Petula Ho: 'Sex with Chinese Characteristics'

Board member Petula Ho Sik Ying has been featured in the November issue of the HKU Bulletin for her research, ‘Sex with Chinese Characteristics’.

‘“Women’s work and the way they conduct their gender roles and present themselves as new sexual subjects are all important to China’s economic prosperity and political legitimacy,” she said. “Most people think sex is a marginal topic, but it is an entry point to understanding the whole post-socialist China.”

In that regard, she has been disturbed by the growing intolerance for academic research about sexuality, sexual diversity and feminism in China that has occurred alongside the promotion of Confucian values and the crackdown on prostitution. Recently, Professor Ho has had collaborators and research students on the Mainland withdraw from projects and publications out of fear of the potential repercussions.

' “In this climate of increasing censorship, the lack of clarity about what is or is not permissible makes scholars and activists ever more cautious and likely to engage in self-censorship,” she said. For now, studies on the bedrooms of the nation will fall to scholars based outside the Mainland, such as Professor Ho.’

Read the article in full in the HKU Bulletin.