{"id":1448,"date":"2005-04-29T01:05:58","date_gmt":"2005-04-28T17:05:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sex.ncu.edu.tw\/jo_article\/?p=1448"},"modified":"2016-12-30T22:28:56","modified_gmt":"2016-12-30T14:28:56","slug":"queer-existence-under-global-governance-a-taiwan-exemplar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sex.ncu.edu.tw\/jo_article\/2005\/04\/queer-existence-under-global-governance-a-taiwan-exemplar\/","title":{"rendered":"Queer Existence under Global Governance: A Taiwan Exemplar"},"content":{"rendered":"

\uff08\u9019\u7bc7\u8ad6\u6587\u6e90\u81ea2005\u5e744\u670829-30\u65e5\u6211\u5728\u7f8e\u570b\u52a0\u5dde\u5927\u5b78\u67cf\u514b\u840a\u6821\u5340<\/span>\u8209\u8fa6\u7684”Beyond the Strai(gh)ts: Transnationalism and Queer Chinese Politics<\/a>“\u6703\u8b70\u4e2d\u7684\u4e3b\u984c\u6f14\u8b1b\u3002\u5f8c\u4f86\u6539\u5beb\u5f8c\u767c\u8868\u65bc<\/span><\/strong>Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique<\/em> 18.2 (Summer 2010): 537-554\uff0c\u662f\u6211\u5c0d\u5168\u7403\u6cbb\u7406\u5c0d\u6027\u7570\u8b70\u7684\u885d\u64ca\u7684\u53e6\u4e00\u7bc7\u5206\u6790\uff09<\/span><\/strong>[1]<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

On October 31, 2009, the seventh annual Gay Pride March trailed through Taipei\u2019s celebrated business districts and staged its climatic performances right in front of the presidential palace, a highly charged political space that had been off limits to the pride march since it began in 2003.\u00a0 The record turnout of 25,000 came as a great relief to organizers who had worried that the march might be losing steam.\u00a0 \u00a0The first ever antigay march which took place the week before, organized by conservative Christian groups to openly denounce homosexuality as an abomination of god, had generated a sense of crisis and brought out the crowd.\u00a0 In the meantime, discontent with the lack of movement militancy and the increasing commercialization of the march also spurred young lesbian and gay activists of a new group, ALL MY GAY!!!<\/em>, to bare it all on stage in order to dramatize the plight of sexual nonconformity under the tightening grip of the precarious Taiwan state.\u00a0 Since the lifting of martial law in 1987, Taiwan\u2019s progress toward liberal democracy has claimed an ever-broadening understanding of human rights that now allegedly includes the rights of gays and lesbians.\u00a0 Yet in actuality, at the urge of Christian child-protection groups, a series of new laws, litigations, and regulations has been put into place since 2000 that now criminalizes practically all<\/strong> sex-related publications, video images, and in particular, Internet communication[2]<\/strong><\/a>.\u00a0 These new installations of law aim to demonize sexual minorities and their channels for cultural representation\/communication, not to mention how AIDS-prevention laws directly target gays as carriers.<\/p>\n

How are we to understand such retrenchment in sexual matters in this age of seeming social openness and toleration?\u00a0 My contention is that as social and political activism gradually complicates social values in Taiwan, the politics of sexual stigma and shame that once made up the oppression of gays and lesbians and other sexual minorities is now shifting its field of operation from the realm of culture to that of law.\u00a0 The shift to intensifying legal codification in fact interpellates unspoken fear and anxiety toward an increasingly sexually open world.\u00a0 On the other hand, such codification not only facilitates the populist government\u2019s effort to consolidate its legitimacy and power, but also works in collaboration with expanding global governance through which Taiwan\u2019s nation-state status bid hopes to find a promising future, albeit at the expense of civil liberties for marginalized sexualities.\u00a0 In that sense, the politics surrounding sexuality is now lodged at the very heart of national and international politics in Taiwan.<\/p>\n

Expanding Human\/Gay Rights?<\/strong><\/p>\n

In comparison with other Asian countries, Taiwan seems to have afforded more room and progress for the idea of gay rights, yet not without local complications.\u00a0 Thanks to three decades of political and social struggle, haunted by domestic as well as international volatilities mixed in with Taiwan\u2019s own precarious nation-state status, the liberal democracy that is Taiwan today proves to be especially vulnerable to populist fluctuations in opinions and values. \u00a0In other words, against-the-grain views face formidable obstacles on the road to winning legitimacy; and progressive ideas such as human rights are always slow to have their applicability extended to marginal populations.\u00a0 As history has it, political dissidents of the 1970s and 1980s championed human rights only in terms of freedom of speech in the political arena against the censorship and oppression of the authoritarian government[3]<\/strong><\/a>.\u00a0 Later, organized labor extended human rights to include the right to work and freedom from economic exploitation, and went on strikes to resist the massive exodus of both Taiwanese factories and Taiwanese capital in the late 1980s and early 1990s.\u00a0 Significantly, labor mobilization was constantly goaded by the democratization movement to prioritize political liberalization\u2014in the form of nation-state building\u2014over labor liberation.[4]<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0 When Taiwanese feminist organization and mobilization picked up momentum at about the same time, they were likewise urged to view political liberalization as necessarily conducive to gender equality.[5]<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0 Later attempts to claim human rights for other marginal groups\u2014such as gays and lesbians, sex workers, surrogate mothers, transgendered people, migrant sex workers, and foreign brides\u2014achieved limited degrees of success in a rigidifying social atmosphere where the instability and consequent polarization of real politics obstinately frame every public discussion in terms of nation-state building, thus leaving social issues at the mercy of whimsical media sensationalism followed by conservative moral diatribe.<\/p>\n

The actualities of human rights may be slow in coming for stigmatized subjects in their struggle, yet ironically, the tides of international politics have made it imperative for aspiring nations to at least nominally pledge support for the concept of human rights, most fashionably and conveniently gay rights.\u00a0 Hoping to improve the city\u2019s standing among international metropolises, then Taipei mayor Ma Ying-jiou decided to allocate moderate funding for gay groups to orchestrate a gay civil rights forum that featured American gay activists Nan Hunter and Michael Bronski.\u00a0 In competition, newly elected president Chen Shui-bian was compelled to receive and pose with the visiting American gay activists under the rainbow flag.\u00a0 Seizing upon such gestures of openness, LGBTQ groups began organizing annual gay pride marches in Taipei in 2003, now considered monumental achievements emulated by LGBTQ groups elsewhere in Asia.<\/p>\n

Such feeling of euphoria hardly corresponds to the realities of gay existence in Taiwan as lesbians and gays continue to face prejudice, hostility, and indifference, not to mention lack of recognition of their civil rights. \u00a0In Taipei, malicious police raids were conducted on gay cruising grounds in 1997,[6]<\/strong><\/a> on gay saunas in 1998,[7]<\/strong><\/a> on lesbian pubs in 2002,[8]<\/strong><\/a> and on gay home parties in 2004;[9]<\/strong><\/a> all resulting in public exposure of gay individuals and violation of their basic human rights, not to mention stigmatization of gay lifestyles and gay-oriented businesses.\u00a0 Compulsory blood and urine testing at gay parties, as well as police collaboration with tabloid media, further testify to the treacherous urban space of Taipei for sexual minorities.\u00a0 This developing sex phobia culminated in the 2003 seizure and confiscation of gay pictorial publications from the only gay bookstore in Taiwan and, despite persistent gay demonstration and protestation, the consequent indictment and sentencing of its owner in the following year.[10]<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0 Such incidents fly directly in the face of the Taipei city government\u2019s claim of respect and diversity.\u00a0 The national government\u2019s track record fares no better.\u00a0 The Ministry of Education only removed degrading definitions of gays and transgendered people as \u201cresulting from childhood gender identity problems or from sexual aberrance\u201d from its official online Chinese Language Dictionary<\/em> in 2003 after persistent protests by LGBTQ groups.\u00a0 Between 2001 and 2003, the Ministry of Justice and the President\u2019s Human Rights Consulting Committee made repeated announcements of an on-going draft of the Human Rights Basic Law that would take a positive position on gay families and gays adopting children.[11]<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0 As world media gleefully reported on the upcoming monumental \u201clegalization of gay marriage\u201d in Taiwan, local lesbian and gay groups were left scrambling to debunk the publicity stunt.<\/p>\n

More alarmingly, alongside the festivities and gesturing, an accumulation of prosecuted cases gradually brought home the chilling realization that a string of well-crafted civil actions, proposed and orchestrated by conservative Christian groups (dubbed child-protection groups or women\u2019s groups), has quietly come into place since the end of the 1990s and is gradually but firmly transforming the context and meaning of things sexual into actual criminal acts targeting the young.\u00a0 As a result, social space is no longer managed by the soft power of dominant culture, but increasingly by the iron rule of newly created state laws, which in turn exacerbates the silent stigma surrounding sexual nonconformity.<\/p>\n

Vigilance over Things Sexual <\/strong><\/p>\n

Significantly, such civil actions uniformly seek to erect more new laws to disrupt easy access to things sexual. \u00a0Foremost among the social spaces targeted for purification is the Internet, where youths have proven themselves much better-versed than adults, and where it is rumored that rampant sexual flirtation, invitation, and possible transaction abound.\u00a0 Taking aggressive and comprehensive \u201cprevention\/protection\u201d measures that aim to keep all children from coming into contact with any information that hints at sexual transaction[12]<\/strong><\/a>, Article 29 of the anti-prostitution legislation \u201cLaw to Suppress Sexual Transaction Involving Children and Juveniles\u201d[13]<\/strong><\/a> was amended in 1999 so that \u201canyone found using electronic signals and the Internet or other media to publish or broadcast messages that seduce, broker, insinuate or by other means cause one to be involved in sexual transactions is to be sentenced to a fixed-term imprisonment of up to five years, which may carry an attendant fine of up to NT$1,000,000 dollars.\u201d[14]<\/strong><\/a> \u00a0Significantly, whether the Web message \u201cactually caused\u201d any real transaction to take place, or whether any minors were \u201cactually involved\u201d in such communication or interaction, is totally irrelevant.\u00a0 The mere \u201cposting\u201d of any message deemed suspicious by the eager police constitutes violation of the law, for allegedly the message \u201cjust might be\u201d stumbled upon by children or teenagers surfing the Internet, who \u201cmight\u201d then become \u201cnegatively affected\u201d by such insinuations of sexual negotiation.\u00a0 In fact, the law practically reads all sexual invitations, inquiries, flirtations, negotiations, or anything of the sort as possible preludes to illegal sexual transaction, and police entrapment is liberally applied so as to \u201cascertain\u201d such criminal intention.[15]<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0 Between 2000 and 2008, more than 20,000 netizens were dragged through the judicial process and suffered the horrible weight of sexual stigma and the shame of legal indictment, with only one quarter of the cases eventually convicted.\u00a0 Still, the fact that they posted messages that in one way or another affirmed their sexual agency was ground enough for public castigation, if not legal indictment, in the name of child-protection.<\/p>\n

Worse, falling victim to the law are not only sexually active net citizens or marginalized sexual subjects who depend on the Internet for information, communication, and contact, but also sex radicals who produce sex-positive discourses and information to combat sex phobia and chauvinism.\u00a0 The Center for the Study of Sexualities at National Central University, famous for its sex-positive activism and staunch refusal to toe the mainstream conservative line on gender and sexuality, had time and again issued its criticism and satire of the child-protection legislation and police entrapment of sexually active netizens.\u00a0 It was cited by religious groups in 2001 for \u201cmisleading the young and feeble-minded.\u201d\u00a0 Undaunted, the center continued to deal out supportive statements of sex work and criticism of the incriminating law.\u00a0 In 2003, an alliance of eleven conservative and Christian groups filed a formal complaint with the court, saying that I, as the center\u2019s coordinator, was \u201cspreading obscenity\u201d through the reference links provided on the center\u2019s online sexual dissidence databank. \u00a0If found guilty, the sentence would have effectively terminated \u00a0my professional career as well as the center\u2019s existence.\u00a0 Mobilization by numerous marginal groups and a massive international petition drive helped counteract the ensuing moral panic so that my detailed self-defense could be taken seriously by the court.\u00a0 Academic freedom was eventually safeguarded by the final not-guilty verdict in both the district court and the high court, thus thwarting conservative efforts to kill sexual dissidence and shrink social space.[16]<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

If the amended Law to Suppress Sexual Transaction Involving Children and Juveniles (1999) successfully sends a chilling message that aims to silence all sexual communication in the virtual world, the Children and Juvenile\u2019s Welfare Act (2003) works to further restrict sexual things in the real world.\u00a0 Taiwan\u2019s original Children\u2019s Welfare Act (1973), which covers children under the age of twelve, and Juvenile\u2019s Welfare Act (1989), which covers youths between the age of twelve and eighteen, were collapsed in 2003 to gather up all under-eighteen-year-olds into one category, children, in compliance with United Nation\u2019s Convention on the Rights of the Child<\/em>.\u00a0 The move effectively reduces all under the age of eighteen to toddlers and subjects them to more stringent and protective measures.\u00a0 The act establishes a legal apparatus of censorship that brings into existence two more sets of regulations to purify social space in the name of child protection.\u00a0 The first is a new rating system created in 2004 that censors all publications deemed violent, offensive, or, in particular, sexually explicit\u2014including the wide array of mangas<\/em> (comic books) and romance novels widely favored by young readers.\u00a0 Overnight, the publications that had given young gays and lesbians the first embodiment and representation of their desires and identities were now off limits, wrapped in plastic, and kept from minors.\u00a0 Then in 2005, a comparable \u201cself-imposed labeling\u201d rating system was created for all online content: websites are \u201cstrongly urged\u201d to install the mark of \u201crestricted\u201d or suffer a large fine, should any content on the site be found to be moderately adult-oriented or include materials deemed unfit for children, such as references to homosexuality.\u00a0 Proactively, webmasters began to erect strict self-censoring regulations against any sexually explicit or mildly offensive messages, as well as seductive or licentious images even in encrypted personal on line albums so as to avoid possible litigation.[17]<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0 The freedom and ease of Internet anonymity which had afforded many gays and lesbians their first taste of friendship, camaraderie, and sexual negotiation, was further curtailed as ISP providers now submit, upon police inquest, personal registration data of net users.\u00a0 The act also requires parents to execute more stringent parental duties in monitoring their children\u2019s activities: parents can be prosecuted if their underage children are found lingering at so-called improper locations (including video arcades, gambling places, nightclubs, and other similar adult recreational establishments), smoking or using other illegal substances forbidden to minors, or in possession of \u201cadult\u201d materials.[18]<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0 It is in these far-reaching measures that the full scope of conservative protectionism can be partially glimpsed.<\/p>\n

Gay and lesbian groups as well as other sexual minorities in Taiwan have gradually awakened to the bitter reality that their limited gains in visibility and equity prove to be quite fragile in the face of the social rigidification embodied in the enforcement of child-protection legislation.\u00a0 In reaction against the cost of devastated lives and growing fear of possible litigation, sexual minorities are embarking upon the torturously long and difficult task of legal reform to challenge the stranglehold of these laws.\u00a0 For what is the benefit of affirming the legitimacy of the gay identity, if at the same time the daily activities and communications that make up that identity are swept into illegality?<\/p>\n

Juridification of Pastoral\/Parental Power<\/strong><\/p>\n

The question remains as to the timely efficacy and popular acceptance of the pastoral\/parental power exercised by conservative Christian groups through the legal grid they have helped put up under the child-protection cause.<\/p>\n

It is noteworthy that most of the conservative NGOs responsible for the institution and the continued amendments of the above-mentioned legislation originally came into existence as charity or social service groups organized by various Christian denominations after the 1987 lifting of martial law in Taiwan.\u00a0 They include Catholic Good Shepherd Sisters (est. 1987 by the Catholic Church), Garden of Hope (est. 1988 by protestant missionaries), Rainbow Project Center (est. 1988 by the Presbyterian church to watch over aboriginal affairs), and End Child Prostitution in Asian Tourism (ECPAT) (est. 1990 by a coalition of half a dozen Christian organizations, including the above-mentioned Garden of Hope).\u00a0 Though religious in origin, the groups have adopted non-religious-sounding names and propelled themselves into full-fledged NGOs through working on various campaigns of sexual moralism and child-protection legislation amidst the emergence of Taiwan\u2019s civil society in its democratization process in the 1990s.\u00a0 Now presenting themselves at times as women\u2019s organizations, at times as charity organizations, at times as child-protection organizations, at times as social services organizations, and at times as regular citizen groups, the Christian NGOs are able to participate in many civil affairs as protean delegates \u201cof the people.\u201d\u00a0 And as such, their faith-based vigilance has succeeded in making the conservative agenda an important component, if not the general orientation, of emerging issues.<\/p>\n

The present paper contends that the conservative agenda on child protection has been able to win favorable reverberation mainly because its proponents have succeeded in articulating an emerging structural crisis in Taiwan society, a crisis to which the conservative legislation claims to offer a promising solution.\u00a0 This crisis finds an apt explanation in J\u00fcrgen Habermas, who notes that newly emergent active civil participation demanded by bourgeois revolutions is accompanied by a tradition-based dampening of such participatory impulses so as to rein in the activism and to stabilize the regime that is coming into place.\u00a0 The result is a compromise subject position that combines \u201cfamilial-vocational privatism,\u201d a lifestyle that is devoted to personal endeavors and achievements, and \u201ccivil privatism,\u201d a civil political stance that leaves political decisions to the purportedly professionalized hands of the bureaucrats (Legitimation<\/em> 1975: 76-77).\u00a0 Habermas sees the formation of such privatisms as being fostered either by the Protestant ethic or individualism and civic utilitarianism, but in Taiwan, it is the Confucian ethic and its clan-based familial pragmatism that leads nicely into familial-vocational privatism, while forty years of martial law makes civil privatism the wise choice for many.\u00a0 Yet as Taiwan finds itself further incorporated into the global economic order where ensuing late-modern economic restructuring continues to upset traditional social reward systems as well as incentives for upward mobility, traditional cultural mechanisms that help produce motives to serve the system are increasingly disturbed, leading to a \u201cmotivation crisis\u201d in which “the socio-cultural system changes in such a way that its output becomes dysfunctional for the state and for the system of labor” (Habermas, Legitimation<\/em> 1975: 74).<\/p>\n

This crisis in economic reproduction is at the same time a crisis in class\/cultural reproduction that produces its own generational problems: youths, taking the hint from \u201cthe ideology of self-determination\u201d that underlies both Taiwan\u2019s nation-state aspiration and its reigning mode of capitalistic consumption, are quickly absorbing the cultures of globalization to range beyond parental control.\u00a0 In response, new local neologisms, such as \u201cthe strawberry generation,<\/em>\u201d crystallize adult frustration with the younger generation\u2019s alleged lack of resilience\/perseverance in face of difficulties and pressure.\u00a0 The feelings of frustration and powerlessness are most acutely felt in the increasingly dysfunctional family, as local scholar Ning Yin-bin describes: \u201cWhen homes are no longer sweet, with high rates of affairs and divorces, homosexual sons and daughters involved in casual sex work, who would continue to be devoted to familial privatism?\u00a0 When unemployment rate is high, glass ceilings are low, and even master\u2019s degrees get you nowhere in the job market, what is the motive for vocational privatism?\u201d (Ning 2005: 17)\u00a0 The conservative Christian cause of child protection through purification of social space thus articulates parental frustration onto the fortified legal grid that embodies the pastoral desire of the Christian groups.<\/p>\n

While Christian NGOs are usually the most severe critics of the tabloid media, they could not have found better allies to fashion folk devils and fan up sexual panics to create a social atmosphere most conducive for conservative legislation.\u00a0 After all, such media specialize in magnifying the daily lives of marginalized sexual subjects, probing and exposing intimacies, demonizing alternative lifestyles, and affirming stereotypes and prejudices.\u00a0 Significantly, their narratives are consistently framed in such a way as to interpellate a unique subject position\u2014that of concerned and vigilant parents, hysterical mothers in particular\u2014through warning the latter about the imminent danger that faces their children.\u00a0 As gay saunas, lesbian bars, busted gay home parties, and the like increasingly come under the scrutinizing lens of the media, an alarming social sensitivity toward sexual nonconformity is cultivated so as to prepare \u201cparents\u201d to safeguard their children against such negative influences.\u00a0 The ignited moral hysteria then culminates in the reaffirmation of moral values and social vigilance, embodied in none other than the timely proposal of protective legislations that not only strengthen state power but also improve state legitimacy (cf. Habermas, Legitimation <\/em>1975: 90-92).<\/p>\n

Habermas uses the term \u201cjuridification\u201d to name this kind of significant re-deployment of power in modern states: increasing numbers of formal laws are instituted for the socio-cultural sphere, the private sphere, and the body-related sphere, laws that probe deeply into everyday life (Theory of Communicative Action<\/em> 1987: 357-373).\u00a0 The exemplary cases in Taiwan, as demonstrated, tend to concentrate in the areas of sexuality.\u00a0 They include not only laws that are directed against sex work, sexual transaction, sexual information, and sexual contact, but also laws that strictly regulate interpersonal relationships in the name of prevention of sexual harassment\/assault.[19]<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0 Other forms of juridification\u2014for example, regulations regarding surrogate motherhood, artificial insemination, new drugs such as RU486 and Viagra, and information on the Internet, etc.\u2014have also come into place in the past few years.\u00a0 As such new technologies or new drugs introduce dramatic changes (such as producing new bodies or new relationships) into the private sphere previously dominated by traditional values and powers, they become prime targets for conservative agitation and state regulation. \u00a0And as sexual conservatism prevails in public discourse, even existing legislation can not escape such vigilance.\u00a0 Hard-won legislation that protects people with AIDS (PWAs) in relation to their legal rights to education, employment, medical care, and privacy are now facing new amendments that would strike out such clauses in order to enforce \u201cthe protection of national health.\u201d\u00a0 At this \u201cunusually dangerous conjuncture for children,\u201d laws can now violate human rights, and universal surveillance is increasingly justified.\u00a0 A seemingly progressive \u201creason of state,\u201d expressed as a national crusade to protect children, has become a hotbed for fascist language and fascist measures against all marginalized populations, from gays and lesbians, PWAs, brides from Mainland China, and alien laborers, to innocent exploring Net citizens.<\/p>\n

Heightened social anxiety and frustration constitute fertile ground for conservative maneuvers that invoke, oddly, the most traditionally Chinese, rather than Christian Western, values.\u00a0 And the main stock of this conservative offensive is directed at none other than the concomitant and accelerating Taiwanese sex revolution since the 1990s.\u00a0 As feminist sex radicals and gay and lesbian activists endeavored to direct the newly unleashed sexual energy toward more social openness and diversity, alarmed Christian groups that advocate at best moderation and at worst abstinence responded by articulating widespread adult anxiety onto the fear of rampant sexual exploration and experimentation spearheaded by the young.\u00a0 Motivation crisis was thus effectively described as a loss of traditional values and moralities in this day of affluence and hedonism, a corruption of youths by the flourishing commercialization of cultural life, and a deterioration of the fiber of the nation by the vulgarizing tendencies of imported popular cultures.\u00a0 Conservative legislation on child protection then pose as genuine efforts to alleviate adult anxiety and feelings of insecurity that would better manage and shape youths through increasingly insulating the latter from elements deemed distracting and corrupting for the reproduction of class, taste, and moral values, not to mention work ethic.\u00a0 Thorough insulation from such elements, of course, entails their total extermination.<\/p>\n

As Christian groups and their legislative appeals endow the Taiwan state with the political legitimacy of a much needed pastoral power that works through the creation and enforcement of the child-protection legislation, parental power, which had been diluted and undermined by the de-traditionalization and individualization brought on by modern capitalism, is resurging again, this time openly anointed by state legislation and project franchises that execute the state\u2019s pastoral duty of overseeing the smooth and successful reproduction of class and power structure.\u00a0 Viewed in this light, the fierce resistance now put up by queers and other sexual minorities against such rigidification of social space carries ramifications on many more fronts than simply that of sexual identity.<\/p>\n

NGOs and (Inter)National Politics<\/strong><\/p>\n

The opportune rise of conservatism in such so-called \u201copen societies\u201d as Taiwan, and the continuous cultural warfare that rages there, may find a theoretical explanation in Habermas\u2019s \u201cmotivation crisis\u201d; still, the reign of sexual conservatism in Taiwan has a historical specificity that reflects not only the unique complexities in its nation-state status and political legitimacy, but also its aspiration to plant a presence in international communities.\u00a0 And it is this specific investment that has afforded the conservative Christian NGOs an important role to play in Taiwan\u2019s (inter)national politics.<\/p>\n

Though Taiwan\u2019s government has never been especially partial toward Christian groups, it has found the latter\u2019s services and symbolic value quite useful not only for national politics, but more importantly for opportunities of international participation.\u00a0 The child-protection\/antitrafficking NGOs\u2019 affiliation with international antitrafficking organizations, as well as their original global Christian connections, offer invaluable links to other international nongovernmental and intergovernmental organizations, a network that the precarious Taiwan government is eager to tap into in order to advance alternative routes of diplomacy and to promote affirmation of its envisioned independent nation-state status.[20]<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0 <\/strong>When ECPAT-Taiwan representatives attended the 2nd World Congress Against Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children held by ECPAT International in Yokohama, Japan in December 2001, Taiwan\u2019s Ministry of Foreign Affairs\u2019 Research and Design Committee provided funding for the travel cost of the delegation which \u201chappened\u201d to include none other than the chair of the committee herself.\u00a0 She was in fact so impressed by the opportunity to attend international conventions in the capacity of a Taiwan government official that she wrote to commend ECPAT for conducting successful \u201ccitizen\u2019s diplomacy.\u201d[21]<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0 One year later, the First ECPAT-Taiwan Forum Against Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children was held in Taipei with multiple international speakers and full funding from the government.\u00a0 Hosting such international events not only affords visibility and international standing for Taiwan, but also enhances the status and importance of the locally-situated but internationally endorsed child-protection cause.\u00a0 The NGOs themselves also benefit from such a network, for connections are set up for exchange of skills, information, and advocacy purposes between NGOs of the developed countries and NGOs of the developing countries, which quickly and dramatically enhance the effectiveness of local efforts as well as their power of influence. \u00a0After all, international events hosted or promoted or assisted by an international organization give strength and credibility to its local chapters and affiliates by presenting them as actively dealing with \u201cglobal issues and standards\u201d rather than being mere embodiments of conservative Christian values.\u00a0 The formation of this complex of formal and informal institutions, mechanisms, and relationships, between and among states, citizens, and organizations through which specific interests are articulated on the global scale constitute efforts that build toward what has come to be termed \u201cglobal governance.\u201d[22]<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Affiliation with international organizations and active collaboration with the state have helped Taiwan\u2019s conservative (Christian) NGOs rise to unprecedented power and influence, which has proven to be devastating for marginalized sexualities.\u00a0 Worse, the groups have become so successful that strategies devised in the Taiwan context are being exported to like-minded conservative Christian groups in other locations.\u00a0 For example, Taiwan\u2019s most powerful conservative Christian NGO, Garden of Hope, has had a very close relationship with the notorious Society for Truth and Light, a Hong Kong-based conservative Christian group well known for its militant attacks on gay rights issues.\u00a0 The groups held joint conferences on stopping \u201cthe trend of sex liberation\u201d and promoting Internet safety to not only propagate the conservative child-protection cause, but also to learn from each other as they function as nodal points on the web of global governance.\u00a0 The circle of influence of conservative groups has also grown immensely due to two other effective strategies.\u00a0 First, conservative international NGOs regularly give out human rights or social service awards (e.g., 2005 World of Children Awards) to select individuals of local conservative NGOs (e.g., executive secretary of Taiwan\u2019s Garden of Hope), thus adding visibility and prestige to the conservative cause. \u00a0Secondly, local conservative Christian NGOs are easily incorporated into international causes launched and defined by similar conservative groups in the advanced countries.\u00a0 In 2005, Taiwan\u2019s Garden of Hope hosted a conference on \u201cStrategies for Combating Human Trafficking from Southeast Asia to Taiwan\u201d in collaboration with Vital Voices, which \u201cgrew out of the United States government’s successful Vital Voices Democracy Initiative, which was established after the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing to promote the advancement of women as a U.S. foreign policy goal<\/em>\u201d[23]<\/strong><\/a> (italics mine).\u00a0 As skills and networking are provided and exchanged, influences and pressures from the United States and other advanced countries that are interested in building their presence in the region through nongovernmental means also touch ground.\u00a0 Conversely, by situating themselves on the map as key players in such global cause, local conservative NGOs can promote their antisex agenda while enhancing their social visibility and collaboration with the state.\u00a0 The active participation in exchange and collaboration both locally and globally continue to help the conservative NGOs become increasingly intertwined in this network of local as well as global governance.<\/p>\n

Since 2000, such NGOs have found another powerful cause under which their conservative agenda can be advanced as they move deeper into the heart of the state.\u00a0 The United Nations\u2019 global protocol of \u201cgender mainstreaming\u201d now provides strong justification for the establishment of an overseeing committee that has the power to examine all planned action, including legislation, policies or programs in all areas and at all levels of the government, as well as to make demands on all branches of the government to work toward the fundamental goal of gender equality.\u00a0 As a political entity that has been seeking entry to United Nations for decades, Taiwan has seized upon this opportunity to make a gesture, and conservative Christian NGOs as well as mainstream feminists and women scholars suddenly find themselves in hot demand to sit on various committees in the government, to take up project franchises and draft policies, to make annual reports on gender mainstreaming, to attend and organize training camps and conferences over gender issues, etc.\u00a0 Understandably, marginal and against-the-grain groups and activists are not only excluded, but are now feeling all the more pressure from the maneuvers of former peer groups, whose experience in strategy and discourse is now helping to improve the clumsy operations of the state and its governance.<\/p>\n

Scholars of global governance have celebrated the weakening of state power and the rise of the power of civil society.\u00a0 Yet in fact, in many parts of the Third World, state power is now horizontally transferred to various suprastate international organizations or downward to various local or grassroots citizen groups (Crook et. al., 1992: 80).\u00a0 Such a \u201cstate-NGO\u201d collaboration is often embodied in a mutual interpenetration of people and power\/money (the NGOs serving as franchise for state bureaucracy), and other times through a network of exchanges between the state and the NGOs.\u00a0 Exchange of symbolic values (such as mutual endorsement or mutual legitimation or conferred awards) between states and NGOs is also quite frequent.\u00a0 The result is a new power formation that has been termed \u201cthe flat governance of new populism.\u201d[24]<\/strong><\/a> \u00a0Instead of state power being weakened, as most global governance theorists have argued, state power in such third-world nations has been expanding.\u00a0 With the help of local conservative-minded NGOs, state power now covers ever more social spheres and is gaining strength in relation to newly constructed subjects for rule (such as emerging sexual minorities) and new spheres where the regulation\/surveillance of marginalized populations and their activities carry insurmountable weight, where bodies and everyday life serve as prime targets.<\/p>\n

State rule, global governance, and oppression of marginalized sexualities have gone hand in hand in the case of Taiwan.\u00a0 The collaboration between the state and conservative Christian NGOs in civil society has made progressive activism all the more difficult as new forms of regulation\/surveillance assume the form and power of legally enforceable laws supported by parts of the civil society.\u00a0 One can no longer presume a clear-cut opposition between the people and the state, the local or the global. \u00a0Instead, a \u201cstate-civil society\u201d conglomerate has become a formidable obstacle to the liberation of marginalized queers.\u00a0 As the double-bind of liberal rhetoric and juridical punishment increasingly makes up today\u2019s \u201cliberal democracy,\u201d it is this child-protection-minded sexual authoritarianism, coupled with the shifting of alliances and developing global governance, that Taiwanese queers, and queers everywhere, will have to contest.<\/p>\n

Works Cited<\/strong><\/p>\n

Crook, Stephen, Jan Pakulski and Malcolm Waters (1992).\u00a0 Postmodernization: Change in Advanced Society<\/em>.\u00a0 London: SAGE.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Habermas, J\u00fcrgen (1975).\u00a0 Legitimation Crisis<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0 Boston: Beacon Press.<\/span><\/p>\n

—– (1987).\u00a0 The Theory of Communicative Action<\/em>.\u00a0 Vol. Two.\u00a0 Life World and System: A Critique of Functionalist Reason<\/em>.\u00a0 Boston: Beacon Press.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ho, Josephine (2005).\u00a0 \u201cFrom Anti-Trafficking to Social Discipline: Or, The Changing Role of \u2018Women\u2019s\u2019 NGOs in Taiwan,\u201d Trafficking and Prostitution Reconsidered: New Perspectives on Migration, Sex Work, and Human Rights<\/em>, Edited by Kamala Kempadoo, Jyoti Sanghera, and Bandana Pattanaik (Boulder, CO: Paradigm): 83-105.<\/span><\/p>\n

—– (2008).\u00a0 \u201cIs Global Governance Bad for East Asian Queers?\u201d GLQ<\/em> 14.4: 457-479.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ning, Yin-Bin (2005).\u00a0 \u201cExclusive Civil Society: Governance and Cultural Wars.\u201d\u00a0 Rethinking and Recasting Citizenship: Social Exclusion and Marginality in Chinese Societies.\u00a0 Eds. by May Tam, Hok Bun Ku & Travis Kong.\u00a0 Hong Kong: Centre for Social Policy Studies, Hong Kong Polytechnic University: 3-26 (in Chinese).<\/span><\/p>\n

Wang, Shuen-Min (2003).\u00a0 \u201cSome Thoughts on the Combinatory Amendment of Children and Teenagers Welfare Act,\u201d NPF Commentary 092-046, National Policy Foundation, March 27, 2003. \u00a0(Accessed Jan. 3, 2010) See http:\/\/old.npf.org.tw\/PUBLICATION\/SS\/092\/SS-C-092-046.htm<\/a><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Endnotes<\/strong><\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> This paper is an extensively revised and updated version of my keynote speech delivered at “Beyond the Strai(gh)ts: Transnationalism and Queer Chinese Politics” Conference, held by the Institute of East Asian Studies, UC Berkeley, April 29-30, 2005.\u00a0 I want to thank my colleague Naifei Ding for reading the first draft and giving me invaluable suggestions.\u00a0 My heart-felt thanks also go to Petrus Liu and Lisa Rofel for their careful reading and insightful comments which greatly helped with the revision.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> With the exception of materials that the court adjudicates to be of educational, artistic, or medical nature.\u00a0 But even there, existing prejudices abound.<\/span><\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> \u201cHuman rights\u201d was originally used by the ruling KMT government mainly to highlight the \u201cnotorious human rights record\u201d of its rival government of the People\u2019s Republic of China.\u00a0 During the 1970s and 1980s, the concept was gradually appropriated by Taiwanese political dissidents to draw attention to Taiwan\u2019s own record of political oppression.<\/span><\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Labor efforts may have weakened along with dramatic changes in Taiwanese economic and labor structure, but labor struggles have since 1997 broadened to include sex workers, domestic workers, and migrant workers from Southeast Asia who now make up an important part of that economic structure and are bringing new issues and new vigor into the movement.<\/span><\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> Those who favored this state-oriented strategy would later enjoy favorable relations with the government even during all its transitions of power, while those who held onto the a-statist gender\/sexuality line continue to be associated with marginal groups and issues.<\/span><\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> Taipei city police repeatedly raided a long-standing gay cruising ground known as Chang-De Street because of its proximity to the presidential palace.\u00a0 In July 1997, police raided the one-block-long street again and demanded to check everyone\u2019s ID card.\u00a0 Those who resisted were taken to the police station and photographed; mandatory urine tests were also performed.\u00a0 High caliber protests by gay and lesbian groups got the city government to agree to avoid such incidents in the future.<\/span><\/p>\n

[7]<\/a> Taipei Gay Sauna AG was raided by the police in December 1998; its provision of condoms as safe sex measures was treated as evidence of illegal sexual transaction.\u00a0 Police even forced patrons to remove their towels and pose in intimate scenes for picture-taking.\u00a0 With the help of human rights lawyers and continued gay protests, AG eventually won a court case against police harassment.<\/span><\/p>\n

[8]<\/a> At least two lesbian pubs that featured occasional lap dancing were raided by the police in 2002.\u00a0 The owners suffered fines and losses in business and eventually closed down.<\/span><\/p>\n

[9]<\/a> A police raid on a gay home party in January 2004 sparked social controversy as ninety-three gays in their briefs or bikinis were marched out of the party site in front of television cameras.\u00a0 Used condoms found on the floor were reported as evidence of a sex orgy rather than of well-practiced safe sex measures.\u00a0 Human rights groups and gay groups protested strongly against this police and media invasion of privacy, yet such raids continue.<\/span><\/p>\n

[10]<\/a> Jin-Jin Books, with the help of sex rights groups, submitted documents to challenge the verdict, claiming that Article 235 of the Criminal Code (concerning dissemination of obscenities) violates basic Constitutional rights to freedom of expression and freedom of speech.\u00a0 The Constitutional Court\u2019s reply in 2006 afforded limited room for soft-core materials provided they are wrapped and marked to be off limits to anyone under the age of eighteen, but clearly stated that sexual violence (collapsed with S\/M) and bestiality and the overtly pornographic are still considered obscene and thus criminal.<\/span><\/p>\n

[11]<\/a> Ironically, at about the same time in December 2003, the DPP party\u2019s own legislator, Hou Shui-sheng openly opposed legalization of gay marriage because, according to him, gay couples would \u201ccause the nation to perish\u201d while then vice president Lyu Hsiou-lian referred to AIDS as \u201cGod\u2019s abomination for the morally degraded.\u201d\u00a0 Such public outbursts continue to expose the thinly veiled homophobia among political figures.<\/span><\/p>\n

[12]<\/a> Such measures include severe penalty for sexual contact with minors, any act considered related to the \u201ctrafficking\u201d of minors, and any sexually explicit advertisement.\u00a0 Minors involved in such incidents, or those deemed \u201clikely\u201d to be involved, are to be sent to special correctional institutions.\u00a0 For details of the transformation of this set of laws, see Ho (2005).<\/span><\/p>\n

[13]<\/a> Alternatively titled \u201cChildren and Juvenile Sexual Transaction Prevention Act,\u201d the legislation was worded in such a way that, except in the title of the act, no reference to minors is stated in any clause, which allows legal measures to be liberally applied to all Internet communication (even that between adults on adult sites).<\/span><\/p>\n

[14]<\/a> The severity of the penalty for such Internet messages is only visible when compared with the penalty levied at non-Internet-based solicitation of sexual transactions, such as offers by regular sex workers, which carries only a three-day detention or a fine of NT$30,000.<\/span><\/p>\n

[15]<\/a> If the sexual transaction charge seems too far-fetched in some cases, the obscenity clause in the Criminal Code can still be applied to any message that hints at sexual invitation (even when posted in clearly marked adult chat-rooms or BBS\u2019s), including, for example, messages describing the size of one\u2019s own penis or inviting a bottom\/master to collaborate in sexual play.\u00a0 Originally targeting commercial production and sale of pornographic material, Article 235 of the Criminal Code has now found new and universal application in this age of individual-initiated production of (noncommercial) sexual self-expression and interaction on the Internet.<\/span><\/p>\n

[16]<\/a> For details about the case, see \u201cZoophilia Hyperlink Incident,\u201d Center for the Study of Sexualities, \u00a0http:\/\/sex.ncu.edu.tw\/members\/ho\/english\/jo_english-bestiality.htm<\/a> (accessed January 3, 2010)<\/span><\/p>\n

[17]<\/a> Kimo<\/em>, one of the most popular sites for online personal albums, instituted restrictions that would even ban photos of individuals in pajamas or swim wear, not to mention posing with hands over sensitive parts of a fully clothed body.<\/span><\/p>\n

[18]<\/a> Local social work scholars warn that such amendments presuppose the so-called natural bond between children\/juveniles and their parents which may no longer be viable in late-modern society.\u00a0 See Wang (2003).<\/span><\/p>\n

[19]<\/a> At the urging of mainstream women\u2019s groups, the Act to Prevent Sexual Harassment was drafted in 2005 and is now enforced nationwide as an anti-sex ordinance that encourages women to treat all sexual presentations, expressions and negotiations as possible cases of sexual harassment.<\/span><\/p>\n

[20]<\/a> ECPAT\u2019s webpage lists such important links as the Interpol, World Tourism Organization, and various United Nations agencies, especially UNICEF and International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour, etc.)\u00a0 See http:\/\/www.ecpat.net\/EI\/Ecpat_Network.asp<\/a>. (accessed January 3, 2010)<\/span><\/p>\n

[21]<\/a> The letter had been available on the ECPAT-Taiwan official website (http:\/\/www.ecpat.org.tw\/html\/view01_05.htm<\/a>) until 2008 when it was removed from the new webpage design.\u00a0 The mother organization, ECPAT International, may still be devoted to \u201cthe elimination of child prostitution, child pornography and the trafficking of children,\u201d but its Taiwan chapter is now repackaging itself as a child-protection organization with a wider range of concerns, hence the new web design.\u00a0 Even its Chinese name is now changed to \u201cSpreading Your Wings Foundation,\u201d thus eliminating any reference to child prostitution.<\/span><\/p>\n

[22]<\/a> I have discussed the spread of global governance and its impact on East Asian queers in more detail in another paper.\u00a0 See Ho (2008).<\/span><\/p>\n

[23]<\/a> \u201cAbout Us,\u201d Vital Voices. (accessed January 3, 2010) http:\/\/www.vitalvoices.org\/about-us.<\/span><\/p>\n

[24]<\/a> Cf. Ning.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u8f49\u8f09\u6642\u8acb\u4fdd\u7559\u7db2\u9801\u8a3b\u8a18<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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