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2 Sexology As argued in the previous chapter, Western sexological understandings of male same-sex relations could gain a footing in China during the rst half of the twentieth century because they shared comparable conceptual contradictions with indigenous Chinese thoughts on the issue. This chapter discusses the content of different kinds of Western sexological writings on homosexuality; and how the introduction of this new knowledge into China shifted attention toward sexual relations between men of equal social status. It also explores how the motivations of Chinese intellectuals who introduced the concept of “homosexuality” in China were connected to the social and political context of colonial modernity.188 The Western term “homosexuality” was translated as tongxing ai (΃ֲෲ) or tongxing lian’ai (΃ֲᛞෲ) in Chinese, and could simultaneously mean “samesex love” and “same-sex sex(uality)” at the same time. This term appeared in sexual education manuals and major journals on women, education, sex, and love, as well as in urban tabloid newspapers from the 1910s to the 1940s. Some of these publications employed sexological concepts such as “perversion” and “disease” as shown in Tze-lan Sang’s study;189 others simply used tongxing’ai or tongxing lian’ai as an alternative catch-all term for the wide range of indigenous Chinese expressions for same-sex relations discussed in the previous chapter. From the 1920s to the earlier 1930s, male same-sex relations became a subject of serious debate in educational journals and books among Chinese intellectuals interested in Western sexological ideas. For commercial writers, the issue became an entertaining topic to discuss in urban tabloid newspapers. In this chapter, I rst discuss a 1930 print debate between two Chinese intellectuals, Yang Youtian (ฦᄯʨ) and Hu Qiuyuan (߈ޭࡈ, 1910–2004). This debate encapsulates the major forms of Western knowledge on same-sex relations that circulated in the two decades prior to its publication in China. Both of them subscribed to social Darwinist thinking about human evolution and considered homosexuality an important step in the evolutionary process. Obsession 42 However, Yang deemed homosexuality a sign of atavism while Hu believed that same-sex love would prevail in future forms of human society. The central difference between these two writers lies in their interpretation of the Western concept of homosexuality. Yang emphasized the dimension of physical sex, whereas Hu highlighted the aspect of emotional love. Their debate suggests that this interpretive difference was caused as much by the confused usage of the term “love” in Western sexological writing as by its Chinese translation ai and lian’ai, in which the meaning of love was often conated with that of sex.190 The second part of this chapter analyzes a 1932 tabloid discussion of questions raised by the new concept of homosexuality. This discussion suggests that while old ideas continued to shape understandings of the new vocabulary, a change in the conceptualization of male same-sex relations did occur in China during this period. While old understandings tended to formulate male samesex relations mainly as class and gendered hierarchical relationships modeled on those between emperors and male favorites or patrons and actors, the new idea of homosexuality brought attention to sex between male peers, such as schoolboys, soldiers, and friends of similar age and equal social status. This discussion also reveals the difference between tabloid writers, who composed recreational articles with an entertaining tone on the issue of male same-sex relations, and the May Fourth intellectuals, who wrote serious essays to introduce Western sexology. The last section of this chapter turns to a 1946 sexological treatie, which reinterpreted Chinese classical records on same-sex relations, by Pan Guangdan (ᅾ̭ͮ), a prominent advocate of Western theories of eugenics and sexology in modern China. Pan’s work exemplies how modern sexological knowledge could be applied to the ancient Chinese history of male same-sex relations, and represents the continuing efforts of Chinese intellectuals to introduce Western scientic ideas in order to modernize indigenous Chinese thought during the rst half of the twentieth century. Through a discussion of these writings, this chapter argues that Chinese intellectuals, inuenced by social Darwinist evolutionary thinking, were concerned with the possiblity of Chinese people becoming extinct. They introduced Western sexological understandings of male same-sex relations in order to reform society and strengthen the nation. Whereas in the West, sexological knowledge pathologized homosexuality as socially deviant, thus reducing it to an individual psychological problem, in China sexology as a form of modern knowledge was used more to diagnose social and national...

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