(Han-)Chinese cultural appropriation of sexual legal politics: postcolonial discourse on law controlling sex work in Hong Kong

Abstract

Hong Kong law, following the Anglo-American liberal legal private/public dichotomy, through decriminalization, imposes strict regulations on the development of the sex work industry. The legal regulations, besides failing to suppress the industry, reproduce a context where female sex workers are (re)pathologized and (re)marginalized by the mainstream patriarchal society. In the article, I will critically examine the underlying theories of the contemporary Hong Kong legal discourse from both the Lacanian psychoanalytic and Buddhist vijnanamatra perspectives, and argue that the Foucauldian resistance subverting the patriarchal agenda on the representation of the sex work industry could be reproduced and localized within the specific cultural context of Hong Kong, which is a predominately (Han-)Chinese society.