ABSTRACT
Gendered markers abound, including exotic, alluring, dangerous or dark, which flows into feminine, erotic, excessive or sexually non-normative. Cultural and ritual tropes have conjured minorities as traditional, timeless and archaic, colourful, folk-artistic – especially in terms of singing, dancing and handicraft – mysterious, spiritual, non-rational, superstitious or mystical. Close readings of othering discourses demand taking as an open question how and whether the other is gendered, how gender and sexuality might interface with other traits, and how in turn they are evaluated. Gender and erotics need to be analytically delinked and considered for their own symbolic logics. For China, the confluence of the gendering and eroticising of minorities with the shift towards re-embracing of femininity/masculinity/sexuality in the post-Mao years generated a particular signifying order inseparable from the geopolitics of the era. Other epochs in which gender/sexuality and ethnic otherness aligned in representation call for unpacking their idiosyncratic politics.
