In the spring of 2010, Wang, a 53 year-old associate professor at a university in Nanjing city, Jiangsu Province, was charged with the crime of “organizing licentious activities”(juzong yinluan).1 Many Chinese news media outlets focused on this lawsuit and initiated discussion about the morally deleterious effects of his behavior. According to the media, Wang had actively organized sexually licentious parties for as many as 27 male and female adult participants, recruited through internet forums and social media. These individuals met 35 times in various private locations in Nanjing during 2007 and 2008. In May 2009, Wang decided to end these gatherings. However, in the summer of 2009, after receiving a number of incriminating reports, the police arrested Wang and 22 other people who were alleged to have participated in these sexual activities. The media mocked Wang and the other accused for failing to withstand the temptations of “advanced thinking”: corrupt Western ideas of pursuing sexual pleasure.
Professor Wang came under the spotlight for two reasons: first, he was no longer young and hence was expected to subscribe to a more “traditional” morality; second, he was an educator, and therefore conventionally entrusted with the responsibility of “summoning morality and introducing good knowledge” (chuandao shouye) in accordance with the Confucian tradition. Wang’s failure to live up to these responsibilities vis-à-vis the maintenance of public order cast his behavior in a shocking light.
The statute concerning “crimes of hooliganism” (liumang zui), an umbrella term that denotes a wide array of sexual behaviours out of wedlock, was removed from the Penal Code in 1997 (Luo 1998), but “juzong yinluan” (organizing licentious activities or participating in collective sexual behavior) remains in the Penal Code of the People’s Republic of China. This second statute covers behavior construed to be in “open defiance of the state laws and disciplines and social morality and subsequently gathering men and women to collectively have licentious activities”.2The penalty for this offence ranges from one to five years in jail. “Immoral sexual behavior” (“yinluan”, or licentious behaviors) can apply to any act that violates heteronormative monogamous sexuality, allowing the government to police sexual activities which could potentially undermine the dominant social mores. Wang’s case is by no means the only one involving a charge of “collective sexual activities” that has found its way into post-socialist Chinese courts. Wang’s case helps to illustrate the current relationship between the dominant articulation of societal norms, the emergent pursuit of sexual pleasure, and the re-appearance of Confucian tradition. Together, these elements reveal the complexities of a changing sexual culture in contemporary China.
What is the sexual culture in contemporary China? In what way does it transform? And why has sexuality been in change over the past three decades? The scholarly debates concerning sexual culture in the PRC focus on a binary argument over whether the post-socialist state’s approach to sexuality is oppressive or indicative of a policy of “open-door sexuality” (Jeffreys 2006). Studies focusing on sexual discourse and the state’s policing sexual behaviors lead to the oppressive statement (Evans 1997; Ruan and Bullough 1989; Ruan 1991; Sigley 2006), while recent research on the subject of sexuality focusing on commercial sex, a growing gay and lesbian scene, extramarital affairs, pre-marital sex and pornographic literature and recent sexual discourse in the form of call-in radio, telephone hotlines and internet chat rooms all seem to demonstrates the liberation of sexuality during the era of “open-market” economy (Braverman 2002; Erwin 2000; Hershatter 1996). Neither of these arguments provides an adequate portrait of the sexual landscape in today’s China. Hence, this study is aimed to contribute to the existing literature by incorporating elements from individuals’ lived experiences, through which past beliefs, dominant discourse imperatives and emerging sexual practices converge to sketch a fuller picture of sexuality in China today.
“Reinventing governance” is a catch-phrase which covers liberalizing Chinese policies that have been introduced to accommodate the country’s shift towards market-centric social relations (Jeffreys 2009; Larner 2000; Newman 2005). This strategy has caused the post-socialist state to retreat from its tightly controlling approach to the private sphere (Alford 2004; Farrer 2002), and thus has opened up a space for new sexual cultures to emerge. Indeed, penalizing “abnormal” sexual behaviors and the punishment of sex out of wedlock have been largely withdrawn. Nevertheless, as Wang’s case demonstrates, some sexual behaviors are still punished by the penal code; moreover, other types of behaviors that are not written into the penal code, such as “viewing pornography” (guankan yinhui luxiang) in a private location,3 can still be punished during politicized anti-vice campaigns (e.g., police “wiping out the yellow” raids, saohuang). At the institutional level, strategies for intervening in private life tend to focus on policing youth sexuality, through an officially-approved adolescent sex education that views youth engagement in sex as forbidden. For example, in October 2002, two 19-year-old college students at Chongqing University of Post and Telecommunications were expelled for engaging in premarital sex, after their relationship came to the attention of educational authorities, due to the female student’s pregnancy and subsequent abortion (Pan 2003). These penalties do not apply to most individuals in Chinese society today, but their occasional enforcement looms large as a symbolic gesture of the state domination in sexuality.
In a Foucauldian sense, the state’s dominion over sexuality remains very much present within the realms of ideology and discourse, indicating that the state never has and never will withdraw its power to control sexuality. Therefore, while sexual practices have become quite diverse in reality, traditional ideological language still prevails in the media, serving as a tool for social control. Nevertheless, there can be no doubt that private life has been gradually diverse in tandem with China’s open market policies. Other types of ideologies and cultures have come to prominence through global interchange over the past three decades, and these ideologies and cultures have pushed sexual culture toward emerging practices in opposition to the party-state’s ideology. However, these emergent forms of sexual culture are not entirely cut off from the dominant forms. The roles of sexual mores derived from the Chinese tradition, especially gendered sexual mores imposed on women, cannot be underestimated in today’s sexual culture. These longstanding attitudes and gendered sexual mores still exercise a great deal of sway over China’s new “sexual freedom”.
My argument aims to build upon and move beyond the binary debates surrounding sexual culture in the PRC by providing a different interpretation of contradictory phenomena found within sexual cultures in today’s China. Drawing upon Raymond Williams’ concepts of the dominant, residual, and emergent elements in cultural evolution (1958a, 1977), I argue that the process of changing sexuality contains multiple and overlapping forms of sexual culture, in which the party-state’s ideology, emergent sexual cultures and traditional Chinese beliefs intertwine and struggle. Without examining these competing forms, no understanding of sexuality within the PRC and its evolving processes can ever be anything but fragmentary and partial. Moreover, in addition to age-based differences in attitudes towards sexuality and sexual practices within studies of youth culture, I intend to incorporate class-based variables into my account by arguing that the middle class as the subject of modernity is absorbing more globalized attitudes through non-official media and thus shows more tolerance toward emerging sexual practices than their working class counterparts.
With reference to Williams’ notion of culture, I first identify the dominant, the emergent, and the residual elements of the sexual culture in contemporary China. Subsequently, I introduce my research method. Afterwards, I move on to examine the ways in which individuals discuss sexuality. My examination focuses on their interpretations of the term “keeping a second wife” (keeping a mistress), extramarital affairs practiced by some of the middle-class women I interviewed, different attitudes toward “sexual freedom” between mother and daughter cohorts, and gendered sexual freedom.
Williams (1958a, 1977) speaks of cultures in the plural, emphasizing power relations between the specific and variable cultures embraced by different social groups. He particularly conceptualizes culture(s) as processes of social change (1958b), arguing that a culture consists of a set of relations between dominant, residual, and emergent elements (1977). Williams’ conceptualization of culture contains an epochal analysis of history from a Marxist perspective, characterizing an epoch as a dominant formation of the times. For Williams, a culture has a dynamic and shifting quality which courses through the historical moments. However, the dominant formation contains different moments that consist of different variations and stages; hence, each epoch incorporates dynamic, contradictory relationships engaged in a complex interplay between dominant, residual and emergent elements. The dominant element in the evolution of culture is an “‘epochal analysis, a cultural process is seized as a cultural system, with determinate dominant features. This emphasis on dominant and definitive lineaments and features is important and often, in practice, quite effective” (1977:121). The residual aspect of cultural change “has been formed in the past, but it is still active in the cultural process, not only and often not at all an element of the past but as an effective element of the present. Thus certain experiences, meanings, and values which cannot be expressed or substantially verified in terms of the dominant culture are nevertheless lived and practiced on the basis of the residue—cultural as well as social—of some previous social and cultural institution or formation.” (1977: 121). In referring to the emergent element, Williams argues that new meanings and values, new practices, new relationships and kinds of relationships are continually being created.
This tripartite understanding of cultural change offers valuable insight into the role that subversive and oppositional cultures play within dominant culture, showing how these elements become intertwined during the process of social change. These concepts can be applied to the current state of the changing sexual culture in China. The next step, then, is to identify and parse out the residual, dominant, and emergent elements within the process of changing sexuality of China. What is won and lost during this re-staging of the sexual landscape? How are these changes being perceived? How do these dominant, residual and emergent aspects play off against each other? These questions may deepen our understanding of sexuality and social change in China. Within the current scholarship, both discourse analysis approaches to sexuality and ethnographic studies of youth culture have failed to treat these questions in depth. Different approaches lead to different portraits of the sexual culture. For example, an analysis of the official discourse might lead the researcher to conclude that the dominant culture of sexuality is still monopolized by the party-state’s discourse. However, the dominant culture no longer has a monopoly upon Chinese thought and social relations—in fact, it could very well lose its dominant position. How does the dominant culture of sexuality interact with other types of cultural forms in contemporary China? As Williams (1958b) argues, new systems of production create new culture(s), and emergent social groups develop new cultures and ideologies. Hence, Williams’ approach to culture deemphasizes the discursive practices of heteronormative and monogamous sexuality during a period of globalization and individualization, in which the pursuit of personal desires has prevailed among some social groups, especially the younger generations examined by youth culture studies (Farrer 2002; Farrer and Sun 2003, 2004).
The dominant culture of sexuality in China is defined by state discourse from both the Maoist period and the post-Mao periods, each of which has contributed aspects of the epochal abstraction. However, sexuality in China is not governed by a homogenous culture defined solely by state discourse and ideology, particularly during a time of transition towards a society that is more open to global cultural exchange. Williams’ distinction between dominant, residual and emergent elements provides the analytical tools for a survey of sexuality in contemporary China that incorporates both the dominant official discourse and the celebratory claims of “sexual freedom” that draw upon the emergent phenomena of sexual culture. This heterogeneous approach to culture highlights the multiple tendencies and forms of changing sexuality in China today, wherein sexuality becomes a dynamic site of regulation, negotiation and contestation.
Given that the official articulation of marriage and sexuality that has long existed remains powerful in Chinese media, and linked to the continuity of sexual mores within the state’s cultural heritage and cultural typology, it is no surprise that the dominant cultural approach to sexuality still exerts a strong pull upon the country’s citizens. The party-state remains the dominant power in the social and political spheres, and its ideological presentation of sexuality and marriage cannot by any means be ignored. Sexuality was strictly monitored by legal and administrative regulations until the state’s recent overall withdrawal from intervening in personal matters such as sex out of wedlock (Ruan and Bullough 1989; Sigley 2006). And yet, these dominant forms do not erase the many heterogeneous sexual practices operative within Chinese society. Past beliefs offer a set of values derived from traditional Chinese culture.
This article does not aim to explore the complex history of these values; rather, for current purposes, I will focus on some elements of this value system that retain a hold upon quotidian life and thought in contemporary China, such as the cult of female virginity and the larger constellation of gendered sexual mores, which to some extent have been integrated into the dominant discourse. These residual forms derive from a Confucian tradition that remains not only “actively effective”, but has also been absorbed into the party-state’s ideology. Moreover, the sexual culture has also been the site of emergent forms embodying new beliefs and practices in opposition to the residual and the dominant. Williams defines the emergent as “new meanings and values, new practices, new relationships and kinds of relationship are continually being created” (1977: 123). This article identifies the emergent forms of sexual culture that many studies have pointed out in recent narratives of “sexual freedom” and accounts of the sexual practices prevalent within youth culture (Farrer 2002; Pan 2006), which are located in the social settings of urban regions and other sites of westernization/globalization. The emergent forms include youth culture, subcultural practices such as homosexuality and sex out of wedlock (premarital sex, extramarital affairs, cohabitation without marriage registration), all of which are practiced by certain social groups.
The dominant is engaged in a continuous struggle to sustain and extend its dominance through a variety of strategies—the official media, education, legal forms and administrative and party sanctions. The residual element can be found in the Chinese tradition, but somehow it also appears within the dominant discourse. The emergent element is practiced by certain social groups and justified through their preferable discourse and other types of media resources. This struggle for dominance shows that the positions of the three elements and their cultural meanings are not fixed and remain in constant flux. The current sexual culture has been recuperated in a new articulation of officially sanctioned sexuality: a mixture of traditional mores and Maoist sexuality. A re-articulation of marriage and sexuality in post-Maoist times, along with the unexpected emergence of new cultures of “sexual freedom” together help to flesh out the story of changing sexuality in contemporary China. Instead of being treated merely as disconnected variables, these elements must be understood to have multiple and overlapping tendencies that affect the landscape of changing sexuality in China. This requires careful attention to the terms of their co-existence, with an emphasis upon the present as a cultural moment containing multiple overlapping temporalities. The co-existence of cultural forms suggests that China’s changing sexuality should be treated as an ongoing, rather than a completed, process.
The data for this article are drawn from in-depth interviews with 40 women, conducted in Chongqing during the summer of 2011. These interviewees include 14 middle class wives, 16 working class women, and 10 female college students. Because I was interested in class, I recruited both middle class and working class women through the snowballing method, via acquaintances, relatives and personal networks. Some of the participants are acquaintances of my own family members, my friends’ students, and some of them were introduced by the participants after the first round of interviews. Some of the interviews were conducted individually, while due to circumstances some of them were conducted in focus groups, which included one middle class group, two female college student groups and two working class groups. My inclusion of college students was to examine the age difference. One focus group interview happened to include six mothers whose daughters were coming of age. Some informants who were individually interviewed included both middle class women and working class women who also happened to have daughters coming of age.
When asked questions regarding sexual mores, sex out of wedlock (questions covering subjects such as female virginity, premarital sex, cohabitation without marriage registration, extramarital affairs and attitudes toward homosexuality), the informants’ responses revealed diverse attitudes. Some of them complied with the dominant discourse, while others articulated their advocacy of or tolerance toward sex out of wedlock. As will be shown, these views of sexuality showed a high correlation with the informants’ subject positions in terms of generational difference and class distinctions. Moreover, some parts of their understandings accorded with the dominant (or the residual) discourse, while other parts incorporated elements of the emergent culture. The following sections examine women’s perceptions of sexuality focusing on their interpretations of the terminology associated with the practice of “keeping a second wife”, the practice of engaging in extramarital affairs, generational differences towards notions of sexual freedom and views of female virginity. The disparate range of approaches to these themes illustrates that all three elements of sexual cultural discourse continue to affect women’s lives in varying degrees.
Women’s interpretations of the meanings of the language formulation, “keeping a second wife”, tell us a great deal about the degree of their tolerance towards extramarital affairs. Roland Barthes’s work (1977, 1983, 1990) focuses on cultural semiotics, advocating an approach that explores meanings and ways of making meaning through an analysis of linguistic signs, in which deep meanings are often hidden behind the surface meanings communicated by mass media. Moreover, Barthes discovers that the hidden meaning is historical and culturally constructed within the framework of dominant ideology. Barthes claims that linguistic signs (or pictures) are never value-natural, but are always intended to serve ideological purposes by convincing audiences to accept the dominant discourse. The term “keeping a second wife” has been widely circulated through news media narratives and popular culture. Because the party-state propaganda depends heavily upon terminological and definitional stratagems (Schoenhals 1992), the signifier of “keeping a second wife” points to a myth (in Barthes’ terminology), confirming that the term is intended to convey ideological meanings. The denotation of the term is the product of the surface meaning, which derives from an old institution. However, the term’s deeper meaning or ideological function serves to tar extramarital relationships with the brush of a stigmatized institution and threaten monogamous sexuality and established sexual mores.
Voloshinov (1973) argues that words have ideological agency. Individuals do not use words passively, but actively employ them to transmit meanings of their own, as well as to engage in ideological interaction. Ideological phenomena penetrate deeply into everyday life in the words (or gestures and sounds) which describe the material world. The dialogic nature of utterance always involves an open relation between the speaker and listener. Hence, the listener is conceptualized as a responsive, autonomous agent whose actions flow through a process of dialogic interaction, and in consequence, individuals are able to manipulate or exercise control over their utterances. Volosinov’s perspective provides the grounds for an examination of various terminological interpretations put forth by the informants. The term keeping a second wife is a dynamic social sign, which carries different meanings for different social groups (e.g., especially as defined by class and age). The meaning of the term is not subject to passive understanding, but depends upon the active participation of the informants. The meaning of keeping a second wife takes shape within an arena of struggle between the dominant discourse and individuals, resulting in a range of accented meanings that can be interpreted in multiple ways.
The return of the term keeping a second wife (concubinage) in media from China’s ideological back-inventory indicates a re-articulation of the established ideology of marriage and sexuality that defines heteronormative marital relations as the only legitimate place for sex (Chen 2014). The encoding process tends to refer to extramarital relationships as the condemned “feudal vice” (concubinage), and moreover stigmatizes women in this kind of relationship as “concubines”. Informants’ impulse to comply with or contest the monogamous idea of sexuality comes to the forefront when they are asked to interpret the meaning of these terms. It is evident that informants interpret the term heterogeneously. If the evidence derived from a case study of 40 female interviewees provides any indication, factors of age and class do play roles in women’s interpretations of these ideologically loaded terms. For example, younger women and middle-class women are likely to disconnect the terminology from concubinage. Nevertheless, these factors are not the sole determinative indicators of women’s perceptions. There is unquestionably some degree of generational difference and class distinction, but women from the same demographic categories often reacted differently. Investigating the factors which determine the informants’ interpretative tendencies may require quantitative research on a larger scale.
These terms are understood heterogeneously. Two main types of interpretations often appear in the informants’ discussions. Neither type of response was the exclusive property of a particular social group (as defined by factors such as class and age), and women within the same demographic groups often expressed mixed meanings in different contexts.For ordinary Chinese, keeping a second wife is not acceptable. If two people want to be with each other, (stops to think), for example our parents’ generation always wants to stay together no matter whether they have feelings for each other. Therefore, people would feel hatred toward “the second wives” and the ones who keep a second wife. Now I am more objective. For example, if an acquaintance of mine is keeping a second wife, I would think first why he is doing it. Perhaps these two are in love, so I feel that’s all right. It’s his personal affair, so I wouldn’t care that much.
(Niuniu, a 33-year-old middle class woman)
First, the informants interpreted these activities as extramarital affairs, demonstrating a willingness to question the terminology and an awareness of the negative meanings associated with the terminology (the stigmatization of women promoted by this usage). Generally, these women expressed hesitation, confusion and a questioning attitude toward the terminology that refers to all women involved in men’s extramarital affairs as “second wives”. They often highlighted the social transformation that has occurred during the course of the past decade, bringing an increasing degree of tolerance towards the idea and the practice of sex out of wedlock. For these interviewees, the traditional understanding of the practice of keeping a second wife needed to adapt to a changing social context.
Second, the transactional nature of heterosexual relationships is particularly visible in some cultures (Wamoyi 2010). Escaping from poverty and accumulating capital are given as primary motivations for women’s need to engage in sexual relationships with “sugar daddies” (Wamoyi 2010). In two different studies on young women’s sexuality in KwaZulu-Natal and Durban of Africa, Hunter and Leclerc-Madlala point out that women’s agency plays an important role in transactional sex (Hunter 2002), in which women use sexual power as a negotiating tool to fulfill their desires for the commodities of modernity (Leclerc-Madlala 2003). These findings are illuminating for the Chinese context of keeping a second wife. There is a longstanding tradition of material negotiations between the families of the engaged parties (Baker 1979; Ebrey 1993; Mann 1991; Watson 1991). In traditional society, marriage (and concubinage) provided women with access to material well-being, as in the old saying “clothing and food all depend upon the man you marry” (jiahan jiahan chuanyi chifan). Although this was interrupted by the Chinese Communist Party’s family reform and women’s liberation project during the Maoist era, the cultural legacy has persisted and continues to play a dynamic role in the operations of the marriage market. Young women’s sexuality is still shaped to a large extent by macro-level factors (e.g., economic resources, policies aiming at domesticating the social, consumerism, and gender norms), and post-socialist politics have promoted an intensified return of the transactional nature of sexuality, complete with a re-discovery of and renewed emphasis upon female physical appearance as a key aspect of women’s upward mobility at the micro-level which is very consistent with traditional Chinese culture.
The return of this approach to femininity in post-Maoist gender politics, together with a particular construction of masculinity emphasizing men’s economic resources, have activated women’s agency in the negotiation of sexual relationships. The construction of femininity and masculinity in the market economy bears significantly upon current perceptions of the practice of keeping a second wife. When asked about the meaning of “second wife”, informants generally referred to a woman with youth and physical attractiveness in order to qualify for the part. Interviewees did not disapprove of transactional sexuality in the case of keeping a second wife. For these respondents, the physical attractiveness of young women qualified as an asset that ought to be used as a tool for accumulating wealth and achieving social security. This tolerant attitude toward transactional sexuality was more commonly expressed by middle class women than by working class women. Working class women showed more of an inclination to accept the media’s suggestion that a “second wife” is “concubine-like”, a term that carries meanings of “shame” and “disgrace”. The difference between middle class women and working class women may derive from the fact that the middle class women expressed their tolerance and openness as a statement of middle class identity, whereas working class women remain more attached to the Maoist legacy.
In short, the informants complied with the media narrative of keeping a second wife to a certain extent, but disagreed as to the artificial linkage between the term and the old institution of concubinage. Negotiation of the terminology shows that, for many women, sexuality is no longer rigidly restrained by the traditional monogamous framework. The state ideology is not prepared to leave room in its discourse for sexual behavior that defies monogamous ideas, but various social groups have nevertheless opened up a space to accommodate these practices. This negotiation also indicates that transactional sexuality has strong cultural roots and is currently embedded in very amenable soil, providing reasons for informants to begin tolerating this behavior. It is important to note that the social meanings of these terms are still shifting according to the changing dictates of cultural sexual processes, and thus the terminology itself has become a site where the dominant, residual and emergent cultures converge.
While middle class women view China as a modern nation, most working class informants emphasize the traditional nature of the country. Class position not only dictates the nature of the informant’s relationship to modernity, but is also associated with particular views about sexuality. With the “openness” of the middle class as the subject of modernity, middle class women tend to express tolerance toward extramarital affairs—some of the middle class informants had engaged in affairs, describing them as part of the search for “love” and “feelings”, and openly discussed their intimate affairs during the course of the interviews. However, working class women construed extramarital affairs as serious moral lapses. While middle class women emphasized “love”, “desire”, “feelings” in extramarital affairs, working class women were likely to single out the transactional factor between the rich/the powerful and women. For example, they often link extramarital affairs (and keeping a second wife) to moral weakness. Hence, they show less tolerance toward extramarital affairs. In their view of society, the rich and powerful are deemed to be “the polluted”. Many working class informants claimed that extramarital affairs are stimulated by the new rich corrupted by money. Employing morality and asserting their moral superiority is a way of defending working class identity.
Working class women also show less tolerance for women who become “second wives”: they often employ Maoist terms to refer to second wives as “parasites” (jisheng chong) and the ones “gaining without working” (bu lao erhuo) whereas middle class women tend to understand the “second wives” as either aiming for survival or for love. Working class women also point out the survival strategy for women in transactional sexual relationships, but at the same time they are likely to express a reflection on their unwillingness to become “that kind”.
This middle class “openness” extended to the practice keeping a second wife. Because the term “second wife” is no longer synonymous with “concubine”, but is understood as a woman with the assets of youth and physical attractiveness, none of these informants condemned the second wives as “morally fallen”; instead, they rejected the moral discourse in the media’s construction of “second wife” and interpreted this behaviour either as a realistic strategy or as evidence of “love”. With this rejection of the moral discourse, these women expressed a perception of extramarital affairs that does not comply with the media’s moral tone.[Cohabitation before marriage] is so trendy today. It’s not such a new thing anymore that one can boast about. [It] is a good thing for your marital life later. You wouldn’t know what life as a couple is like without [cohabitation before getting married]. It would be a good thing for a couple to practice before getting married even though they just live together with not cooking three meals a day but only eating out.
(Qinqin, a 31-year-old middle class woman)
Sexual mores advocated by the official discourse are seen as “traditional” by middle class women. “Unconventional” sexual practices are seen as new trends brought on by the process of modernization. One’s acceptance of new trends is a signal of modernity, and performing modernity has become something of a signifier of one’s modern suzhi. The understanding of modernity is likened to the appreciation of a fashion show, with an acceptance of the fact that things constantly appear as the new and disappear as the old, helping to indicate one’s subscription to the subject position of modernity. Many middle class informants employ the term “chao” (“fashionable waves”) to describe homosexuality, extramarital affairs, and premarital sex. Formerly, this term applied only to trends in food, clothing, magazines, and styles of films. Being “chao” (fashionable) refers to one’s performance of a modern suzhi. For example, when comparing the different meanings of extramarital affairs and keeping a second wife, one middle class informant Zhuzhu said: “[these two terms] actually refer to the same thing, but the word “keeping” (bao) seems to come out of a more fashionable (chao) way”. Nevertheless, despite their tolerance and embrace of sexual liberalism, all middle class women expressed a belief in the importance of marriage. Cohabitation without marriage registration is a temporary behavior for couples who intend to marry. These informants considered remaining unmarried throughout one’s life a failure.
“Red apricot flowers climbing out of the wall”? Are you kidding me? This is a modern society now. How could you use this traditional standard to judge women in extramarital affairs like that? This saying is so ridiculous. I wouldn’t bother to criticize it.
(Mia, a 31-year-old middle class woman)
In justifying their extramarital affairs by employing the codes of modernity, these women demonstrated that the cultural codes that Farrer and Sun (2003) discovered in their study on extramarital relationships in Shanghai, such as family responsibility and guilt, no longer dominate in women’s narratives. Unlike the women who ended their affairs due to the cultural codes in Farrer and Sun’s study, two of my informants had ended their affairs due to disappointment with their lovers. One had divorced her husband and started to live with the man with whom she had an affair and the fourth divorced her husband, married her lover but later divorced again. The personal stories of these women cannot be treated as special cases. Rather, these stories reflect an oppositional attitude towards official discourse and the evolution of sexual culture in China.
Women’s extramarital affairs in the cultural codes are defined as moral weakness. How is this cultural imposition on women dismantled and why do women become guilt-free in pursuing their sexual desires? Anthony Giddens’ work (1990, 1991, 1992) on modernity and intimate relationships helps us understand the changing nature of sexuality in contemporary China—what tensions, forces and experiences dominate individuals’ lived experiences and how they cope with them while pursuing a good life. For Giddens, one of the consequences of modernity is liberation, autonomy and empowerment (1992). The growth of capitalism in China has radically transformed individuals’ experiences of their lives, and social relations have been globalized to some extent, while “old” practices and meanings (both material and psychological) have shattered. Life ruled by emerging knowledge and information rather than previously established rules and orders becomes reflexive, always subject to uncertainty, revision, and subversion in accordance with new conceptualizations. In particular, intimate relationships are no longer embedded in local communities or structures of authority and kinship networks, patterned by traditional meanings; instead, they are created by mutual strangers through “a mutual process of self-disclosure” and sexual experimentation (1990: 121–122). Gidden’s (1991) conceptualization of modernity also sheds light on the relations between modernity and the idea of self. His central idea regarding the interconnections between modernity and the self is that the replacement of traditional orders creates opportunities for freedom and self-actualization through a series of life-style choices, rather than being “given” or “discovered”. Moreover, love relationships take on heightened value as the principal means of creating self-identify, achieving authentic being and restoring emotional security (1991). Liberated sexuality can be touted as the key to personal meaning and social context.
In pursuing love and romance, sexual pleasure is no longer men’s privilege, but becomes an experience that women desire. The informants expressed no shame in speaking of their sexual desires and pleasure during the course of these interviews. They talked openly about orgasm and sexual experience.Back in the mid-1980s, my mother liked [my ex-husband] and insisted that I must marry him because he was talented and established in his career. So I married him. He was 15 years older than me. I married him for my mother. Later in the mid-1990s, I met a younger man, much younger than me actually. I had such a strong feeling for him, so I ran away with him. I was a bad woman in the view of the society because I left my family and my duty as a mother behind. But I was determined to do so for myself. I was thirsty for love”.
(Jojo, a 55-year-old middle class woman)
Generational difference in the perception of marriage and sexuality continuingly remains significant. How do women make sense of the shifts in the perception of gender and sexuality between different generation cohorts, and what are their attitudes towards these shifts? Older informants compared their youthful experiences with their daughters’ lives at present, particularly with regard to mate selection, courtship, marriage, and virginity. Conversely, the younger informants that I interviewed individually and in two focus groups of female college students compared their own lives with the cultural context experienced by their mother’s generation.It’s not a big deal if I live with my boyfriend for a while and later for some reason we break up. For my mother, she may think that it’s better if I live with someone whom I will marry in the end. My grandmother would think I have lost some value for a girl (virginity) in the cohabitation.
(Hong, a 33-year-old middle class woman)
Evans (2008) explores mother-daughter relations by reflecting on gendered meanings perceived by women in relation to their subjective perceptions of gender. Subjective positioning of women in different political moments of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is closely linked to their discursive environments; nevertheless, their own experiences often challenge the discourse. Evans’ discovery is helpful for analyzing the changes as well as the liaisons between mother and daughter cohorts. Over the course of conversation with my informants, the perceptions expressed by the older cohort evidently shows that the dominant discourse has shaped their lives. However, this group’s attitude towards the time of “sexual freedom” expresses a complex rather than a simple disapproval of the emerging sexual culture to which their daughters are subjected.
The mothers sighed for the fun they missed during their youth and envied the “good times” that have grown out of the expansion of freedom and choices available to their daughters. Although mothers reflected that their generation was too conservative and had no fun, they also attributed positive values to their girlhood: for example, being conservative in courtship, shame of premarital sex and adhering to the view that dating is only for marriage. By using the words “pure”, “naïve” and “innocent”, these women made clear their feelings about how “a girl ought to be”. Despite the “envy” they felt for their daughters’ generation’s freedom, they nevertheless expressed the sentiment that “public morals are declining day by day” (shifeng rixia). Hence, the mothers worried about the negative impact of “sexual freedom” upon their daughters. On the one hand, the older cohort expressed worries about the younger cohort’s safety in the changing sexual culture, based on an understanding of weak and passive female sexuality. On the other hand, the mothers’ cohort was willingly subjected to current social morals (shehui fengqi) in order to keep pace with contemporary society, and have had no choice but to try to adapt themselves to the changes in the current sexual climate. For example, many mother informants said that they did not approve of the fact that their college-aged daughters were living with their boyfriends, but they turned a blind eye to it and made an effort to tolerate the fact. The mothers’ cohort was aware of the wave of modernity, a trend toward distinguishing one’s suzhi as part of the superior segment of the population; therefore, they expressed a passive tolerance of and contradictory attitude towards sexual liberalism.
By way of contrast, the daughters’ cohort reflected on their lives by emphasizing the modern subjectivity which distinguished them from their mothers. They advocated in favour of the sexual freedom that the mother cohort deplored. Sexual freedom is understood among the daughters’ cohort within its social, cultural and historical contexts. Premarital sex is no longer taboo; instead, it becomes a normative part of female maturation and development. Female virginity has lost the importance that it held for the mothers’ generation. Remaining single throughout one’s lifetime is no longer considered abnormal, although it is seen as a lost opportunity for happiness. Divorce, seen as a moral weakness in the past, is accepted as part of “China’s moving step forward” (jinbu), based on the consideration that marriage ought to derive from “love” instead of mere responsibilities.
Nevertheless, different from Giddens’ conceptualization of autonomous individuals in modern society (1991), sexual freedom is neither understood primarily as an aspect of individual autonomy and independence nor an equal right for both sexes; rather, it is generally interpreted as a phenomenon related to positioning the self in line with the pushing force of modernity. The daughters’ cohort’s rejection of sexual restraints that used to be placed on the mothers’ cohort is not exactly identical to conceptions of free love during the 1960s in the West. Sexual freedom during the 1960s generally went hand in hand with a women’s consciousness-raising movement and the pursuit of a brand of autonomy and independence that challenged ideologically prescribed gender roles (Wheeler 2013). It was a desire for autonomy that embraced the new urban youth culture (August 2009). Young women in the 1960s breaking out of traditional restrictions, seeking independence and sexual freedom and challenging male dominance grew common in Western societies (Lehman 2011).
By contrast, the sexual freedom in contemporary China derives from conceptions of modernity and life style considerations. Although transformations within institutions, cultural codes and social contexts are forces of changing sexuality (Farrer 2002; Farrer and Sun 2003), the understanding of modernity plays an important role for both the mothers’ cohort and the daughters’ cohort. The mothers’ cohort is seen as representative of “tradition”, while the daughters’ cohort represents modernity. Hence, the mother-daughter relation is a metaphor for the liaison between “tradition” and “modernity” and between the emergent and the residual. Lan, a young middle class woman, described the liaison in this way: “our parents’ generation is still with us, so our tradition is with us too”. Hence, the daughters’ positioning of the self and their identification of the liaison not only demonstrates their self-identity a subjects of modernity, but also reveals the interplay between the residual and the emergent aspects of culture.
The previous social and cultural formation of sexuality is a set of social norms based on oppressive patriarchal norms. The traditional family and marriage institution contains a whole set of norms designed to regulate sexuality rigidly differentiated by gender (Ebrey 1993; Levy 1968; Watson 1991). The enforcement of sexual mores fell far more heavily upon women, while men, by contrast, were often granted sexual license (Ebrey 1993; Hsu 1971)—and this practice is still supported by the social construction of male promiscuity. These residual ideas of female sexuality have persisted over time (and have been integrated into the dominant ideological view of marriage and sexuality). Female virginity and sexual restrictions imposed primarily on women reflect a set of values from the Chinese tradition—what Williams (1977) describes as “some previous social and culture institution or formation” but still “in effect” at present. This cultural inheritance from the Chinese tradition has been a constant through many different historical periods and political regimes as a residual force upon the changing landscape of sexual culture. These past beliefs continue to exert an influence upon contemporary Chinese sexual culture.
The residual life of these past beliefs is evident in institutional practices as well as women’s everyday life experiences. It is actively advocated through institutional channels such as the media and educational programs. Sex education has recently become a signifier of modern education that is seen to be part of “joining the trajectory of the international community” (yu guoji jiegui), but it is understood as a way of reinforcing biological difference and is carried out through “female chastity courses” for girls, while boys’ courses emphasize a particular conception of masculinity associated with the term machismo (saving masculinity, zhengjiu yanggang qizhi) (Fang 2012). Examples which trumpet the importance of female virginity continue to appear once in a while. Campaigns for protecting female virginity and chastity are organized by female university students who aim to preserve female virginity as a significant token to be offered in exchange for a husband’s love (Li 2012). In 2011, a female representative of the People’s Congress claimed that “a girl’s virginity is the best bride’s gift to the husband’s family (po jia)”.4 She claimed the idea while serving as a guest host at a Shanghai TV station. In 2012, Satellite Television of Hubei Province ran a show for public interest promoting traditional morality, inviting an internet celebrity, “the goddess of chastity”, to lecture upon the importance of female virginity.5
I gave my virginity to my husband. So did he to me. We got married afterwards. Everything was perfect for us. He often talks about the issue [of virginity]. He feels that he would mind it if [I had not given my virginity to him]. I wouldn’t mind [if he wasn’t a virgin] as much as he would. For example, his friend’s wife was not a virgin when this woman married [his friend]. My husband despises her. He feels that this woman doesn’t deserve matrimonial happiness. In fact, I feel that female virginity is a factor that protects the marriage. It works in this way that husband respects you more.
(Xue, a 34-year-old middle class woman)
[People’s taking female virginity seriously] is because of thousands-years Chinese tradition. In fact, people do think [female virginity] is important. How do I put this? The society may no longer care [whether a woman gives her virginity to her husband or not]. The majority of people do not care if a woman has kept her virginity until marriage. But if it happens to a person himself, a husband definitely will be upset about the fact that [his wife didn’t lose her virginity to him].
(Tiantian, a 33-year-old middle class woman)
The celebratory accounts of sexual freedom overlook the fact that the “freedom” is practiced in a gendered way. Many past beliefs and gendered assumptions concerning the sexual natures of men and women remain effective and continue to affect women’s lives. Consequently, although changes in sexual mores have generated much progress in terms of sexual equality and women do enjoy more sexual freedom than ever before, the space of sexual freedom left for women is much more restricted than it is for men. In general, men benefit far more than women from China’s extremely gendered interpretation of sexual freedom. The evidences of gendered sexuality add an ironic account to the statement of sexual freedom and require an interpretation moving beyond the statement.
In my informants’ accounts, female virginity is no longer viewed as an oppressive social norm by which every woman in the society must be judged; rather, these concerns are more likely to play themselves out within marital relationships (i.e., virginity becomes either a source of happiness or discord between husbands and wives). Often, the informants identified the place where they live as an “open” and “tolerant” society, in which the old norms have been forsaken; however, they claimed that the past norms are still valued in personal relationships. This may indicate that the residual element appears in a transformative way, and it is the transformation that allows the residual element to persist. Nevertheless, the core of residual elements remains constant and carries with it the content of past beliefs. For example, female virginity played out in marital relationships retains a traditional symbolic meaning as a token of a woman’s physical and mental devotion to the male partner. Many of the informants, including both middle class women and working class women, have claimed that husbands take far more serious interest in their wives’ virginity than women do in their husbands’. On the one hand, the persistence of female virginity as an attribute to be valued in marital relationships may reveal the continuing importance of a cultural emphasis upon a “harmonious” unity in marriage, rather than as a partnership between two individuals with equal sexual rights. On the other hand, women’s open discussion of unequal sexual rights between husbands and wives may paradoxically reveal women’s awareness of sexual inequality within marriage. This awareness may indicate that the residual elements are undergoing rapid changes.
Sexual culture in China is characterized as repressive by discourse analysis and policy studies (Dikotter 1995; Erwin 2000; Evans 1997; Hershatter 1996), or seen to be undergoing a process of sexual liberalization by youth culture studies (Farrer 2002; Pan 2000, 2004). These claims and discoveries each contain some elements of truth, but neither presents a complete picture of sexual culture in the PRC. By building upon and moving beyond the previous studies, this article argues that sexual culture in China is a changing process that contains multiple and overlapping forms of sexual culture. Moreover, while age difference continues to be significant in attitudes towards sexuality, class emerges as a variable to examine degree of adherence to the previously established beliefs of sexuality.
Along with dramatic social changes in the economic and political spheres, in contemporary China, the sexual culture is undergoing a changing process, in which the discursive practices of the dominant ideology concerning gender and sexuality, past beliefs regarding sexual norms and an emergent sexual liberalism co-exist, overlap, and compete. The dominant ideological (and legal) view of gender and sexuality—which has framed the heterosexual marital unit as the normative place for sexual relations—is challenged by the increasing practice of premarital sex and extramarital affairs, cohabitation without a marriage registration and sexual behaviors previously defined as “abnormal”. Some of these emerging practices are subverting sexual norms and usurping the dominant position, such as premarital sex. Although marriage is no longer the only place for sex, it remains essential to the Chinese “common sense” understanding of happiness. All interviewees, including both middle class and working class women aged between 21 and 55, expressed the importance of marriage and viewed remaining single as a failure of life. Premarital sex often occurs among women who intend to marry their male partners. The past beliefs concerning female virginity still exist at the level of the private sphere, and sometimes can play an important role in determining matrimonial happiness. This indicates that the residual element remains in effect, but in a transformative way that makes it persistent. The effectiveness of this past belief suggests that the advent of “sexual freedom” does not grant equal sexual rights between women and men. It is, at best, a highly gendered “freedom”. These forms of sexual culture help to define the complex parameters of sexuality in China today.
There are several different attitudes towards this sexual freedom. Generational difference continues to play a significant role as an indicator of these attitudes. Members of the younger generations are likely to embrace the idea of sexual freedom, lining up against their older counterparts in exactly the manner that the youth culture scholarship suggests. However, my data collection reveals that members of the older generations are making an effort to adjust their views of social change in terms of sexuality. Apart from the indicator of age, my interviews with both middle class and working class women indicate that class may be added as an important determining factor with regard to attitude towards sexual freedom. Middle class interviewees showed more tolerance toward sexual practices outside of the dominant frame (such as sex out of wedlock and homosexuality), whereas working class respondents showed more attachment to the dominant discourse. However, this claim would require a larger quantitative study before it can be generalized. These differences rooted in age and class helped to determine individuals’ subject position vis-à-vis China’s trajectory toward modernity. The younger generations and middle class respondents were more likely to see themselves as participants in a modern social order that defines individuals as “open”, “tolerant” and “fashionable” subjects. In this understanding of modernity, concepts of “love” and “feelings” become ethical categories deployed by middle class women to justify their extramarital affairs, and thereby enable them to challenge the dominant ideal of monogamous sexuality.
The discourse of modernity plays an important role as a pushing force in transforming sexuality. This particular discourse derives from multiple utterances coming from different media resources. On the one hand, it includes state discourse as a part of the state’s modernization of the family, which depends upon a monogamous idea of heteronormative sexuality and temporarily takes precedence as a dominant element. On the other, modern discourse also incorporates many ideas derived from sites of global cultural exchange, which encourage individuals to adjust themselves to concepts of tolerance in opposition to monogamous and heteronormative sexuality. Interplay and struggle often occurs within and between the multiple forces which make up the discourse of modernity. Embracing the monogamous idea is often seen as standing by modernity, while tolerance towards other types of sexual practices is also a signifier of being a modern subject. Interestingly, ideas derived from the state’s modern discourse are often seen as “traditional” by informants who have embraced an attitude of “sexual freedom”. This may point the way toward a sexual culture in which the dominant ideas concerning sexuality will cede more space to other ideas, giving birth to a growing tolerance that will permit the sexual culture of the PRC to become much more diverse than it is at present.
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