變向女人: 香港男性寫作中的性別主體

Translated title of the contribution: Becoming Woman: The Subject of Masculinity in Some Writings of Men in Hong Kong Chinese Society

    Research output: Chapter in book/report/conference proceedingChapterpeer-review

    Abstract

    「男性特質」備受解構挑戰,學術研究固然對父權不斷攻擊,現實生活中男性 的既有地位亦岌岌可危。華人社會是典型的男性主導體系,男人一般比女性享 有更大的權力,但在西方人的眼中,華裔男人又往往被「女性化」,視為「弱 者」。本文討論九O年代中國男性在香港這個曾經是英國殖民地社會中的構造 與演變,透過分析基督教團體鼓吹新男性運動的通俗讀物、新一代中產爸爸的 親子散文,及年青作家董啟章的小說《雙身》,採討男性主體建構如何藉著「變 向女人」再重新自我定位的意識形態問題,以及這種新男性身分與「中國性」互 為表裡的關係。

     

    This paper deals with the changing definitions of masculinity in Hong Kong society in 1990s as seen through some literary and critical texts. What does it mean to be Chinese male in Hong Kong today? What does the emergence of feminism mean for men in Hong Kong Chinese community?

     

    Although Hong Kong cinema has been exporting, through the masculine body of its action stars, Chinese national identity to the diasporic Chinese communities, many discourses in Hong Kong have constituted a “feminized” image of men. The changing images of men or fathers in contemporary Hong Kong are evident in the fact that many male celebrities are no longer only concerned with the external interest but become more family-oriented, compassionate and tender. Some religious groups start the campaign of becoming a caring and feminine father as found in Father in the Makings other liberal men are turning into family men who develop strong emotional tie with their children, such as in The Twelve Fathers. Louis Dung’s fiction Double Bodies takes up an ambiguous gender persona and relocates a male subject in the process of becoming woman.

     

    Some radical feminists consider these phenomena man’s conspiracy against woman because men’s transformations do not address the consequences of their privileges. That is to say, they still retain the privileges of patriarchal society. Would such “new male order” threaten to infringe the turf and dignity of women? Will men occupy the position of femininity and become even more privileged than ever?

     

    Deleuze and Guattari have provocatively argued that any political or cultural movement should be understood as a mobile and active challenge of becoming. Any assertion of woman as a subject in feminism should not simply oppose man, but must affirm itself as an event in the process of becoming. Hence, becoming should go beyond binary opposition so that man and woman can be seen as variables. But in the context of Hong Kong in the 1990s, is this strategy of becoming-woman just a masculine cannibalization by means of which woman’s non-identity is only used to shore up a new male identity?

    Translated title of the contributionBecoming Woman: The Subject of Masculinity in Some Writings of Men in Hong Kong Chinese Society
    Original languageChinese (Traditional)
    Title of host publication媒介與性/別
    Editors 洛楓
    Place of Publication台北
    Publisher遠流出版事業股份有限公司
    Pages119-133
    Number of pages15
    ISBN (Print)978957255055
    Publication statusPublished - Apr 2005

    Publication series

    Name媒介擬想 = Envisage: A Journal Book of Chinese Media Studies
    Publisher視覺傳播藝術學會(台北)
    Volume3

    User-Defined Keywords

    • 變向女人
    • 中國性
    • 基督教男性運動
    • 新一代中產爸爸
    • 新男性秩序
    • 自由主義
    • 香港文學
    • 性別演出
    • 模擬
    • becoming-woman
    • Chirteseness
    • Christian men’s movement
    • new bourgeois fathers
    • new male order
    • liberalism
    • Hong Kong literature
    • gender performance
    • simulation

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