To browse Academia. Magaly Rodriguez Garcia. Madhu Singh. I-ting Chen. What emotions and affects are at work when they sing a duet in both Mandarin and Minnanese with each other to express their feelings?
Simultaneous with the campaign for legislative reform in post-martial law Taiwan is the emergence of cross-strait migration after the enactment of laws permitting cross-strait exchange. This dissertation investigates questions of desire, gendered subjectivity, and modernity in the context of cross-strait relations between Taiwan and mainland China.
I argue that a greater understanding of this complexity sheds new light on contemporary Taiwan-China relations. Sex workers all over the world face a constant risk of abuse. This is not news. Nor is it news that they are an extremely marginalized group of people, frequently forced to live outside the law.
No one would be surprised to learn that they face discrimination, beatings, rape and harassment-sometimes on a daily basis-or that they are often denied access to basic health or housing services. Conversations around "sex work" often focus on the issue of "choice"-whether or not, for example, women should have the right to "choose" prostitution as a "career", or whether or not "consenting adults" should have the right to engage in sex in exchange for money.
What we don't talk about enough is the context behind said "choices". Issues like poverty, abuse, gender inequality, racism and a history of colonialism all play a role in leading women into prostitution and keeping them there. The paper focuses on the effect of prostitution on the future generations of those involved in this "profession.
