Sexuality in The People's Republic of China - Feminist Discourse in China

Feminist Discourse in China

Gender equality has been one of China’s national policies. The Cultural Revolution slogan "Women can hold up half the sky" is well known. Many organizations and centers for gender were established after the Fourth UN Conference on Women was held in Beijing in 1995. The government sponsored the conference and then signed the UN documents pledging gender equality, and official women’s organizations and feminist activists and scholars have been fighting against gender discrimination and working on achieving gender equality. Their struggle has permeated many aspects of the people’s social lives.

Mainstream feminist discourse in China tends to ignore sexuality issues, considering those topics either unimportant or as stirring up unnecessary trouble. Nevertheless, the critical thinking of feminist discourse has challenged stereotyped gender roles, including sexuality roles. The latter especially has influenced many young people.

The role of feminist discourse in the field of sexuality has been to redefine a woman’s sex role. It criticized the double standards of sex between women and men, which included traditionally held norms such as that men should be aggressive and active, women passive and inactive; that men should have stronger sexual desires and women weaker; that men should be sexually experienced before marriage but women retain their virginity; that women should not ask too much for sex and should consider men’s satisfaction as their own. The critical feminist discourse is also rewriting the gender views in Chinese society. Some feminist scholars have started to emphasize women’s sexual rights and the diversity of sexuality among Chinese women. Thus China’s sexual revolution is also women’s sexual revolution, as evidenced by these trends.

While women in previous generations were expected to marry in their twenties, many highly educated women are deciding to hold off on marriage into their 30s or longer. Their increased economic power has given them autonomy so they don't need to rely on a spouse. But the Chinese media has still given them the derogatory name, "sheng nu" or leftover women.