While overtly focused on China, contemporary nationalist discourse in Mongolia is in fact mostly concerned with Mongolian women. It is women who are policed and threatened and the nationalist battle is waged over the terrain of female sexuality. In addition to the rumours described above, other stories circulate in which Mongolian women are seen to play a more proactive role. Many of my interlocutors claimed that young Mongolian women are always found in the vicinity of construction sites where Chinese men work. Although these workers are shabbily dressed and of rural extraction, they are imagined, on account of their Chineseness, to have considerable financial resources, and therefore to be attractive prospects for (at least some) Mongolian women. Mongolian sex workers are also believed to seek out rich Chinese customers, potentially falling pregnant and giving birth to Chinese infants. Therefore, although Chinese men (and women) are largely considered by Mongols to be physically unattractive, Mongolian women are rumoured to be interested in Chinese men — or at least pliable to their overtures — because of their actual or imagined financial resources. These women tend to be described as either greedy or naive, prioritising their own aims over those of the community and, therefore, requiring intervention by patriotic males.
Through the idiom of nationalism and ethnic preservation other types of anxieties, namely sexual and financial, are also channelled. Male-specific anxieties relating to sexual and financial competitiveness find themselves cloaked in a nationalist narrative of resistance. As noted above, these narratives convey the idea of a besieged country, requiring constant alertness and caution for its survival. For ultra-nationalist men, sexual relations outside the group are nothing less than treason, deserving wartime-style punishment.
Of course, ultra-nationalists such as the members of Dayaar Mongol or Hoh Mongol (another nationalist group) are a minority. The vast majority of Mongols disagree with both their methods and their violence. However, many do subscribe to the notion that Mongolia is under direct threat from China and therefore that association, sexual or otherwise, with Chinese runs counter to national interests. As such, while most Mongols were appalled by the video where a woman’s hair was shorn, very few deem sexual relations with the Chinese to be acceptable. Indeed, an article published in the tabloid Mash Nuuts (Top secret) argued that while such practices may seem brutal and violent (hargis, hertsgii), the fault does not rest with the nationalists but with Mongolian ‘girls’ who have ‘over-enjoyed’ their freedom (Mash Nuuts 2007).
In such a context, sexual behaviour is ideologically loaded. This predominantly concerns female sexuality, as we have seen, but not exclusively. While male sexuality is less problematic to the extent that any potential progeny will be a Mongol, non-normative male sexualities also feature highly in nationalist discourse. Gay men in particular have been targeted and attacked in recent years. For this group, the issue has not been the fraternising with Chinese men but rather the perceived departure from Mongolian ideals of manhood. Homosexuality in Mongolia, as in many other societies, tends to be associated with femininity or at least with failed masculinity. This assumption has been reinforced in recent years by the high visibility of several transgender individuals, notably Gambush, a famous TV personality frequently referred to as ‘Hermaphrodite Gambush’ (manin Gambush). Homosexuality is seen to be incompatible with Mongolian ideals of masculinity which in the post-socialist period have been fused to the cult of Genghis Khan. For many of my interlocutors, including gay-identified men, homosexuality is regarded as a recent development, introduced into Mongolia by Mongols having worked or studied abroad. This incompatibility, this reluctance to harness and sublimate libidinal interests for the collective good, and — importantly for Mongolia’s survival, non-participation in the nation’s reproductive enterprise — means that gay men are structurally equivalent to ‘erring’ women and that they are perceived as ‘sexual dissidents’. For reasons of space and because I discussed issues specific to Mongolian gay men elsewhere (Bille 2010), this chapter is concerned primarily with the experience of women. However it is important to bear in mind that nationalist discourse is not only sexist, it is also strongly heteronormative, and that one group’s resistance strategies may also collude with the dominant majority in oppressing another group. During interviews or informal conversations, it is thus not unusual for women to insist on men’s adherence to culturally established gender roles, or for gay-identified men to claim that Mongolian women should not date foreigners.
For women, resistance to the dominant discourse is also complicated by the fact that female oppression and emancipation are defined in very narrow terms. As a result elements found outside ‘emancipation’ as it is discursively delineated tend to remain invisible. Many of my interlocutors drew parallels with emblematic practices of exploitation such as foot binding in the context of China or their perceptions of the restricted professional opportunities available to Japanese or Korean women. Wide participation in the professional realm was given as evidence of contemporary emancipation but fundamental assumptions about male and female roles were rarely challenged. As Schick (1990) has eloquently argued, in the socialist literature of the Soviet Union and its satellites photographs of emancipated women, just like photographs of a tractor, an industrial complex, or a new railroad, ‘merely symbolized yet another one of men’s achievements’. The trope of the ‘emancipated woman’ was simply one in a set of images representing progress and modernity.
While it is true that women currently play a vital role at most levels of Mongolian society, men have not become more involved in what has traditionally been the ‘female’ sphere, such as child-rearing and domestic chores. As a result, ‘emancipation’ often translates into a double burden for women (Ashwin 2000). In the post-socialist period, the situation has been compounded further by overconsumption of alcohol and domestic violence, the latter affecting as many as a third of all households according to several studies. Although resources are being allocated to address the problem, a certain tolerance of marital violence as ‘traditional’ and a cultural reluctance to air ‘family issues’ in public are proving a difficult combination to overcome (Benwell 2006).
It is assumed that Mongolian women desire to marry, have children and work to help support the household financially. Departure from these norms is not seen as liberatory. On the contrary, women who do not adhere to these expectations are seen as selfish actors, and as examples of failed womanhood as it is currently conceptualised in Mongolia. In other words, a woman is ‘free’ to pursue her own ambitions as long as these dovetail with nationalist narratives. A further reason why it remains difficult for many Mongolian women to distance themselves from these rules is that many assumptions are deeply internalised and culturally embedded. Numerous taboos are associated with infertile women who are perceived as incomplete or failures. In traditional Mongolian culture, a lack of children was never a choice but a curse, and current research (Lacaze 2012a) suggests that this largely remains so. In a study of post-Soviet society, Larissa Remennick (1993: 53—54) writes that abortion among women is seen as a routine, albeit unpleasant, procedure, while contraception is viewed with suspicion as something ‘unnatural’. The number of abortions she cites, an average of two to three for a sexually active woman, resonate in Mongolia where a large number of abortions are reported (Johnston 2009), at over 20 per thousand pregnancies, with many more likely to be carried out unofficially, especially prior to 1989 when abortion was legalised (Rossabi 2005: 152).