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WHAT WAS IT LIKE CONFRONTING YOUR PARENTS ABOUT WHAT YOU DO?
It was a very sticky situation. Having to explain all that in Mandarin, when my Mandarin was not very fluent. There are a lot of words in English that do not have a Chinese equivalent.
LIKE WHAT?
Like "feminism," for example. Try explaining feminism to a Chinese person from that generation. We don't have a term for it.
WHEN YOU TOLD YOUR PARENTS ABOUT IT DID YOU TALK ABOUT FEMINISM?
Yeah, I did. And my mom kind of understood it in those terms, because, you know, in my mom's generation, women are not supposed to go to school and are supposed to get into arranged marriages. My mom really resisted that whole thing. She did not want to get into an arranged marriage with this rich guy, so when the matchmaker came to the house she took a broom and chased him out. I've got an even better story about my grandmother; she's a tough cookie. She was really young during the time when women were supposed to bind their feet. And she belonged to this filthy rich Teocheouu family and was the only female in the family and had all these brothers who believed that if women didn't bind their feet they wouldn't marry into good families. Well, she put up a really big fight, like really major, like grand mal seizure. It's becoming like family legend now, you know, Grandma's Big Fight. So, she was the first female of her generation from that social status in Singapore not to get her feet bound. From what they told me she kind of started the ball rolling and then other families, their daughters would go, "Well you know, so-and-so from the Lee family did not get her feet bound, so we're not going to get our feet bound either."
SO YOU COME FROM A LONG LINE OF STRONG WOMEN.
Uh-huh. It was something I was brought up with.
DO YOU FEEL LIKE YOU'RE CONTINUING THAT LINE?
Well I would certainly hope that I am. I would like to.
DOES YOUR MOTHER THINK YOU ARE?
After talking for a long time she's beginning to see that what I'm doing is trying to forge a different path than the paths that are commonly taken. And although she may not agree with the exact path that I'm on, she respects the fact that I've decided to do something different. She said so suddenly one day, out of the blue. We were cooking, preparing the chicken and everything, and she just suddenly turned to me and said, "Grace, you know, I am beginning to see the fact that you're trying to do something on your own and I think that's very good." Suddenly out of the blue while I'm, like, cutting up the chicken.
WHAT DID YOU DO?
I didn't know what to say. I was speechless. I just told her, "Yeah Mom, that's cool. Just make sure the soup doesn't boil over," you know? [Laughs] When something really dramatic happens the knee jerk Chinese reaction is to focus on something really banal. But we understand it.
WHAT DID YOU DO WHEN YOU WENT HOME FROM THE GANGBANG?
Of course I took a shower, sat around for a while, had a few cigarettes, a glass of wine and it was back to the computer.
WHAT WERE YOU WORKING ON?
Writing a paper on bisexuality. I had to do a review of . . . what book? I think it's called The Politics of Bisexuality.
COULD YOU CONCENTRATE?
It wasn't my best effort at concentration, but it wasn't as if I was completely scatty. I was writing better than if I was on two lines of speed at four in the morning.
HAVE YOU EVER REGRETTED THE GANGBANG?
No, I haven't. Well, the only thing I regret is that I end up getting asked about it all the time, as if that's the one defining event of my life. It seems to be terribly unfair. I've done a lot of things and they're hopefully equally interesting, but that's the only thing I ever get asked about.
DID YOU DO THIS THING FOR A CAUSE OR IN THE NAME OF SEXUAL LIBERATION?
Well, it started out as this idea of exploration, of exploring my sexuality and what women are supposed to be like sexually. So I did the gangbang partly in response to the stereotype that women are compassionate and loving and they only like vanilla sex. It just seemed so condescending — that women couldn't go for the rough and tumble, that women are like these really precious wilting violets or vessels of purity. That stereotype really annoyed me when I was growing up and it continues to annoy me now, so in that sense it is sort of a feminist statement insofar as it is targeting stereotypes of women. Whether or not the stereotype is promulgated by men or by certain schools of feminism . . .
DO YOU THINK IT'S PROMULGATED BY CERTAIN SCHOOLS OF FEMINISM?
Yeah, well, ecofeminists, for example, who have that whole thing that women are these earth goddesses and into love and community as opposed to hate and aggression. It seems to be such a constricted idea of women. Also, I was sick and tired of all these stereotypes that are being taught in feminism classes. The books I would read really annoyed me. I'm thinking about, say, Catherine MacKinnon. On one hand I can understand the impetus of her argument — it's about the welfare of women — and it's cool to be concerned about that and I'm all for it, but at some point it made me think of a certain school of political theory. Rousseauian paternalism, you know, and that makes me very uncomfortable because it's moving women out of a set of rules into a new set of rules and restrictions that is based on all these generalizations that may or may not be truthful. Another thing that annoys me is that a lot of these feminist attacks on pornography, they usually pick up the worst case scenario when pornography itself is actually very diverse. It covers a lot of ground but they always pick on certain subgenres within the genre itself and use them to generalize about the entire form.
YOU HAVEN'T BEEN PARTICULARLY IMPRESSED BY THE WRITING THAT'S BEEN DONE ON PORN, I TAKE IT.
It's so waffly and generalized. Most people just talk about Porn, full stop. But porn changes, it's just like art history, and I don't think there's really been a good book on porn history, you know, like on the changing aesthetics and the changing narrative structures within it. There is this totally condescending attitude where art deserves to be studied extensively and every single change is catalogued and we have pictures to prove it. There's names for everything — cubism, symbolism — but with porn, you know, people think, "Oh it's just porn. It's kitsch so we can talk about it in general terms and nobody's going to know shit."
YOUR CONTENTION IS THAT GANGBANGS OFFER A NEW IDEA OF FEMALE SEXUALITY?
Once you put something out there people can interpret it any which way they like. Nothing contains a specific meaning; nothing is essentially degrading for anybody. It depends on how you want to read it, and how you read something depends on your values and your environment. Chances are people read it in accordance with what they call the dominant discourse. Corny term, but . . . My work starts when the gangbang ends — offering various ways of looking at the gangbang that counter the way it is commonly taken.
WHICH IS WHAT?
Which is that it's all these men victimizing a woman.
YOU HAVE VERY RATIONAL, DIDACTIC REASONS WHY YOU DID THE GANGBANG. CAN YOU ARTICULATE A MORE SUBCONSCIOUS, PERSONAL REASON GIVEN THE PERSPECTIVE YOU HAVE NOW?
I guess it's the idea of being totally out of control and wanting to take control, especially of my body. I don't know if that's too rational, but certainly there are a lot of emotional things going on there.
CAN YOU ARTICULATE THEM?
[Long pause] Yeah, I guess. Another emotional reason just occurred to me that might segue into that answer. All my life I've wanted to get out of Singapore and to be not a Singaporean. It's the idea of how far I can run away from home. Not home as in my parents, but home as in Singapore and all it stands for and all the things about Singapore that upset me. And that segues into control, the idea of taking control, because running away from home is very much a form, no matter how misguided, of taking back control of the things that maybe felt out of control in the past.
WERE YOU MOTIVATED MORE BY THE DESIRE TO BE FAMOUS OR THE DESIRE TO CHANGE PERCEPTIONS OF FEMALE SEXUALITY?
It's easier to change people's perceptions if you're famous. A lot of performance art, it takes place in these stupid little galleries in the middle of nowhere and the people who are there are just all these art people. You know, it makes no impact whatsoever because they're preaching to the converted. We are the media generation, and it may be going too far to say if the press isn't there then it doesn't happen, but I think that to communicate to a lot of people you've got to work with the media instead of thinking of the media as an enemy.
AS A FEMINIST, DOES IT BOTHER YOU THAT YOU ARE SEEN FIRST AND FOREMOST AS A PORN STAR?
It's interesting because it serves as a sort of foil. I think I can make it work. [Laughs] But I'm not sure yet. Because people usually think of porn stars as the exact opposite of feminists. I would say that I would like to be known as a porn star feminist. It's like, either you're a porn star or you're a feminist, but you can't be both. So, being a little punk I'd like to be both. [Laughs]
IS THERE ANY EMOTIONAL STRAIN IN YOUR WORK?
The biggest emotional strain I feel, being constantly on the road, is a feeling of homesickness. I'm always among strangers. I'm homesick, and I get that when I'm promoting the documentary, too. But not from stripping. I think it's much easier to strip than it is to do Q&A's, where my entire life is being opened and it's almost as if I'm stripping away my emotions for the audience and having people say antagonistic things to me. When you're stripping you're not really taking off your clothes. You're putting on a costume that's called T&A. You're never naked. People don't go there to see a naked girl; they go there to see tits and ass and that's a costume.
SO, YOUR WORK POSES NO THREAT TO YOUR SELF-ESTEEM. AS YOU KNOW, THAT'S THE COMMON ASSUMPTION.
My self esteem . . . it comes and goes. There are days when I'm not feeling too good and there are days when I'm feeling very confident, but I'm very glad to say that I'm feeling more and more confident about myself as years go by. Having gone through this much pain, say pain to the degree of seven out of ten, when five out of ten hits, it's not so bad. I deal with it on a day to day basis and sometimes I get affected when I read bad reviews, where they say everything I say is bullshit and I'm completely crazy and have no self-esteem. Of course I feel bad for a couple of hours [Laughs] and I think that maybe I've got no self-esteem after all and I call up my friend Alan and say, Alan, do you think I've got no self-esteem?" And he usually will say, "Whoever wrote that can just go fuck off and die." And then I feel, like, much happier. And then I have self-esteem again. [Laughs]
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©1999 Amy Goodman and Nerve.com
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