風流浪子的男友：晚明到清末的同性戀與男性氣質

by Giovanni Vitiello, 魏濁安, 王晴鋒 (Translator)

一部探索明清時代中國男同性戀歷史的漢學研究巨作

《風流浪子的男友》深入研究晚明至清末三百年間的中國文學，揭示中華帝國晚期的男同性戀和同性戀關係複雜而迷人的歷史。魏濁安特別借鑑經常被忽視的豔情小說作品，就同性之愛與慾對中國男性氣質演變的重要性進行了坦率的探索。

Genres: History, Nonfiction

388 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2011

Reviews

[Andre · Rating 1 out of 5]

Quote this book out of context and it makes late Ming and Qing China look totally different from how it was according to this.

I had misgivings about what he wrote from the start and my skepticism turned out to be well-founded as according to this book "normative homosexual relations during this period involved one of the partners being a teenager, as young as twelve and as old as twenty, ideally sixteen sui - roughly fifteen years old."
And "a prominent sexual inclination toward boys, it is often implied, is a natural trait of one's personality. Such a "weakness" is constitutive of a person from the very early stages of his development...Occasionally we also encounter the notion that a propensity for boys even precedes birth and is therefore defined as a "congenital weakness" (taili bing)"
But if this “homosexuality” was as accepted as the author claims, why call it a "weakness"? And why is it directed towards boys and not men?
Furthermore, he states very early in the book that "apart from the relatively rare cases of a unidirectional disposition toward boys, we mostly encounter characters who are attracted to women yet have sex with boys out of erotic curiosity or for reasons of expediency." Later the book basically says that there is boy fucking because there are no women, cases were gayness is thought to be due to men being unable to satisfy women; or that you basically switch to boys once women no longer satisfy you.

Maybe he tries to somehow save his opinion by stating that "it is important to emphasize that what all these seventeenth-century authors object to is not homosexual desire or sex with boys per se, but rather its fashionable status among the literati elite-that is, homoeroticism as a cultural phenomenon."
But not only is it odd that they object to it in any way if it is accepted, but why does he use the word boy constantly if this is allegedly about love between men? And is it really a desire if it is thought to be a substitute for straight sex?
He doesn't even use the term pedophelia when quotes a case where an 8-year-old child is raped, he refers to it as homosexuality, even called rape “making love” several times. This confusion of words was so bad I wondered whether he is intentionally lying here.

He writes about how sources cited by him have a tendency to suspend the verdict on which beauty and sexuality is objectively superior. And I wondered, whether he actually suggests that it is not right to suggest that the sexual desire for an adult woman is superior to that for boys.
Furthermore there is "wealth of expressions describing the desire of men for boys but there is no specific expression to convey the opposite" and "most fictional sources appear to deem the notion of boys' desire and pleasure as almost an oxymoron" and most fiction only shows anal intercourse and only rarely kissing and blow jobs. In fact a kiss is mentioned here for the first time only after 100 pages and the first is connected to a murder plot and the second to getting someone intoxicated and is only an attempted kiss. And just like with the fellatio from a prior page, this is the last time it is mentioned here in text. The difference to modern day Chinese gay fiction could not be bigger.
And "As for the pleasure deriving from sodomy, it is deemed as a rule unilateral rather than mutual...it is the privilege of men, while boys are thought of merely enduring it...and pomographic fiction is full of references to experienced male prostitutes who artfully moan to pretend they are enjoying being penetrated." But in today's acceptable pornography, mutality of pleasure is a must.
And even most of the very few cases that have mutual pleasure between the two are still coded in accordance to class, age and gender.

It is not that what would be acceptable today couldn't have happened back then, but the author himself stated that while "literary representations of class-wise transgressive homoerotic relations do transpire, positions in sex between men are otherwise supposed to be fixed and accurately reflect class stations as a matter of fact homosexual desire and pleasure are privileges of ("decent") men, which ("vile") boys cannot even afford and suspicion that a man might hire a male prostitute to be penetrated by him is something that hardly occurs in the Chinese sources.
This book does have some mentioning of relationships of men that are both “decent” and not belong to the “vile” classes, but those examples are not the norm.
And the author admits that the argument that a social stigma attached to men who received anal intercourse is mostly confirmed by fictional sources and that the egalitarian bonds between peers presented in some sources, just like being a receptive partner, are attached to social stigma.
It took him until the “masterwork The Red Chamber Dream” to get to an example of egalitarian rather than hierarchical bonds (but between two effeminate boys) and while he seems to consider it a bad thing that Baoyu's lust is almost rid of sexual overtones, in my mind that is preferable to the constant fucking of boys and rape in the majority of this book.

I read this book because I came once again across claims that prior to European colonialism China was allegedly so tolerant and accepting of homosexuality and had a sort of gay marriage in the Fujian province. But, according to this book it was called “sworn brothers” and a sort of “betrothal” that was sanctioned by the younger one's parents who received betrothal gifts, treated the older as a “son-in-law” who would pay for the expenses of the younger, including his straight wedding. And not only does that still sound like prostitution (which the author admits) the only positive thing compared to what came before is that here the “love” could continue after the younger was 30 (the book doesn't state how long such “sworn brothers” usually lasted).
And this relationship is not much different from what is considered acceptable for the times, because for the boy the bond involves assuming a female-like, sexually receptive role. The book even mentions how "sworn younger brother" (qidi) was clearly associated with "boy-girl,” as an equivalent of "sing-sang boy" (xiaochang), the Beijing term for male prostitutes.
And while the man's age may vary, boyhood is one of the necessary requirements for the ideal male entertainer (or boyfriend, for that matter). Those who work as male prostitutes (zuo xiaoguan de) are 14 or 15 years old; thought to correspond to the peak of a boy's beauty, which would bloom for about three more years, before the decline would begin. In fact, in one story the male prostitutes organize the guild into three categories: Top, 13-14 years old, beginning to grow facial hair; Middle, 15-16 years old, wearing their hair down on the shoulders; Bottom, 17-18 years old, wearing their hair tucked up in a chignon.
And read this: "in China, although certainly a bearded man, or one with any other type of pronounced body hair, would not be considered desirable by any standards, the problem being inextricably tied with that of age...When it comes to the aesthetic issue of a boy's beauty, the question of age camouflage is far more commonly related to that of the abuse of makeup

There is so much here that havs strong pedophilic undertones (even 12 year old lovers and catamites are mentioned) or have the man fuck boys (who hide their penises) because there are no women available. Call me crazy but if you have sex with someone and that one has to "block and hide" the penis with "a silk cloth tied around their waists" I don’t think that maleness is appealing to you.
And the author seriously never seems to get it. He claims a story from “Forgotten Stories of Catamites” is "concerned with the competition between male and female prostitution and, by extension, between male and female beauty, and homo- and heterosexuality." But considered that all the male prostitutes are referred to as boys while the female ones are all referred to as women, I think "between pedophilia and heterosexuality" fits better." And the tendency of the author to say “men” when the texts that he cites/states clearly say“boy” is just irresponsible.
And if this wasn't bad enough in suggesting a culture of partial pedophelia and sexual exploitation if not downright rape (which could be compensated by offering sex with a woman), we get told that "a man of means” could rely on personal "studio boys" (shutong).
He constantly speaks of male beauty and male charms but I could not find any instance where it was clear that this beauty and charm referred to adult males and not teenage boys (in their cases it was abundantly clear). And keep in mind, not late teens, early to midteens. So fucking boys was common and love between men was not.
And it just gets sooo much worse:
"Such a structure confirms a basic assumption in late imperial erotic ideology, one that is already in place in the earliest sources on male homosexuality dating back to the pre-imperial period-the fundamental equivalence, that is, not only between male and female beauty and the attendant male sexualities, but also between a man's love for a woman and that for a boy."

And he does mention the literary icon of male love Dong Xian, the favorite of the Han Emperor Ai. And I think it is telling that the author never points out or even mentions some details in regard to Dong Xian:
Emperor Ai was only 4 years older than 19 year old Dong. So if these two were actually a couple/sexually involved, that means they would have been really unusual, if not transgressive, when compared to what this book consideres normal for late imperial "homoeroticism". They are of similar age, both of the "decent" classes and none underage.

I think he has a tendency to ignore viewpoins that don’t fit his own. You see, according to some Brook person "patronizing boy prostitutes in the late Ming" has something to do with decadence but the author things that "other ways to apprehends this phenomenon are plausible." But are they?
And maybe this Kong Silang is one of the catamite characters who were truly in love with their patrons, but it is telling how the author does not consider other reasons for this loyalty.
And when he states another author named Volpp claims that marginality characterizes the phenomenon of male-male sexuality in 17th-century China he tries to deny it. She states that there is no "widespread tolerance" of sex between men or fashionable status during that period, she detects a consistent ambiguity in the discourse on male-male relations, and discursive intensification might point to increasing policing and repression. He claims however, that the notion expressed by these direct observers and critics that male prostitution, and thus male homosexuality, was widespread and not just restricted to a particular geographic area, perfectly tallies with the fact that homoerotic fictional narratives are set all over the empire. But in my mind, the author did not proof that homosexuality (except fucking teenage boys) was actually accepted.
He mentions what look like romantic relationships between peers and claims that this shows that male homosexuality in the late Ming period is widely spread across the social spectrum. Apart from the fact that this would have been the case anyway simply due to statistics, but what he presented for the most in this book was fucking boys in their early to mid-teens, not sex between men! And damn it took him long to state right away that someone of e.g. 26 years would not be coveted by men as it would make no sense in terms of the notion of “homosexual desire” in late imperial China. Usually he ignores this element. And it never seems to occur to him that the constant criticism of "only" rape/craze of boys is due to the critics being unable to imagine anything else.
He even cites cases that state that noneffeminate male beauty is considered a paradoxy and as being predicated an the sheer absurdity of desiring a male who is no longer a teenager, whose beard and stocky constitution mark him as hopelessly masculine rather than desirably androgynous.
And the reason for engaging in sex can be dubious as well. According to him the first male libertine in the book The Plum in the Golden Vase was adopting a "homoerotic sensibility" because of his "desire to rise in the ranks of the elite and meet its aesthetic and cultural standards."

Credit were credit is due, he doesn't act as if homophobia or critical stances against what he calls homosexuality didn't exist back then (like when homosexuality tends to be attributed to servants and villains, and keep in mind that even actors are considered vile people) but he still seems to continue to downplay it. Or uses an odd definition of homosexuality as some cases are only homosexual actions but no respective desire.
Unlike this Maram Epstein, the author does not subscribe to the notion that at the beginning of the twentieth century there was a discourse on sexuality especially unfavorable to male homosexuality under the influence of the "colonial West." He rightly points out that the novel “Humble Words” already had an "exceptionally virulent antihomosexual stance," even by how he defines that word.
However, according to him the "normalization of opposite-sex romantic love was achieved in part through the abjection of same-sex love, which decontextualized from China's long-standing homosocial and homoerotic practices and reclassified as a newly identified psychological perversion that was at once naive, unnatural, abnormal, and depraved."
He keeps acting as if this "new" China and its morals were so utterly new and that only the cross-dressing was a remnant of the "old". But anti-homosexual stances (even to what he covers) had already been there ever since the late Ming and so was a critic of a too feminine China. From my perspective the European influence at most strengthened what was already there.
So when he stated hat "The rediscovery of the record of homosexuality in premodern China, one hopes, will increase the historical awareness and inspire the political action of today." I was thinking:
So China will go back to ostracizing consenting sex between adult men and praising sex of adult men with teenage boys? It doesn't seem to occur to this author that what he praised here has barely anything in common with modern day gay culture.

Now, despite my low rating, I would still recommend this book. You get some good insights into the times and topics it covered. However, do not simply believe what he says. Do not trust the author when he speaks of homosexuality and love between men. Always stay sceptical with this.

[Kai-Te Lin · Rating 4 out of 5]

真的是大開眼界