Liu 2016

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Gender, Work and Organization Vol. 24 No. 2 March 2017

doi:10.1111/gwao.12158
Sensuality as Subversion: Doing Masculinity

with Chinese Australian Professionals
Helena Liu*
Within western gender structures, dominant discourses of Asian men as weak, feminized and
asexual continue to render Asian masculinities subordinate to white hegemonic ideals. Although
research of gender in organization studies has revealed important insights into how gender might
be redone or undone, non-white voices remain marginalized in this critical project. This article ex-
plores through in-depth interviews the ways by which Chinese cis-male professionals in Australia
attempt to coopt desexualizing discourses and do masculinity through sensuality. Specically,
the ndings show how their sensuality is practised across various dimensions at work and be-
yond, including via the presentation of the self, relationships with others and representations in
social texts. In presenting the voices of Asian men, this article seeks to illuminate their individual
and collective pursuits for decolonization, agency and pleasure.
Keywords: sensuality, race, Asian, masculinities, resistance
Introduction
onnells (1987, 1995) inuential theorizing of hegemonic masculinity has deepened our under-
C standing of how the reproduction of patriarchal gender relations has traditionally involved the
subordination and marginalization of non-white men. Although hegemonic masculinity has popu-
larly been taken to refer to a somewhat xed form of ideal masculine character, Connell and
Messerschmidt (2005) further claried the relational and performative nature of hegemonic masculin-
ity as a conguration of practices that naturalizes the gender order. In particular, hegemonic
masculinity requires complicity to sustain its social dominance, including its performance by non-
hegemonic men, women and people who identify otherwise (Connell and Messerschmidt, 2005).
Emergent research of resistance in organization studies has produced promising insights into the
possibility of unsettling hegemonic gender orders (Ainsworth et al., 2014; Connell, 2010; Katila and
Merilinen, 2002; McDonald, 2013; Murgia and Poggio, 2013; Pacholok, 2009). Some scholars argue
that it is possible to subvert the gender binary and undo gender (Deutsch, 2007; Risman, 2009), while
in contrast, West and Zimmerman (2009) argue that gender can never be undone as that implies an
abandonment of our accountability to sex categories. They suggest that this accountability is embed-
ded in historical and structural circumstances that cannot be easily dismissed (West and Zimmerman,
2009). Rather, accountability to normative conceptions of sex categories can only realistically be
shifted so that gender is redone rather than undone (West and Zimmerman, 2009). In Connells
(2010) study of transgender people at work, she demonstrates how efforts towards hybrid gender
performances combined with the politicization of transgender could be varyingly interpreted as
either redoing or undoing gender. Her ndings suggest that redoing and undoing gender are perhaps
more uid, but critically share a feminist common ground of challenging gender inequality.
Address for correspondence: *University of Technology Sydney Business School, PO Box 123, Broadway, NSW 2007, Australia;
e-mail: helena.liu@uts.edu.au
2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

SENSUALITY AS SUBVERSION 195
To date, explorations of redoing/undoing gender have focused predominantly on white subjects.

The relative absence of non-white voices, I argue, is more than a research gap to be lled. While
we have developed the language and understanding to speak of multiple masculinities and their per-
formance and resistance, organization studies have yet to develop an equally nuanced engagement
with race and ethnicity (Ailon-Souday and Kunda, 2003; Nkomo, 1992; Parker, 2005). In this article,
I seek to examine how Chinese Australian men in particular resist their own subordination in white
hegemonic models as weak, asexual and feminized (Hiramoto, 2012; Hirose and Pih, 2010). Speci-
cally, it draws on in-depth interviews with eight Chinese cis-male professionals working in
Australia from a wider study to ask: How do Chinese Australian cis-male professionals do
masculinity?.
In theorizing racialized masculinities, this article adopts intersectionality as a guiding principle for
analysis. Originating in black feminist politics, intersectionality recognizes that examinations of gen-
der or race in isolation offer only partial, incomplete analyses of the social injustices that characterize
black womens lived experiences (Collins, 2000, 2012; Crenshaw, 1991; hooks, 1981; Lorde, 1984). To
understand power and resistance in organizations requires seeing the interconnectedness between
multiple axes of power such as sex, gender, sexuality, race, religion, coloniality and class that work
together to dominate (Acker, 2012; Cheng, 1999; Collins, 2000, 2012; Holvino, 2010).
This article begins with an overview of the literatures on masculinities in organization studies. In
recognizing that extant research has primarily centred on white subjects, I draw on theories of
Asian masculinities from Asian American/Australian studies to ground my analysis. The conceptu-
alizations of Asia explored in this article follow from these literatures as being bounded within east
Asia, southeast Asia and south Asia, and do not include the Middle East or the Pacic Islands. At rst
sight it might appear as though my use of the term Asian is employed in an unproblematized way
as a homogenous concept collapsing together all of Asia. However, my deliberation of the Australian
context in this article will attempt to show otherwise. From a wider empirical study exploring lead-
ership among Chinese Australians in government and business, I outline my methods of data collec-
tion and analysis before presenting the ndings. In discussing the implications of its ndings, this
article demonstrates that exploring non-white masculinities at work and in organizations can reveal
some possibilities and pitfalls in subverting hegemonic masculinity.
Theorizing Asian masculinities

Sustained organizational research into men and masculinities over the last three decades has pro-
duced important insights into the ways in which workplaces are gendered and how certain
masculinities have come to represent the organizational norm and ideal (Acker, 1990; Collinson
and Hearn, 1996; Kanter, 1977; Kerfoot and Knights, 1993; Mills, 1998; Mills and Tancred, 1992). This
research has enabled us to move beyond the reduction of gender to binary biological categories to-
wards a more complex understanding of gender as a social practice and system of power (Billing
and Alvesson, 2000; Bowring, 2004; Knights and Kerfoot, 2004; Pullen and Rhodes, 2012; West and
Zimmerman, 1987). Further, it has now become possible to speak of masculinities in the plural
(Connell, 1995) and to see masculinities as practised by people who identify as men, women or
otherwise (Ainsworth et al., 2014; Butler, 1999; Connell, 2010; Halberstam, 1998).
Connells (1987) seminal concept of hegemonic masculinity perhaps most saliently addresses the
dynamics of power in the practice of masculinities. Extending Gramscis (1971) notion of hegemony
as a naturalized form of ideological domination, Connells (1987, 1995) hegemonic masculinity refers
to a conguration of practices that inscribe the structure of gender relations. Hegemonic masculinity
is embedded in specic social contexts. For example, its expression in managerial masculinities can be
seen in the valorization of patriarchal and competitive masculinities through which control and con-
quest become taken-for-granted ways of engaging with the world (Collinson and Hearn, 1996;
Kerfoot and Knights, 1993). Elaborating on its forms in Australia, hegemonic masculinities have been
observed to be historically grounded in the male breadwinner model (Connell, 2014). Australian
masculinities emphasize sporting prowess, the ability to consume alcohol, sexual conquest and
2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd Volume 24 Number 2 March 2017
196 GENDER, WORK AND ORGANIZATION
heterosexuality, while disavow[ing] emotions and sensualities, aside from anger or lust (Gorman-
Murray, 2013, p. 138; see also Donaldson and Tomsen, 2003).
The hegemonic model may not correspond to the lives of any actual men, yet in many ways
articulates our collective fantasies and desires and acts as a benchmark against which all people are
measured (Connell and Messerschmidt, 2005; Pacholok, 2009). Thus while hegemonic masculinity
institutionalizes the domination of men over cis-women, transgender and intersex people, it also
denotes the ascendency of certain men over other men (Connell and Messerschmidt, 2005;
Demetriou, 2001).
Among the manifold ways through which tensions between masculinities manifest is the subordi-
nation and marginalization of Asian men as weak, feminized and asexual compared to the idealized
forms of white masculinities (Chan, 2000; Hiramoto, 2012; Hirose and Pih, 2010; Louie, 2012). This so-
cially constructed sexual inferiority emerged from the mid 1800s through anti-immigration senti-
ments in the US, where white Americans saw the inux of Asian labourers as threats to both their
jobs and their white women (Shek, 2006). In order to prevent miscegenation and the intermingling
of races, Asian men were varyingly depicted as sexually deviant, emasculated and/or asexual (Chan,
2001; Espiritu, 1997; Kong, 2006). Black masculinities occupied the other end of the racialized sexual
spectrum, where they were reduced to images of the hypersexualized savage (Bordo, 2000; hooks,
2003). Both racialized masculinities were constructed as aberrations to the white heterosexual mascu-
line hegemony (Chon-Smith, 2015).
Popular culture offered ctional characters like Fu Manchu, who came to emblematize white no-
tions of Asian masculinity as a reviled and ridiculed sexual joke (Chin, 1998, p. 95; see also Chan,
2001; Eng, 2001; Mayer, 2013). In the Asian American/Australian studies literature, asexualization
and desexualization of Asian masculinities are commonly used to denote mutual historical pro-
cesses by which Asian men are caricatured as wimpy nerds, effeminate exotic Others, ascetic martial
artists and stoic patriarchs (Chan, 2000; Eng, 2001; Hirose and Pih, 2010; Khoo, 2005). These images
perpetuated white-supremacist notions of Asian men as sexual deviants, while directing Asian
men to see themselves in reaction to these dominant images rather than self-denitions (Shek,
2006). In this article, I maintain the uidity with which asexualization and desexualization is used
to reect the ongoing, complex and conicting ways through which Asian men are constructed in
white discourses as both sexually deviant and devoid.
At the same time, desexualizing bureaucratic discourses attempt to expel sexuality from organiza-
tions to maintain a rational, neutral and competent ideal (Burrell, 1984; Hearn et al., 1989; Sullivan,
2014). However, this desexualization is not monolithic as white heterosexual masculinity remains
the hegemonic centre and its embodiment signies both sexual and professional prowess (Harding
et al., 2011). If sexuality is indeed ubiquitous in organizations as research has shown (Fleming,
2007; Pringle, 1988; Sullivan, 2014), there are likely implications for how Asian men balance their
masculinities between professional and personal desexualization. These implications are not well un-
derstood as white masculinities (and femininities) have tended to feature as the predominant subject
of organizational research (Nkomo, 1992), with theories of non-white masculinities more likely to
concentrate in the humanities (Chan, 2001; Espiritu, 1997; Louie, 2002; Reeser, 2010).
Despite the voices in organization studies that have argued for the treatment of gender as complex,
contested and contradictory, the mainstream literature continues to bear essentialized treatments of
race, while conating it with ethnicity, nationality and culture (Ailon-Souday and Kunda, 2003;
Kwek, 2003; Narayan, 2000). Following intersectionality theory, I see gender as fundamentally racial-
ized (Anthias, 2008; Collins, 2000; Crenshaw, 1991; Yuval-Davis, 2006). An intersectional perspective
maintains that even where gender in organizations has been seemingly examined in isolation, such
theorizations have often only overlooked the normalized status of whiteness as raceless (Holvino,
2010; Nkomo, 1992). My analysis thus attempts to explore how multiple axes of differentiation inter-
sect in Chinese Australian cis-male professionals lives. This article seeks to problematize persistent
treatments of Asian masculinity in organization studies as biologically and culturally distinct from
a white male norm, and show instead how the practice of Asian masculinities can attempt to subvert
hegemonic masculinity.
Volume 24 Number 2 March 2017 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd
In taking a social constructionist view of race, the foci of analysis shift to the processes that engen-
der race across the multiple dimensions of our everyday lives (HoSang et al., 2012; Omi and Winant,
1994). In the micro, interactional dimension, race is seen as a constantly negotiated performance that
people do, rather than are (cf. West and Zimmerman, 1987). These performances occur through
mundane, day-to-day acts that inscribe our identities for ourselves and others (Angouri, 2001;
Holmes, 2006). Race is also constantly produced and regulated in line with social norms and conven-
tions through the meso, institutional relations of control (Ashcraft, 2004; Parker, 2005). In the
macro, societal dimension, race is informed by the possible subjectivities embedded in social texts
(Ashcraft, 2004; Parker, 2005). Social texts such as those produced and disseminated via the media,
literature, lm and television and academic research inscribe broader historical, cultural narra-
tives of race and shape its representation (Ang et al., 2000; Gabriel, 1998; hooks, 1996; Omi and
Winant, 1994).
Despite its paucity in organization studies, theories of Asian masculinities can be found across di-
verse disciplinary concentrations including anthropology, cultural studies, sociology, history, and lm
and literature studies. In utilizing the term Asian, these disciplines are not attempting to inscribe ho-
mogenous ideas of Asia, but instead explore the effects of such western categorizations on how Asian
peoples are seen and come to see themselves in white-dominated societies (Stratton and Ang, 2013).
Fundamental to their approach is the recognition that Asian masculinities in the plural are com-
plex, uid and shaped by context.
Much of this research has sought to denaturalize and contest representations of Asian masculinities
as sexually deviant or devoid (Ang, 2014; Chan, 2001; Chen, 1999, 2006; Lee, 2006). For example,
Cheng (1999) shows how the desexualization of Asian masculinities emerged through the bachelor
societies of the indentured labourers imported to the US who were forced to leave behind their wives
and were prevented from marrying white women. Cheng (1999) also explains the stereotypical char-
acterizations of Asian men as asexual nerds by the relative ease with which new migrants entered
technical elds like accounting, engineering and computer science that required lower levels of
English and cultural prociency. Sankaran and Chng (2004) similarly traced the marginalization of
Asian men to colonial representations of Asian women as oppressed and long-suffering and requiring
white imperial intervention. To justify the European imperial project, Asian women were often cast as
helpless victims longing for white European men to save them from primitive or emasculated native
men (Sankaran and Chng, 2004).
Analyses of social texts of Asian men as martial-arts gures in mainstream white lm and televi-
sion have demonstrated how these popular images, even while representing Asian men as strong
and capable, often reinforced stereotypical notions of them as stoic and asexual (Chan, 2000, 2001;
Hiramoto, 2012; Hirose and Pih, 2010). In his analysis of Bruce Lees prominent role in dening
Asian masculinity, Chan (2000) highlights how Lees models of asexual masculinity resisted patriar-
chal ideologies of hegemonic masculinity and challenged heterosexism. Chan (2000) attributes Lees
popularity to the anti-bourgeois social and political climate in the US during the 1970s. Lees subver-
sive masculinity alone, however, was not enough to change dominant discourses: as Chan (2000)
notes how contemporary imaginaries have reappropriated Lees image into a new stereotype of the
screeching, chop-socky, kung-fu ghting Asian American male (p. 372).
Perhaps one of the most critical contributions of anti-essentialist studies of Asian diaspora has been
to highlight the agency of Asian peoples in their identity work. One such example is Kuos (2013)
study of Chinese-community media discourses in early 20th-century Australia. Her study demon-
strates how Chinese urban elites strategically emphasized the virtues of their Confucian heritage in
attempts to redene, for both white Australians and themselves, a civilized and respectable identity
amid stereotypes of the Chinese as licentious opium smokers (Kuo, 2013). This research highlights the
ways in which Chinese Australians may have been implicated in their own desexualization by co-
constructing less sexual images of themselves in response to preexisting representations of Asian
men as sexual menaces.
In short, research on gender in organizations has demonstrated the complex ways through which
masculinities are performed at work in relation to a hegemonic ideal. Yet despite the gains we have
made towards seeing gender as something people do, we lack a similarly nuanced way of under-
standing race and ethnicity. This oversight leaves problematic assumptions of Asian men and
masculinities as sexually deviant or devoid unchallenged. Grounded in intersectionality theory, this
article centres previously marginalized voices to understand power and resistance between gendered
and racialized professionals. Following the Asian American/Australian studies literature, I seek to
recognize the agency of Chinese Australian professionals in performing gendered identities, while
also remaining sensitive to the contradictory ways in which their performance may reinforce existing
white patriarchal systems at work.
Methods
This analysis is part of a wider study exploring the social construction of leadership among 21
Chinese Australians in government and business. Participants were identied initially through my
network of contacts and expanded through snowball sampling. The study was explicit of its political
agenda from the outset: my research information statement specied that I sought to challenge racial
stereotypes in organizations and aspired to produce counter-narratives of Chinese Australian profes-
sionals that are self-dened, humanizing and beautiful. During the recruitment phase, a deliberately
inclusive approach was taken that followed participants self-identication as Chinese and
Australian. As such, the sample comprises participants of diverse backgrounds including those born
and raised in mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore, Fiji, the US and Australia,
and ranged from third-generation Chinese to recent migrants.
As interviews for the study began, I immediately became aware of the powerful role of sensuality
to the gender identities of the men in the study. When I left it to my participants to suggest a venue for
our meeting, they often selected restaurants so we could conduct our interviews over a meal. Our in-
terviews were frequently punctuated with exalted exclamations of blissful enjoyment for the food
they were tasting; a sensorial pleasure that seemed to permeate into their accounts of their profes-
sional work. When I made this observation to my rst participant, Jay, he matter-of-factly relayed
the importance of sensuality to the way he seeks to relate to others and the world around him. His
arresting description of the ways in which his work and life embody sensuality prompted me to raise
sensuality in my subsequent interviews. It then became apparent that sensuality particularly
linked to participants racialized masculine subjectivities was a critical feature of the lived experi-
ences of some of the participants in the study. So while gender was not an explicit focus of the study
at the outset, the entanglement of participants racialized professional identities with their gender and
sexual subjectivities highlighted their intersectional realities. The eight participants who most sa-
liently discussed their masculine subjectivities were analysed in this article.
The analysis draws on eight face-to-face interviews conducted between April and December 2014.
Participants were between 27 and 43 years of age at the time of interview. All of the participants were
cis-gendered meaning they identied with the sex they were assigned at birth with one identi-
fying as homosexual and seven identifying as heterosexual. By focusing on cis-men in this article, I do
not intend to imply that masculinities are essential to men and cannot be performed by people iden-
tifying as women or otherwise. However, the performance of masculinities did not resonate strongly
with the women in my study and thus cannot be explored in this article. The participants held various
professional, managerial and entrepreneurial roles across the sectors of nance, hospitality, law, arts,
information technology (IT) and media. The sample of leaders interviewed and their sector, role and
country of birth are presented in Table 1.
Each interview lasted between an hour and two hours with a total of 10 hours and 29 minutes of
formal recorded interviewing time. The interviews began with a life-history approach tell me
about your background, your childhood, where you went to school and your memories growing
up and then proceeded in an informal, unstructured way, allowing the informant to choose which
aspects of their life and career they wished the interview to concentrate on. A life-history approach is
particularly appropriate for the study of identities for its capacity to reveal social structures,
Table 1: Sample of professionals
Participant Industry Role Country of birth
An-Rong Media Entrepreneur Australia

Ben Hospitality Head chef Australia
Jason Film and television Film producer Malaysia
Jay Finance Middle manager China (Hong Kong)
Jeff Information technology Middle manager Taiwan
Peter Arts Senior manager Australia
Teck Law Solicitor Malaysia
TK Information technology Entrepreneur Malaysia
collectivities, and institutional change at the same time as personal life (Connell, 1991, p. 143; Lin and
Mac an Ghaill, 2013).
For the participants featured in this article, masculinity was particularly salient to their stated
identities and experiences, which emerged from their narratives in diverse ways. For An-Rong, mas-
culinity surfaced when he discussed his love for sport; Ben recounted his recent attendance at a mens
retreat; Jeff expressed his admiration for Bruce Lee; Peter discussed his fathers marriages; and TK ex-
plained how his career path was changed by a new romantic relationship. With my existing interest in
power relations around gender, race and class, these discussions prompted me to probe how each of
the participants perceived and experienced masculinities.
My embodiment as an Asian woman in her late twenties at the time of the interviews facilitated a
conducive dynamic for my discussions with certain participants about their masculinities. My au-
thoritative position as a researcher was in some ways tempered by my gender and age, which culti-
vated a space where my participants would have likely felt more at ease exploring their gendered and
sexual identities. However, my sensitivity to the sexualization of Asian women made me ambivalent
about probing for sexuality with the older men in my study. Upon reection, my ambivalence led me
to inadvertently desexualize our interaction and maintain a bureaucratic professionalism in our inter-
views by enforcing physical distance, maintaining a cooler tone of voice, eschewing conversations
about not just sexuality but related topics like romance or marriage. In doing so, this reinforced their
asexualization as both Asian men and older people, which could be redressed with future research.
My own relationships with Asian men stirred my writing of this article. The rst of these, with my
father, is one of warmth and mutual respect. I have been asked more than once how does your father
feel about you studying management?, based on the stereotypical assumption that as the stoic patri-
arch of a Chinese family, my father must disapprove of me studying a less serious major compared
to nance or economics. The notion that (particularly older) Asian men could cultivate intimate, af-
fectionate relationships seems to be beyond the realm of the white Australian imagination. Meeting
my husband 12 years ago unexpectedly became a way for me to confront my internalized racism
as I grew to nd Asian men attractive. During my interviews with the professionals, the knowledge
I was married to an Asian man played a pivotal role in prompting my participants to discuss their
sexual subjectivities. It would be nave to assume that their openness to discuss sexuality and mascu-
linity was not, at least for some of the participants, grounded in a patriarchal acceptance of me be-
cause I had married one of them. However, I had no reason to doubt the expressions and
experiences they shared of their desexualization or their attempts to resist it.
When the interviews were transcribed, the text amounted to 121 pages. The encounters with par-
ticipants also involved informal discussions over coffee before our interview, sometimes followed
by dinner or lunch afterwards. These discussions were recorded in 16 pages of notes. The transcripts
were coded via grounded-theory techniques and procedures (Corbin and Strauss, 2008). The tran-
scripts were closely examined for the leaders concrete descriptions relating to the key focus of this
study, moving iteratively between previously coded categories and emergent themes via constant
comparative analysis (Corbin and Strauss, 2008).
An open coding scheme around core categories of Chinese/Asian masculinities and sensuality
emerged through the continuous classication and reclassication of the data. Within these core cat-
egories, further subcategories were developed. For example, under Chinese/Asian masculinities,
subcategories included sexual desirability and physicality. Under sensuality, subcategories included
self-presentation, relationships and representations.
Once the ndings were written up, excerpts relating to each participant were sent to them as mem-
ber checks (Lincoln and Guba, 1985) to seek their feedback and input on my interpretations and anal-
ysis. All eight participants accepted the request to review the analysis and the excerpts featured
include participants amendments and elaborations. Identifying information has been removed and
pseudonyms are used for all participants with the exception of Jeff and Jason, who declined
anonymity.
Personal versus professional desexualization

In order to understand Chinese cis-male professionals attempts to subvert hegemonic masculinities,
it is necessary to recognize how the desexualization of Asian masculinities in white Australian ideol-
ogies is a source of pain and suffering. TK, a Malaysian-born CEO of a startup who grew up in
Australia, held a romantic dream of going back to Asia. He took a job offer in Singapore after leaving
university, yet found that he could not escape the racism he had encountered during his childhood in
Australia:
Caucasians were worshipped in Singapore during the time. Even though I moved from
Australia to Singapore, I didnt escape this prejudice that being Asian versus Caucasian imposes
upon you. So even in Asia, Caucasians are regarded as rst-class citizens and Asians are just
yeah, you have to prove yourself, and that was quite disappointing.
Although TK expressed frustration that this pervasive white-supremacist ideology meant that pro-
fessionally the expats had really good gigs there, he focused on the sexual subordination of Asian
men as a key source of pain working and living in Singapore:
TK: If youre considered a second-class male among other males, then thats not a good thing. So I
dont know if you heard, but there was a video that went viral in Hong Kong about two weeks ago,
and it hit a nerve in Asia actually. Its basically this US tourist who posted a video called, I Stole a
Chinese Girl from a Chinese Guy you should Google it it has a million YouTube hits already,
it was in Lan Kwai Fong in Hong Kong, and basically one American tourist encouraged his other
American tourist friend to pick up a girl that was already picked up by a local guy, and the video
basically showed him just walking all over the Chinese guy.
Researcher: To steal his girlfriend?
TK: Yeah. So there were massive cultural foreign debates, and its a masculine thing. So all these
Hong Kong and China guys said, why are these white guys coming here and basically walking
over all of us?. And also that Chinese guy didnt do much to stop the girl being taken from him.
And also the girl in the video was asked by the American guy, who do you want to win this bat-
tle?, and she goes, the white guy. So this poor Hong Kong girl got caught on a viral million-view
YouTube video choosing a white guy over a Chinese guy. That created a viral storm in Hong Kong
and China over the last three weeks. And that would denitely be a reection of masculinity. If it
goes back to the hunt for a partner, and being gazumped by someone of a different race, guys will
take that to heart.
TKs sense that Asian men were perceived as sexually inferior to white men was closely entwined
with his sense of professional success. The conation between these two subjectivities support
existing claims that despite attempts to desexualize work, gender and sexuality remain dening
and persistent features (Fleming, 2007; Sullivan, 2014). Where research of gender and organizations
has consistently demonstrated the ways that professions privilege men and masculinities (Collinson
and Hearn, 1996; Kerfoot and Knights, 1993) particularly for the engineering sector, in which TK
worked the participants experiences emphasized that not all men and masculinities are created
equal. Professional relations that reproduce hegemonic masculinities can subordinate men who are
seen as beyond those boundaries.
Ben, a former head pastry chef, similarly shared how the sense of his subordination that developed
when he attended an all-boys high school carried through to his career as a chef a profession that
very much upheld idealized masculinities through the gure of the celebrity chef. Ben claims that
his approach to gendered hierarchies at work is to become comfortable being an outsider and to
let my work speak for itself. However, he admitted that there are situations where he continues to
struggle with his sense of sexual inferiority:
You know, in terms of Australian media, and especially in gay media, the idealized man is either
successful white, athletic, muscular, tall, and so thats always bombarded me. You know, Im short,
Asian and slim. Things like facial hair, for instance, Asians arent generally genetically inclined to
grow facial hair and especially with current fashions, facial hair is very in right now, I see that as
a symbol, but not a denitive symbol, of masculinity that has sometimes eetingly crossed
my mind, just I cant do that. Slight feelings of envy do come into mind but I suppose we sort
of all have to remind ourselves to be comfortable with ourselves no matter who we are.
Although Ben accepts a narrow, stereotypical model of Asian men as physically short, slim and
smooth-faced, like TK he connected his sense of professional legitimacy and success with his sense
of sexual desirability.
While the men interviewed could all recognize to an extent the dominant discourses that con-
structed Asian and other non-white masculinities as inferior (Connell, 1987; Connell and
Messerschmidt, 2005), they varied in their attribution of this subordination to essentialist qualities
or relations of power (Ashcraft, 2004; Parker, 2005). Ben, for example, attributed asexual stereotypes
of Asian men to biological inclinations and asked me on a separate occasion outside our interview if I
have come across any academic research that examines lower testosterone levels among Asian men.
My discussions with Ben suggest he sees a natural basis for the socially constructed desexualization
of Asian men, which has at times led him to internalize a sense of his own sexual and racial inferiority.
Other participants strongly rejected the desexualization of Asian men when they perceived them-
selves to contradict the weak and nerdy stereotypes (Hiramoto, 2012; Hirose and Pih, 2010). For
example, An-Rong, the founder of a media startup born in Australia, claims:
I was a really good athlete. I competed in Victorian state championships and I think that was a bit
of an anomaly for a lot of people who sort of went, Ooh, Asian kids can actually run. So I think it
was a surprise and I think it was different Academics were important [in high school] but I re-
member not taking it very seriously, and maybe I should have. I really did enjoy that part of life,
just growing up and making friends and building up my people skills because thats something Im
quite fond of now in my role.
Similarly Peter, a senior manager of an arts organization, jokes about his sexual precociousness:
I was a pretty rebellious teenager and I denitely did not apply myself in high school at all. It didnt
help getting a girlfriend at 15 and so my last two years at school were more about, ooh, I got a girl-
friend [Peter laughs] If you ask any of my friends that have known me for more than 20 years,
they will almost all say something along the lines of, Im really glad the way that Peters turned
out, because when they rst met me, I was denitely a party boy, always clubbing, always social-
izing, not really doing anything with my career, but pretty fun to be around.
While An-Rong and Peters self-declared contravention of Asian masculine stereotypes sug-
gested some ambivalence about the validity of the stereotypes, discussions with some of the
participants also hinted at a temptation to see hegemonic masculine attributes of sporting and
sexual prowess as a personal achievement. Although Peter confessed that he was not necessarily
proud of his adolescence, where his behaviour set back his education and career signicantly,
An-Rong suggests that his successful adoption of a hegemonic masculine performance is an asset to
his current work.
Both An-Rong and Peter beneted from relative class, heterosexual and able-bodied privilege that
centred struggles on their racialized masculinities. For participants like them, the promise of
hegemonic privilege tended to rest on a careful regulation and presentation of their physical body
as athletic. Existing studies on bodies in organizations have demonstrated the ways the idealized
professional body are often made invisible in the rational sphere of work (Binns, 2010; Lewis
and Simpson, 2012; Sinclair, 2008). In order to t more successfully into masculinist professional
culture, professionals are often required to maintain their bodily presentation (Haynes, 2012). The
ideal professional body is one that is t (as opposed to fat) because it is believed to indicate the pro-
fessional is disciplined and in control (Sinclair, 2005; Trethewey, 1999). In contrast, the
hypervisibility of womens bodies (particularly pregnant bodies), queer bodies and disabled bodies
can draw attention to their presence as out of place in the professional domain (Haynes, 2012).
Asian mens bodies carry stereotypical assumptions of their femininity and frailty, but asserting
their athleticism provides one way through which Asian men can persuade others of their profes-
sional competency.
TK focused less on his individual masculine performance, but nevertheless struggled to name
relations of gender and racial power that undergird Asian masculine asexualization. TK
expressed anger at being considered a second-class male, yet saw this seemingly evidenced
through the prominence of representations such as the video he cites that depicts Asian mens
acceptance of their own subordination and Asian womens complicity with white mens
domination.
Within the intersection of gender, racial and neocolonial oppression, tensions are indeed produced
within some Asian groups and communities. In her study of second-generation heterosexual Korean
American and Vietnamese American womens romantic preferences, Pyke (2010) found a tendency
among her participants to romanticize white men as egalitarian knights (p. 81) and denigrate
Asian men as inferior, patriarchal partners. This acceptance of white-supremacist ideologies led them
to overlook some white mens gender oppression and some Asian American mens feminist politics
(Pyke, 2010). My interview with TK, however, suggested he suspected the presence of these neocolo-
nialist inuences but did not know how to look beyond a presumed onus on the part of victimized
Asian women and men to defend Asian masculine sexuality. Again, a neoliberal and patriarchal
tendency to individuate white supremacy, particularly on women, produced pain and suffering for
participants like TK.
At play here is the power of white masculinist discourses to reproduce denitions of non-white
masculinities as inferior and further inuence the representation of non-white peoples as accepting
or being complicit with this characterization. It is worth pointing out that when I went to search
for this video as TK suggested, I found numerous videos seeking to debunk the original video as well
as counter-discourse videos showing Asian men appearing to convince white women to leave their
white boyfriends. Notwithstanding the highly chauvinistic practices embedded in these masculine
performances, the video and its response suggest the profound impact Asian masculine
asexualization has in white-dominated and postcolonial societies, but also its instability in the face
of non-white voices in new media.
In bell hooks (1990, 2003, 2012) work, she talks about the importance of non-white people
engaging in processes of decolonization; of seeing value in their identities and resisting white su-
premacy. For participants like An-Rong and Peter, it appeared that a critical part of their decolonizing
process was to reject the biological determinism of their sexual and physical weakness. This resistance
seemed to be most accessible for the participants who embodied the counter-discourse. The processes
of decolonization were further from reach for participants like Ben who perceived themselves as re-
sembling the stereotypes, even to a small extent. However, a temptation for participants who
dismissed asexualized stereotypes of Asian men because they inhabited tall, muscular bodies was
their attribution of this to their own success in performing hegemonic masculinity, rather than to call
hegemonic masculinity into question. Likewise, a patriarchal tendency existed to see a considerable
part of the onus for Asian masculine sexual politics as being on Asian women to be more sexually
available for straight Asian men. Decolonization involves seeing a wider struggle beyond ones
own masculine subjectivity, as the next section will explore.
Doing sensuous masculinities

As the participants called into question their subordination in the Australian masculine hierarchy,
some of the men found various ways to reject the sexuality they have been denied through gender
and racial relations to embrace their own deviant masculinities as a sensuously subversive practice.
Sensuality is understood here to encompass experiences of beauty, luxury, joy and pleasure (Arrizn,
2008). Sensuality and sexuality are distinct yet interrelated: sexuality may be expressed in ones sen-
suality, while sensuality may stimulate ones sexuality (Arrizn, 2008). Sensuality can be expressed
through embodiment and brings forward ones sensorial experiences (Arrizn, 2008). Specically,
the ndings suggest that Chinese Australian cis-male professionals can practise sensuous
masculinities through various processes of: (1) presenting; (2) relating; and (3) representing.
Presenting
Teck, a lawyer, performed a sensuous identity at work through his appearance. Eschewing the
conservative dress typical of his profession, Teck derived pleasure from his experimentation with a
non-conformist style. When he observed that the majority of his colleagues wore dark grey and navy
suits with plain ties at work, he resolved to wear striking oral print ties. Teck also exuded an opulent
sensuality through his conspicuous use of accessories like a vaporizer infused with apple-avoured
liquid and a vintage mother-of-pearl fountain pen trailing a deliberate shade of deep red ink, both of
which he spent several months researching. When I asked what his colleagues think about his
appearance, Teck answered:
They like it. They think Im really well-dressed Im just, Im pretty anti-establishment [Teck
laughs]. Ive never been about what people think I should be, I just do whatever the hell I want.
Ive found that if you do your job well you can get a lot of leeway; people like my mentors really
care about me being good at my job. They respect me because of that, what they dont respect is
what Im wearing. I just wear it because I like it. I know I dont look like a typical lawyer.
Through visual markers of his style, Teck playfully contradicted prevailing Australian masculine
and professional norms to be emotionally and sensuously restrained (Gorman-Murray, 2013) and
disrupted his desexualization as an Asian man (Chan, 2001; Khoo, 2005; Reeser, 2010; Zhong,
2000). Yet in doing so Tecks case highlighted the contradictory ways in which Asian masculinities
are constructed as sexually deviant (Fung, 2005; Shek, 2006), for example when he admitted that
colleagues made heterosexist assumptions about his feminized dress: well people think Im effemi-
nate, thats for sure I think its humorous that people think Im gay.
Existing studies have argued that through the disembodiment of hegemonic masculinities, organi-
zational discourses and practices powerfully enhance their invincibility and immortality (Jeanes et al.,
2012; Sinclair, 2012). Teck, in contrast, embodied hedonism and excess, surrounding himself in an
aura of sensorial indulgence that exemplied pleasure for pleasures sake, in his words. Thus while
Teck subverts hegemonic masculine models of sexual expression, this trade-off is made as hegemonic
performances of class are maintained.
Tecks masculine performances resonate with constructs of the dandy. For Foucault, dandyism is
the quintessential ethos of modernity (Foucault, 1997). The dandy possesses an experimental attitude:
testing the limits of institutional powers in order to nd possibilities to transgress them (Foucault,
1997; Lamb, 2005; Peng, 2010; Williamson, 1997). The Foucauldian dandy is one who struggles at
the frontiers to make of his very existence a work of art (Miller, 1998, p. 887). Tecks playful aesthet-
icism thrives in the liminal spaces of masculinity and sexuality. However, he stressed to me on two
occasions after our interview and after reading my preliminary analysis of his interview that he
pursues pleasure for pleasures sake. Despite Tecks ostensible apolitical commitment to individual-
ism a critique Hadot (1995) has made of Foucaults dandyism his embodiment as a dandy al-
lows him to subvert hegemonic masculinities without ultimately violating the neoliberal, elite class
norms of his law rm.
Relating
Jay, a middle manager at a nancial services rm, adopted a more conservative approach to his
self-presentation than Teck, but nevertheless revealed some subversive tendencies in his
masculine performances. At our rst dinner together before we subsequently met for the formal
recorded interview, Jay canvassed the association of Australian hegemonic masculinities with an
individualist sexuality and distinguished that from his own preference for sensuality in his life
and work:
Researcher: Theres something I want to pick up on about a conversation we had earlier. What was
really interesting to me was when you said that sensuality was something that appealed to you a
lot more than sexuality. I want to hear a little bit more about what you think the difference be-
tween sensuality and sexuality is.
Jay: Thats a good one. Sensuality to me is a more luxurious idea its more about tenderness,
about loving, about empathy with someone. For me, thats what sensuality is. Whereas sexuality
is a lot of things really; it can encompass sensuality. You can be sensual in your sexuality, but sex-
uality can also mean a lot of perversions that are not necessarily sensual If someones sensual, it
kind of means that theyre doing something that gives another person an explosive pleasure to
their senses. In order to do that you have to understand what this person would enjoy, how can
I make them feel good? Thats the empathy part of it. Sexuality can be formulaic sensualitys
more about trying to put yourself in their shoes and understand where theyre coming from.
Jays articulation of sensuality as something improvised with others (not formulaic) was
profoundly relational and empathetic. Jay elaborated that when he is at work, however, he would
not explicitly cite a sensuous approach, but still attempts to manage in a way that transgresses heg-
emonic masculine norms:
[At work] I wouldnt use sensuous to describe it but empathy. Empathys important, regardless
of who youre dealing with. Empathy allows you to understand where another person is coming
from and when you understand you feel for them and that shapes how to manage or work with
others in a more positive way.
Jays accounts of sensuality eschewed the kind of competitive individualism inherent in readings of
managerial masculinities as conquest and control (Collinson and Hearn, 1996; Kerfoot and Knights,
1993). Jays professional practice is about melding with others as opposed to a unilateral penetration;
it is grounded in connection and reciprocity so that while he enters anothers shoes, he does so in a
way that allows them to touch him back and enables him to feel for them.
Both Teck and Jays accounts suggest that in the desexualized organizational context (including
sensitivities around sexual harassment), one needs to be careful (and perhaps creative) with how sen-
suous masculinities are practised within bureaucratic relations of control (Burrell, 1992; Hearn et al.,
1989). Teck was largely able to perform a dandy identity because it was buttressed by a hegemonic
class performance. Jays use of the rhetorical device of empathy to express his sensuality at work
aligned it with wider discourses of postheroism that have in recent years begun to celebrate stereo-
typically feminine qualities in management such as empathy, collaboration and care (Fletcher,
2004). However, Jay implied that his practice of empathy was covert, rather than any strategic mobi-
lization of feminine capital (Huppatz and Goodwin, 2013, p. 295).
In contexts where masculinized occupations intersect with feminized images of Asian masculinities,
performing femininity remains a dangerous territory for some men. While some studies have found
that men can gain a professional advantage by performing femininity and showing they possess
capabilities of both masculine strength and feminine care (Fahlgren, 2013), this advantage may only be
available to those who embody the white heterosexual hegemony. For the Asian men in this study, as-
sociations with femininity were seen to reinforce their deviant status and detract from their mascu-
line (and therefore professional) strength (Collinson and Hearn, 1996; Kerfoot and Knights, 1993).
In examining the processes of presenting and relating in the cases of Teck and Jay in particular, the
analysis demonstrated the intersection of occupation and class in their attempts to perform subver-
sive masculinities (Acker, 2012; Holvino, 2010; Knight, 2016; Scully and Blake-Beard, 2005). The pro-
fessionals in the study suggested that the practice of sensuality is in many ways most readily acquired
by and associated with the educated, moneyed classes. Tecks embodied resistance through his dandy
identity was made possible by his income, which allowed him to purchase the accoutrements that
formed his subversive style, and also made meaningful through his legal profession, where the choice
to wear oral ties had the hypervisibility Teck reported. In Jays case, he constrained his sexual ex-
pression to eschew the kinds of sexuality [that] can also mean a lot of perversions, favouring a more
respectable bourgeois masculine performance (Bourdieu, 1984; Skeggs, 2004).
Further, Tecks aesthetic experimentation at the boundaries between heterosexual and homosexual
masculine identities was supported by his heterosexual privilege. While some of his colleagues teased
him about his amboyant style, many of them knew he was in a long-term heterosexual relationship
and therefore not really deviant. Tecks heterosexuality meant his colleagues could express homo-
phobic views yet likely feel safe from being charged with workplace harassment. Thus while Teck
may seek to transgress hegemonic masculine models at his organization, he is not necessarily making
alternate masculine expressions more livable (Thanem and Wallenberg, 2016).
These tensions across intersecting identities highlight the dialectic between control/resistance ex-
plored in existing studies of sexuality and organizations (Burrell, 1984; Fleming, 2007). As such, the
study of Asian mens resistance against hegemonic masculinities needs to recognize the potential
contradictions in reproducing neoliberal, patriarchal and heteronormative systems of power. Thus
in examining how Chinese cis-male professionals in this study do masculinity, it is acknowledged that
their approach is limited from participating in a radical challenge to existing norms, structures and
systems. The next section will explore how engaging in the politics of representation may offer a socio-
cultural challenge to hegemonic masculinities that attempts to make Asian masculinities more livable.
Representing
Jeff, who spoke about recognizing the malleability of masculine identities, saw a critical aspect of the
struggle to subvert white hegemonic masculinities through inuencing social texts (Ashcraft, 2004;
Parker, 2005), particularly around the representation of Asian men in popular culture and the media:
The media is a leading indicator of culture. Olivia Khoo, a lecturer in Film Studies at UNSW, wrote
a scathing critique of an Australian lm, Japanese Story.1 The lm was shallow it its portrayal of the
protagonists love interest, a Japanese businessman and tourist called Hiro, who was only allowed
to exist as a stereotypical fetishized representation, [a] one-dimensional character. The lm
highlighted everything that is wrong with the Australian popular culture: Hiro was never allowed
to exist as an ongoing concern, but merely sacriced in the journey for Sandys journey of self-
discovery. Furthermore, the sex scene in Japanese Story is almost laughable. Hiro lies naked under
the bed sheets while Sandy puts on [Hiros] pants and gets on top of him. The scene is yet another
example of the Australian cinemas feminization of the Asian man. The lm speaks of a utopian vi-
sion for Asian-Australian relations, where Asia is in Australia, but Asians are not of Australia. I
believe the Australian lm industry is probably the last bastion preserving the monocultural
white-Australian policy.
Jeff revealed a sensitive awareness of the ways in which Asian men are represented through
Australian social texts. He recognized the ways in which feminized representations of Asianness
are symptomatic of neocolonialist discourses that inform the mainstream constructions of Asian peo-
ple as fetishized sex objects and sacricial lambs for white consumption (Cheng, 1999; Khoo, 2005).
Jeff underscored the importance of creating representations of Asian men on their own terms and
suggested that we will need to revisit the mainstream discourses of hegemonic masculinity in order
to redene what it means to be sexy in Australia:
Jeff: The reality is that ultimately the Asian male sex symbol will have to be Asian. And what I
mean by that is the characteristics that he possesses which make him desirable should be distinc-
tively Asian, rather than an Asian version of Brad Pitt. Perhaps he can be a lial son with the big-
gest heart, a loyal loving husband, a strict yet devoted father. Take the list of Chinese virtues,
loyalty, lial piety, benevolence, love, integrity, righteousness, harmony and equity. Take the con-
cept of (y) I struggle to nd a word in English that explains the concept in its entirety it
is a cross between righteousness, justice, afliation, impartiality, morality, chivalry and rapport.
In Chinese folklore, (Guan Yu), also known as the God of War, is portrayed as oozing y, a
mans man, with virtue worthy of legend. Such quality is and should be considered desirable,
yet completely alien to western pop culture, even lacking as much as a word to describe it.
Researcher: Is that, in your opinion, the essence of a sexy Chinese man?
Jeff: No, its up to us to dene what that is. We have largely let the popular media dene what sexy
is but its up to us to redene what that is. And I think to an extent, Bruce Lee did exactly that.
Before Bruce Lee, martial arts werent exactly glamorous. He single-handedly inspired a boom for
an entire industry. I have come to appreciate how ckle the world is; that we are but followers of
clever marketing. In todays world, with the prevalence of social media, opportunities to change
the world abound.
Jason, a lm producer and actor, is acutely cognisant of how representations of Asian masculinities
can act as a powerful vehicle of gender and racial oppression and resistance. As an actor working in
Australia, Jason was continually expected to be complicit in stereotypical portrayals of Asian men in
popular media as illiterate criminals:
Wed often get told to speak in broken English, and it would get me irate at times because Id just
think, well, youre actually doing a modern drama. I dont see any reason why this particular actor
has to be portrayed in this way I could only expect to be auditioning for the thief, the burglar,
the drug addict, whatever; it was the stereotypes, and in my mind, thats all I could play. When I
went to Singapore and they said, oh, you can be the romantic lead, I was shocked. I was really
so taken aback because I thought, how is that possible? [Jason laughs].
Jasons experiences of casting in mainstream Australian lm and television later led him to start his
own lm production company in Singapore. He is explicit about his engagement in the politics of
Asian representation:
One of the reasons I decided to start a production company and to write and direct was that at least
I can choose the people that are going to be in my stories. I still want to act, but as an actor I really
had no control over casting and over the story; the ultimate outcome of your character and how
youre portrayed. And I just got sick of it the stereotypes. To be honest, even in Asia, stereotypes
abound. Singapore is just full of actors who are very happy to play stereotypical Asian characters
that many people nd funny, but not particularly good for the image of the Asian male So my
mission after that was really just to keep pursuing the destruction of the stereotypical ways Asians
are portrayed in the media, and in some ways do the opposite, which is to not create stereotypes; to
just play ordinary characters and aspirational characters in the media The change has to come
from people who are most aware of it because we hired an Indian-Malaysian man, as a kind of ro-
mantic lead in a love triangle. [The actor] said to us, no one has ever, ever hired me as a romantic
lead because Im Indian.
Jeff and Jason proposed that one way by which Asian men can subvert hegemonic masculinities in
the face of their own marginalization and subordination is to advance self-dened representations of
Asian masculinities (Shek, 2006). Although Jeff offered the Confucian concept of y, he asserted that
humanizing representations of Asian masculinities are not found in one universalistic model, but are
negotiated through the collective political struggle of Asian people. However, the y example he of-
fered is signicant in that Jeff acknowledged the power that counter-discourses of social texts hold
in decentring western hegemonic masculinities, calling on us to redene what it means to be an
Asian man and what it means to be desirably masculine (Fung, 2005).
For participants like Jeff and Jason, media and popular discourses play an important role in
shaping individual identities. Sexually deviant images of Asian men like Fu Manchu not only rein-
force racist ideologies, but constrain the ways through which Asian men see themselves (Shek,
2006). Therefore, by taking self-denitions as the starting point, Jeff and Jason believe Asian men
and boys will have the opportunity to develop more positive and complete self-identities.
Despite Jeffs optimism that prominent Asian men in mainstream social texts like Bruce Lee can
change the world, Lees own example as examined by Chan (2000) demonstrated the limitations of
subversive masculinities in mainstream lm and television to challenge wider systems of racial op-
pression. If a potential pitfall of subversive masculinities is having their practice coopted into domi-
nant discourses (Chan, 2000), this suggests that humanizing representations also need to extend
beyond lm and television. Jeff pointed to the potential of social media, and it is also worth noting
that social texts of Asian masculinities have in recent years become increasingly inuenced by trans-
national media production and consumption. The contemporary rise of Korean television series and
popular music in English-speaking nations, for instance, may further facilitate the ongoing politics of
Asian masculine representation (Lin and Tong, 2008).
Concluding discussion
This article explored the ways Chinese Australian cis-male professionals attempted to resist their sub-
ordination in hegemonic masculine models with the aim of contributing non-white voices in the
struggle against prevailing gender and racial relations. Encounters with the participants suggested
that their sense of professional legitimacy was interlinked with their sense of sexual legitimacy, which
was shaped by dominant discourses that cast them as weak, feminized and asexual in white
Australian imaginations. The desexualization of Asian masculinities was a source of pain and suffer-
ing for the participants and prompted some of them to seek alternate gender and racial performances
in order to reclaim value in their identities.
In answering the research question how do Chinese Australian cis-male professionals do mas-
culinity?, this study demonstrated that among professionals, some coopted the desexualized images
of Asian masculinities by rejecting the individualist sexuality they associated with Australian hege-
monic masculinities and embracing sensuality instead via practices of presenting, relating and
representing. Specically, the ndings explored how Teck embodied sensuality by playfully present-
ing himself as a dandy (Foucault, 1997) and experimenting with style to disrupt the grey, conservative
norm of his profession. Sensuality suffused Jays approach in relating to his colleagues. By placing his
own and others pleasure at the core of his work, Jay valorized empathy over hegemonic masculine
ideals of tough-minded competition and conquest (Collinson and Hearn, 1996; Fletcher, 2004; Kerfoot
and Knights, 1993).
Furthermore, Jeff and Jason believed that a critical dimension to subverting hegemonic
masculinities involved engaging with the politics of representation, particularly as produced and dis-
seminated through the mainstream media and lm and television. This approach recognized that
constructions of Asian masculinities in social texts embed the possible subjectivities, relations and
practices available to Asian men (Ang et al., 2000; Hiramoto, 2012). As a consequence the men in
the study supported and advocated, if not directly produced, images of Asian masculinities that con-
travened their sustained subordination in mainstream representations.
In sharing the voices of Chinese Australian male professionals in this study, this article sought to
problematize persistent mainstream treatments of race and ethnicity in organization studies as an
essentialistic attribute and the tendency to overlook the agency of non-white people in resisting heg-
emonic gender and racial orders. The traditional absence of Asian voices in this eld has reinforced
notions of Asian passivity and maintained their marginalization from both hegemonic norms and the
resistance against them. That being said, there was little evidence in the ndings that the participants
sought to redo (West and Zimmerman, 2009) or undo (Deutsch, 2007; Risman, 2009) gender at work.
Rather, the participants identity work suggests the need for an intersectional lens, where the uid
and complex ways they did masculinity focused on shifting accountability to race categories and
the subversion of white supremacy, rather than struggles towards gender equality per se.
In drawing upon Asian American and Asian Australian studies, the analysis has attempted to
demonstrate how these traditions offer more critical and nuanced explorations of non-white identities
beyond mainstream organization studies research (Ang, 2014; Chan, 2001; Chen, 1999, 2006; Lee,
2006). Yet while this article tried to illuminate how resistive masculinities might be practised among
Chinese cis-male professionals through sensuality, I do not seek to assert that the actions of the par-
ticipants represent an absolute, unproblematic emancipation from oppression. Indeed, the ndings
suggested that resistance alone was not enough to engage meaningfully in decolonization. In partic-
ular, some attempts made by the professionals to challenge their asexualization through processes of
presenting and relating reproduced neoliberal, patriarchal and heteronormative relations of power
problematically. The gentrication of sensuality that makes it safe for work along class-based scripts
may also potentially limit its capacity to overcome these prevailing norms.
The complexities and contradictions inherent in doing masculinities emphasize the value of inter-
sectional perspectives that can attend to the ways in which multiple axes of power, including gender,
race, sexuality and class, work together to enable and constrain forms of resistance (Collins, 2000;
Holvino, 2010; Muhr et al., 2016). Accordingly, the practice of subversive masculinities calls for ongo-
ing deconstruction and critique of how sensuality is socially constructed within wider intersecting
systems of power. For example, it was beyond the scope of this article to examine in depth the differ-
ent experiences between participants who identied as heterosexual and homosexual and the inter-
section of their sexual identities with the subordination of homosexuality in hegemonic masculinity
(Connell and Messerschmidt, 2005; Fung, 2005).
In drawing on the discursive practices of Chinese Australian male professionals constituted in in-
terviews, this article was able to provide insight into how their masculinities were practised through
their work; however, the study was limited by its distance from the processes of identity-doing as
they unfolded. This study could be extended with ethnographic research to examine at a more
granular level how professionals present, relate and represent subversive masculinities day to day.
Processual analyses would also enable explorations of how alternate masculinities are negotiated
with others at work, particularly with those who seek to refute, deny and close down practices that
are seen to threaten hegemonic masculine norms, and the impact of Asian mens resistance on their
workplaces.
Declaration of conicting interests

The author declared no potential conicts of interests with respect to the authorship and/or publica-
tion of this article.
Funding
This research received no specic grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-
prot sectors.
Notes
1. Japanese Story was an Australian lm screened at the Cannes Film Festival in 2003. Written by
Alison Tilson and directed by Sue Brooks, it depicts the story of a white Australian woman who
embarks on a romantic affair during a road trip across the Pilbara desert with a Japanese business-
man. Khoos commentary on the lm can be found here: http://www.realtimearts.net/
article/issue59/7336.
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Biographical notes
Helena Liu is a Senior Lecturer at UTS Business School. Her research critiques the gendered, racial-
ized and classed nature of how we have come to understand leadership. Helenas work has been
published in Gender, Work and Organization, Leadership, Journal of Business Ethics, Management Commu-
nication Quarterly and Equality, Diversity and Inclusion.

Liu 2016

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Gender, Work and Organization Vol. 24 No. 2 March 2017

Sensuality as Subversion: Doing Masculinity

Keywords: sensuality, race, Asian, masculinities, resistance

2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

To date, explorations of redoing/undoing gender have focused predominantly on white subjects.

Theorizing Asian masculinities

Table 1: Sample of professionals

Participant Industry Role Country of birth

An-Rong Media Entrepreneur Australia

Personal versus professional desexualization

Doing sensuous masculinities

Declaration of conicting interests

Deutsch, F. (2007) Undoing gender. Gender and Society, 21, 1, 10627.

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