Sexual as a Ritual

East Asia DOI 10.1007/s12140-010-9130-z

Sex as a Ritual: Transforming Women’s Sexual Being from ‘Human-like’ to ‘Animal-like’ in Taiwan Heung-wah Wong & Hoi-yan Yau

Received: 26 April 2010 / Accepted: 3 November 2010 # Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010

Abstract This paper aims to explicate the cultural meaning of sex in the Chinese society of Taiwan with reference to marriage in the Chinese kinship system in Taiwan. Through an examination of how Taiwanese informants talk about sex and their sexual behaviours, we demonstrate that their discourse on sex involves not only the notion of active-male/passive-female but also a symbolic transformation of the ‘human-like’ woman into an ‘animal-like’ man. This is arguably the core meaning of sex in Taiwan: sex is a ritual through which women’s sexual beings are symbolically transformed from ‘human-like’ into ‘animal-like’. As we shall show, the transformative nature of sex has a significant parallel with the logic of marriage in Chinese kinship system in Taiwan. In other words, there is a significant parallel between marriage in kinship system and sexual discourses in Taiwan. In conclusion, we shall spell out the epistemological implications of this parallel to the studies of Chinese societies: the relevance of kinship studies to the understanding of Chinese societies. Keywords Discourses on sex and sexual behaviour . Sex as a ritual . The cultural meaning of sex . Active-male/passive-female model . Marriage in Chinese kinship system

Introduction Wen-chien was in her late 30s working as a senior accountant at a large international firm in Taipei when we first made her acquaintance in early 2003.1 Coming from a In order not to confuse readers with so many different pronouns, we use “we” even though only one of the authors conducted interviews and researches in Taipei. 1

Heung-wah Wong and Hoi-yan Yau contribute equally to the paper and as a result their names are arranged alphabetically. H.-w. Wong School of Modern Languages and Cultures, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Hong Kong e-mail: [email protected] H.-y. Yau (*) Department of Anthropology, University College London, London, United Kingdom e-mail: [email protected]

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middle class family, she received her master’s degree from a world-class university in the US. In 2003 she divorced for the second time – the first time occurred in 1992. Soon after her divorce, she fell in love with two married Taiwanese men, starting her colourful post-divorce life – one was her boss; another was her colleague. Meanwhile, she maintained an amorous relationship with her second ex-husband. She thus concurrently involved herself in complicated sexual relationships with three different men. Throughout our interviews, she repeatedly stressed that she luxuriated in sex and that it was the reason why she simultaneously engaged in three amorous relationships. Wen-chien once asked us whether we thought women were incredible, because she could effectively handle three men at the same time – of course we were fully aware of her hidden meaning: men could never handle three women at once. We told her that we could not agree more. We met Pei-han in late 2002. In her mid-20s, she was a travel consultant based in Taipei. She is half aboriginal and half Taiwanese. Her ethnic marginality is further complicated by her unusually intricate family background. Her birth parents did not marry and in the course of the past two decades her mother had affairs with different married men. Like her mother, Pei-han has had extremely colourful love and sexual affairs. Her first love, involving sexual activity, happened when she was 16. In the years that followed, she engaged in a number of relationships, most crucially, a lesbian relationship, and simultaneously having causal sex with men including an on-and-off affair with a married man which continues to this today. These two episodes point to the dramatically changing sexualscape of Taiwanese society wherein young people, in particular, women enjoy greater gender equality, and engage in a higher rate of premarital sex, non-exclusive sex, and extramarital affairs. This drastic change in the sexualscape of Taiwan has been well documented by other scholars. Bresnahan et al. [1], for instance, argue that prime-time TV commercials in Taiwan started to depict males and females in non-stereotypical gender roles. This changing discourse on gender roles on TV finds its full manifestation in real-life dating, marital arrangements, and sexual behaviours in Taiwan. Cernada et al. [2]; Thornton, Chang, Yang [20]; Chang [4, 5], Wang & Chou [24], Yeh [27]; Wang, Wang, & Hsu [23]; Lee et al. [13], for instance, all document the burgeoning practice of premarital sex, soaring pregnancy rate among unwed adolescents, and extramarital affairs in Taiwan over the past two decades. Peng [17] specifically examines how a number of Taiwanese married women engaged in extramarital affairs have encountered social stigma alongside emotional trauma as a result. Such changes must be accompanied by changing trends in fertility, martial dissolution along with intergenerational relationships, and gender ideologies within the family (Thornton & Lin [19]; Hermanlin, Ofstedel & Chang [10]; Cheng [7]; Lee, Lin, & Chang [12]; Lo [15]; Weinstein et al. [21] and Xu & Lai [25]). However, amid this changing sexualscape of Taiwanese society, there are studies which render such a ‘drastic’ change just one-side of this emerging phenomenon. Moskowitz [16] observes how Taiwanese women struggle to maintain an image of chaste even in the context of a pick-up bar. When a Taiwanese woman consents to go home with a little-known man, ‘she will often hastily rush out of the club, man in tow, so that she is not seen, or agrees to meet him around the corner so that no one notices them leaving together’ (Moskowitz [16], p.336). In other words, even when they actively seek male companionship and amorous relationships, they feel

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compelled to maintain their ‘chaste’ women image. Their compulsion to maintain this chaste image suggests that Taiwanese women’s perception of themselves as ‘women’ has not changed, though their behaviours have changed substantially. In fact, Moskwoitz’s observation concurs with Yang [26], who remarks that while the Taiwanese version of Cosmopolitan, an international women’s magazine, might serve to promote feminisms and female empowerment in Taiwan, its rhetoric sustains rather than subvert patriarchal capitalism. The same goes to Wen-chien and Pei-han. While Wen-chien might appear to some as a nymphomaniac by engaging in sex with three men simultaneously, she nonetheless believes that it should be the male who initiates and leads the sex act. Moreover, Wen-chien did not have sex until she was 25 years old. At our interview, she could not even utter a phrase which is by no means immoral by today’s standard – cong houmian charu (literally entry from the back, here referring to anal sex), a sexual posture which her second ex-husband wanted to try but which she had never agreed to. Likewise, although Pei-han engaged in a wide range of sexual experiences, she told us that she had never initiated sex with her boyfriend(s); rather she waited for their lead. Furthermore, she never actively encouraged her boyfriends to wear a condom during sex, fearing that it would annoy them. It is for this reason that she had four illegal abortions in the backstreet hospital during the years she was with her first boyfriend. The startling examples of Wen-chien and Pei-han speak to what Evans ([8], p.10) calls the ‘active-male/passive-female’ model. Evans ([8], p.10), while acknowledging the changing sexual discourses in China after 1949, maintains that ‘little of this suggests any real challenge to the active-male/passive-female model generally explained through natural biological structures’. In fact, this core model is the underlying logic in a number of sexual discourses identified in previous scholarships. As identified by Friedman ([9], p.14) in Southern China, embedded in the discourse of ‘reprosexuality’ is a form of sexuality in which women are not expected to be candid about their sexual pleasure. The discourse of anti-obscenity/prostitution as identified by Huang in Taiwan is likewise based on a constructed category of ‘woman of respectable family’ (Huang [11], p.239): a woman who strictly observes the social and sexual norms. Even the discourse of life prolongation in ancient China is no exception. The discourse is based on the sexual technique of a man who ‘actively’ pleases his woman in order to absorb her essence and thus prolongs his life (van Gulick, [22], p.121). One can see that central to these various sexual discourses is the active-male/ passive-female model because women are after all made, if not forced, to take a passive role with regard to sex. In this paper, we show, through a thorough analysis of how men and women in Taipei talked about sex and sexual behaviours that the same model of active-male/ passive-female exists in Taiwan. Taiwanese informants tended to talk about sex in terms of six binaries, and most crucially paralleled the binaries with gender contrasts such that men’s sexual being is considered as biological, physical, ordinary, necessary, uncontrollable, and thus ‘animal-like’; while women’s sexual being is cultural, spiritual, non-ordinary, unnecessary, controllable, and finally ‘human-like’. Interestingly, the sexual scripts derived from the way they talked about their sexual behaviours are also informed by the six binaries: men tend to take initiative, lead the act, swap into a number of different postures, perform penetration for a period of time, and most importantly bring orgasm to the woman; whereas women have to wait to be initiated, led in sex, caressed, and finally brought to orgasm. Placing back

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the sexual scripts into the binaries, we shall demonstrate that the ‘cultural meaning’ of sex in Taiwanese society is to symbolically transform women’s sexual being from ‘human-like’ to ‘animal-like’. But this is only to lay the background for a more ambitious project: to demonstrate how the transformative nature in sex is paralleled to the logic of marriage in the Chinese kinship system in Taiwan. In conclusion, we shall spell out the epistemological implications of this parallel to the studies of Chinese societies: the relevance of kinship studies to the understanding of Chinese societies.

Methodology The data for this paper are culled from an anthropological fieldwork on pornography use and sex conducted by one of the authors in Taipei. The author lived and interviewed people in Taipei between October 2002 and August 2005. Informants were solicited through snowballing, because it was not always easy to recruit people for research on such a sensitive and private topic. Informants with some experience using pornography were preferred, because it focuses on sex through pornography use. The number of informants who were interviewed in depth is 44, of which 22 are male and 22 are female informants. Informants were mainly ethnic Taiwanese along with a few mainland Chinese and aboriginals, ranging between their twenties and early fifties at the time of the interviews. Half of them were married as of the interviews between 2002 and 2005. But by now, more than half of our informants are married and some are in fact divorced. Interviews were primarily conducted in Mandarin. All of the recorded tapes were transcribed by the author, resulting in three hundred pages of ethnographic data. In this research, we gave extra care to the triangulation of data obtained through interviews. While illuminating, data obtained via interviews entail two problems: it is difficult to make sense of, and to validate, the data. To cope with these, we conducted the research via a network-based fieldwork. This network was based on three key informants who would introduce their friends, colleagues, neighbours and so on to us. That members could be ‘friends’ to these three key persons points to the fact that they must share with the latter something in common such as interests, values, worldview, background and so on. What these three key persons offered is therefore three ‘distinct communities’ in which members are meaningfully related to one another. The interrelatedness among the group thus provided useful contexts against which data could be better made sense of and understood. The network itself can also be used to validate and verify what informants had told us. In addition, the author continued to participate in a wide array of activities with informants after the interviews, providing useful chances to check what they had said. To facilitate our analysis, we have indexed the ethnographic data according to several major themes; two of them which are particularly relevant to this paper are ‘sex’ and ‘sexual behaviour’. Our indexing involves identifying a portion of dialogues that directly or indirectly address the themes. The length of the dialogues varies differently from case to case, ranging from a paragraph, to a few pages. No matter how long the portion of dialogues lasts, it is counted as one entry. From our data, we discovered that 66 and 128 entries of data are indexed as ‘sex’ and ‘sexual behaviour’ respectively. After analysing, comparing, and cross-checking

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these entries, we have identified six pairs of binary oppositions through which our Taiwanese informants ‘talked about’ sex and five imperatives of how they ‘talked about’ their sexual behaviours. We argue that these six pairs of binary oppositions and five imperatives can allow us to reconstruct the configuration of the sexual beings of men and women in Taiwan. It must be stressed that due to the limitation of space, we are unable to present all the relevant data here. This limitation necessarily means a selective presentation of data which best illustrates the themes. To allow readers to join the unfolding exchange and draw their own inferences, we have opted to reproduce portions of field conversations, rather than paraphrase the interview data. In the pages that followed, we shall first examine how Taiwanese informants, men and women alike, ‘talked about’ sex in terms of six pairs of binary oppositions. Sexual Discourses in Taiwan The first notable example of binary opposition is the dichotomy of shengwu benneng (biology) and wenhuade (culture). In describing her first time having sex, Pei-han, the female informant mentioned above, made it clear that she, like many other Taiwanese girls, saw sex as a token of love toward her man and therefore cultural. Researcher: You mentioned that your first sexual experience happened at 16, with your first boyfriend? Can you describe your first sexual experience? Pei-han:

It happened at a Karaoke box [an enclosed cuticle which contains karaoke equipment where people can sing]...and we were sort of drunk...

Researcher: Wow... I see... So you guys were basically prepared for it [sex]? Pei-han:

Um....Not really. I think he might have been just ‘playing around’ at the beginning...he might have thought I was kind of juvenile and so did not matter... But that time he did not succeed [in having sex with me]...

Researcher: Ummm....because you did not want it[sex]? Pei-han:

Coz I felt very painful, just pain and pain...and I said no... It was later, might be one or two weeks later....again in the Karaoke box, we made out.

Researcher: How did you feel? Did you want it? Or simply he wanted it? Pei-han:

I think men would feel they would like to have sex, just like eating when they are hungry...they feel it and so they want it...

Researcher: How about you? Pei-han:

I was scared and terrified at that time...scared that my mom would scold me for doing this. But ... I liked him; I loved him, and then I was willing to give out what I had...though I wonder now whether it was love or not. But at that time, I felt I loved him, and so fine, let’s do it [have sex]. I guess girls tend to see [the first] sex as the manifestation of love.

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One can see that Pei-han gave away her virginity to her boyfriend because she ‘loved’ him and therefore was willing to give all she had. In other words, her desire for sex at that time was hardly biological. Rather it was relational, highly dependent on the partner and thus cultural. By contrast, she told us that her boyfriend had sex with her not because he loved her but because he, like men in general, saw sex as a gratification of his biological needs and therefore he took whoever was available to him sexually. This biologicalcultural dichotomy is even more evident in Chung-yu who is now in his early 30s: Researcher: Do you like having sex or watching pornography in general? Chung-yu: Of course I do... Researcher: Why then? Chung-yu: It [sex] is human nature!!! You won’t ask a man whether he likes eating, but what he likes to eat, right?! The same thing goes for pornography and sex. You better asked me what I like to watch... Researcher: But it is not always the case... some people might not like sex...as far as I learnt from the interviews... Chung-yu: Umm...right! ... That is perhaps true, too...... My [ex]girlfriend is not very keen on sex. And pornography could not incite her desires. I had to create an occasion, you know, a romantic atmosphere before sex. She needed to know that I loved her [in order to have sex]! Here, one can observe that Chung-yu objected to us when we asked him whether he liked watching pornography or having sex in general. He corrected us by saying that we had better ask him what he liked to watch – and by extension, what type of women he felt like having sex with – just as we might ask him what he liked to eat instead of whether he liked eating. To him, pornography use and sex, like the innate desires of hunger, are biological and thus incontestable. However, he also noted that pornography ‘could not’ incite his girlfriend’s desires; instead he had to prepare ‘a romantic atmosphere’ in order to initiate sex with her, because ‘she needed to know that [he] loved her’. In other words, while he saw sex as a biological instinct for men, he nonetheless believed that sex is more ‘relational’ as well as ‘cultural’ for women, because they need to know they are loved in order to feel like having sex. Bearing a resemblance to the biological-cultural dichotomy but not exactly in the same fashion is the pair of the shengtide (physical) vs. the xinling shang (spiritual). For instance, Wen-chien, as mentioned in the beginning of the paper, tells us how sex can be classified into the physical and the spiritual in relation to sexual imaginaries: Researcher: Some men said that they could ejaculate through sexual imagination... Wen-chien: I feel that men do not need to imagine so much as just have the action [intercourse]... Which is the way I feel, I often ask my [ex] husband, I thought that they [men] are by nature [sic], made excited from the physical part. When they look at pornography or Japanese adult videos, they feel like having sex. But I think that

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for women, the excitement comes from their mind, from their imagination. I feel this way. I told him that I don’t really need to have sex: the intercourse, I can feel excited through my imagination... Researcher: You told him so? Wen-chien: Yes, that is why I told him that man is an animal; their excitement is coming from the physical part. Not from the mind, [but] just the physical. I told him that I can feel more sexually gratified if he gives me a warm hug, or caressing touch, than the intercourse. It is a kind of soul communication, through which I feel excited and gratified. But for him, sex is about penetration, ejaculation, and orgasm. Wen-chien’s dialogues strongly oppose the physical and the soul, the excitement coming from the physical part and that coming from the mind. She laments that her exhusband failed to understand that she, as a woman, could find a ‘warm hug’ or a ‘caressing touch’ as sexually satisfying as, and sometimes even more sexually satisfying than vaginal intercourse, because sex, to her ex-husband, is patently physical, summarised by a three-step formula: ‘penetration, ejaculation, and orgasm’. One can observe that sex is neatly partitioned into the physical and the spiritual, with the former focusing on bodily or corporeal satisfaction and the latter on soul communication. The third common pair of binary oppositions is yibande (ordinary) vs. fei yibande (non-ordinary). In describing their childhood, Hsueh-kuai and Ming-chuan, both in their early 30s now, suggested that sex and pornographic materials came into their lives as ‘ordinary’ things. Even now, they watch pornography whenever they have the chance and Hsueh-kuai watches pornography every day. And Kuan-ta who is also in his early 30s now even talks about how sex and pornography are part of the everyday life of Taiwanese men when they go to all-male environments such as wuzhuan (a five-year vocational school which is often single-sex), or military camp: Kuan-ta:

I first indulged in pornography during the fourth year of my wuzhuan. My best classmates and I rented an apartment and had cable installed. We watched sex tapes and discussed sex together. Similarly, when I went to do military service, I again watched pornography and talked about sex with my comrades when we were free – you know, life there was boring. It is like eating, taking shower, or sleeping. Sex is just part of our mundane lives there.

Researcher: Why did you talk about sex or watch pornography only in wuzhuan or the military camp? Kuan-ta:

Because all men like or at least are interested in sex; sex is natural with us [men]. But girls don’t like sex. It is definitely not part of their life. That is why they don’t like watching pornography or talking about sex all the time, like us... haha...

One can observe that Kuan-ta distinguishes between sex as an ordinary life event and sex as a non-ordinary life event, which are viewed as polar opposites with no middle ground. For men, sex is posed as just another part of everyday life. No matter whether in wuzhuan or military camp, men watch pornography and/or talk about sex

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just like eating, taking showers, or sleeping. By contrast, Kuan-ta thought that women do not like talking about sex or watching pornography, because sex is not part of their lives. That is to say, sex is a non-ordinary thing for women. The dichotomisation of sex into the ordinary vs. the non-ordinary is often predicated on another set of binary views on sex: bixude (necessary) vs. fei bixude (unnecessary). For it is only when sex is seen as (un)necessary that it can be in turn portrayed as (non)ordinary. Pei-han, for instance, tells us how sex can be divided into the necessary and the unnecessary. Researcher: Do you enjoy having sex? How does it make you feel? Pei-han:

I think I have a normal response...

Researcher: Normal response? Can you explain a little bit? Pei-han:

I think I am the ‘average’, I can do it but it is also ok if there is no sex...

Researcher: So it means that you don’t really like or enjoy sex? Am I right? Pei-han:

I won’t say I don’t like sex, but I feel that sex is something which I can be ‘with’ or ‘without’ ...

Researcher: I see, ‘with’ or ‘without’! So you won’t have the desires to do it, is it correct? Pei-han:

I guess it should be put this way, men will have the desire, and they need to DIY [do it yourself, i.e. masturbate] when sex or girlfriends are unavailable. But for me, I might feel like having sex if I have a boyfriend. However, if my boyfriend is not around or if I do not have a boyfriend, I might think about it, but then I will forget about it. I won’t try to do anything. I guess, I cannot say I ‘love’ sex, but I like it. This thing [sex], to me and to other women as well, I think, can be ‘with’ or ‘without’.

When asked whether she enjoyed (having) sex, Pei-han replied that sex is not a necessary thing to the effect that it is something which women can be ‘with’ or ‘without’. Interestingly, many other female informants do share this view. Wan-rong, a married woman who is now in her mid-30s, reported that she might have ‘stronger’ desires before her menses but otherwise she does not bother to have sex. Mei-fong, another married woman and a mother in her mid-30s, told us that she might occasionally feel the desire, but generally she is ‘disinterested’ in sex to the degree that she often tries to escape from her ‘horny’ husband. Yet sex is equally portrayed as ‘necessary’ by these women. For instance, Pei-han thought that sex is necessary for men to the effect that they have to masturbate if sex is unavailable. Similarly, while Wan-rong was very critical with the misuse of pornography, which refers to the use of pornography on top of corporeal sex, she nonetheless agreed that if a man does not have a girlfriend and by extension sex, he is therefore eligible to use pornography because ‘his body needs it [sex]’. To talk about sex as necessary vs. unnecessary inevitably brings about another pair of binary opposites: buke kongzhide (uncontrollable) vs. ke kongzhide

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(controllable). Mei-fong, for instance, was surprised by the ‘hypersexuality’ of her husband who often woke up with ‘an erected penis’. As our conversation shows, Mei-fong: I feel that sometimes all I have to do is just get even slightly close to him and he gets very excited as if he had received ‘an electric shock’. He gives me the feeling that he really wants sex. Only a light physical touch can arouse his sexual desires... Researcher: Haha...an electric shock?! So you mean that he has strong desires? Mei-fong: Yes, I thought so. To the degree that it is not within his control! He often wakes up with an erected penis!! [with great exclamation] Researcher: I see, but it is, as far as I know, by no means abnormal... Mei-fong: Ummm... he will try to get closer to you, touch, caress, and kiss you. I feel that he particularly wants it in the morning. But it is not possible to have sex in the morning. Because our kids might wake up – they sleep with us in the same bed. There was one time in the morning, as he tried to touch and kiss me, my smaller daughter woke up, staring at us to see what we were doing! Mei-fong’s exclamation is obviously a result of the understanding to her of sex as ‘controllable’. The constant erect-penis in the morning of her husband and his desires to have sex with her even when their children are by their side invariably suggest to her that he has ‘uncontrollable’ sexual desires. Similarly, Wen-chien complained that men often cannot ‘control’ their desires because ‘their eyes are always staring at women’s breasts’, and that is why she thought that ‘there is no noble man’. Likewise, Wan-rong was obsessively upset with the fact that men failed to control their sexual desires just as women did and resorted to pornography whenever they felt like having sex. She questioned rather angrily why men could not read books or even watch TV programmes instead of watching pornography. All the binary oppositions mentioned above can best be summarised up by what Wen-chien called the dongwu (animal)-renlei (human) dichotomy. For the contrast between biological and cultural, physical and spiritual, ordinary and non-ordinary, necessary and unnecessary, uncontrollable and controllable is precisely the difference traditionally posited between an animal and a human. As Wen-chien noted, animals are laden with instinctive drives and inclinations, lending their sexual desires a brutal power, which must be gratified at all costs and by all means. By contrast, human-beings are more refined, cultured, and educated, and therefore can contain their sexual desires in the right place and at the right time. One can observe that Taiwanese people are much like the ‘structuralists’, talking about sex in terms of six pairs of binary oppositions, as summarised in Table 1: More interestingly, our Taiwanese informants ultimately associate these binary pairs with the contrast between men and women. As we have seen in the dialogues above, half of the binary pairs, that is biological, physical, ordinary, necessary, uncontrollable, and ‘animal-like’, is invariably associated with men, while the other half, that is cultural, spiritual, non-ordinary, unnecessary,

East Asia Table 1 The six binary pairs of sex Biological

vs.

Cultural

Physical

vs.

Spiritual

Ordinary

vs.

Non-ordinary

Necessary

vs.

Unnecessary

Uncontrollable

vs.

Controllable

Animal

vs.

Human

Men

vs.

Women

controllable, and ‘human-like’, is invariably associated with women. Taiwanese people therefore not only talk about sex in terms of a set of reified binary oppositions, but also link these binary pairs with the gender contrasts. That is to say, how they come to perceive sex is not just culturally constructed, but indeed gendered. By this, we mean that ‘sex always remains subject to gender norms’ (Chambers [3], p.47). The Sexual Scripts of Men and Women in Taiwan In what follows, we shall examine how our Taiwanese informants ‘talked about’ their own sexual behaviours when discussing their pornography use and sex life. This examination shows that the sexual script of our male informants is made up of five imperatives. First of all, it is the imperative to initiate sex. As Uncle Te, who is now 55 years old and soon to retire, told us in the following conversations: Researcher: Do you mind talking about your sex life with your wife? Uncle Te:

No problem. You can ask anything you want...

Researcher: Thanks Uncle Te. Can you describe your sex life a bit? I mean, generally speaking, who takes the sexual initiative and so on...my general guess is it is you, am I right? Uncle Te:

Yes. It is me. Maybe we are old-fashioned or out-dated. But we believe that it is always the man who takes the initiative in sex.

Researcher: Why is taking sexual initiation so crucial to you? Uncle Te:

It is because we are men, and we have to take the initiative...

Researcher: Did you wife ever take the initiative in sex? Uncle Te:

Very very rare. I think I can count the number of times she made the initiations in the past thirty years! I think she would feel embarrassed to do so...

Researcher: How did you feel then when your wife made the initiation? Uncle Te:

Umm.....I think, it is ok...but it is a bit weird for me...because we learnt that it is our job....haha.

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The second imperative is to lead the women throughout the sex act. Uncle Te continues to explain his sex with his wife, Uncle Te:

I hope you won’t think we are that kind of da nan ren (literally big man, referring to those buying into the ideology of male supremacy).

Researcher: No. But why would you say so? Uncle Te:

Coz I think it is even more important to lead [her] during sex...

Researcher: You mean leading and guiding the whole sexual procedure? Uncle Te:

Yes, that is right...

Researcher: Would your wife lead you in sex? Uncle Te:

No...never ever...

Researcher: Why? Uncle Te:

She feels embarrassed, maybe. But I think it is just the way it is... no special reason...

Taiwanese men also feel obliged to use a number of sexual postures during sex. As Chun-hong, a 31-year-old single man now, remarks: Researcher: How would you describe your sex with your [ex]girlfriend? Chun-hong: Ummm...it was generally good...because she also enjoyed it... Researcher: What position did you most commonly use? Chun-hong: It was missionary or the side... Researcher: Would you use other positions during sex? Chun-hong: Yes, we did; we often changed into many positions. Researcher: Many? What were they? Chun-hong: Doggie style, sides, standing, sitting and so on.... Researcher: Why so many positions? Chun-hong: Because it is important for me to swap into a number of positions, thereby making her happy and sexually satisfied. I want to take good care of her [in sex]. Researcher: ‘Take good care of her sexually’? Chun-hong: Yeah...it is; it is the male responsibility to take good of her woman sexually. Dialogues with Chun-hong also point to another sexual imperative for Taiwanese men: to perform sex for a certain period of time. As our conversation goes, Researcher: I found your idea of taking care of your woman sexually very interesting!

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Chun-hong: Oh really?! I think it is very common among Taiwanese men...just like we take care of our woman by giving her some money to spend... Researcher: I see. So swapping into a number of different sexual postures is the way you take care of your girlfriend sexually? Chun-hong: Yeah it is. But it is just one of the many ways. I take care of her also through performing sex for a certain period of time...I mean, to go without ejaculation or coming to climax...say 20 minutes to half an hour... Researcher: I see. So you think it is important to swap into a number of positions as well as to perform sex longer. Chun-hong: Yes...pretty much... The final, and perhaps the most important, imperative is to bring their women to orgasm. As Wei-chieh, now a 33-year-old married man and the father of a two-year old son, remarks, Researcher: How is sex with your wife? Wei-chieh: It has been good...but recently just had a son, so we are a bit too busy to have sex. Researcher: So your wife does enjoy sex? Wei-chieh: Yeah, she is ok with sex. Researcher: Does she often orgasm during sex? Wei-chieh: Oh, she comes almost every time... Researcher: But most of my female informants told me that they won’t come every single time. Wei-chieh: Yes, I have heard that too. But I try my best to make my wife orgasm every time. I think it is very important for her to reach orgasm in sex. Researcher: Why is it [making her orgasm] so important to you? Wei-chieh: Because you would feel ‘good’ if you made her come, made her orgasm... Researcher: So you are suggesting that making her orgasm is sort of like massaging your male ego? Wei-chieh: Um....Yes, you might say so.... The sexual script of Taiwanese women is likewise made up of five imperatives: women have to wait to be initiated, to be led in sex, to be caressed, and to be brought to orgasm. For instance, Wan-rong remarks: Researcher: Would you initiate sex by yourself?

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Wan-rong: No!!!! Of course not [in a high pitched tone]. Researcher: Why not then? It is not that uncommon nowadays’...I guess! Wan-rong: I don’t know, but I think that it should be the man who initiates sexual activity...I just think so... Researcher: So you won’t lead your boyfriend during sex... Wan-rong: Of course not. How could I do that? Men should initiate as well as guide throughout the act of sex... Researcher: I see. Wan-rong: I think that we girls should be more restrained in sex; the man should take the active role in sex... Wan-rong might seem conservative, if not submissive, in sex, but most of our other female informants in Taipei shared their beliefs in one way or another. Pei-han, remarks, Researcher: Would you initiate sexual activity with your boyfriend(s)? Pei-han:

No...

Researcher: Why not? Pei-han:

I don’t know...if you ask me...

Researcher: You don’t know why? Why is that? Pei-han:

Um...I just feel that way; that sex is initiated by men and led by men...but not the reverse.

One can see that the sexual scripts of men and women in Taiwan are heavily underlined and informed by the six pairs of binary opposites on sex outlined above. Consider that if the male sex is ‘animal-like’, biological, physical, ordinary, and thus necessary and uncontrollable, it follows that men should actively pursue sex, lead the sex act by taking the initiative and taking charge during the act, swap into a number of positions, and perform penetration for a period of time. If sex is seen as necessary and uncontrollable for men, they should actively look for sex. In a similar vein, if men ‘need’ sex, it is ‘natural’ for them to initiate and guide the sex act. The understanding of male sex as uncontrollable in turn suggests that men might swap into different postures and perform sex longer so that they could be sexually satisfied. Finally, in order to be able to lead and guide the act, men also need to learn the mechanics of sex as early as possible and prepare themselves with other related sexual knowledge. By contrast, if the female sex is ‘human-like’, cultural, spiritual, non-ordinary, and thus unnecessary and controllable, it follows that women should be recipients rather than initiators of sex. By this, it means that women need not actively pursue sex, because sex is simply not a necessary or ordinary thing for them. Given that women do not ‘need’ sex in the first place, there is no need for them to be active in the actual act of sex. On the contrary, women are supposed to be led and guided. As recipients of sex, they also do not need to pursue sexual knowledge or to consume pornography.

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The sexual script for men in Taiwan prescribes that men cannot identify with women who are from the outset sexually aggressive or active. For if women are aggressive in sex from the outset, there is simply no room for men to initiate sex, or to guide the women throughout the act. That is precisely why Chun-hong alongside other male informants does not like the sexually aggressive or experienced women, because he cannot take care of this kind of woman sexually. To hide their fear or justify their inability, our male informants could not but reject them variously as ‘immature’, ‘promiscuous’ or simply ‘cheap’. In line with the same male sexual script, it is equally unacceptable if women remain sexually passive all through sex. For, if women remain sexually disengaged at the end, it is tantamount to the failure of men to follow closely the sexual script: the imperative to bring women to orgasm. The imperative to bring women to orgasm implies that in sex women are symbolically transformed, though temporarily, by men from being passive to active and that at the end of the sex act they are as sexually active and engaged as their male partners. Placing all of this back into the six pairs of dichotomies we have delineated above, one can immediately recognise that sex, to Taiwanese men and women, can be considered as a ritual in which the ‘human’-woman whose sexual being is cultural, spiritual, non-ordinary, and unnecessary is symbolically transformed into an ‘animal’-man whose sexual being is biological, physical, ordinary, and thus necessary. One can see that man attempts to symbolically appropriate one side of the binaries totally within the other, subsuming the ‘human-woman’ in the ‘animalman’, so that at the end only one (i.e. the ‘animal’-man) has independent existence. In the event, the sexual opposition between male and female is ritualistically transcended (Table 2). One might therefore conclude that the discursive meaning of sex in Taiwan amounts to a ritual through which a woman is symbolically transformed from a ‘human’ to an ‘animal’, though temporarily, so that in the end man and woman would be rendered the same kind of sexual beings. This is arguably the core meaning of sex in Taiwan. Interestingly, the transformative nature of sex appears not as an independent cultural phenomenon in Taiwan. As we shall show very shortly, it seems to have a significant parallel with the marriage system in Taiwan. By ‘parallel’, it means that in both sex and marriage women are to be transformed from one kind to another kind. In order to better understand marriage in Taiwan, we now turn to the Chinese kinship system in Taiwan.

Table 2 The discursive meaning of sex in Taiwan Biological

←

Cultural

Physical

←

Spiritual

Ordinary

←

Non-ordinary

Necessary

←

Non-necessary

Uncontrollable

←

Controllable

Animal

←

Human

Men

←

Women

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The Chinese Kinship System in Taiwan: Fang and Jia-zu In his PhD fieldwork in the southern part of Taiwan, Chen Chi-nan [6], a prominent Taiwanese anthropologist, argues that the Chinese family system is underlined by concepts of fang and jia-zu. In local usage, fang refers to the bedroom of a married son and his wife. Metaphorically, fang thus takes on the meaning of the genealogical status of the son vis-à-vis the father ([6], pp.65-6). Jia-zu is a blend of jia and zu. Jia refers to a co-resident, commensal group, while zu is a genealogical notion referring to the sets of agnates and their wives regardless of their functional aspects ([6], p.64). Jia-zu, as a whole, refers to the genealogical status of the father in relation to the son. Central to the fang/jia-zu relationship, according to Chen [6], are four major principles. Firstly, only the son can assume the genealogical status of, and thus become, fang ([6], p.68). Although customs dictate that sons are only addressed as fang after getting married, sons are basically born as fang members ([6], p.117). If there is more than one son, they will be named according to the birth order, such as da-fang (the senior fang), er-fang (the second fang), and so on ([6], p.91). Secondly, while each of the fang lines is united together in the jia-zu under the ideology of filial piety and ancestor worship, each specific father-son filiation is differentiated from other collateral father-son filiations ([6], p.87). The genealogical division of fangs is functionally expressed in the divisions of family properties alongside competitions among brothers and the trifling squabbles among their wives ([6], p.88). Thirdly, the continuity of the fang/jia-zu line, as Chen [6] points out, is the single most important imperative of the Chinese family. The line flows from the father as jia-zu to his son as fang who, once he assumes the status of the father (as jia-zu), in turn passes the line onto his son (as fang), who yet again passes it onto his own son. It is through the successive father-son filiation that the Chinese family attains its eternity. Finally and relatedly, a daughter can never create a fang in her father’s jia-zu. Before marriage, she is a dependent member in her father’s jia-zu; after marriage, she instead becomes a member of her husband’s fang/jia-zu. Even if she marries uxorilocally, she cannot carry on her father’s fang line, nor she is entitled to fang property ([6], p.68). No matter whether she is married out or uxorilocally, she could not worship her father, or be worshipped in the ancestor hall of her father’s jia-zu after death ([6], pp.68-9; p.80). The only way she could only obtain her fang/jia-zu status is through marriage ([6], p.69). One can see that female descendants, no matter married or not, would not be counted as members of their father’s fang/jia-zu ([6], pp.68-9). However, they will be fully absorbed into and become a full member of their husbands’ fang/jia-zu through marriage ([6], p.118). As members of her husband’s fang/jia-zu, they automatically acquire property rights from their husbands and, will be in charge of the fang’s properties if their husbands die ([6], p.118). They will also be worshipped after death in the ancestral hall by the descendants of their husbands’ fang. As Lin [14] also points out, in her field site in southern Taiwan once the bride bids farewell to her ancestors in the ritual of baigongma (literally, worshipping ancestors), she is no longer under the protection of her ancestors, and neither can her ancestors expect

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her to worship them anymore. In other words, she is totally detached from her father’s fang/jia-zu, and becomes a full member of her husband’s fang. By contrast, male descendants, no matter whether they are married or not, will be automatically placed in the ancestral hall after death and worshipped by the descendants of the family, because they are born as fang members. However, unmarried daughters who die prematurely will not enjoy the same treatment. Being banned from entering the ancestral hall of their fathers’ fang/jia-zu, these unmarried daughters will become wandering ghosts, which is seen as the worst fate befallen Chinese; these unmarried daughters can only obtain worship through ‘ghost marriage’ (Chen [6], pp.69-70). One can see that women, no matter alive or dead, can only obtain their fang membership and hence the status of social being through marriage. Marriage is arguably the ultimate goal of every Taiwanese woman. However, marriage is crucial not only to Taiwanese women, but also to Taiwanese men. As mentioned above, the continuity of the fang/jia-zu line is the single most important imperative in the Chinese kinship system in Taiwan. Every Taiwanese man strives to have his own son(s) so that his fang line can be extended. But in order to have his own son(s), a Taiwanese man cannot just find a woman, but a wife, that is, he has to turn her into a member of his family through marriage, so that their child/children can extend his fang line. From this, one can infer the cultural meaning of marriage in Taiwan. Fundamentally, Taiwanese marriage is about transforming a woman from being a non-fang member to a fang member, so that in the end she will be rendered the same kind of social being as her husband. It is only then will she become a full social being, enjoying property rights and ancestral worship as her husband does. In other words, Taiwanese marriage is to transform women from being a woman’s kind to a man’s kind. We will be at once reminded that this cultural logic of Taiwanese marriage bears a striking parallel with that of the discourses on sex and sexual behaviours outlined above. Just as a Taiwanese man transforms a woman of another family into a member of his own fang/jia-zu by way of marriage, he transforms her in sex from a ‘human’-woman into an ‘animal’-man, who will, like himself, enjoy sex. Just as he would like to turn a woman into the same social being as him by way of marriage, he too wishes to transform her into the same sexual being as him in sex. It must be stressed that we do not mean that the every content of the six pairs of binary opposition parallels with the marriage system. What is parallel between them is the transformation logic. As we have shown above, the kinship system of fang/jiazu dictates that only the male is born as fang, and that the female can only obtain her social status of fang from the husband by way of marriage. In the discourses of sex and sexual behaviours we have identified, we can also see that the ultimate logic of sex in Taiwan is to transform a woman from a ‘human’ to an ‘animal’ sexual being so that at the end the man and woman will become the same. In these two social arenas (marriage, and sex) in Taiwanese life, women are after all transformed from one kind to another kind, so in the end they are rendered the same kind as their male counterparts. It is in this sense that we are convinced that the core cultural meaning of sex and sexual behaviours are in fact parallel to, and thus better understood by, those of marriages in the kinship system in Taiwan.

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Conclusion In this article, we demonstrated that Taiwanese people tended to talk about sex in terms of six pairs of binary opposition: biological vs. cultural, physical vs. spiritual, ordinary vs. non-ordinary, necessary vs. unnecessary, uncontrollable vs. controllable, and finally ‘animal-like’ vs. ‘human-like’ and that these six binaries contributed to the configuration of sexual beings of Taiwanese. Taiwanese informants paralleled the binaries with the gender contrasts, such that men’s sexual being is biological, physical, ordinary, necessary, uncontrollable and animal-like, whereas women’s sexual being is cultural, spiritual, non-ordinary, unnecessary, controllable and human-like. The six binaries were then shown to have underlined and informed the sexual scripts of both men and women in Taiwan which we extrapolated from the way informants talked about their sexual behaviours. As we have shown, Taiwanese men are expected to initiate sex, to guide their women throughout the sex act, to change into several sexual postures, to perform sex for a certain period of time and to bring their women to orgasm. The sexual script of women, on the contrary, prescribed that Taiwanese women should wait to be initiated, to be led, to be caressed, and to be brought to orgasm. As we have seen, the sexual scripts of Taiwanese men and women are emblematic of the active-male/passive-female model. Yet they are not only about leading and being led, but also about symbolically transforming the female partner so that she will enjoy sex as much as her male partner. In other words, the meaning of sex in Taiwan is to symbolically transform a ‘human-woman’ into an ‘animal-man’, who at the end of sex would be as sexually active and engaged as their male counterparts. We concluded that the discursive meaning of sex in Taiwan is tantamount to a ritual process through which a woman’s sexual being is temporarily transformed from ‘human-like’ to ‘animal-like’. However, this transformative nature of sex was not an independent cultural phenomenon. The main thrust of this paper is to demonstrate that there is a significant parallel between the discursive meaning of sex and that of marriage in the Chinese kinship system in Taiwan. In the Taiwanese marriage system, men attempted to turn women into members of their fang/jia-zu by way of marriage, so that in the end women would become the same social being as them. This logic paralleled significantly with the gendered discourses on sex and sexual behaviours in Taiwan. Just as Taiwanese men attempt to turn women into members of their fang/jia-zu through marriage, they attempt to symbolically transform their women’s sexual being from ‘human-like’ to ‘animal-like’, so that in the end they become the same kind. The significant parallel between the cultural meaning of sex and that of marriages in Chinese kinship system in Taiwan identified here implies that to Chinese, kinship is closely related to other important social domains such as sex. In fact, Chen Chi-nan has already pointed out in his unpublished PhD dissertation that the genealogical paradigm of Chinese kinship he identified through fang/jia-zu is the operative principle in governing ‘a man’s or woman’s kinship status, property ownership, domestic organization, agnatic adoption, uxorilocal marriage, lineage formation and segmentation in rural Taiwan’ (Chen [6], p.ii). What Chen argues about the relationship between kinship and other social domains in Taiwanese society is similar to the ontology of tribal societies described by Sahlins that ‘[s]ociety is ordered by a single consistent

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system of relationships, having the properties we recognize as “kinship”, which is deployed or mapped onto various planes of social action’ (Sahlins [18], p.6). This ontology of Chinese societies has an important epistemological implication: we conclude kinship studies are always relevant to the understanding of Chinese societies.

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