M H S Ho
Biographic Data
| ID | 40876 |
|---|---|
| NAME | M H S Ho |
| GIVEN NAMES | M H S |
| FAMILY NAME | Ho |
| SIGNATURE | HO M H S |
| AFFILIATIONS | National University of Singapore |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3381-3580 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 18 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 20 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 18 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2014 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
I’m an androgynous tomboy with tattoos’
Alongside the transnational success of Korean popular music (K-pop), various idols have embraced androgynous looks. One case study I explore is Amber, a Taiwanese American singer-songwriter and former member of girl group f(x) who identifies as an ‘androgynous tomboy with tattoos’. In what ways does Amber challenge gender and sexuality norms in South Korea? Taking androgyny as an analytic, how might we rethink such norms and the flourishing of mo…
When everything goes online, it's never really gone
Increasingly pervasive in recent years is a range of behaviours using digital technologies to harm individuals–especially women–known as ‘technology-facilitated sexual violence (TFSV)’. Some notable examples of TFSV include digital sexual harassment and nonconsensual sharing of intimate content–also called ‘image-based sexual abuse (IBSA)’. This article investigates university students’ experiences of TFSV in Singapore, addressing the questions: …
Queer Asias
In this introduction, we highlight the developments and transformations that have been put forward and situate our examination of Queer Asias within that context. We then turn to the contributions in this special issue, which collectively examine the intricate and imbricated flows of capital, power, intimacy, citizenship, sexual politics, and categories of gender and sexual (self-)identification in and across Japan, Taiwan, Indonesia, Hong Kong, …
Categories that bind
This article investigates “ toransujendā” (transgender), “ josō” (male-to-female crossdressing), and “ otoko no ko” (boy/male daughter) as categories that bind through ethnographic research in Tokyo’s contemporary josō gyōkai (scene and business circles). Building on queer and transgender scholarship, I ask what these categories mean, what they do, and how they figure in trans people’s everyday lives and the institutionalization of seidōitsuseish…
Banning sissy idols to clean up the entertainment industry’
On 2 September 2021, Mainland China’s media regulator SARFT introduced guidelines to ‘clean up’ the entertainment sector, banning the ‘sissy idols’ trend and danmei 耽美 culture (male–male romance by and for women and sexual minorities). A few days later, Sina Weibo, a major Chinese social platform, banned K-pop fan accounts, including BTS, previously criticized for Korean War comments. These crackdowns by Chinese authorities reveal concerns about …
Detrimental to Our Digital Well-Being
Although increasingly prevalent in Singapore, campus sexual assault and harassment and technology-facilitated sexual violence (TFSV) remain underresearched. Conducted by scholars across social work, gender studies, policy studies, communication, and computer science, this interdisciplinary study explores the impact of technologies such as social media and online platforms on the digital well-being of university students in Singapore who experienc…
Hyperathletic Artistry
The Chinese American skater Nathan Chen and the Japanese skater Yuzuru Hanyu have demonstrated what we call a ‘hyperathletic-artistic turn’: recognizing an almost superhuman, quad-jumping ability along with an equally developed artistic side. This article closely analyses their 2018 Olympic season performances exploring costuming, music, dance choreography, and jumping ability. While Chen's balletic and dancerly choreography – a ‘return of the da…
Looking Japanese
In 2015 and 2016, Ariana Miyamoto and Priyanka Yoshikawa became the first and second “hāfu” (half; multiracial) contestants to be crowned Miss Universe Japan and Miss World Japan respectively. Following their win, they were alternately ignored in mainstream media, lambasted online for not being “jun-nihonjin” (pure Japanese), and celebrated for heralding a multiracial and multiethnic Japan. I explore these discourses by examining how the two beau…
Asian sporting masculinities in figure skating
In sport and sport media, figure skating is often perceived as ‘feminine’ and male skaters frequently occupy an ambiguous position, especially for Asian (American) athletes in a historically White-dominated sport. Based on discourse analysis, this article compares how English- and Japanese-language news narratives represent elite male figure skaters Nathan Chen and Yuzuru Hanyu, who are close rivals and skate for the United States and Japan respe…
Following Naomi Osaka and Rui Hachimura on Social Media
This article explores the role of social media in athlete activism and sport commodification through the case studies of two elite multiracial athletes who represent Japan, professional tennis player Naomi Osaka and professional basketball player Rui Hachimura. Osaka's mother is Japanese and her father is Haitian-American, whereas Hachimura's mother is Japanese and his father is Beninese. Employing critical discourse analysis of Twitter and Insta…
“Queer” Media in Inter-Asia
This chapter explores how thinking gender and sexuality transnationally can help us make sense of “queer” media, practices and performances proliferating across East Asia and Southeast Asia through two prominent examples – South Korean popular music (K-pop) and “boys love” (BL) media. Thinking gender and sexuality transnationally is useful for making sense of the overlapping processes of queer K-pop and BL media fandom, consumption and (re)produc…
How Nissin Represented Naomi Osaka
In January 2019, instant noodle giant Nissin Foods released two animated advertisements online featuring Naomi Osaka, which elicited backlash over “whitewashing” the multiracial professional tennis player who represents Japan. Although Nissin has since pulled the advertisements and officially apologized for portraying Osaka as lighter-skinned, underlying these issues are also those of gender, especially its intersections with race/ethnicity, nati…
A Different Kind of Transgender Celebrity
Scholars have criticized how tarento (television personalities) who might be considered “transgender” have for decades provided comic relief on Japanese mainstream television, but few have considered the recent emergence of a different kind of trans celebrity who rejects the entertainment narrative to embrace the “wrong body” discourse (having mismatched corporeality). This article explores this phenomenon through the example of Nishihara Satsuki…
From dansō to genderless
This article explores the mediation of androgynous bodies and styles in contemporary Japan by mapping the relationship between dansō (female-to-male crossdressing) and genderless (jendāresu). Dansō refers to gender-crossing practices usually by individuals who are assigned female at birth, whereas genderless is a mode of fashion emerging in 2010 which theoretically denotes styles that do not distinguish between genders. Drawing on media coverage …
Queer and normal
Though dansō—female-to-male crossdressing—has been historically embedded in Japan as tradition, performance, and entertainment, in the last fifteen years it has fractured and increasingly become commercialized, adopted by young people—a phenomenon I call “contemporary dansō culture.” One example this article explores are dansō café-and-bars—establishments where employees dress as another gender—which since the mid-2000s have emerged in Nakano, Ik…
Consuming Women in Blackface
In 2014, ASTIGU – a Japanese pantyhose brand – launched ‘ashi wa, kao’ (legs are face), a new series of advertisements featuring a female model whose face is painted black. Although scholars have previously written on blackface and blackness in Japan, they have focused more on subcultural contexts and men’s instead of women’s experiences. Drawing on the campaign’s promotional materials and employing women’s blackface practices as a heuristic devi…
Tracing tears and triple axels
Anticipating the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, this article uses the triple axel jump, one of the most challenging moves in women’s figure skating, as a heuristic device to track representations of Japanese skaters Ito Midori and Asada Mao in the New York Times and Asahi Shimbun. Ito and Asada are two of only six women to have landed triple axels at international figure skating competitions. Employing affect and feminist theories, I argue that constructio…
Is Nadeshiko Japan 'Feminine?' Manufacturing Sport Celebrity and National Identity on Japanese Morning Television
When the Japan women's soccer team, more affectionately dubbed 'Nadeshiko Japan,' emerged FIFA World Cup champions in 2011, its members became celebrities overnight. However, central to their celebrityhood is the media's obsession with 'femininity.' Through constructing sport celebrities, or tarento ('talents'), I argue that the Japanese media shift between representations of Nadeshiko Japan as glorified national athletes and as trivialized 'femi…
Is Nadeshiko Japan 'Feminine?' Manufacturing Sport Celebrity and National Identity on Japanese Morning Television
When the Japan women's soccer team, more affectionately dubbed 'Nadeshiko Japan,' emerged FIFA World Cup champions in 2011, its members became celebrities overnight. However, central to their celebrityhood is the media's obsession with 'femininity.' Through constructing sport celebrities, or tarento ('talents'), I argue that the Japanese media shift between representations of Nadeshiko Japan as glorified national athletes and as trivialized 'femi…
How Nissin Represented Naomi Osaka
In January 2019, instant noodle giant Nissin Foods released two animated advertisements online featuring Naomi Osaka, which elicited backlash over “whitewashing” the multiracial professional tennis player who represents Japan. Although Nissin has since pulled the advertisements and officially apologized for portraying Osaka as lighter-skinned, underlying these issues are also those of gender, especially its intersections with race/ethnicity, nati…
Following Naomi Osaka and Rui Hachimura on Social Media
This article explores the role of social media in athlete activism and sport commodification through the case studies of two elite multiracial athletes who represent Japan, professional tennis player Naomi Osaka and professional basketball player Rui Hachimura. Osaka's mother is Japanese and her father is Haitian-American, whereas Hachimura's mother is Japanese and his father is Beninese. Employing critical discourse analysis of Twitter and Insta…
Consuming Women in Blackface
In 2014, ASTIGU – a Japanese pantyhose brand – launched ‘ashi wa, kao’ (legs are face), a new series of advertisements featuring a female model whose face is painted black. Although scholars have previously written on blackface and blackness in Japan, they have focused more on subcultural contexts and men’s instead of women’s experiences. Drawing on the campaign’s promotional materials and employing women’s blackface practices as a heuristic devi…
Tracing tears and triple axels
Anticipating the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, this article uses the triple axel jump, one of the most challenging moves in women’s figure skating, as a heuristic device to track representations of Japanese skaters Ito Midori and Asada Mao in the New York Times and Asahi Shimbun. Ito and Asada are two of only six women to have landed triple axels at international figure skating competitions. Employing affect and feminist theories, I argue that constructio…
Looking Japanese
In 2015 and 2016, Ariana Miyamoto and Priyanka Yoshikawa became the first and second “hāfu” (half; multiracial) contestants to be crowned Miss Universe Japan and Miss World Japan respectively. Following their win, they were alternately ignored in mainstream media, lambasted online for not being “jun-nihonjin” (pure Japanese), and celebrated for heralding a multiracial and multiethnic Japan. I explore these discourses by examining how the two beau…
Asian sporting masculinities in figure skating
In sport and sport media, figure skating is often perceived as ‘feminine’ and male skaters frequently occupy an ambiguous position, especially for Asian (American) athletes in a historically White-dominated sport. Based on discourse analysis, this article compares how English- and Japanese-language news narratives represent elite male figure skaters Nathan Chen and Yuzuru Hanyu, who are close rivals and skate for the United States and Japan respe…
Is Nadeshiko Japan 'Feminine?' Manufacturing Sport Celebrity and National Identity on Japanese Morning Television
When the Japan women's soccer team, more affectionately dubbed 'Nadeshiko Japan,' emerged FIFA World Cup champions in 2011, its members became celebrities overnight. However, central to their celebrityhood is the media's obsession with 'femininity.' Through constructing sport celebrities, or tarento ('talents'), I argue that the Japanese media shift between representations of Nadeshiko Japan as glorified national athletes and as trivialized 'femi…
Tracing tears and triple axels
Anticipating the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, this article uses the triple axel jump, one of the most challenging moves in women’s figure skating, as a heuristic device to track representations of Japanese skaters Ito Midori and Asada Mao in the New York Times and Asahi Shimbun. Ito and Asada are two of only six women to have landed triple axels at international figure skating competitions. Employing affect and feminist theories, I argue that constructio…
Consuming Women in Blackface
In 2014, ASTIGU – a Japanese pantyhose brand – launched ‘ashi wa, kao’ (legs are face), a new series of advertisements featuring a female model whose face is painted black. Although scholars have previously written on blackface and blackness in Japan, they have focused more on subcultural contexts and men’s instead of women’s experiences. Drawing on the campaign’s promotional materials and employing women’s blackface practices as a heuristic devi…
Queer and normal
Though dansō—female-to-male crossdressing—has been historically embedded in Japan as tradition, performance, and entertainment, in the last fifteen years it has fractured and increasingly become commercialized, adopted by young people—a phenomenon I call “contemporary dansō culture.” One example this article explores are dansō café-and-bars—establishments where employees dress as another gender—which since the mid-2000s have emerged in Nakano, Ik…
How Nissin Represented Naomi Osaka
In January 2019, instant noodle giant Nissin Foods released two animated advertisements online featuring Naomi Osaka, which elicited backlash over “whitewashing” the multiracial professional tennis player who represents Japan. Although Nissin has since pulled the advertisements and officially apologized for portraying Osaka as lighter-skinned, underlying these issues are also those of gender, especially its intersections with race/ethnicity, nati…
A Different Kind of Transgender Celebrity
Scholars have criticized how tarento (television personalities) who might be considered “transgender” have for decades provided comic relief on Japanese mainstream television, but few have considered the recent emergence of a different kind of trans celebrity who rejects the entertainment narrative to embrace the “wrong body” discourse (having mismatched corporeality). This article explores this phenomenon through the example of Nishihara Satsuki…
From dansō to genderless
This article explores the mediation of androgynous bodies and styles in contemporary Japan by mapping the relationship between dansō (female-to-male crossdressing) and genderless (jendāresu). Dansō refers to gender-crossing practices usually by individuals who are assigned female at birth, whereas genderless is a mode of fashion emerging in 2010 which theoretically denotes styles that do not distinguish between genders. Drawing on media coverage …
“Queer” Media in Inter-Asia
This chapter explores how thinking gender and sexuality transnationally can help us make sense of “queer” media, practices and performances proliferating across East Asia and Southeast Asia through two prominent examples – South Korean popular music (K-pop) and “boys love” (BL) media. Thinking gender and sexuality transnationally is useful for making sense of the overlapping processes of queer K-pop and BL media fandom, consumption and (re)produc…
Hyperathletic Artistry
The Chinese American skater Nathan Chen and the Japanese skater Yuzuru Hanyu have demonstrated what we call a ‘hyperathletic-artistic turn’: recognizing an almost superhuman, quad-jumping ability along with an equally developed artistic side. This article closely analyses their 2018 Olympic season performances exploring costuming, music, dance choreography, and jumping ability. While Chen's balletic and dancerly choreography – a ‘return of the da…
Looking Japanese
In 2015 and 2016, Ariana Miyamoto and Priyanka Yoshikawa became the first and second “hāfu” (half; multiracial) contestants to be crowned Miss Universe Japan and Miss World Japan respectively. Following their win, they were alternately ignored in mainstream media, lambasted online for not being “jun-nihonjin” (pure Japanese), and celebrated for heralding a multiracial and multiethnic Japan. I explore these discourses by examining how the two beau…
Asian sporting masculinities in figure skating
In sport and sport media, figure skating is often perceived as ‘feminine’ and male skaters frequently occupy an ambiguous position, especially for Asian (American) athletes in a historically White-dominated sport. Based on discourse analysis, this article compares how English- and Japanese-language news narratives represent elite male figure skaters Nathan Chen and Yuzuru Hanyu, who are close rivals and skate for the United States and Japan respe…
Following Naomi Osaka and Rui Hachimura on Social Media
This article explores the role of social media in athlete activism and sport commodification through the case studies of two elite multiracial athletes who represent Japan, professional tennis player Naomi Osaka and professional basketball player Rui Hachimura. Osaka's mother is Japanese and her father is Haitian-American, whereas Hachimura's mother is Japanese and his father is Beninese. Employing critical discourse analysis of Twitter and Insta…
Queer Asias
In this introduction, we highlight the developments and transformations that have been put forward and situate our examination of Queer Asias within that context. We then turn to the contributions in this special issue, which collectively examine the intricate and imbricated flows of capital, power, intimacy, citizenship, sexual politics, and categories of gender and sexual (self-)identification in and across Japan, Taiwan, Indonesia, Hong Kong, …
Categories that bind
This article investigates “ toransujendā” (transgender), “ josō” (male-to-female crossdressing), and “ otoko no ko” (boy/male daughter) as categories that bind through ethnographic research in Tokyo’s contemporary josō gyōkai (scene and business circles). Building on queer and transgender scholarship, I ask what these categories mean, what they do, and how they figure in trans people’s everyday lives and the institutionalization of seidōitsuseish…
Banning sissy idols to clean up the entertainment industry’
On 2 September 2021, Mainland China’s media regulator SARFT introduced guidelines to ‘clean up’ the entertainment sector, banning the ‘sissy idols’ trend and danmei 耽美 culture (male–male romance by and for women and sexual minorities). A few days later, Sina Weibo, a major Chinese social platform, banned K-pop fan accounts, including BTS, previously criticized for Korean War comments. These crackdowns by Chinese authorities reveal concerns about …
Detrimental to Our Digital Well-Being
Although increasingly prevalent in Singapore, campus sexual assault and harassment and technology-facilitated sexual violence (TFSV) remain underresearched. Conducted by scholars across social work, gender studies, policy studies, communication, and computer science, this interdisciplinary study explores the impact of technologies such as social media and online platforms on the digital well-being of university students in Singapore who experienc…
I’m an androgynous tomboy with tattoos’
Alongside the transnational success of Korean popular music (K-pop), various idols have embraced androgynous looks. One case study I explore is Amber, a Taiwanese American singer-songwriter and former member of girl group f(x) who identifies as an ‘androgynous tomboy with tattoos’. In what ways does Amber challenge gender and sexuality norms in South Korea? Taking androgyny as an analytic, how might we rethink such norms and the flourishing of mo…
When everything goes online, it's never really gone
Increasingly pervasive in recent years is a range of behaviours using digital technologies to harm individuals–especially women–known as ‘technology-facilitated sexual violence (TFSV)’. Some notable examples of TFSV include digital sexual harassment and nonconsensual sharing of intimate content–also called ‘image-based sexual abuse (IBSA)’. This article investigates university students’ experiences of TFSV in Singapore, addressing the questions: …
Gender Studies (16 works) · Sociology (16 works) · Art (12 works) · Political science (12 works) · Asian Culture and Media Studies (11 works) · Aesthetics (10 works) · Gender Studies (10 works) · Japanese History and Culture (10 works) · Media studies (8 works) · Politics (8 works)