The youth sexual revolution did not end in the 2000s but changed in form and focus as some of the ‘bold’ practices of the 1990s became taken-for-granted features of sexual life for a new generation. Chinese youth are fond of naming generations by the decade of birth; for example those born in the 1980s are ‘post-80s’ (baling hou). The post-80s (and up-coming post-90s) youth were distinguished from the sexual revolutionaries of the post-70s generation in several ways. First of all, a high proportion of youth born after 1980 were singletons, offspring of the one-child policy. Starting out their lives as ‘little emperors and empresses’, they grew up into individualistic young adults supported by highly indulgent families but facing a competitive academic environment (Fong 2004). To many observers, they appeared not only more self-centred or individualistic, but also less adventurous, or more risk averse, than the post-70s generation who proceeded them (see Cameron et al. 2013).
If the sexual revolution of the 1990s first played itself out in the collective spaces of nightlife, the ongoing sexual revolution of the post-80s generation played itself out in the much more anonymous, anomic and diverse spaces of the Internet. The earliest prominent example of the Internet-based sexual revolution was the blogger Mu Zimei. Mu Zimei, the pen name of Li Li, a Guangzhou magazine editor, was herself born in the late 1970s, but she reached a new generation of Chinese youth by using the new medium of the Internet in 2003 to post a diary of her numerous love affairs on the new blogging site Blogcn. com. For a short time in 2004 the ‘Mu Zimei phenomenon’ was the most talked-about topic on the Chinese Internet. Her diary was reposted on countless sites with thousands of comments from ordinary ‘netizens’ (wangmin) appearing on bulletin boards, some praising her daring lifestyle but far more criticising her lack of moral standards (Farrer 2007).
Mu Zimei described the act of writing as an accessory to her self-explorations through sex itself, a form of ‘writing through the body’. Many of her entries bragged about her violations of conventional ideals oflove and romance. The ability to separate sex from emotional entanglements was a central focus of her writing. Li Li told a New York Times reporter, ‘I do not oppose love, but I oppose loyalty; if love has to be based on loyalty, I will not choose love’ (Yardley 2003). For her, sex without love or loyalty was a positive achievement, a bold challenge to the romantic discourse legitimating women’s sexual actions as expressions of love and commitment (Farrer 2007).
Mu Zimei was simply the first of what would become a torrent of women and men exposing their sexual lives in various ways on the Internet, desensitising the public to sexual imagery and discourse. Within a few years of the ‘Mu Zimei phenomenon’, very few would be surprised or even all that curious about a young woman’s numerous lovers. Sexual stories rarely became Internet sensations unless they involved some exotic subject matter such as a police chief reportedly employing twin sisters as mistresses, corrupt politicians with reportedly hundreds of lovers, or an official found to be juggling four wives and ten children (Osnos 2012). More productively, the Internet fostered a more pluralistic youth sexual culture, including lively discussions of homosexuality and non-mainstream sexual practices.
For youth, the Internet became the primary purveyor of sexualised entertainment, information and opportunities for sexual socialising. Among respondents to a 2010 survey of 14—17 year — olds, 65 per cent of males and 67 per cent of females said that they had searched for sex-related texts or pictures on the Internet. And 12.4 per cent of males and 7 per cent of females reported that they had used a cellphone to find a sex partner or access a sexual advertisement (Pan and Huang 2012).
One aspect of youth sexual culture that seemed clearly shaped by online culture was the growing awareness of same-sex desire, the concept of homosexuality, and gay (tongzhi) and lesbian (laid) subcultures within China (see Martin and also Tang in this volume). As late as the 1990s most Chinese youth, even those who might identify as homosexual, had almost no access to materials about homosexual desire and culture and viewed homosexuality as a form of disease or perversion (biantai). Gay men often reported happening by pure chance upon the occluded urban ‘fishing spots’ where men desiring men could meet. In contrast, gay men and lesbians interviewed in the 2000s identified the Internet as a ready source of information on gay community life and personal stories of same-sex desire (Sun et al 2006; Kong 2010 163—64).
Newfound access to online information also made predominantly heterosexual youth more aware of and accepting of homosexual behaviours. Although in the same 2010 survey cited above, 63 per cent of 14—17 year-old males and 72 per cent of females felt that they ‘did not understand the meaning of homosexuality’, the numbers dropped to 43 per cent and 50 percent respectively among 18—29 year-olds. And despite this reported lack of sufficient knowledge, the majority (66 per cent of 18—29 year-old males and 57 per cent of females) felt that homosexuals ‘should be equal’. In terms of same-sex behaviours, Chinese youth reported a consistent though minority interest in same-sex sexual encounters (see Table 10.1).
Given that only 15.4 per cent of the males and 11.9 per cent of the females in the same survey reported an experience of heterosexual intercourse, the numbers reporting same-sex sexual intercourse are not particularly low for this population of 14—17 year-olds. This survey and others like it were also themselves part of the information that was becoming available to Chinese youth on the Internet. Therefore youth, even those in small towns, now had relatively easy access to information on sexuality that would have been scarce in decades past.