Sociologist James
Farrer recently attended a conference in Beijing
on sexuality and its implications for human rights
and civil society in China. Farrer, author of
Opening Up: Youth Sex Culture and Market Reform in
Shanghai, is associate professor at Sophia
University in Tokyo, specializing in Chinese
society. He speaks to Devin Stewart
Devin Stewart: Tell
me about this intriguing conference you attended
in China. How does it relate to your work?
James Farrer: Well, the
conference I went to was called the "International
Conference on Chinese Sexual Culture." It was held
at
People's University in Beijing in the third week
of June, and was organized by the Sex Research
Institute at People's University. This is
practically a two-person operation, but still the
best academic sex research in China, led by
sociologist Pan Suiming, who has been studying
sexuality for over two decades in China.
Actually like many things in China,
there's a lot to be learned just by investigating
the conference title. There are two things I can
tell you about this conference title. First,
although it was called international, the
conference actually ran completely in Chinese.
That is, all the presentations and
discussions were planned to be in Chinese
regardless of where the scholars came from.
Actually this was great for all of us, because we
got to hear most of the conference presenters
speak their minds fluently and clearly in their
native language. Moreover, many Chinese scholars
would not have been able to function well in
English, so it was a practical consideration.
But looking at this another way, it is
also evident that Chinese are confident enough,
and China is important enough, that foreign
presenters were expected to function in Chinese.
Granted, this was a conference about Chinese
sexuality held in China, but the step toward using
Chinese as an international language is
interesting. I see that more in China than in
Japan, for example.
Secondly, the title of
the conference was originally planned as the
"Conference on the Chinese Sexual Revolution." The
university administration of People's University
asked that this focus be changed to the more
neutral term "sexual culture".
The
original term "sexual revolution" however could
summarize many of the path-breaking presentations
at this conference, pointing to the liberalization
of sexual mores in China, but also to the broader
political and social implications of these
changes, namely the increasing calls for sexual
rights, including rights for sexual minorities and
people with alternative sexual interests.
So the point is, despite this being a
purely academic conference, it is also a forum in
which important and sometimes sensitive ideas are
expressed. And the topic of sexuality is still
sensitive enough that university officials are
careful even about the conference title.
Finally, the conference was funded by the
Ford Foundation, which indicates the important
contribution that foreign non-governmental
organizations can make to the development of
Chinese academic discourse, the
internationalization of discourse, and the free
flow of ideas.
DS: Are these
types of gatherings common in China? Are they
growing?
JF: This kind of
international academic conference is increasingly
common in China. The fact that it was an
international conference held largely in the
Chinese language might make it somewhat unusual,
but the open exchange of ideas, increasingly
cutting edge research and plurality of ideas is an
example of the opening up of Chinese academic
society generally.
Younger students were
particularly daring and straight-forward in their
work, and some of them engaged important themes
such as gay and lesbian life in China and the
policing of sex work in
China.
DS: What kind of
people attend?
JF: About
one-quarter of the presenters were non-Chinese
"foreign" academics. The rest were Chinese. There
were also quite a few residents of Hong Kong and
Taiwan, and their presentations on sexual rights
and sexual activism by non-governmental
organizations produced some of the most lively
discussion and attentive audiences among the
mainland Chinese crowd.
The local Chinese
were also extremely diverse, including university
based academics, but also many people involved
with the growing gay and lesbian communities in
China, sex educators, AIDS educators, and
independent writers and intellectuals. Not
everyone was from the "liberal" side on sexual
issues.
The audience and presenters also
including a few government officials, and people
associated with government bodies such as the
all-China Women's Federation, an important
government body. There were no angry disputes, but
some clear differences of opinion did emerge on
many issues.
DS: Is this a
sign of change in Chinese society?
JF: This kind of conference
represents a huge and ongoing change in Chinese
society. It is not a change that has come out of
nowhere. Some of these people have been working on
sex research for 20 years or more. And some have
been patiently and in a very low-key way
advocating the expansion of sexual rights.
One of the milestones that is frequently
discussed is the abolition of the crime of
"hooliganism" in 1997. This was often the vague
legal code under which many homosexuals and some
heterosexuals who had engaged in non-marital sex,
were arrested or detained by police. Now gays,
lesbians, and bisexuals in China can rightly claim
that there is no law against what they are doing
sexually.
It was pointed out repeatedly at
the conference, however, that in removing the law
against hooliganism, the government never had to
take a stance clearly in favor of gay rights, nor
are there any legal guarantees of gay rights in
China.
There are also some other
conferences and meetings like this one. There was
a gay and lesbian film festival in Beijing and
there have been a series of very popular lecture
courses at Fudan University in Shanghai explicitly
dealing with homosexual issues.
I was
invited to teach one session in 2005 and was
surprised to see that students had arrived in the
classroom as early as three hours before the class
began to gain a seat in the large hall that could
hold roughly 300 students. So there is huge public
interest in sexual issues in general, including
gay and lesbian issues in China.
DS: Are there downsides to
these changes?
JF: Of
course, conservatives in China, like conservatives
in the US, will focus on what they perceive as the
"downsides" of the sexual revolution. First there
is the perception in China, as in the US, of a
decline in moral values. This includes alarm at
the rise in premarital sex among young people,
which is often attributed to the corrupting
influence of "Western values".
Unlike in
the United States, there is almost no religious
dimension to these conservative concerns, but
there is much more of a political and economic
dimension. That is, some of the
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