Socialist Sex

The discussion of sex, Chinese and Western scholarship suggests, is emblematic of the seemingly absolute distinction between the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) and the subsequent post-Mao/economic reform period. During the Maoist Cultural Revolution, when politics was in command, to discuss any aspect of personal life, romantic relationships, or sex was considered bourgeois and hence taboo. Throughout the more recent decades, however, sex-how to do it, with whom it is appropriate, at what age it is acceptable-has exploded as one of the major topics of public debate and is featured as the subject of fiction, films, newspaper and magazine articles, and scholarly research. Personal testimonies and memoirs, filled during the Maoist years with chronicles of political consciousness and struggle, have become more reflective about their authors' romantic and sexual histories. This shift has produced, ironically, a sexing of the Cultural Revolution-an insertion of sexual discussion, practice, and preoccupation into the history of a period long presumed to have been dominated by political concerns.