A native of Taiwan, Josephine Ho has been intensely involved in the burgeoning counter-cultural movements since her return to Taiwan in 1988 after receiving two doctorates from US universities. As perhaps the best-known feminist scholar in Taiwan, she later founded the Center for the Study of Sexualities at National Central University in 1995, widely-recognized for both its activism and its intellectual stamina. Josephine Ho herself has been writing both extensively and provocatively on many cutting-edge issues in the Taiwanese context, spearheading sex-positive views on female sexuality, gender/sexuality education, queer studies, sex work studies and activism, transgenderism, and most recently body modification. Her theoretically informed but discursively accessible books, all written in Chinese as timely interventions into Taiwanese gender/sexuality politics, include The Gallant Woman--Feminism and Sexual Emancipation (1994), Gendered Nations--Sexuality, Capital and Culture (1994), Sexual Moods: A Therapeutic and Liberatory Report on Female Sexuality (1996), Radical Sexuality Education: Gender/Sexuality Education for the "New Generation" (1998), and The Admirable/Amorous Woman (1998). She has since written and edited another eight volumes of Taiwanese gender/sexuality research in sex work studies, queer studies, and transgender studies which greatly enhanced and challenged Taiwanese academic research into marginal gender/sexualities. Her present research interests lie with extreme bodies and sexualities as well as modern emotions.
Considered the single most formidable theoretician/activist for Taiwan’s sex rights movement, and the “godmother of the Taiwanese queer movement,” Josephine Ho’s continuous and articulate efforts on marginal issues have made her the number one “public enemy” for conservative Christians in Taiwan who have been trying to silence her sexual dissidence. Her academic website was forced out of the academic net space in 2001 because of its sex-positive stance on teenage sexuality. In 2003, a dozen of conservative Christian NGOs banded together to bring a lawsuit against Josephine Ho and her massive sexuality studies internet databank, in particular for including two hyperlinks that lead to zoophilia websites. With the support of students, scholars, activist groups, along with a wide-spread international petition drive plus her own articulate self-defense in court, Josephine Ho won the court case first in the district court and then again in the high court in 2004, thus successfully defending the freedom of speech and information on sexual matters. Though best-known for her work in gender/sexuality related issues and movement, Josephine Ho has not been absent from local organization/mobilization for the anti-war movement, anti-globalization movement, anti-nuclear-plant movement, and the most recent anti-social-exclusion movement. For her tireless effort in resisting bigotry and prejudice, and her work on human rights and sex rights, she was selected as one among the thousand women from all over the world who were collectively nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005.
