The anxiety of love: an analysis of recent Chinese popular music

Love between two sexes is a time-honored but commonplace theme in songs that it does not seem to demand scholarly attention. Yet, the manner in which sexual love is expressed in Chinese songs today carries with it the deep stigma of the sea change that has been taking place in recent Chinese culture. The present paper discovers that, as a result of drastic changes in Chinese people’s attitude toward sexual relations, there has been a greater anxiety in songs intended for men to sing, as well as those for women, and manifestations of the anxiety of the loss of love are gender-specific. In “male songs,” paradoxically, the anxiety has been more voiced and apparently with more pain, which is one of the key indicators of the profound change in sexual attitudes in Chinese society.     

Endless Sex: The Gender Recognition Act 2004 and the Persistence of a Legal Category

This paper challenges a view of the Gender Recognition Act 2004 as involving an unequivocal shift from the concept of sex to the concept of gender in law’s understanding of the distinction between male and female. While the Act does move in the direction of gender, and ostensibly in an obvious way through abandoning surgical preconditions for legal recognition, it will be argued that the Act retains and deploys the concept of sex. Moreover, it will be argued that the concept of sex retained is not merely an anatomical understanding, but sex in a biological sense. In this respect the Gender Recognition Act can be viewed as embodying a tension between gender and sex. Further, it is contended that this tension is explicable in terms of irresolution of contrary legal desires to reproduce the gender order and to insulate marriage and heterosexuality from homosexuality in the moment of reform.     

Matricide and Two Sexual Femicides by a Male Strangler with a Transgender Sadomasochistic Identity

Abstract: While violence against sexual minorities is a well‐known phenomenon, sexual homicides committed by men with cross‐dressing or transsexual identity are not, because they are relatively few. We report a 23‐year follow‐up of the case of a transvestite, possibly transsexual, man who killed his mother by strangulation at the age of 20, and later in two separate cases strangled a female victim towards whom he felt sexual desire. He reported being sexually aroused by being strangled himself. The case raises questions concerning legislation which does not allow life‐long control of criminals.     

论变性人的法律地位及权利救济——以人权入宪为时代背景

变性人的出现对传统的道德和现有的法律产生了极大的冲击,变性人已经形成了一个不容忽视的社会群体,并一步步走进公众的视野.虽然这些人在数量上占绝对的少数,但我们不能因此忽略他们的存在,更不能忽视他们的合法权益,如何对待他们,如何规范他们的行为,是法律所应予以考虑的问题.我国是人权公约的缔约国,宪法明确规定国家有尊重并保障人权的职责和义务,我们必须要修改原有人权本源宪政理念,加强立法,在法律上对变性人提供权利保障.通过对特殊人群的保护,增强人们的人权意识.     

A Hazy Concept of Equality

K.B. is a woman working for the United Kingdom National Health Service (NHS) with a transsexual male partner. Her partner's male gender was not legally recognised in the United Kingdom and consequently they could not marry. Whilst the NHS pension scheme provides for the payment of a survivor's pension, this is only in respect of married partners. The European Court of Justice held that the combination of circumstances that prevented K.B.'s partner from receiving the survivor's pension amounted to sex discrimination in pay contrary to Article 141 of the Treaty establishing the European Community. At first sight, this decision appears to represent a strengthening of the concept of gender equality in European Union law. Yet, the reasoning provided by the Court lacks clarity and coherence. Moreover, the reach of equality is compromised by the Court's determination to exclude any confrontation with the privileged status of heterosexual marriage. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

“Gender is No Substitute for Sex”: A Comparative Human Rights Analysis of the Legal Regulation of Sexual Identity

U.K. regulation of sexual identity within a marriage context has traditionally been linked to biological sex. In response to the European Court of Human Rights decisions in Goodwin and I.,² and in order to address the question of whether a transsexual person can be treated as a “real” member of their adoptive sex, the U.K. has recently passed the Gender Recognition Act 2004. While the Act appears to signal a move away from biology and towards a conception of sexual identity based on gender rather than sex, questions of sexual identity remain rooted in medico-legal assessments of the individual transsexual body/mind. In contrast, because transsexual people in some parts of Canada have been able to marry in their post-operative sex since 1990, contemporary debates on the sexual identity of transsexual people in British Columbia and Ontario do not focus on the validity of marriage, and more frequently centre upon the provision of goods and services, in human rights contexts where sex is said to matter. Currently in Canada this is prompting questions of what it means to be a woman in society, how the law should interpret sex and gender, and how, if at all, the parameters of sexual identity should be established in law. This article seeks to compare recent U.K. legal conceptualisations of transsexuality with Canadian law in this area. As human rights discourse begins to grow in the U.K., the question remains as to whether or not gender will become an adequate substitute for sex.See Johnson “Gender is no substitute for Sex” Daily Telegraph, 24 February 2004. I am being disingenuous here as the author of the article is arguing that replacing the term sex with gender in relation to transsexuality is erroneous and an annoying Americanism, whereas I am arguing that neither term is adequate. Goodwin v. U.K. [2002] 35 E.H.R.R. 18; I. v.U.K. [2002] 2 F.L.R. 518.