James Farrer
Why youth and sexuality?
The advent of ‘youth’ as a recognised life stage between childhood and full adulthood has been accompanied in many societies by radical changes in sexual culture, involving such sexual innovations such as ‘dating’ and ‘hooking up’ and an informalisation of sexual mores (Bailey 1988; Wouters 1987). China is no exception. Defining youth (qingnian) as those aged 15 to 29 years old, the Chinese party-state has emphasised educating youth as political and economic actors, while viewing their sexual impulses as a dangerous distraction (Xi 2004: 79—80; Evans 1997: 75—81). Like Western youth, however, Chinese youth have often set their own agenda with regard to sexuality rather than simply following the party line.
In general, youth in modern societies can be described as a period of ‘emerging adulthood’ in which young people explore identities, life options, leisure activities and relationships, collectively creating new cultural forms which can be described as youth culture (Arnett 2004: 15). A central aspect of modern youth sexual culture has been the increasing separation of sexuality from marriage, courtship or even long-term relationships. For young women in industrial societies, youth sexual culture has provided opportunities for challenging patriarchal norms of compulsory marriage, premarital chastity, and heteronormativity. At the same time, we should not simply valorise the sexual activities of youth as inherently liberal or liberating. In China, as in other societies, many youth support the sexual and gendered status quo, or even react fiercely against behaviour they see as crossing a moral line (Farrer 2007).
This chapter describes the youth sexual culture that has developed in mainland China, exploring the claim that there has been a ‘sexual revolution’ in youth sexuality (Jankowiak and Moore 2012; Pan 2006; Zhang 2012). Given that nearly all mainland Chinese people marry by age 40, youth sexuality in China has been largely assumed to refer to heterosexual ‘premarital sex’ (hunqian xing), though in reality it also includes same-sex behaviour and non — partnered sexual expression, as discussed below. This chapter identifies the sexual revolution of the 1990s as a key turning point, but locates the roots of contemporary youth sexual culture in earlier decades.