Sexuality in a Changing China
Subtitle: Young Women, Sex and Intimate Relations in the Reform Period
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group
Published: 2017
Language: eng
Number of pages: 172
ISBN-13: 9781138240148
Subjects: Sex; Sex instruction; Sex role; Dating (social customs); Marriage, china; Women, china
Description: China has experienced rapid economic and social change since the beginning of the 'Open Door' policy in 1978. Yet at the same time, the legacy of the Mao era remains and elements of Confucianism continue to exist in the reform period. As a result, traditional views concerning gender roles and sexual attitudes and practices persist. Based on interviews with forty-three women in Shanghai, this book investigates the way in which young women, born under the one child policy in China, consider sexuality and intimate relations in the 21st Century. Covering their thoughts and views on issues such as sex education, the rise of 'dating culture' and 'ideal' husbands, it is argued that reform China offers young women a series of contradictory expectations of sex and relationships. Despite the Party-State rhetoric of equality, participant narratives ultimately highlight the limited discourse of desire and sexual autonomy available to young women, the prevalence of essentialist notions of femininity and masculinity and the continuing norm of marriage as the only legitimate context for female sexual expression. 0.