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Socialist Sex: the Cultural Revolution Revisited Author(S): Emily Honig Source: Modern China, Vol Socialist Sex: The Cultural Revolution Revisited Author(s): Emily Honig Source: Modern China, Vol. 29, No. 2 (Apr., 2003), pp. 143-175 Published by: Sage Publications, Inc. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3181306 . Accessed: 02/06/2014 13:39 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Sage Publications, Inc. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Modern China. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 128.95.232.208 on Mon, 2 Jun 2014 13:39:29 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions SocialistSex The CulturalRevolution Revisited EMILYHONIG Universityof California, Santa Cruz The discussionof sex,Chinese and Western scholarship suggests, is emblematicof the seemingly absolute distinction between the Cul- turalRevolution (1966-1976) and the subsequent post-Mao/economic reformperiod. During the Maoist Cultural Revolution, when politics was incommand, to discuss any aspect of personal life, romantic rela- tionships,or sex was considered bourgeois and hence taboo. Through- outthe more recent decades, however, sex-how todo it,with whom it is appropriate,atwhat age itis acceptable-hasexploded as oneof the majortopics of public debate and is featuredas thesubject of fiction, films,newspaper and magazine articles, and scholarlyresearch. Per- sonal testimoniesand memoirs,filled during the Maoist years with chroniclesof political consciousness and struggle, have become more reflectiveabout their authors' romantic and sexual histories. This shift has produced,ironically, a sexingof the CulturalRevolution-an insertionof sexualdiscussion, practice, and preoccupationinto the historyof a periodlong presumed to have been dominated by political concerns. CulturalRevolution memoirs of thepast decade (a minorcottage industryin theirown right) have startled readers by their often frank reflectionsabout sex and sexuality.Anchee Min's autobiographical accountRed Azalea, forexample, describes the residents of Red Fire Farmas beingfar more concerned with the pursuit of romanticand sexualpleasure than with political struggle (Min, 1994: 58-59).Rae AUTHOR'S NOTE: I wouldlike to thank Gail Hershatterand ElizabethPerry for their critical readingsof earlierversions of thisessay. I am particularlygrateful to Kay AnnJohnson for insightfulcomments on thegendered dimensions of sexuality during the Cultural Revolution. MODERNCHINA, Vol. 29 No.2, April 2003 143-175 DOI: 10.1177/0097700402250735 ? 2003Sage Publications 143 This content downloaded from 128.95.232.208 on Mon, 2 Jun 2014 13:39:29 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 144 MODERN CHINA/APRIL 2003 Yang'sSpider Eaters, too, offers memories of an adolescencespent in theGreat Northern Wilderness, where the struggles of theCultural Revolutionwere interspersed with her emerging sense of herself and herclassmates as sexualbeings (R. Yang,1997). Likewise, Blood Red Sunset,Ma Bo's accountof life as a sent-downyouth in Inner Mongo- lia, is punctuatedby reflectionson his romanticliaisons and sexual fantasiesas well as theclandestine affairs of others (Ma Bo, 1996).' Notall memoirsare so positivein their reflections on CulturalRev- olutionsexuality. Report on Loveand Sexamong China's Sent-Down Youth,a three-volumework published in 1998,aims to documentthe moretragic dimensions of sexualityand to presentstories of severe sexualrepression. "We wererobbed of ouryouth, ideas, hopes, and love,"the editors lament. "In terms of love, people were criticized and struggledagainst, put in jail .... All books about love were labeled pornographic,all songsabout love labeled low-class. Men and women in love wereconsidered hoodlums" (Zhang Dening and Yue Jianyi, 1998a: 2). Even in detailinghorrific punishments inflicted on youth accusedof inappropriateromantic relationships, however, the hun- dred-oddmemoirs insert and implicitly insist on sexualpreoccupation as beingat thecenter of experiences of the Cultural Revolution. It is temptingto interpretthese reflections on CulturalRevolution sexualityas a rewritingof eventsas viewedthrough the lens of con- temporaryconcerns, as a projectiononto the past of the post-Mao pre- occupationwith sex, romanticism, and erotics.2 These memoirs, like all memoirliterature, surely do representthe past through the con- cernsof their authors' present, and it is hardlycoincidental that indi- vidualswriting during a timeof intense public discussion of sexuality wouldhighlight that part of their experience. However, to reducethe emphasison sexualityto a projectionof the present onto the past, or evento a writingof the past as skewedby the terms, language, and pas- sionsof the present, presumes a totaldisjuncture between the Cultural Revolutionand the post-Mao period: it takes for granted that what pre- vails now did notand couldnot have existed then-that just as fer- ventlyas sexualissues are discussed in the present, they were silenced in thepast. Economic,political, and evenmany social policiesof thereform era do radicallydepart from and in someways explicitly reject Cul- turalRevolution policies. But the currentdenunciation of Maoist This content downloaded from 128.95.232.208 on Mon, 2 Jun 2014 13:39:29 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Honig/ SOCIALIST SEX 145 policiesmay obscure underlying social continuities. I do notmean to suggestthat there is statepolicy, on one hand, and social reality, on the other;the state made discussion of love and sex taboo,but in reality sex was discussedand performedin contextsnot sanctioned by the state.Nor am I suggestingthat discussions of sexuality during the Cul- turalRevolution and post-Mao era are identical. Rather, my point is to examinethe specific contexts in which sexuality became an issuedur- ingthe Cultural Revolution and to acknowledgethat the reflections aboutsexuality in contemporary memoirs may be morethan a projec- tionof the present onto the past. Thisarticle, then, aims to offer a preliminaryexploration of sexual- ityduring the Cultural Revolution. Despite the proliferation of new, revisioniststudies of theCultural Revolution by bothChinese and Westernscholars, the subject of sexuality-andpersonal life in gen- eral-has beencompletely ignored, an oversightthat replicates, per- hapsunwittingly, the presumed repression of personal life during the CulturalRevolution itself (Joseph, Wong, and Zweig, 1991; Perry and Li, 1997;Yan Jiaqiand Gao Gao, 1996).As materialsabout the Cul- turalRevolution increasingly become available-not just memoirs butalso archivalmaterials and collectionsof documents-theyare revealingthe variety of niches in which sexuality was part of the life of theCultural Revolution. They also suggestthe gendered dimensions of sexuality,the divergent ways in whichmen and women perceived sexualissues and experience.What emerges from these materials is nota simplestory of state silencing and popular submission or of state prohibitionand popular resistance. State "policy" about sex during the CulturalRevolution is farfrom clear, and popular attitudes and behav- iorare full of contradictions. STATESILENCE AND THE SILENCING OF SEXUALDISCOURSE The Maoiststate, it is commonlyassumed, actively silenced dis- cussionof personal life in generaland of sexuality most particularly. "Whatoften got erased," Mayfair Yang asserts, werenot only women's bodies and female gender but also sexual desire itself,through a combined process of repression and an emptying out This content downloaded from 128.95.232.208 on Mon, 2 Jun 2014 13:39:29 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 146 MODERN CHINA/APRIL 2003 ofpublic discourse on sex.... Therewas a dearthof both public and privatediscussion of sex duringthe Cultural Revolution. [M. Yang, 1999:44] The historianHarriet Evans's studyof sexualityin post-1949China persuasivelychallenges this assumption by documentingthe far- rangingdiscussion of sexual issues that took place in official publica- tionsduring the 1950s and early 1960s (Evans, 1997: 2). Nevertheless, evenher study presents us withthe Cultural Revolution as thesingle periodwhen the Chinese governmentsuppressed this discussion. From1966 to 1976,Evans writes, The slightestsuggestion of sexual interest was consideredso ideologi- callyunsound that gendered tastes in hairstyle and dress were coerced into a monotonousuniformity of shape and colour. A kind of androgyny,a sexual sameness, based on thedefeminization of female appearanceand itsapproximation to malestandards of dress, seemed to be thesocialist ideal. [Evans,1997: 2] Thestate, presumably, was responsible for this explicit and aggressive policingof sexuality. Anyanalysis of sexuality during the Cultural Revolution requires a closerlook at thestate and its role in governingsexual discourse and prescribingacceptable (and unacceptable)behavior. What emerges fromsuch an analysisis a statethat said remarkably little about sexu- alitywhile appearing to criticize,arrest, and punishindividuals for transgressingsexual norms. Issuesof sexuality were not placed high (if anywhere) on theCul- turalRevolution's agenda, and statepolicies and proclamationsdid notgenerally
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