Informants in the age range of fifteen to twenty-one years from a working class background might not seek out a commercial lesbian space often due to the lack of money. Rather, they tend to rely on affordable spaces or free hangouts to socialise or simply to get away from their parents. Sixteen-year-old Yuki often argued with her mother about common issues concerning schooling and peer relations, growing up, and family responsibilities. Living in a public housing estate in a satellite town, Yuki’s family members were too busy to spend time with her and she primarily hung out with peers in the stairways and corridors of the housing estate. Her father repaired air-conditioners and her mother worked two jobs as a domestic helper and a bar hostess. Her brother remained an absent figure and was not mentioned much by Yuki. Yuki’s relationship with her mother was close yet laden with tension. Yuki’s lesbian identity had been exposed when her ex-boyfriend made a call to her mother and exposed her. Her ex-boyfriend informed her mother that Yuki was seeing a TB. Her mother confronted Yuki and the interaction was described by Yuki as an interrogation. Yuki fought back by accusing her mother of not trusting her and her mother said right out, ‘You’re messing with that dirty stuff! Do what you want but just don’t you dare to bring it home!’ This last comment is of particular significance. Informants who came out in their teenage years often heard similar comments from parents or authority figures, such as school teachers and religious leaders. The term ‘dirty stuff (wuzouje) is often associated with unforgivable or disgusting family secrets as in ‘dirty laundry’, and is used to describe homosexual desires.
Fifteen-year-old Ah Lok echoed the same sentiments and reiterated the degrading comments that she often heard: ‘unnatural thing’, ‘a violation of nature’, ‘perverse’ and ‘disgusting’. Ah Lok was a TB who was most concerned with sporting the latest hairstyle and continuously played with her hair to make sure the right bits stood up in the right place during our interview. Similar to Yuki’s social background, Ah Lok lived in a satellite town with her parents. Her father worked for the government as an independent contractor. Her mother operated a food stall in their housing estate. Her mother was seldom at home but her parents were still ‘officially together’. Ah Lok saw herself as living alone with her father since her older brother had passed away a few years ago. Ah Lok’s relationship with her mother remained close, though, as she often had more candid conversations with her mother than her father. Often branded as a trouble-maker in school, Ah Lok faced pressure not only from teachers but also from her peers.
As she explained, ‘[s]witching to a co-educational school means rumours always being spread by the boys. Lots of people didn’t like me in this school. They always say ‘sei gei po’ (a demeaning term to describe lesbians). I hate this word so much. Being called a ‘gei po’ and a ‘lesbian’ are two different things’. Ah Lok mentioned a school bullying incident where a few male classmates from another class came over and one of them suddenly put his arms around her waist. She jabbed him with her elbow right away. When I asked Ah Lok how she would explain the boys’ bullying and harassment, she said, ‘They did it on purpose! They wanted to know. They are curious about TBs. Very curious’. Curiosity in this sense can be understood as an excuse to harass and to bully lesbians. She continued, ‘I think my school environment is perverted. One day a group of Form Five boys [from another class] just came into my class and picked on me. One of them even tried to punch me in the face but missed’.
Ah Lok’s account is far from an isolated incident. Other informants also discussed school bullying in our interviews. Bullying and harassment in schools included being asked to think carefully about their choice of a lesbian lifestyle, to consider seeking psychiatric help in order to cure their same-sex desires, and to adopt a more gender-appropriate or ‘normal’ appearance. Schools are both social and institutional spaces to regulate bodies and to govern sexualities. Previous studies on young women in Hong Kong secondary schools have also shown how tomboys show resistance to structural inequalities in their everyday lives by exhibiting particular bad behaviour such as swearing and smoking (Tong 2008).
Ah Lok viewed the school’s acceptance or tolerance of her androgynous hairstyle as a key indicator of their attitude towards her sexuality. She specifically chose a school that is less known for its academic excellence and rather more lenient about school uniforms and regulations. Prior to entering this school, Ah Lok had played truant many times and once quit school altogether after she finished form three in secondary school. She only agreed to come back to school on her mother’s plea because of the relaxed classroom atmosphere and the location of the new school. In her words, ‘I can hang out in Tung Lo Wan after school right away. The school uniforms are new [not commonly associated with other schools in the area]. I can wear them to go to gaming arcades without being caught [by teachers]! It doesn’t look like a uniform. Also, I can wear a PE shirt (a sports t-shirt) and pants. Pants are allowed!’ Ah Lok has kept her short hairstyle as well at this school.
In Hong Kong, 35 percent of schools are managed and operated by the Protestant, Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches (Hong Kong Yearbook 2011). Historically, the Church has always had a significant influence on the Hong Kong government’s policies on education, social services and welfare, as well as other areas of civic affairs. Conservative religious values dominate the school curriculum and have had a major impact on how sexualities are taught in these schools. Same-sex sexualities are officially prohibited or condemned in school as a perverse form of sexual desire that is in contradiction to God’s teachings. Non-Christian schools tend to have a more lenient stance on same-sex sexualities. This is not to say that same-sex sexualities are positively affirmed in these school settings, but that same-sex sexualities may not be singled out for condemnation as they are in Protestant and Catholic educational institutions. Progressive educators face many structural obstacles in providing sex-positive education and teaching about non-heteronormative sexualities in secondary schools. It is commonly at the discretion of the educator whether to include sexual diversity in sex education classes. Nonetheless, the impact of secondary school education on Hong Kong lesbians cannot be underestimated. Most informants in my study discussed their discovery of lesbian desires and their initial thoughts about coming out or being coerced to come out due to peer pressure during their secondary school years. They vividly remembered the heartbreaking relationships, the positive experience of discovering their own same-sex desires and the discrimination they experienced during those years.
Living in a very tight space measuring just 120 square feet with her parents, siblings and her grandmother, Ku Tsai spent a lot of time outside of her home. Working as a full-time salesperson since graduating from high school, Ku Tsai has relatively more disposable income than Yuki and Ah Lok. She can contribute part of her income to her family and still have enough for her daily expenses. I came to know Ah Lok, Yuki and Ku Tsai together as a trio of three close friends. I was first introduced to Ku Tsai through another informant in the study. When I told Ku Tsai that I was looking for younger informants for my study she introduced me to Ah Lok and Ah Lok brought along her then girlfriend, Yuki, for the interview. They spent time regularly at shopping malls, video arcades and lesbian karaoke bars. These consumer spaces allowed them to express their gender and sexual identities in a welcoming environment — or, at the very least, they did not feel that they were at risk ofbeing harassed as women with same-sex desires. Shopping malls as tolerant consumer spaces for the expression of young people’s gender identities have been examined in Ara Wilson’s study tom identities in the Mah Boonkrong mall in Bangkok. Wilson suggests that the shopping mall is ‘a space of consumption and leisure’ where tom can express themselves in tom fashion and display intimacy in public with dee, a term referring to a tom’s lady companion (Wilson 2004: 121).