During my master's study at the University of Hong Kong, I conducted a 29-month ethnography in a sex party club. The research, grounded in feminist and queer theories, examined how straight-identified individuals navigate heteronormativity and compulsory monogamy by creating spaces for erotic freedom within defined boundaries.
This work resulted in two sole-authored, award-winning articles published in Gender & Society and Sexualities, contributing to gendering transnational queer sociology and rethinking pleasure and sexual justice.
Queer and Feminist Analysis of Heterosexuality in Sex Partying
Pamela P. Tsui (2024)
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Sally Hacker Graduate Student Paper Award from the Section on Sex and Gender, American Sociological Association, 2024
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Honorable Mention, Best Graduate Student Paper Award from the Section on Sexualities, American Sociological Association, 2024
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Honorable Mention, Best Paper Award from Hong Kong Sociological Association, 2024
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Daniel G. Hill Prize for Best Graduate Paper in Sociology from the University of Toronto, 2024
Synthesizing queer and feminist perspectives, this article examines how heterosexual men and women cope with the regime of normalcy by compartmentalizing their normative aspirations in daily lives and nonnormative desires in sex parties.
Erotic Capabilities:
A Feminist Analysis of Sexual Justice and Pleasure in Heterosexual Sex Partying
Pamela P. Tsui (2024)
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Best Graduate Student Paper Award from the Section on Sexualities, American Sociological Association, 2023
I propose the erotic capabilities approach to assess and promote entitlement to erotic choices and freedom in everyday practices. As this study formulates sexuality as a vehicle of empowerment that can and should be cultivated and actualized, it illuminates the possibility to imagine and create agentic and pleasurable opportunities for people in different social locations under the patriarchy we still live in.
