What's good for the gander is even better for the goose: Women buying commercial sex in China.

Research about the commercial sex industry rarely examines the women who are the clients purchasing sexual services. Examining how this challenges gender stereotypes through the undoing gender framework reveals how gender norms can be reshaped through contextual changes. Based on 3 years of ethnographic data from a high-end bar in Tianjin, interviews with 27 female clients and 47 MSWs paint a complex picture of how some women adopted ungendered strategies regarding sexuality. As women take control of their own sexual behavior, they free themselves of some traditional societal expectations about their identity. Primarily motivated by pleasure and control, purchasing sex becomes a means for women to experience empowerment and self-confidence by breaking with traditional gender norms and expectations. Undoing gender involves expanding gendered repertoires, with women finding empowerment in adopting a masculine model of sexuality. However, social stigma and personal efficacy indicate that gender deconstruction is a gradual process. The research contributes to understanding complex gender dynamics and sexual behaviors within commercial sex transactions, shedding light on societal norms and individual agency.

"Be the Dream Queen": Gender Performativity, Femininity, and Transgender Sex Workers in China.

An under-researched aspect of transgender sex workers in China pertains to their desires and expressions of femininity. Male-to-Female (MTF) transgender sex workers are a high-risk population prone to depression and stress regarding body image, intimate relationships marked by violence, and social stigma, rendering them vulnerable to hate crimes and discrimination. Ethnographic data from in-depth interviews with 49 MTF transgender sex workers indicate that sex, gender and feminine desire are mutable in the construction of self and subjectivity. This study uses the conceptual framework of gender performativity, that is, gender is performative and distinct from physical bodies and binary classifications. It is not only an individual's normative gender expressions which are based on the sex assigned at birth, but it also reinforces the normative gender performances of the gender binary. This article argues that the 49 MTF transgender sex workers are embodiments of gendered performances, displaying femininity to ameliorate hate crimes and discrimination as well as reinforce the masculinity and sexuality of their clients and intimate sex partners. Embracing their femininity constitutes a self-help program, enabling them to build self-confidence and develop a positive self-image in the face of overwhelming social disapproval.

A "Phoenix" rising from the ashes: China's Tongqi, marriage fraud, and resistance.

There are significant numbers of women in China who have inadvertently married closeted gay men. Women in China who unwittingly marry closeted gay men are known as Tongqi (), and these women often discover their husband's secret only after giving birth to fulfill filial obligations. These women taken into this "marriage fraud" are initially unaware of their husbands' sexual orientation. Because China's divorce law favors men, even if the wife files for divorce, the husband often wins custody of children. The tendency to blame the woman who have unwittingly married gay men extends even to the woman's own immediate families. These women suffer heightened risk of not only physical death from AIDS and other diseases, but also psychological death through the loss of physical mobility, alienation of kin, and death of their heterosexual marriage identity. This article extends necropolitics to the social death situations of 12 educated and 47 low-educated Tongqi and reveals how they resist and overcome their circumstances. Tongqi are the women who have unwittingly married gay men of violations involving their own marriage, but they are not simply waiting for death. Taking an ethnographical approach, this work uses the social death concept of necropolitics to provide understanding of how marriage and gender laws perpetuate these dysfunctional unions.

Parental Socialization and Development of Chinese Youths: A Multivariate and Comparative Approach.

Parental socialization has been recently reported as a multifaceted concept, which includes parenting practices and family processes. Nevertheless, prior family research generally treated parental socialization tantamount to parenting behavior only and overlooked its different effects on multiple youth outcomes simultaneously, especially in the Chinese population. This study, with a sample of 223 Chinese parent-youth dyads (80.7% mothers; 55.6% male youths; meanage = 16.7 years), found that both authoritative parenting and positive family processes, as measured by a multi-informant approach, significantly predicted higher self-esteem, self-control, future orientation, other perspective taking and lower externalizing problem behavior of Chinese youths concomitantly. Furthermore, youth self-esteem was found to significantly mediate the effects of authoritative parenting and positive family processes on their self-control, future orientation, other perspective taking and externalizing problem behavior, and different facets of parental socialization significantly predicted the youth outcomes differentially. Results of this study highlight importance of considering the multifaceted nature of parental socialization and interrelations of youth development.