ABSTRACT
The histories of labour and class in industrial societies have always been entangled with the development of modern expressions of gender and sexuality. The working class and wage labour – both categories generally presumed male – have depended on female bodies, heterosexuality, and normative visions of the family for their articulation within social and political discourse. This has been true in industrializing Japan and Korea as well as in the West. The essays in this volume span the twentieth century and focus on various forms of industrial and sexual labour in Japan and Korea. The phrase “sexing class” in our title refers to the ways that sex, gender, labour, and class are inextricably related categories in the stories that are told in this volume. In some cases, especially in the essays that deal with sexual labour, “sexing class” refers to the classed nature of sex work and the deployment of various forms and meanings of sexuality within the sphere of “work.” In other instances, “sexing class” indicates how biological sex, and the constructions of gender that emerge along with it, contribute in fundamental ways to the production of class and worker identities. That is, “class,” “worker,” and “labour” do not exist outside the realm of gender, but are constituted through interactions among gender formation, experiences of work, structural conditions of labour and family, and the politics of nation. Sex, gender, sexuality, labour and class cannot exist independently of one another.
