons from two to six-thirty, I worked at the factory. I made enough money for my family and bought snacks for myself and my friends. I felt so proud of myself. I took care of others! … This idea of taking care of others came from my upbringing. I took it upon myself to take care of my lovers.

When I probed further into what she meant by taking it upon herself, Ah Fun elaborated,

I have always planned ahead in my life. I took every relationship I had with each of my girlfriends very seriously. I have always written a will for each relationship and changed its contents from one girlfriend to another (Laughter). You know, I think it’s my role to protect women as a woman myself.

In our later conversations, Ah Fun explained that she has always looked up to role models that exemplified a balance of both Chinese masculine and feminine traits as in Cantonese opera star, Yam Kim-fai. As the most popular Cantonese opera performer who primarily performed as a wenwusheng, Yam captured the cultural imaginations of the ideal Chinese man for most female audiences in Chinese societies. On the screens of Cantonese opera films, Yam embodies many admirable qualities, as a man with moral righteousness, a dandy who flirts but remains faithful to his partner, an intellectual with little regard for fame and fortune (Luo, 2002). Yam excels in ‘playing the “straight” man, a role-type paradigm consisting of filial sons, gentle husbands, kind fathers, or benevolent emperors’ (Tan, 2000: 206). Yam engaged in a common drama practice of ‘fanchuan’, which points to ‘a multitude of possible “crossings” along the gender, age and/or class continuums’ (Tan, 2000: 206). Her longtime collaborator, Pak Suet-sin, has contributed to the fantasy of a romantic duo on and off screen. In the fifties, Yam and Pak as the leading sheng (performative male) and dan (performative female) characters, dominated the arena of Cantonese opera films through the works of librettist Tong Dik-san. Their partnership reached a mythological level as their on-screen collaboration also materialized in their everyday practices through living together and often appearing in public with each other close by.

As a spectator, Ah Fun’s admiration of Yam has also led her to take up Cantonese opera after her retirement from the civil service. She attends at least two to three practices every week to meet up with other women who are also interested in Cantonese opera. They gather weekly to specifically study the art of Cantonese opera, to rehearse opera scripts and to perform the roles of the performers that they revere on screen. The rehearsal space becomes ‘a homosocial environment’ (Sinnott, 2013: 333), ‘generic space[s]’ (Wilson, 2004: 120) as women develop close friendships and romantic relations that are not openly spoken of as queer or lesbian but rather, a form of intimate understanding that is created and extended in the name of Cantonese opera. Yam’s devoted legion of fans in the 1950s and 1960s have always comprised wives, young women and zishu nu. ⁷ Ah Fun, as a masculine woman, sees herself in the shoes of Yam, taking up responsibilities as a gentleman would do for her lovers, demonstrating kindness as a father to her lovers’ children. Her protectiveness and care towards her lovers can be further understood as connected to the wider societal gender role of being a provider for the family.

In another interview, 65-year-old Betty viewed her ‘female masculinity’ in a different light (Halberstam, 1998: 1). Unlike Ah Fun’s notion of being a protector, Betty cited being ‘polite and well-mannered’ as a major reason for others’ acceptance of her female masculinity. Betty worked as a software engineer at a mid-size company. She retired early in her mid-fifties after a bout of severe illness. Her first relationship with a woman lasted 10 years. In response to her masculine gender expression, she said,

My first girlfriend’s parents really liked me, treated us like a son and a daughter. I am not trying to shower praise on myself but I have always been a good girl, I guess. I was polite and well-mannered, respectful of elders, even when I am in masculine attire, with a men’s haircut, I am lucky that her parents still treated me well. My ex-partner has always identified as straight. I thought I must have been really clever and gifted to have a straight girl as my partner then. But I knew she would get married one day. My mom warned me. She didn’t want me to get hurt. Thinking back, she’s right. But when you’re in love, what your mom said meant nothing to me.

Betty’s masculinity was explained as an extension of politeness. Being well-mannered in a culture of respect for the elders allowed her to escape potential scrutiny as a differently gendered body. Politeness in terms of expressing respect for the elderly brought up the Confucius virtue of filial piety for parents, elders and ancestors (Sigley, 2002). Even though her first girlfriend left her for marriage, Betty continued to have serial monogamous relationships mostly with women who identified as heterosexual. Throughout her career in information technology, she wore a men’s suit with an occasional more feminine-fitting blazer if a higher-up manager visited her workspace. Body politics of butchness have always been examined in early lesbian histories. Performing masculinity as female-bodied individuals contributed to creating identities that carved out particular ways of living (Wieringa and Blackwood, 1999: 15).

Conclusion

To conclude, this study investigates the embodied meanings of female masculinities which brought us tales of longing, inter-Asia travels, Cantonese opera, family obligations and personal respectability. I aim to examine how same-sex desires among women need to be traced through their experiences of social worlds and their strata of cultural life. Even though the informants have lived in an era where stigmatization was more significant than criminalization as a threat to sexual behaviour among lesbians, they have nonetheless made decisions on romantic relationships or career choices based on wider societal attitudes towards women and women with same-sex desires. The three sites were selected in recognition of inter-Asia cultural flows and connected histories.

The primary aim of this paper is to understand the emergence of same-sex desires and practices among older lesbians and bisexual women through an interdisciplinary approach where sociological ethnographic accounts meet cultural analysis, and vice versa. Treading carefully on a highly stigmatized subject, I encountered women who were most likely to share informally rather than formally, their lived experiences and cultural imaginations of being different but surviving as a Chinese woman with lesbian desires. I first explored a cultural notion of longing and waiting to demonstrate how in the face of heterosexual marriage, love and intimacy can be redefined to hold up to its standards as provisional and worthwhile. Social meanings of same-sex relationships are not tied to institutional definitions since there were none during their time, rather the informants shaped their own desires within relationships in environments often more permissive of sexual deviancy and gender transgressions. These border-crossing practices were critical to their becoming of women with same-sex desires. Gender expressions of masculinity and butch identifications also play a critical part in how informants made sense of their own behaviour in courtship and in comprehending the outcomes of same-sex romantic relationships.

Second, I analysed a methodological episode where the calling up of Hong Kong as a cosmopolitan imagination and a form of Chinese modernities by a working-class and masculine Singaporean informant urges us to rethink inter-Asian flows and mobilities. In order to carve out spaces to live a memorable life, Joey travelled to work in occupations that were often deemed as deviant and questioning of a woman’s proper dignity. Her impression as a strong and independent woman crosses boundaries of gender roles when such transgressions are made necessary in order to act on one’s sexual desires.

I end this paper with a discussion on two performative aspects of butchness/masculinity: as dual roles in being protected and protecting others and as a form of professional politeness. Female masculinity is commonly documented in ethnographies and cultural representations in lesbian studies (Halberstam, 1998; Wieringa, 1999; Wilson, 2004). Butch presence in gender-based or homosocial intimacies opens up spaces for same-sex desires to be met and romantic relationships to be formed. The role model of a Cantonese opera star, Yam Kim-fai, who specializes in faachaan, provided a cultural intervention for some informants to locate their lesbian gaze and spectatorship. In the absence of social and public recognition for lesbian desires and relationships, as well as the non-existence of a rights-based discourse, informants in this study engage in varying sexual practices and survival tactics to skirt around or disturb strict gender hierarchies. Lastly, I hope this study will increase our understanding of older lesbians and bisexual women in Asia and contribute to revise regional history in an attempt to include marginalized voices and forgotten stories.