Gendered nationalism and otherization: transnational prostitutes in South Korea

초록

The purpose of this paper is to understand how masculine ideologies become (re)produced in the trope around transnational prostitution, by examining a lawsuit case concerning Filipina prostitutes in Korea. While several actors, including nation-states, journalists, and activists engaged in constructing the images of Filipina prostitutes as ‘sex slaves,’ as ‘deceived or exploited victims’, or as ‘abused poor women,’ the actual economic, political and cultural processes that contribute to the complex process of women crossing borders are elided. Such homogeneous images of transnational prostitutes function to symbolically demarcate and maintain the boundaries of the nation, gender, and sexuality, and to neglect actual women’s agency and experiences as workers. This paper demonstrates how, complicit in the representations of the transnational prostitutes as victims, are ideologies of traditional gender norms, nationalism, and colonialism. Ultimately, I argue that this case will enable us to re-examine contemporary discourses on trafficking and transnational prostitution in a more critical and subversive feminist perspective.

키워드