Not so great expectations: sex and housewives in Hong Kong.

This article contains a study of the experiences of middle-aged married women in Hong Kong and how they understand their own lives, marriages, and sexual relationships in relation to their social status as si-nais (housewives). In Hong Kong, middle-aged Chinese women living according to a "conventional" heterosexual life script are often called si-nai. The two characters mean "teacher" and "breasts." Whilst it was a term of respect for a teacher's wife in the 1960s and 1970s, in the 1980s and 1990s the label began to refer to housewives in resettlement estates, who were seen as economically unproductive. In twenty-first century Hong Kong, it has become a derogatory term that is reserved for middle-aged, married women who are seen by the general public to be ignorant, overweight, and "penny wise but pound foolish." These women are stereotyped as being tireless bargain hunters and rumor mongers who know of no higher goal in life than to please their husbands and make their children happy (Si-nai, 2006). Unsurprisingly, to be called a si-nai is now considered an insult. According to Rubin's (1984) categorization, the heterosexual, married, monogamous, reproductive si-nais in Hong Kong undoubtedly exist within the charmed circle and at the apex of the sexual hierarchy, but what are these si-nais" experiences of their apparently superior status on the sexual hierarchy?

In her 1984 essay "Thinking Sex," Rubin reviews a wide range of sexual stigmas and regulations, and she contends that people sort "good sex" from "bad sex" using a series of hierarchies. Rubin shows how the line between good sex--or normal sexuality--and bad sex--or damned sexuality--is continually constructed by the various discourses on sex, be they religious, psychiatric, popular, or political. These discourses delimit a very small portion of human sexual capacity as sanctified, safe, healthy, mature, legal, and politically correct. The types of sexuality that fall inside this "charmed circle" are heterosexual, marital, monogamous, reproductive, and noncommercial, and they should also be coupled, relational, within the same generation, and occur at home. Any sex that violates these rules is "bad," "abnormal," or "unnatural," and is banished to the outer limits of the circle. Bad sex could be homosexual, unmarried, promiscuous, nonprocreative, or commercial. Rubin also shows that there is another aspect to the sexual hierarchy: the struggle over where to draw the line and what other activities, if any, "may be permitted to cross over into acceptability" (Rubin, 1984, p. 282).

What is good, normal, natural, blessed sexuality? Are good, normal, natural heterosexual women privileged? Rubin (1984) argues that there are social privileges and concrete material benefits to being associated with social legitimation: "Individuals whose behavior stands high on this hierarchy [of accepted sexual practices] are rewarded with certified mental health, respectability, legality, social and physical mobility, institutional support, and material benefits" (p. 279) and this would seem to apply to Hong Kong's si-nais. But is it really the case?

In my earlier work, I looked at how Hong Kong Chinese women position themselves in relation to this stigmatized social category of si-nai (middle aged-housewives) and the prevailing norms and values regarding women's roles (Ho, 2008a, 2008b). I argue, in this article, that Rubin's idea of sexual identity and its relationship with good sex is an oversimplification of what is happening in many women's lives, and several questions need to be addressed: (1) What does Rubin mean by good sex? Is it about being seen as having a socially acceptable identity? (2) Do these women really feel that by having a socially respectable status they are socially respectable or truly valued by the community? Do they really feel privileged? (3) Do people who find themselves high in the hierarchy actually experience their sexuality as normal and blessed? What is the relationship between social acceptance and sexual pleasure? (4) What constitutes good, blessed sexuality for these married women: social acceptance and respectability, orgasm and bodily sensation, or achievement of other psychological and social aims?

Literature Review

While Rubin sees good sex as social respectability, there are other scholars who conceptualize good sex differently. One school of thought focuses on women's physical experiences and bodily sensations. The experience of orgasm, in particular, has become the sign of sexual competence and well-being both in medical discourse and popular women's magazines. It is believed to represent a "peak" sexual experience, a form of self-transcendence or self-actualization in humanistic terms (Bejin, 1986; Potts, 2000).

Another school of thought sees good sex as relationship and emotional intimacy. Feminist theory, in particular, has been relentlessly involved in exposing and subverting the valorization of male-centered versions of sex, including the imperative of orgasm via penetration (Jackson & Scott, 2001; Nicolson, 1993; Tiefer, 1995). These studies argue that women rarely describe orgasm in purely physical terms. It has become bound up with ideas of ecstasy and transcendence and associated with the romantic trappings of love and intimacy (Potts, 2000; Roberts, Kippax, Waldby, & Crawford, 1995) perhaps as a means of legitimizing the experience of orgasm for women. Many recent studies have suggested that social and emotional factors like the quality of people's relationships and lives are important in sexual satisfaction (Haavio-Mannila & Kontula, 1997; Hurlbert, Apt, & Rabehl, 1993; Parish et al., 2007; Ridley et al., 2006; Young, Denny, Young, & Luquis, 2000). Scholars like Ridley and Colleagues (2006) suggest that emotions, both positive and negative, are important in understanding how lust is experienced inside the person and in the relationship. Insufficient emotional intimacy is an important factor contributing to their lack of sexual desire, as women interpret sexual desire as a continuation of nonsexual intimacy (Basson, 2001a, 2001b, 2002). Women lose sexual desire when they feel disrespected, devalued, or degraded and when their partners use poor sexual techniques or have sexual problems of their own (Leiblum, 2002; Leiblum & Rosen, 1988). Wood, Koch, and Mansfield (2006, 2007) found that women conceptualized sexual desire as a whole-body feeling, including both emotional and physical aspects, either with a partner or alone.

The third school of thought focuses on the intertwining of reputation-based sexual identities with structurally patterned sexual geographies (i.e., the social spaces that shape sexual behavior). Hirsch, Meneses, Thompson, Negroni, Pelcastre, and del Rio (2007) found that culturally constructed notions of reputation in rural Mexico that led to sexual behavior designed to minimize men's social risk (threats to one's social status or relationships) actually increased married women's risk for HIV infection. Feminist scholars assert that human sexual embodiment can neither be thought of as an abstract potentiality outside the social spaces where it is experienced, nor as a mere assemblage of organs, orifices, and orgasms. Sexual practices and experiences have to be understood in social context, taking account of the everyday situatedness of sex as well as of wider socio-cultural processes (Jackson & Scott, 2001, 2007).

Along the same lines, this article explores how married women's sexual expression is affected by their sexual geographies and the wider social context. The socially respectable status of married women may inhibit or facilitate their sexual experiences and enjoyment of social privileges, depending on their specific social circumstances. Some women may deny their sexual urges even to themselves in order to maintain an appearance of "decency" and "respectability" and thus remain within the charmed circle and maintain their social status in the sexual hierarchy, while others may be inclined to break out of the confines of their social status to explore their desires. Thus, we can never assume that married women (or any social category) are privileged by virtue of their status on the sexual hierarchy.

Sex in Hong Kong--Small Expectations

Sexual satisfaction in Hong Kong is not high, either for men or women. This is demonstrated by the results of the 2007 Durex World Sex Survey, which questioned more than 26,000 people in 26 countries about all aspects of their sex lives, including satisfaction levels, it did not analyze the data by gender. Hong Kong did not fare well and was ranked twenty-fourth out of twenty-sixth areas in terms of sexual satisfaction (Durex World Sex Survey, 2007). Only 24% of the respondents from Hong Kong and China reported always experiencing an orgasm during sex, which is the lowest in the survey (48% worldwide). On average, 59% of respondents strongly agreed that sex was important to them, with the lowest rankings coming from Thailand (38%), Japan (39%), and Hong Kong (48%; Asians rate sex, 2007). Long working hours and a focus on materialism have a part to play. The Chinese injunction against boastfulness may also be a factor in these figures, but knowledge of Hong Kong culture suggests that the survey reflects reality.

In 2003, a survey by the Family Planning Association showed most married women in Hong Kong found sex boring:

   Only 28 per cent of the 1,607 women questioned
   expressed both interest and satisfaction in their sex lives.
   By contrast, 52 per cent of the 1,147 husbands questioned
   said their sex lives met the same criteria. (Chow,
   2003, para. 3 & 4)

This suggests that men can be interested in and satisfied by their own sex lives and not give a thought to whether their partners feel the same.

Many academics have talked about how sexual practices in Hong Kong have come under both traditional Chinese and Judeo-Christian influence (Ng & Ma, 2001; Tsang, 1987). It has been observed that both systems are characterized by patriarchy, which is an overarching discursive structure dominating the social life of women. According to Leung (1995), "The explanation of women's continuing subordination lies in the persistence of the centripetal family system in industrial Hong Kong" (p. 41). His observation highlights the combined oppressive forces of patriarchy and capitalism. Dominant discourses on parenting and education are usually predicated on notions of female chastity; and young women are not supposed to have sex before they get married. Ng and Ng (2005), for example, argue that, in a partnership, it is more accepted that the man is still the more "interesting" half and "the protector," and the woman is "the protected," who should look up to her husband. "Marriage should precede family. Intimacy outside of marriage and sexual relations without love are usually not endorsed" (p. 15), at least in the case of women.

After the handover of Hong Kong to China in 1997, the increased social and commercial exchange activities between Hong Kong and mainland China have made many women feel threatened, because their husbands can always go across the border to find a yi-nai (second wife; Ng & Ma, 2001). The 2006 by-census results in Hong Kong show that the gender imbalance has worsened in Hong Kong. For every 1,000 females, there are on average only 911 males (Census and Statistics Department, 2007). An increasing trend of males from Hong Kong marrying females from the mainland is observed (from 7,724 registered marriages in Hong Kong in 2002 to 16,800 in 2005). The increase in the number of Hong Kong females marrying males from the mainland, however, lags far behind (from 977 in 2002 to 2,700 in 2005; Census and Statistics Department, 2006). Hence, as far as finding marriage partners is concerned, women in Hong Kong face competition from both their counterparts in Hong Kong and the mainland.

Such specificities of the local context have shaped my research interest to explore how it is possible for Hong Kong women to be "good" (socially respectable) and "sexual" (in terms of sexual satisfaction) when they are not permitted to contravene the social norms and manage their relationships in a society where sexual relationships outside marriage are socially unacceptable. The study explores how women construct their gender and sexuality in such a context and particularly the contradiction between being at the center of the charmed circle while wearing a label (si-nai) that has become tainted.

Method

The research reported in this article is part of a project that explores how women in Hong Kong relate to the sinai identity and deal with their sexuality within this context (Ho, 2008a, 2008b). This article concentrates more specifically on their experiences of sex, drawing on the findings from 10 focus groups and 15 in-depth interviews about the sexual life histories of 45 married women. Interpretivist constructivism was adopted as the specific qualitative research paradigm, as it is concerned with meaning and seeks to understand social actors' definition of a situation (Schwandt, 2000). To address the point of auditability (Shek, Tang, & Han, 2005), I adopted a procedure that is transparent. Details of the data collection procedure are provided below.

Sampling and Participants

Theoretical sampling rather than random sampling was used. Theoretical sampling is a term coined by Glaser and Strauss in 1967 to describe the process of choosing new research sites or research cases to compare with those already studied. The goal of theoretical sampling is not the representative capture of all possible variations, but to gain a deeper understanding of analyzed cases and facilitate the development of an analytic framework and the redefinition of concepts. Theoretical sampling is about data and theory interaction. It is not just one round of data collection according to a fixed framework, but rather several rounds. The gaps in the data and holes in the theories force one to go back to the field and collect data from other samples to fill those gaps. In relation to this study, adopting this approach meant including four divorcees, three cases of married women without children, and one widow to ensure that respondents represent the broadest possible range within the inclusion boundaries (Strauss & Corbin, 1997).

I began by asking people in my social circle whether they knew any typical si-nais--middle-aged, full-time homemakers who were married and not gainfully employed. I soon found, however, that the classification of women into neat and tidy categories such as "employed" and "unemployed" is problematic. More often than not, women who said that they did not need to work outside their homes were found to have, or to have had, some form of employment, either before or after marriage. This experience helped me raise further questions regarding the term "heterosexual, married woman," a description that is not as unproblematic as may first be thought. What is a good, normal heterosexual married woman? Those who are divorced and widowed tend to identify themselves as "married" rather than single because of their previous experience with marriage. In the end, 45 married middle-aged women participated in the focus groups, individual in-depth interviews, or both for the study. Four of them were new immigrants from Mainland China (residing in Hong Kong for fewer than 7 years). It was found that their views were quite different from the permanent residents in Hong Kong and were taken as another reference point for me to understand the experience of local women.

Excluding the recent immigrants, the remaining 41 participants ranged in age from 35 to 55, with an average of 42.1 years. Eighty percent of them were married, whereas the rest were separated (two persons), divorced (four persons), widowed (one person), and remarried (one person). Nine of them had no children, and the others all had one to four children. The average number of children was 1.27. One participant was on social security, and the others lived on family income (from family members or their own).

Forty percent of the participants were full-time homemakers. About 24% were employed full time and were engaged in administration, professional or associate professional occupations (community worker, social worker, and accountant), sales and services (merchandizer and insurance agent), and clerical work. Twenty percent were working on a freelance basis--investing from home and performing editorial, domestic, and phone sex work. Three of them were students at the time of interview, and four had their own business (home bakery, boutique, printing company, and newspaper stand).

Interview Procedures

The 45 women in the present study participated in 10 focus groups and 15 in-depth interviews about their life histories. Each focus group had 5 to 12 participants who gave their views on the meaning of the term si-nai and whether they saw themselves as members of this social category. They were then asked to describe their way of life and how they saw themselves in relation to this social category and the prevailing norms and values associated with the label. After meeting them in groups and getting to know them a little better, I phoned to suggest individual interviews with some of the more information-rich respondents whom I thought would be able to further my understanding of the issues. They were also invited to help me identify cases with interesting or atypical stories.

An interview guide was prepared for an in-depth exploration of each woman's life. The first part of the interview was an open exploration of how the interviewees defined the meaning of the term si-nai and whether they considered themselves as belonging to this category. In the second part of the interview, the subjects were asked to talk about their idea and experience of love, sex, friendship, family, marriage, children, body, self, physical appearance, virginity, abortion, work, and leisure. Specifically, they were also invited to comment on the following: Do si-nais have a social identity about which they feel good? If they are not satisfied with the social privileges that others see them as having, then what more do they want? What constitutes good sex for them? How do they negotiate between maintaining their reputation and social respectability and their pursuit of the erotic? The interviews were conducted at places convenient to the participants, such as a community center, a university tutorial room, or the interviewee's home.

In the focus groups, the interviewees tended to refer to themselves as members of a collective social category more often than in individual interviews. Many of them were enthusiastic about explaining to the researcher their difficulties in meeting what society expected of them as mothers and wives. I found the data from the focus groups useful in helping me to understand their awareness of the social prejudices against women and their eagerness to redefine themselves. In the individual interviews, they were more willing to disclose their reflections on their personal lives, history, or relationships and their family background. In this way, I could better understand the sexual choices they made in relation to the social forces they faced.

Data Analysis

The individual and group interviews produced more than 80 hours of audiotaped materials, which were then transcribed into 600 pages of data. In order to protect the data from researcher's bias, the full transcripts of the interviews were read by two research assistants. Categories were devised separately by the research assistants and the author. All the categories generated were then included in the analysis of the first three cases. They categories follow: identity, stigma, strategies of identity, gender role, social status, marriage, wife, motherhood, love, sexual relationships, extramarital relationships, sexual satisfaction, orgasm, body, self, virginity, abortion, work, leisure, and community. As the analysis proceeded, new categories were then developed to include hang-fok (happiness), sexual self-image, erotic satisfaction, and extension of social space through sex.

Results

Do Hong Kong Chinese Si-Nais Believe That They Are Valued?

Apparently, married women should be enjoying the kind of social respectability that Rubin (1984) talks about since sexual activity for them is not problematic and they are seen to be inside the charmed circle. This may not be the case, however, for si-nais in Hong Kong. Middle-aged married women in Hong Kong are aware that labels like si-nai are used as mechanisms to control them and belittle their contributions. They have invented strategies to resist being pinned down to a fixed identity by altering its meaning or creating new identities (Ho, 2008a, 2008b).

Some of the women insisted that the label has outlived its usefulness and popularity, even in the food markets where it was formerly common linguistic currency. They prefer to be called liang nui or pretty women (which uses beauty as a marker) rather than being called si-nai (which is related to age, class, and social status). An important question is whether these women really think they can pass as liang nui. Many married women know how important it is for them to reduce their weight and put more effort into beautifying themselves so that others do not think that they look like a si-nai (Leong, 2006). Very often, these women are described as overweight and unattractive, so they do aerobics and go to the gym (as in the case of Ah Ting and Ah Lum), sign up for expensive slimming treatments (as in the case of Ah Lum and Susan), and participate in social dance (as in the case of Ah Ting and Susan) to move slightly closer to the accepted standard of beauty. These women know intuitively that they are not attractive enough by Hong Kong standards, which are among the harshest in the world.

Women like Ah Ting are aware that they have much to do to make themselves look good so they can feel secure: "Yet no matter what I do, it's not enough. These mainland women are young and I am not!" Many married women regard themselves as useless, outdated, and unattractive, and they feel that their status as wives is threatened by women from the mainland. They are definitely not privileged by default. Ah Lure's story illustrates how a woman's aspirations and expectations of herself change with the course of life and the Hong Kong-China connection:

   For a long period of time, I didn't care about my physical
   appearance. I felt myself to be so important to my family and my
   children that I didn't care whether I was pretty or not. Now I feel
   that I need to take care of myself. I do care about what others
   think of me.

Many women began to be aware of the competition between them and other younger women, and possibly between them and the yi-nai (second wife) across the border in mainland China. As Susan said,

   My days as a proper wife are over. If I still treat myself as a
   wife, I am done for. Every time I look around, there is a more
   beautiful woman. I want to be a yi-nai (second wife). I know what
   my husband wants and I will try my best to look young and
   beautiful.

Thus we can see people who are apparently socially respectable are not necessarily appreciated and highly valued. For middle-aged married women with different class backgrounds and social capital, there is much to be done to maintain or increase social respectability, mental health, and the associated privileges that Rubin thinks they should possess.

Keeping Orgasm in Its Place?

Rubin said heterosexual married monogamous sex is at the center of the charmed circle and the apex of the hierarchy, but she never said that these women will have sexual satisfaction or orgasm. Obviously, the kind of good sex that she talks about is not really about good sexual experiences or sexual satisfaction but rather satisfaction that comes with social validation. This study goes further to explore different conceptions of good sex. Is it about social acceptance and social respectability? Is it about orgasm and bodily sensations? How does relationship intimacy and the other psychological and social satisfactions that women may want figure in their conception of good sex?

In the initial interviews with the women about their sex lives, I was surprised by the conspicuous absence of reference to orgasm. Therefore, questions on orgasm were added to the later interviews to find out how these Chinese women experienced orgasm and sexual pleasure in the context of a changing discourse of sex for women.

When asked about their experience of orgasm, 80% of interviewees said that they had had their first orgasm at the age of 30, after being married for about 10 years. When asked how they had finally found out about it, most replied that orgasm had been an accident; it was neither a big discovery nor a memorable event. They merely accepted it as something that happens when it happens, rather than as a goal. As Lee said, "it just happened, I don't think one needs to seek it out." Wong also stated, "Orgasm is not something you will have every time you have sex, and that is normal. That's what the doctor told me." The group members received knowledge of gender differences in anatomy, sexual desire, and needs. They did not expect to climax every time they had sex and therefore were not likely to feel disappointed when orgasm did not occur. All except Betty said that they would not regard sex as "incomplete" or call it "unsatisfactory" when they could not reach orgasm. Ng expressed her opinion:

   Women would feel lonely if they feel little when having sex, but in
   most cases, I think women can tolerate it. I think women are more
   conservative. I don't think they will even think about it unless
   they know how to masturbate.

Ng specified that it is only through masturbation that women would come to understand what orgasm is like and to feel that they may need it in their sex lives with their partners. Cheung echoed her observations that not many women of their age knew how to masturbate: "For those who don't masturbate, I don't think they will mind if they don't have an orgasm."

For Betty, orgasm is a must, and it is the most basic thing to achieve. However She wants more, however, as she said:

   I always have an orgasm and I am not desperate or anything. Just a
   5-minute kiss will get me all wet. My problem is that my husband is
   like an old horse. He is too lazy to take any initiative. I need
   someone to seduce me.

It is important to note that when these women imagined pleasurable sex, they were not saying that it equals physical sensations or orgasm. Jade, for example, told me that they could have good sex without an orgasm:

   Marriage is not a one-night stand. Why would we bother to calculate
   the gains and losses of a sexual encounter? We are talking about a
   long-term, even life-long, relationship. There is no need to keep
   score all the time.

We do not evaluate a relationship in terms of what happens in bed (Ah Leung). All of them stressed that it is the entire context of sex that counts. Good life, they said, is more than good sex. Sometimes, they used the term hang-fok (luck, blessing) as a euphemism for a happy life. When asked to elaborate on what they meant by hang-fok, they said that they have "a bit of everything" that they need. Some of the women believed that unless they had, a good husband, a nice house, good children, financial security, a harmonious household, their own social life, and achievements outside the home, the orgasm--if it happens at all--cannot really be good. Many kept saying that they "should be considered as quite hang-fok" even though they do not have orgasms all the time. In their concept of good sex, there seems to be a multitude of other elements, too. You may wonder whether they were talking about sex at all!

The coerciveness of the orgasm imperative that Potts (2000) talks about is simply not present. The sense of "noncompletion" or "nonresolution" in nonorgasmic sex that is identified by Potts (2000) was rarely reported, but the preorgasmic and postorgasmic pleasures of personal connection and intimacy were often described by the interviewees as integral parts of their experience of pleasure. As Joyce said, "It's the bonding that counts. It's the introduction to orgasm that matters. But if you can't have the feeling that you really want, sex is the next best thing that you can have."

Even for those women who know what orgasm is, good sex is just a tiny part of a good life, and a good life is more important than good sex. Pleasurable sex is nonetheless an implied part of the package, at least at the fantasy level, but very often it is neither the most important part of the marriage deal nor part of their actual experience.

Tracy, Patsy, Julie, Alice, and Ah Chun believed that they had a happy marriage, good sex, as well as nice children. Orgasm, however, is just one element in their happiness equation. For Ida, Cheung, and Linda, orgasm is no big deal. It is a good feeling, but it is also exhausting, and brings trouble:

   I often have a headache afterwards. I don't have time to
   rest after orgasm. My two daughters are always there.
   I don't want to go all the way. I prefer to be hugged
   and kissed without going all the way. (Ida)
      I woke up next morning and felt that I wanted more.
   That is not a nice feeling. (Cheung)
      Orgasm is mental work. It is about how you try to
   trigger yourself. You have to help yourself with the kind
   of fantasies that work for you. (Linda)

Good Sex in the Marriage Equation

When asked about whether sex was important, everyone agreed that sex was important for the maintenance of marriage, children's happiness, family harmony, reproduction, self-esteem, and control of other people's pleasure.

Angie and Amy had problems during sexual intercourse when they were first married. They complained about the pain involved in penetration. Amy was able to solve her problem within one year after seeking help from a medical doctor referred by her sexologist friend. Although she was satisfied with different kinds of sexual activities in marriage, she felt it was important to prove that she could also have sexual intercourse like other people: "If teenagers can have sexual intercourse so easily, why can't I?" She was also aware that her husband was keen to have this problem fixed:

   I could never be sure if my husband would accept our marriage like
   this (without intercourse), although he seemed supportive and he
   never really blamed me for the problem. But I knew very well that
   he would like us to have a normal sexual life. (Amy)

Other than low self-esteem and worry about her husband's feelings, Angie felt that she needed to think about having children as she approached her mid-thirties, so she decided to join a sex therapy group: "Both my husband and I like children. A family without children is incomplete." Many women felt that children are more important than sex. Vicky, who divorced her husband after just a year of marriage, believed that sex was no longer relevant for a divorced woman because rearing her one-year-old son took precedence. In the interview, Fung described the painful experience of giving birth and afterward she thought that childrearing was the most important thing in her life. Her husband and she decided to take alternate shifts so that their son could have someone to look after him around the clock.

Children's happiness is also important, and some women see sex as a tool to ensure family harmony and solidarity:

   If he is happy, he speaks more gently. The children
   would not suffer. (Ah Lin)
      If he comes back from a business trip and he does not
   want sex, then I know I may be in trouble. (Ah Ming)
      Whenever I go to visit him in China where he stays
   most of the time to take care of the factory, I will make
   sure that we have sex the night before I leave. If we don't
   have sex during my whole visit, I would feel very
   uncomfortable. Does he want me anymore? (Esther)

The question is, can we say that this is merely evidence for showing that these women's sex lives are just for achieving their own aims--for the security of their own identities, reassurance of commitment, erotic self-image, livelihood, harmony of the household, or ideals about marriage and family? Apparently, good sex is also about the achievements of other psychological and social aims that women see as important in their life circumstances. This may be viewed as a compromise in the face of powerful oppression, or as a strategy of resistance to maintain one's capacity, and life space, for pleasure seeking and gratification.

Good Sex as Erotic Satisfaction

It is important to note how some women see orgasm and sex as something that is marginal to the overall quality of an erotic relationship. They prefer some form of romance, such as dating (which does not have to be strictly sexual), with their husbands. Dating is part of a good life. Mei recounted one of the most intense moments with her former husband. When they were married, she rarely had the opportunity to go out with him alone--there were always children and family members around. On one occasion, they had to go to a funeral of a close relative together, and she remembered that vividly as the only time in a long while when they could be out on their own. She had to take a mini-bus to meet him near his work; then the two of them caught a cab together to go to the funeral:

   I feel embarrassed even talking about it. Why was I so
   happy going to this funeral? When I stepped into the
   taxi with him, my heart was pounding. And I had been
   anticipating the moment for so long, as if I was going
   out on a date.

These women are keen to pursue pleasures that are not overtly sexual, but rather romantic or erotic, such as feeling wanted and desired. Others, such as Har Chai, did not mind being seen as engaging in purposefully deviant behavior: "I smoke. I have sex with [other] men. I am not your average housewife." She also hung out with members of a lesbian group, but she said that the relationship was purely "social."

There were other women who had intimate relationships with their same-sex friends, even though they would not explicitly say whether the relationship was sexual. After her early retirement, Katy became very close to another woman, Amy, whom she met at a dance class:

   Now we dance and do everything together. She hasn't
   received much education, but she is a superwoman
   who can do everything, from household repairs to
   computer work. She is the only one who can make me
   do so much exercise.

With the encouragement of Amy, Katy has become more involved in different kinds of activities including Cantonese opera, social dance, flower arrangement, and cookery. Har Chai and Katy would not talk about relationships with another woman in sexual terms, but the ties between them and their activity partners were obviously strong, and they acknowledged that their activity partners were vital to their well-being. It is important to explore the importance of erotic satisfaction related to dating, interest groups, leisure activities, and intimate same-sex friendships in women's conception of good sex. The way they manage these activities and relationships may determine whether they would transform their identities and status in the sexual hierarchy.

Social Respectability in the Good Sex Equation

Four of the 45 respondents were divorced. Two initiated the divorce and chose to leave the charmed circle to seek their own good life and good sex. Among those who stayed in their marriages, four of them made it very explicit that they did so to maintain the security of their identity as si-nai (housewife) or tai-tai (elegant wife).

Kitty, for example, ran away with her boyfriend and did not come home until a few months later when their relationship ended:

   I am very well provided for. My husband treats me like a
   young girl, even though my son is nearly 20 years old
   now. Last year, I ran away with my lover, but my husband
   took me back. I told myself that I would never risk
   my marriage again with silly romances.

She continued to go out with her male friends, but said she was more discreet. "I want to go to parties, but I am not going to run away again. I just want to enjoy the tender moment when a man puts his arm around my waist."

In a similar vein, Betty went home dutifully every day and did everything expected of her by her family, but her emotional life was ruled by the secret dates she had with her first love, whom she had recently met again by accident: "I haven't felt like this about a man for such a long time. Is it friendship or is it love? I don't care."

The ambiguity of the relationship gave Kitty room to maneuver. Like Betty, she was able to stay within the confines of her marriage and perform her role as mother whilst injecting certain romanticism into her life by seeing another man. At the second interview, Betty had already moved out to live on her own on the grounds that she needed "to take a break" and think about her marriage. She had exactly the same family daily routines except that she would go back to her own little rented apartment after dinner. She never felt that she had low sexual desire. Rather, she just felt frustrated because of her relationship with her husband.

There were two women in the study, Katy and Jo, who had complaints about low sexual desire related to the onset of menopause. Both of them said they were dry and that intercourse was painful. Katy said she could still feel aroused by reading books and watching movies with erotic scenes. She admitted that the lack of communication with her retired government servant husband was an important factor: "I just don't want to see him around the house. What's the point of living under the same roof with someone who does not read and has no interests whatever?"

Jo felt that her sexual desire had just vanished in one night:

   I think it is the menopause. It is a natural process, I
   think. He just has to accept this. Maybe I can go see
   the doctor, but I feel that I have lost all my sexual desire
   and I am so unmotivated. I am not a sharp person anymore.
   There is no sharpness in my face anymore.

When asked whether she could imagine rediscovering her desire with her former boyfriend, whom she described as the "frog prince," she said, "I am not sure. He asked if I would travel to Japan with him. I wanted this so much, but I don't want to lie to my husband." Unlike Ivy, Katy and Jo felt that they could not afford to lose what they had and so they chose to exchange sexual pleasure for respectability, in the eyes of their husbands, family, and community. Will Kitty be able to contain her dissatisfaction with her marital life in return for the social respectability that she has gained? No one knows, but in her own way, she is keeping her desire--and therefore her taste for life--alive.

Among the four divorcees, Lydia admitted that feeling "desperate for sex" was one of the main reasons for initiating the divorce. She had not had sex for more than 3 years. She said that she would be happy if she could have some sex once or twice a year, just to assure herself that she was still married. Lydia was married to the son of a rich family and she herself was an accountant. She discovered that the highest point of her sexual frustration was when she saw clearly that her husband was not even willing to give her a hug:

   There was a fire in the building. I walked all the way
   from the twentieth floor to the ground. I phoned my
   husband on my way down and urged him to come over.
   I ran to him when I saw him outside the building. I
   wanted a hug so much. He just said, "Let us go home."
   It is almost like pushing me away. I was so angry that I
   slapped his face.

The husband finally agreed to go for sex therapy, but he refused to carry on after two sessions. He said, "Why don't you just take it like I am a patient and let me be." Lydia was angry and frustrated. She said she would consider quitting her job and going to study overseas, believing that this would be a transition to the initiation of divorce.

Ivy adopted a similar approach to her marriage. Like Betty, Kitty, and Lydia, she chose to leave her marriage after 5 years of what she called "sexual breakdown" in her divorce petition. Before her divorce, she said her main concern was not preserving the family but "preserving the image of a happy family in other's eyes" until one day she met her new boyfriend. Ivy was married to a fund manager for 11 years. She was seen by many as having a happy family and leading the life of a tai tai (elegant wife), especially after she left her job 3 years ago to study for a postgraduate degree. She had been haunted by her sexual frustration for the past 5 years of her marriage until she decided to divorce her husband:

   I dress well. I make myself look sexy. Every day I hope:
   maybe today is my day. Maybe he will want to have sex
   with me today. Days pass by and years pass by. Nothing
   happened. Sometimes, I asked him, "Do you need me to
   dance naked in front of you before you would touch
   me?" He just said, "Don't be childish. Go to sleep
   early." ... My girlfriend is also divorcing. Her feeling
   is that even if she did dance naked for her husband, he
   would not even look.

Ivy started to talk more about wanting children, in her desperate attempt to initiate sex. Still, nothing happened. One day, she met someone at the hospital when she visited her mother who had to go through major surgery:

   I felt I was so undesirable until I met my boyfriend. My
   mother was dying and I was so down. I was in my jeans,
   and I didn't put on any makeup. Still, someone told me
   that he had found me attractive.

When asked what these apparently "happy" housewives were really after in their extramarital engagements, they kept saying that it was not sex, but attention and tenderness:

   The key difference between marriage and an extramarital
   relationship is that--in long term relationships, there are
   so many distractions. My husband always has other
   things to do--TV, SMS, the stock market. In my
   extramarital relationship, my lover can give me 100%
   attention. This is the first time in my life that I would have
   sex with no protection. I want so much to posses this person
   and even have a child with him. The qualitative difference
   in sex makes me realize that I can't go back. (Ivy)

In response to the question regarding what has made it possible for her to make the decision to divorce, Ivy said, "It was mainly related to feeling desirable. I am 40 now. I can't afford to wait any longer and I must take the chance." When asked if she felt turned on by this guy, she said, "He speaks so gently. He leans so close to me. He is certainly 'turned on,' but I am not. I am touched because I am so desirable."

These discontented heterosexuals have chosen to step over the boundary and leave the charmed circle for erotic satisfaction and achievement of other psychological and social aims. The availability of a new man who can give a woman a better sexual self-image is certainly crucial to help her decide to stay at the apex of the hierarchy or trespass the boundary to the outer limits.

Discussion

The study explored the experience of the heterosexual, especially for women who are married, have children, and are seen as housewives. It shows that "good," "normal," and "natural" heterosexuality is not what we imagine it to be, and that by representing the sexuality of married women in these terms we may have taken an overly simplistic view of the lives of heterosexuals and particularly the lives of different categories of women. Thus, we need to question the commonly held assumption that those living within the charmed circle are valued and rewarded with social recognition, privileges, and moral superiority. In fact, people who are termed "normal" or "natural" realize that they too are simply ordinary people who are often taken for granted. The connections between female heterosexuality and social privilege should not be assumed: The good life of a good wife is perhaps not as good as it seems. Many women are, in fact, not really having good, normal, blessed sex even in the sense of social respectability as Rubin (1984) has described.

The people in Rubin's (1984) charmed circle are not always privileged, but rather are over-regulated. In real life, people constantly desire to move out of this citadel in one way or the other. Many women may refuse to be imprisoned in one social space and a stable identity. Some discontented heterosexuals will step over the boundary and leave their marriages. Si-nais in Hong Kong are well aware that they are not highly valued in their society, and so they have found numerous ways of transgressing the boundaries that define good heterosexual married women. It turns out that transgression is not the sole prerogative of "deviants" but also involves the most "normal" and docile of women. These so-called normal married heterosexuals may also want to gain new experiences of relationships. Their discontent and deviations from "normality" are generally ignored in an effort to maintain the illusion that there really is a core of good married women with no sexual or life desires to achieve who are content to reproduce the accepted social order. The desire to move out of the charmed circle and explore alternative forms of relationships outside the frontiers of boring "normality" has to be recognized even though such women seem to be still staying within the charmed circle. The nature of desire is ambivalent and seeks its own realization in ways that can never be adequately captured by the limited conceptual categories available to us (Ho, 2006, Tsang & Ho, 2007), be they categories of gender, sexuality, or identity. As Kulick (2000) and Valentine (2003) argue, we should focus on desires that are "unintelligible" and thus present a unique opportunity for us to investigate the complexity of erotic desire, its expression in practice, and its relationship with categories of identity.

The study has shown that the way women imagine good sex seems to have many origins and sites. The erotic satisfaction of these married women arises from multitudinous elements, including love and care, sexual intimacy and gratification, erotic pursuits, social validation, and other desire-fulfilling supplements to their roles as wives or mothers. Interest groups, leisure, and extramarital relationships, for example are all "passports" to other options, of no longer being a mother and wife or to making being a wife and mother more tolerable (Ho, 2007a, 2007b, 2008a, 2008b). The meaning of their lives is subject to continuous reconstitution through the expanding domain of supplementation (Gergen, 1997). Social validation and the respectability that comes with being a normal, natural heterosexual is not the only thing that counts in women's lives to maintain mental health and social privileges. There are other elements in the pleasure formula. No marriage transaction is likely to provide all of these elements to the degree that a woman desires, and each woman has a different package deal. This means that during their life course, women repeatedly reformulate their expectations about what pleasures can be realised for them, and how. It is in their specific social and relationship contexts that they decide upon the significance of orgasm or social validation in their formula of good sex.

The results of this study are in line with many researchers who have found that sexual satisfaction for women is best predicted not by specific sexual responses, but by qualities inherent in their relationships and lives (Haavio-Mannila & Kontula, 1997; Hurlbert et al., 1993; Young et al., 2000). This points toward the importance of a broader conceptualization of the erotic. There is a need to take a look at the larger social context, however, and see how women's lives and sexual identities are affected by the meanings associated with their sexual geography and the value of their social identities. The changing meaning of the label si-nai from a respectful designation to a derogatory term for the middle-aged housewife is suggestive of the changes in the economic development and social-cultural context in postwar Hong Kong and how these have shaped social expectations toward women. People have to draw on available cultural scenarios and rework them through everyday sexual practices that can themselves become, within a particular social group, available as ways of "doing" sex. Thus, it is important to note how Hong Kong Chinese women have their specific ways of pursuing what they think is sexual or romantic, either because of their sexual frustrations or erotic dissatisfaction or because they have other desires, including the desire to maintain social respectability. Their leisure activities, extramarital affairs, divorces, and same-sex intimate relationships (albeit without identifying themselves as lesbians) are noteworthy as culturally specific responses to their erotic dissatisfactions.

The present study has limitations. As is usual in qualitative methodology, this research aims to provide an in-depth understanding of women's lives from their own perspective. The sample was chosen to document the diversity of women's experiences rather than to arrive at empirical generalizations, and thus the sample was small and nonrandom. This study is of one cultural group of Chinese women, and further work needs to be done to examine the similarities and differences of their experiences in relation to both women in Mainland China and women in other Asian or Western cultures. This would shed light on the universality, or not, of women's experiences in this area, using Hong Kong as an example of a culture that is predominantly Chinese while also being significantly Westernized. The narratives of the women in the present study show how women's desires change according to social context and life circumstances over time. An alternative theory of womanhood or a new conceptual framework for mapping out women's desires remains to be articulated, taking into consideration women's different ways of understanding good sex.

Conclusion

Theoretically, these married women are at the apex of the sexual hierarchy and they should be enjoying social respectability, if nothing else. In reality, they do not because they know that they are not really valued. Many middle-aged married women in Hong Kong are aware that what used to be a socially respectable category--'si-nai'--has actually become a stigmatized identity that is associated with being ordinary, boring, and not sexually attractive. Si-nais, housewives, and homemakers are respectable identities, but they are not respected even though they seem to have a socially acceptable social status when compared with sexual deviants and those who are at the outer limits of the circle. Many women have to address the contradictions, however, between being at the center of the charmed circle while also having a derogatory component in their identities. The fact that they have to work hard to add value to themselves in order to regain respect shows that this is the case. The kind of social respectability that they have is social acceptance rather than appreciation. I therefore argue that many women are, in fact, not really having good sex even in the sense of social respectability, as Rubin (1984) has described.

I argue further that social respectability is not only no guarantee of good sex in terms of orgasm or physical sensations, but it may actually work to prevent it from happening because of the constraints posed by structured and patterned sexual geography. Many women have to exchange pleasurable sex and the fulfillment of other desires to maintain an apparently socially respectable status. There are many constraints imposed on married women to prevent them from reaching out to acquire the social exposure and sexual explorations needed to improve their lives. While the limited expectations born of their life worlds help them to achieve a measure of satisfaction, many nonetheless have an acute sense of limitation and boredom, and they seek more intense, erotic relationships and life experiences. In other words, the blessings of social respectability apparently enjoyed by these women may work to enable or hinder women's expression of their erotic desires and sexual fulfillment, depending on their needs in special social circumstances.

What Rubin (1984) thinks is good sex is often different from the woman's own definitions and experiences. Even though it is not Rubin's concern in her formulation of the sexual hierarchy whether these women have good sex in the sense of pleasurable sex, I argue that we should make this aspect explicit so that what we (scholars and researchers) see more clearly as good sex, whatever that may mean, often diverges from women's actual lived experiences. It is found, through the women's narratives, that their perceptions of good sex are composed of a multitude of components or at least four dimensions. Women may feel good because (1) they have done the right thing and so they can be seen as socially acceptable or respectable; (2) women may feel good because they have an orgasm or pleasurable bodily sensations (which are often related to other psychological satisfactions); (3) women may feel good because of the erotic satisfaction that they derive from different pursuits, including their interests or leisure or other intimate relationships, rather than sexual fulfillment in terms of orgasm or physical pleasure; (4) women feel good because they can achieve other psychological and social aims that are important in their life circumstances (which could be related to the maintenance of marriage or the peace of the family). Women may reformulate their pleasures variously at different stages of their lives. Social respectability, orgasm, emotional intimacy, or any other specific element may enter or leave the formula.

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Petula Sik Ying Ho

Social Work & Social Administration, The University of Hong Kong

Correspondence should be addressed to Petula Sik Ying Ho, The University of Hong Kong, Social Work & Social Administration. Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong, China. E-mail: [e-mail]