Behind the Red Door:Sex in China by Burger Richard

Author:Burger, Richard. [Burger, Richard.]
Language: eng
Format: mobi

Homosexuality

No country has as rich and unusual a history of homosexuality as China. For centuries, China was more tolerant of same-sex love than nearly any other society, rivaled perhaps only by Ancient Greece and Rome. References to same-sex love have permeated Chinese literature since the Tang Dynasty more than 1,000 years ago. Throughout most of its 5,000-year history until the end of the nineteenth century, China has not only tolerated male samesex love but also celebrated it. As far back as the Warring States (841 BC - 221 BC), when China’s history first began to be recorded by trustworthy scribes, stories tell of giving the gift of a young man to ruling lords. Nearly all of ancient China can be called a “golden age” of same-sex love although some eras were more tolerant than others.

It is important to draw a distinction between homosexuality in ancient China and homosexuality as perceived in the West. Throughout China’s imperial dynasties, men who practiced same-sex love were not considered deviants, even if their partner was a boy in his early teens. Homosexuality was not a lifestyle choice or an identity or something that could be explained psychologically as it is in the West; it was a behavior that was, at most times in imperial China, considered natural. There was not even a word for “homosexuality,” as it was not seen as a person’s identity, but simply as an accepted behavior. Those who practiced it were usually married with families and, it is probably safe to say, heterosexual, or at the most bisexual. The nobility, the literati and wealthier merchants were at certain times in China’s history expected to have young male lovers, though the relationship was quite different than the one they shared with their wife.

Arelationship with a younger man was not so much a matter of love but of status and power. For men of privilege, same-sex love was something to be practiced with boys from lower rungs of society, and the boy would invariably play the passive role. It was the wealthier man or aristocrat who held the power. This is not to say that these relationships did not blossom into long-term love affairs. Often they did. But usually, as the boy grew older, the patron would discard him and seek a younger man. The term “homosexuality” in regard to most Chinese practitioners of male same-sex love is really something of a misnomer, as their sexual life was by no means limited to boys. They had their heterosexual family complete with all the Confucian rituals, and they sought young men for entertainment outside their house.

The phenomenon of same-sex love in China can seem surprising in a nation whose secular religion is Confucianism, which is based on morality, restraint and the belief that procreation is the primary reason for sex. Yet Confucianism never teaches that homosexuality is a sin. In general, as long as a man lived up to his social obligation of getting married and having children, sexual contact outside the marriage, at least for men, was not considered relevant.

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