Sexuality and Expression of self Identities in Chinese MSM

Your way, Your own exploration

Professor Pan Suiming: President Institute of Sexuality and Gender, Remin University of China

1.    MSM, to be conspicuous or get conspicuous?

In the 21st century China, the existence of MSM is getting more and more conspicuous. Probably, it is that MSM is pushed to be conspicuous by social movement, rather than MSM appears to be conspicuous intentionally. I have been the lecturer on “Sexual Sociology” in the Renmin University since 1985. At that time, the topic as “Homosexuality” was discussed in only one session. Students even proposed to skip the session quite often by claiming that “None of us is gay!”. While, in recent two or three years, when people come to me for a speech, I will ask them “On which topic? Homosexuality?”. “How could you know that”, they are surprised by my reaction. In effect, I just want to know the reason “Why is Homosexuality, instead of other topics? We may also find this tendency in social research area. More and more articles on Homosexuality are presented in our annual academic conference. For example, more than half of the papers are of this topic this year.

It is an inevitable phase in the MSM development that the MSM becomes conspicuous, since every county in the World experiences the same process. To a great extend, this is due to the AIDS threat to the MSM. AIDS could be used by some people as a spiritual counterforce to MSM. In USA, gay HIV positives are the first to be reported among all those HIV contaminated. Quite soon, USA conservatism regarded “Homosexuality” as something evil. The AIDS became one of their main arguments against MSM. Consequently, MSM is forced to fight against the threat vis-à-vis. This gives MSM a further development.

It is the same story in China. For some social members, AIDS arrives at a right timing-it is “Just in time!," as said in the Chinese proverb “the rain for the drought!." The AIDS is an obligatory! The reasoning is: “Social problems linked with “sex” is not well controlled in China. AIDS is the most powerful weapon to fight against the “sex revolution” and the “homosexuality”! It is the necessity of Politics! But, I will say: it is a pan politicalization of social sex issue! Put it in another way, although MSM exists along with the human society as a choice of life, it became conspicuous as a “social problem” at the beginning of the 21st century in China because of the appearance of AIDS. And the “AIDS issue” is a result issue from the China domestic and foreign politics game-play.①

I hold no doubts that the actual moderate “Homosexuality” movement is the outcome of my MSM friends braveness. Nothing could be attained without their courage. Yet, what we should study is that: in this movement, what kind of effect that our society exercises? For the MSM information circulation between the MSM and the society, or within MSM, does the society function as the filter or the modeler? How the society filters the information and through which mechanism? What kind of the social environment and mass emotion facilitate this filtration? Or, let’s view it from the other angle, whether the MSM tries to cater for or challenge the social needs intentionally or unintentionally? Which mechanism is hiding behind? My answer will be: the actual moderate “homosexuality” movement is a result of the both social forces. I should say I did not do any research on this topic. But I would like to raise the question. I hope that neither the MSM nor the non-MSM will attribute the actual Homosexuality movement only to the “curiosity” or the “self-fabrication”. We do need to advance our study in this area.

2. Sex Knowledge, Sexologist or Individual experience?

In 1885, an Austrian doctor Mr. Kraft-Ebin published a book entitled . Since then, Sexology is formally regarded as a science. From 1920s to the mid of 1980s, two attempts of introducing Sexology into China could be found (Unfortunately, the first attempt ended in vain). But, till the beginning of 21st century, you might easily find various kinds of “sex knowledge” in publishing and internet as the avalanche. The 10-year-ago so called “taboo” now becomes a “hot topic” today!

Where does all these “sex knowledge” come from? They are all proclaimed as “authentic research result”, or at least, it is said that they are issued from the expert. On the contrary, all individual experiences or descriptions, no matter how profound they could be, are regarded as “aberration”, which is far away from “knowledge”.

This is a fundamental issue, since it is closely related to issues as “What are the knowledge and the science?”, “Who can possess the knowledge and the science?”, and “What is the use of the knowledge and the science?”

During the passive modernization process of China, the cultivated will agree that this question has been settled once and for ever. It is known that the knowledge and the science are issued from the expert, only experts possess the knowledge and the science, and the knowledge and the science are used to educate the “ignorant”. Probably, it is not a big mistake to understand this way and it is the case when we are talking about mathematics of physics. But, if we would like to address the “Sex”, something, which implicates all feelings of human beings, which could arouse the emotion from the recess of one’s heart, and which is the most memorable and most valued till the end of one’s life, we have all reasons to question: All that I have experienced and felt, will those experts could really get the same feeling exactly as I do? There is no proving that experts are more knowledgeable while I am ignorant, let alone I must follow their instructions.

It is not about the clear-cut between natural science and human science. It is about the distinction between human beings and the things. Only if that I am regarded as a human beings, all knowledge linked with me, must comprise of my subjective feelings and experiences. While if it is obligatory to take an “objective” study on me, as if I were a things. The research will only be viewed as the research of “Veterinary”.

 Under this “scientific superstition” influence, almost all the present knowledge that we get from the “Homosexuality” research is base on the behavior analysis of “Guinea Pigs of sociology”. The study runs under the experimenter’s observation, definition and interpretation with the homosexual people as the “Guinea Pigs of sociology”. Nobody knows the true feelings of the “Guinea Pigs of sociology”.

This is the inevitable limit in the biological research. But now, we apply this methodology as “authentic” to the study on human individuals, who possess their egos and who can express themselves! As the consequence, we are obliged to follow those “scientific verdicts”, a wrong deed called by a good name as “education”! The superpower of sex knowledge and the superpower of social word-system are set up this way and the social inequality easily gain profit from it.

We must confess that the individual experience should have the priority in all research linked with human beings. The traditional “knowledge and science” is but one of the parts in the social power structure. This is the principle of pose-modernism. As for individual, everybody should be clear about what principles we should follow as the behavior guidance and what is just the frame of reference? Is it the so called “science” defined by others, or is it one’s own apperception? Put it in common words: what is our purpose of being alive? Is it for the joviality of our body and soul, or is it just to follow others’ instructions?

Giving a typical example, during 1980s, the lyric of the pop song named “Following your own feelings” helped young people to find their “egos”. But nowadays, the lyric becomes a mock. People of today think little about: whether to follow the feeling in the daily sexual lives or to learn the “sex gymnastics” from the textbook? The question is: To have sex, is it a sex activity or a sex violation if we do not follow our feelings? Or we might have no our own feelings at all!

Today’s human science puts much more focus on “individual experience”. Even the medical science nowadays emphasizes the new medical pattern as “Psychology-Behavior-Society”. In another words, researcher should try his best to fully understand the feelings of the individual in the research, and then base his analysis upon it. It does not mean that the researcher will take whatever description generated by individual experiment participants. It means that the researcher should at least make a comparison between his analysis and the individual’s descriptions and check it. Then, the researcher must find the reason of the non-accords and the behind reasons. From this, we can see that the epistemology and the methodology of the post-modernism are not a kind of “topple over” but for the purpose of “advancement”. If you go against this methodology, all your critiques or comments will be only “gossips in the streets” and your analysis will be only at the primary level.

Things are always easier to be said than to be done. It is an issue not of methodology but of standpoint. Given that the research is carried out on a one hundred percent “objectiveness” basis, take the MSM as a pure object, say a bottle, and try to analysis his or her risks, you will get nothing. The researcher should keep in mind that: his research “object” is human beings, not a bottle! Let’s take it as an analogy: it is a waste of time to do AIDS intervention to the suicide. Your advice as “you are on the edge of getting AIDS” is of no help to him. How could those diseases prevent the suicide from killing himself? He is an autonomous individual! He has his own feelings, his own choice. Your effort will be inefficient or even run into the contrary, if you do not take his feelings as the prerequisite in your research.

This is the same for the MSM issue. In case that we do our analysis blindly and do AIDS indigestion without trying to understand the feelings of the MSM beforehand, we might violate the “law”, the law of the academic research and the law of behavior and conduct.

3.    Can we study ourselves?

In recent years, I keep on saying to people, who invite me for speeches, that “The homosexual produces a plenty of works on Homosexuality, for examples: books, films and act. You should go to them for speeches in person”. While, they respond me as “We prefer your speech because of its objectiveness.” Their implication is that studies done by MSM are not objective.

This is related to another big issue in the epistemology. It is about a mistake committed by “imitation of natural science” and a result of passive modernization of Chinese people.

For the natural science, it is fatal to be objective or unobjective. The researcher could neither plug something into the test during the experiment nor add his personal subjective opinions into the final report. Unlikely, the research object in the human science is human beings, instead of things. Especially the research is run basing on the “man to man” pattern not on the “machine to man” pattern. The researcher is also an individual in our society and is inevitably influenced by the society. No matter how hard and how intentionally he tries to eliminate these influences, his own feelings and opinions will definitely affect the study, in which the researcher makes analysis on other individuals. The so called “objectiveness” will not be saved. Put it in academic jargon: “There is no pure neutrality of the researcher’s value view”.

“Under controllable condition, to be repeatable and to be experimentative” are three necessities for natural science research. The research result is regarded as “objective” and “scientific” only if the study could satisfy these three necessities at one time. For example: The conclusion as “Water boils at 100 degree centigrade” is subject to these two controllable conditions as “Under one normal barometric unit pressure and purified water”. No matter whomever the experimenter is and if the experimenter runs the experiment in true, not by reasoning, he will get the same result under these conditions.

While, the human science could satisfy probably none of these conditions. First of all, the human world could be not taken as the experiment object, nor could an individual. Secondly, all behaviors of human beings are not repeatable, because people are in the process of growth. Finally, no researcher could control the social and historical conditions of human world.

We will commit a big epistemology mistake if we try to force the human science into the natural science methodology.

It is the same for the MSM issue. Put aside the morals, ethics and laws constraints, can we really satisfy the “controllable condition” by closing the MSM in the laboratory and testing on them? Will the MSM repeat their behavior in the same manner to all the observers, so that the repeatable necessity could be respected? Finally, can experiments be carried out on MSM human beings?

That is my reasoning why non MSM researchers will not definitely be “objective” than MSM researchers when the research on MSM is run. Not only because that MSM experiment object is human beings, but also because that the researcher is in his or herself not the machine. You will have as much concerns on that the study done by MSM researcher might be something modified as on that the study done by non MSM researcher might be something uglified. In addition, whether there exists an objective criterion between this “beautification” and “uglification”?

A serious human science researcher holds the belief of “no imitation of natural science”, let alone the “copy and paste” attitude. Intentionally he tries his best to eliminate the subjectiveness and all those unreasonable analysis in his study. What is more, in his works, he will differentiate the personal feelings and expressions of the MSM research object from his own ideas and opinions. He will definitely not force his own opinions onto the MSM research object and will definitely not allege his own opinions as “true, objective, and scientific”.

Due to historical reasons, Chinese people are inclined to “force the human science into the methodology of the natural science. We were emerged in the propaganda of “objective rules”, “scientific truth” and etc since our childhood. This makes us believe that these “scientific truth” really controls the human world, our society, and even every individual, who are alive like you and me. So, we are inclined to verify the “objective and unobjective”, “scientific and non-scientific”. We even do not realize that these terms should not be applied in the human science study.

As the consequence, “Whether to force the human science into the natural science methodology or not” is the only criteria of judgment in MSM research. It is an issue of academic ability and capability of thought, not of sex orientation.

4.Value of this book

In general, this book follows the above mentioned viewpoints at a great extend. And this gives me a motivation to write such a long preface.

In this social survey report, Mr. Tong Ge collected a great amount of MSM information and materials, which are rarely be seen for most the Chinese, even to some MSM. This report is the only one with such a profoundness and details among the Chinese publishing that I have read. Its profoundness and details are unprecedented and far beyond the imagination!

What I appreciate more in this book are:

First of all, this book presents us the MSM people’s personal feelings and their own apperceptions, rather than a so called “objective description” of “What on earth they are doing?”. In other words MSM could express themselves at their wishes. This is a hard job and quite valuable. A lot of researchers, including me have the kind intention to “make manifestation for their good”, to “draw them to be objective”, or even try to “conclude their experiences and feelings”. This runs against the principle of “Individual feelings have the priority” and we assume still the traditional methodology in our analysis. I am delighted to find efforts have been made in this book. I wish to share this book with its readers. It is not simply an issue of “loyalty to the original records”, but an issue of researcher’s study principle: You prefer to talk or let talk.

Secondly, in the eye of those who “klow” the science, some of the individual expressions in the book might be nonsense or contradictory to the scientific common sense. They may rank call this book as “a book of heresy”. Please go to the 2nd part “Sex knowledge, Sexologist or Individual experience?” of this preface for the answer. The ever lasting human history has proven and will prove that: the substance un-known by the expert does exist in our lives; and there is no substance well studied by expert but does not exist in our lives. The expert could make mistakes, but not the life.

Finally, by reading between the words and lines in the information assortment in this book, readers could find (if they are not only read for “broaden their knowings”) : How could the personal feelings, individual apperceptions, and subjective description be expressed in different families, social conditions, growing stages and choice mechanism, and to whom they are expressed. What is more important is that: by reading through this book, how these individual feelings are circulated, harmonized and sustained among different sexual relationships and between (among) tow (or more) individuals. This is the complementary mechanism and development mechanism of human relationship! This is the milestone on which the knowledge and science on “Human Beings” should be founded! This book could advance its analysis towards this direction.

Whereas, I would like to appreciate Mr. Tong Ge and the the Beijing Gender Health Education Institute (BGHEI). They provide us such a valuable individual expression of MSM people, as well as the spiritual enrichment for advanced research on “Sex” and even on “Human beings”.