My friend mentioned to me today that out of all of the places she's lived, Hong Kong is the single place in which she feels sexually safe, meaning she doesn't feel like the object of the male gaze while walking on the streets. Masculinity, and the performance of such. Interesting thing. Comparatively.
I wonder if guys in Asia are just more secure with their masculinity that they don't feel the need to perform it all the time.
Aihwa Ong had said something in her book, "Neoliberalism as Exception," to the effect of, middle class (mostly white) American men have always been able to make a living - that was sort of a given - to be able to raise their family by earning a living wage. However, with the outsourcing of tech jobs, and the influx of engineers from Asia into Silicon Valley (the site of inquiry Ong uses), this taken-for-granted ability to make a living is threatened - the masculinity of the American man is threatened.
I see this potentially manifested a way I find rather amusing, which I'll attempt to illustrate here.
There are a LOT of Samsung Galaxy Notes here. A lot. Everywhere you turn, there's another person using it. The consensus on the Internet (from English sites) seems to be that the device is too big. But they are everywhere here in HK. I have a theory (other than the fact that Samsung seems to be vastly more popular here than in the States). Murses. Man purses. Possibly the least macho thing a guy can carry around. But, convenient enough to carry around a 5.3-inch screen device that won't fit in your pocket.
So why is it that the assessment that the Note is too big not a problem in Asia? Is it because guys here are ok carrying around a bag, even though that may not be the macho thing to do? I don't know much about fashion, but I'm sure there's a statement about fashion that can be made here...
But, ultimately, are guys in Asia just more secure in their manliness that they'll readily carry around a man purse? And not be afraid that they'll be seen as effeminate? And does this have anything to do with the earning potential of men in Asia as compared to men in the US?
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3 comments:
There are several assumptions in this post that bother me. I'll try to articulate them clearly here.
You wrote:
>> My friend mentioned to me today that out of all of the places she's lived, Hong Kong is the single place in which she feels sexually safe, meaning she doesn't feel like the object of the male gaze while walking on the streets....
I can understand how in many circumstances a woman might feel unsafe if a guy is checking her out. But if you look at it from a guy's perspective, he is just looking at a hot girl. I feel like there is an unspoken assumption here that it is somehow wrong for guys to check out girls. And the reality is, at least for the guys I know, girls don't come to us. We have to pursue women if we are going to have a successful relationship, get married, and reproduce. The start of this process is checking out girls.
Like I said, I understand how in certain situations this might be threatening (such as a closed elevator at 4 am), but up to a certain point, everyone needs to accept that we all have a right to look at one another.
You wrote:
>> I wonder if guys in Asia are just more secure with their masculinity that they don't feel the need to perform it all the time.
I think what you meant by this is that guys in Hong Kong don't check out girls as much as they do in, for example, LA.
How do you know this is true? Your friend *said* she feels sexually safer in Hong Kong than in unnamed other places, but might that not reflect objective reality? For example, I personally feel extremely safe from physical violence in my hometown, but objectively, it has one of the highest murder rates in the country (owing to the crack trade, because it is situated halfway between New York and Miami).
Even supposing it is true that guys check out girls less in HK than in many other place (which seems plausible though unverified), does this actually imply that women are safer?
A final assumption that you seem to be making is that checking out girls is the only way to "perform masculinity." I was initially surprised to see you give the example of Samsung Galaxies to illustrate this point.
From my perspective, this is an example par excellence of Hong Kong men performing their masculinity. In more normal English, they are showing off their wealth. To my understanding, in all cultures in general and perhaps especially in Hong Kong, a man's desirability is evaluated (by prospective mothers-in-law, for example) by his wealth, since that directly correlates with how well is able to care for a prospective bride. Carrying around a conspicuous item that costs a decent chunk of change is an excellent way to demonstrate that you have many decent chunks of change to throw around. I would say this is every bit as much "performing masculiinty" as checking out girls.
The fact that you can't tuck it in a pocket makes it *more* visible, so that you have a good excuse to not hide it in your pocket, which is exactly what a guy would want in this case..
Anyway, your friend is welcome to feel safer in Hong Kong than anywhere else. That's her right. But I would challenge your assumption that this is any way caused by "insecurity" among non-HK guys, or by greater sexual security among HK guys.
It could just be that guys stare at her less in HK because there's a lot more Asian girls there, so she stand out less.
Thank you for your response! I just wanted to clarify a few things here.
1) My friend is white.
2) In the rest of my post, "checking out girls" is not the only way that I stated (anecdotally, I admit) that guys perform masculinity. I went on to give a rumination on the ways in which fashion may interact with technological devices. The "checking out girls" was a lead-in to the rest of my thoughts, which, while revolving around this idea of performing masculinity, moves on from the male gaze to something that is not about the male gaze at all, but attempts to examine and explore a culturally-specific constructed sense of masculinity in the ways in which fashion intersects with technology (ie: the Samsung Note) in a sort of rough anthropological way.
3) Again, I'll freely admit that I'm not a gender studies person, and a lot of my ruminations are based on anecdotal observations and free associations. This is far from a scientific method, and merely a perspectival analysis of some of the things I've experienced and observed during my travels.
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