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Vol 12 No 1 - April 2007

The regulation of Chinese women's sexuality on the internet
Anne S Y Cheung, Associate Professor, Department of Law, University of Hong Kong

The internet has brought forth unprecedented freedom for many . One new found freedom is sexual liberation. While one’s sexual desires could be unleashed on the web, they could also be equally constrained. This article examines the fate of two Chinese women and how their sexualities were being regulated and tamed. Despite one being a victim of blatant privacy violations and the other an unrepentant sexual rebel, both women were condemned and censored by the mass. This article aims to analyse the emerging regulatory framework, social practices and moral norms in the ongoing socio-technological revolution, the ambivalent role of the obscenity law and their relations with women’s sexuality. It argues that the internet is a controlling medium that reinforces patriarchal norms in society but it is also a new arena for the female agents to assert new forms of representation.  

This is the secret of really vulgar and of pornographical people … sex is dirt and dirt is sex, and sexual excitement becomes a playing with dirt, and any sign of sex in a woman becomes a show of her dirt … And this is the source of all pornography. D H Lawrence

Full text versions of articles are available from LexisNexis online.

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