Session 2: Sexual Governance and Resistance

6th Global Conference

Tuesday 10th November – Thursday 12th November 2009
Salzburg, Austria

Sexual Governance: Regulation Of Sexualities In Singapore
Laurence Wai-Teng Leong
Department of Sociology, National University of Singapore, Singapore

This paper develops the concept of “sexual governance” to analyze the role of the state in the sexual lives of citizens. Why does the state intervene (directly or indirectly) in the sexual lives of citizens ? Do state authorities in the administration of public affairs take into account the sexual welfare of citizens ? How does the state treat sexual minorities ? How do issues of governance relate to “sexual citizenship” ? These questions are addressed using Singapore as an example, where the state intervenes in the everyday of citizens. Particular emphasis will be given to Singapore’s procreation policies that privilege heteronormativity, and to Singapore’s policy towards sexual minorities.

Recognition and Regulation of Same-Sex Couples in the United Kingdom: An Exploratory Study of Civil Partnership
Mike Thomas
School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University, United Kingdom

This paper offers an exploratory analysis of civil partnership as a form of legal recognition for lesbian and gay couples in the United Kingdom. Although presented by the UK Government as a matter of equality and fairness, civil partnership carries a number of apparently contradictory messages around control, discipline and the promotion of highly normative behaviours and attitudes.

A Foucauldian theoretical framework, drawing upon concepts of sexuality, governmentality, surveillance and the confessional, makes clear that civil partnership submits same-sex couples to unprecedented levels of state intervention and social scrutiny. This theoretical framework is applied to government documents and to data gathered through interviews with seventeen same-sex couples, offering an engagement between government objectives and couples’ own aspirations in seeking official recognition. Narrative analysis of interview data suggests that lesbian and gay couples are aware of the numerous and contradictory themes within civil partnership and are able to demonstrate both acceptance and resistance with regard to disciplinary discourses.

A Foucauldian policy critique combined with narrative analysis of qualitative data presents a highly nuanced examination of civil partnership as a form of social regulation which implies moral responsibility as well as financial and legal entitlements. With the number of countries offering same-sex marriage and other forms of recognition increasing year on year, the findings of this research offer a timely and highly relevant assessment of a number of contradictory and unforeseen aspects of recognition as applied in the United Kingdom.

This research was carried out as part of ESRC-funded PhD studies in the School of Social Sciences at Cardiff University.

Download Draft Conference Paper (pdf)

Monetary Oppression vs. Monetary Romance: Conjugal Relationships in Commodified Transnational Marriages between Taiwan and Vietnam
Yi-Han Wang
Social Science Research Centre, National Science Council, Taiwan, R.O.C.

The prevalence of transnational marriage can be witnessed in Taiwan in the late twentieth century where Southeast Asian women, mainly from Vietnam, dominate numerically. Most of these women marry Taiwanese through the operation of profit-pursuing matchmaking agents, and thus their marriages are named as “commodified transnational marriages” (CTM). Due to the association with commodification and the lack of courtship, the involved men are commonly regarded as “chauvinistic exploiters” who use their economic advantage to sexually oppress the women from impoverished Southeast Asian countries, while the involved women are depicted as either “victims” or “gold-diggers” who get married for money not for love. Thus this paper explores how money can have effect upon the conjugal relationships of CTMs by investigating the case between Taiwan and Vietnam. After investigating the experiences of 7 women and 7 men (3 of them were couples), I argue that valuing the marital relationship merely through the “money-exchanged” vision can ignore the men’s and women’s intentions to cultivate and endure relationships, which are linked to ideas about race, sexuality, gender and family roles. However, the issue of money cannot totally be erased from the conjugal relationship. It is found that when the husband provides the wife with the money for sending to her natal family, the wife come to gradually develop affection towards the husband through an appreciation of this financial support – which I name as “monetary romance”. In spite that money can form a positive conjugal relationship, the amount of money given for a remittance can also give rise to quarrels between the couple. CTMs are featured with money; the involved couple’s relationships are also complicated by money which cannot be simplified as “monetary oppression”.