From enter the dragon to enter the mullet: exploring filmic representations of east Asia butch dykes by Asian queer women filmmakers in contemporary Canada

Abstract

This paper is like a pilot project for my doctoral research and it is very much a work in progress. In my doctoral research I am looking at the filmic representations of transmigrant East Asian queer women in contemporary Canada. While addressing sexuality, the term “queer” also encompasses the intersection of multiple identities such as race and gender. I use the word, “transmigrant” rather migrant or immigrant, as Martin Manalansan suggests, to address “the multi-stranded relationships” (Manalansan 2000: 185) such mobile groups have with both their home and settlement countries. I especially want to focus on two aspects of this research. The first is an examination of how the racialised, queered, and gendered body is presented, appropriated, or subverted in films about and by Asian queer women. Secondly, I want to look at the “monolithic” representation of Asian women in much Western discourse and how differences are delineated by Asian queer women from their own perceptions and interpretations. I will mainly look at the work of transmigrant queer women from filmmakers from Taiwan, China, and Hong Kong who identify themselves as non-heterosexual, and who live or stay in two highly multicultural Canadian cities: Vancouver and Toronto.