Multiple Virginity and Other Contested Realities in Taipei's Foreign Club Culture

Abstract

In this article I explore the constructed realms of thought in the club Laowai and other western-style nightclubs in Taipei, Taiwan. These contested realities revolve around notions of foreign and local, masculine and feminine. In examining Taiwanese women's portrayal of selves as chaste in the setting of a pick-up bar we can explore the complicated web of contradictory messages in which purity is constructed and the foreign is simultaneously exalted and despised. In exploring these issues I address Taiwanese women's sexuality in relation to the representational appeal of, and ambivalence towards, western men. This, in turn, ties in with contested fantasies within one social space. The resulting analysis suggests that to reduce club cultures to the singular, even in one club, is a conceptual error, for there are several overlapping realities in any given locale.

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