Katrien Jacobs

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Adjunct Associate Professor at Chinese University of Hong Kong

This paper examines how Pepe the Frog, a cartoon character originally created by American cartoonist Matt Furie, and currently a global digital image-meme of online activism, was adopted and adapted in Hong Kong during the 2019 Anti-Extradition Bill and Law Movement (??????????; faan deoi tou faan tiu lai sau ding wan dung) (hereafter: anti-ELAB Mo...

DiGeSt 9(1) General Issue - Ageivism Roundtable

This article introduces the special issue on East Asian Pornographies and Online Porn Cultures. It considers the logistical and theoretical challenges faced by researchers within the region who wish to investigate Asian producers and consumers. It introduces trends and scholars working within the emerging field of Asian porn studies and explores wh...

Mainland Chinese pornographies on the internet and social media platforms have emerged amidst hardline strategies of government surveillance and censorship. This article examines a new tide of government-sponsored surveillance technologies regarding how they affect new sex and porn industries, which are systematically being closed down and leave th...

This article makes a case for sex-positive research and pedagogy that acknowledges and hence reflects on the researcher’s use of a “pornographic mirror,” a critical and consensual engagement with erotic and pornographic (self-)imagery that opens up bodily sensations and analysis in the public sphere. The article will do so by means of examples of r...

This essay focuses on women’s contributions to democracy activism as part of an ongoing fight for more tolerant community standards and censorship legislation. It looks at how Hong Kong Boys’ Love fans use Facebook to circulate gay-themed erotica and sexually explicit media despite a rigid ban on depictions of sex and nudity. Secondly, it discusses...

This article analyzes the views and activities of sex activists and entrepreneurs in Hong Kong and San Francisco who were interviewed about the topic of queer and feminist pornography and its relationship to social movements. Hong Kong in recent years has become an exemplary East Asian protest site where questions of feminism, LGBTQ rights and erot...

This essay discusses methods of pedagogy and educational philosophy stirred up by the Hong Kong Umbrella Movement/Occupy-Hong Kong Movement at the end of 2014. It situates these events as a way to envision a new type of public university. To this end, the essay proposes a model of ‘wandering scholarship,’ in which educators and activists walk throu...

The essay contributes to Cultural Studies as an evaluation of changing practices of media and social activism while highlighting theories of feminism and dialogic aesthetics. More specifically, it discusses women’s use of online self-photography as a protest medium and a platform for feminist activism within two distinctive protest movements, the U...

Chinese artists, activists, and netizens are pioneering a new order of pornographic representation that is in critical dialogue with global entertainment media. Jacobs examines the role of sex-positive feminists and queer communities to investigate pornography's "afterglow" (a state of crisis and decay within digital culture).

Within the context of a global turn toward feminine taste cultures, this study sets out to examine how Hong Kong women are sensing and rating hard-core and alternative pornographies. Since Hong Kong (like many other cultures) lacks a flourishing porn industry and a confident tradition of feminist and queer-produced erotica, how are Hong Kong women...

This second chapter looks at female ghost figures in Ming and Early Qing dynasty (1580–1700) literature and their treatment in modern Hong Kong cinema. The selected movies can be categorized as art-house or soft-core erotic films with narratives of a scholar’s enlightenment through contact with ghosts. While the sexual ghost encounter is presented...

In Chapter 1, I describe the feminine pornographic gaze as restless, craving different types of hard-core and soft-core sex scenes, as well as identifying with different sexual orientations. The “drifting eyeballs” of women announce a search for erotic stimulation and dissatisfaction with existing male-dominated aesthetics in pornography. This chap...

The era of neoliberal reform in China and postcolonial citizen movements in Hong Kong have allowed women to pursue erotic pleasures and sexually sophisticated lifestyles. At the same time, as will be shown in this chapter, there is increasing pressure from governments and relationship entrepreneurs to travel back in time to an ethos of conservative...

This chapter focuses on naked bodies and bodily writing as online activism in mainland China—how artists and activists stage nakedness as a sensual yet engaged medium to challenge conservative family planning and acts of sexual abuse. Leta Hong-Fincher in her study of “leftover women” tells of a new wave of state propaganda against sexual enjoyment...

Porn studies are currently dominated by European and American scholarly networks. This article looks at how the field might broaden its scope to include non-western media and cultural contexts. Using an example of porn research in Japan and China, it is argued that non-western pornographies are not just a set of global and regional cultures to be m...

Since its establishment in 1949, the People's Republic of China has upheld a nationwide ban on pornography, imposing harsh punishments on those caught purchasing, producing, or distributing materials deemed a violation of public morality. A provocative contribution to Chinese media studies by a well-known international media researcher, People’s Po...

This chapter investigates the work of the researcher as “sex artist” or vice versa, the “sex artist” as researcher, wondering if artistic types of research methodology ought to be taken seriously in the fields of media and sexuality studies. More specifically, the chapter hopes to work out this question in dialogue with a gay media artist from Hong...

This paper investigates web users, their sexual behaviours and self-representations as observed on a sex and dating site. The website concerned is a massive social network for sexual self-display and encourages members to find real-life partners for sex--whether this be casual sex affairs between singles, swinging couples or extra-marital affairs b...

This article gives an overview of my experience as a researcher using visual ethnography and sex studies to probe hidden strands of Chinese sex culture. More specifically, it shows how sexually explicit materials and sex studies became influential to undergraduate students at City University of Hong Kong on my course, ‘Gender Discourse’, in 2008 as...

Academic publishers are wary of illustrations for books or articles on sexual representation; they typically discourage such illustrations, and authors have adopted their deeply ingrained worries. And, indeed, the warning signals are spelled out clearly, as one publisher writes in its stylistic guidelines for authors on a forthcoming book about cul...

This article forwards a new way of thinking about pornography, based on the changing work practices of web-based and film/video amateur porn producers and their spectators. Their efforts are not to be confused with individuals who pose for porn sites and simulate sex as glossy “amateurs” – bored housewives, horny freshmen, nasty teen virgins, batte...

This article investigates pornographic web-based media at a time when commercial pornography has flooded the Internet and pockets of sex activism are budding alongside the porn boom. Pornography moving freely across borders is foremost a capitalist vision, but the web’s sexual potency is equally defined by web users and artists who visit and mainta...

In her essay, Katrien Jacobs ties in with the gender body in order to further develop it in a context which feminism itself finds hard to come to terms with: pornography. This field has always been treated by feminism as the pre-eminent terrain of phallocratic oppression. But where does that leave lesbian porno? Or sadism and masochism, where sexua...

Aqueous dispersions of different smectite-type clay minerals were probed by ion-exchange of methylene blue (Mb). The evolution of the absorption spectra with time demonstrates the importance of the strength of the Mb−clay surface interaction, which is affected by the colloidal nature of the suspension and typical clay characteristics. A strong Mb−s...

Aqueoussuspensions of different Na-smectite type clay minerals were exchanged with methylene blue (Mb) and analyzed by visible spectroscopy. The spectra show bands of two types of monomers, protonated Mb, Mb-dimers, and higher aggregates. Their relative importance and the bandwidth was found to depend on parameters such as the particle morphology,...

Pillaring of smectites with Al consists of three processes: (i) ion exchange of the Al13 7+ Keggin ion; (ii) hydrolysis of the Keggin ion upon contact with the clay surface; (iii) precipitation of the Keggin ion on the clay particles. Conditions can be chosen to limit the pillaring to the first two processes. Smectites with Al in the tetrahedral la...

Wide Angle - Volume 19, Number 3, July 1997

Summary form only given. New approaches to the engineering of nonlinear materials are important. We have investigated second-order nonlinear properties of dye molecules adsorbed on clay particles. Clays are naturally occurring aluminosilicates with sheets consisting of two layers of (Al,Si)O4 tetrahedra sandwiching a layer of Mg,Li(O,OH)6 or Al,Mg(...

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Maryland at College Park, 1996. Thesis research directed by Dept. of Comparative Literature. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 211-219).