Beginning at the Millennium: An Autoethnography on Body, Intimacy and Sexuality

My hometown is in the south of mainland China, a humid, hot, small town built along a river. In the early days of reform and opening up, the area experienced a brief period of prosperity due to its papermaking and shipping industries. Since the new century, changing social relations and social contradictions have become increasingly apparent. After the bubble gradually dissipates, what is left is a kind of depression that is hesitant to talk about. I was born in the millennium and grew up in the downward trend of the times. During my turbulent adolescence, I witnessed the process of the promised future gradually turning into an illusion. The people in my hometown are hard-working, simple, and at the same time quite conservative. There are many such towns in China, which have given birth to generations of people. Perhaps one thing they have in common is that for children who grow up in such an environment, the process of gender, identity and socialization is somewhat difficult. .

When I was in elementary school when my gender consciousness was enlightened, I was both eager and confused about my female identity. Like many little girls, I have made some silly underground attempts, such as secretly trying on my mother's high heels and almost falling over; another example is imagining the days when I can wear lipstick when I grow up, and have a high degree of appreciation for the effects of makeup. expect. Sometimes I'm disappointed because I don't like Barbie dolls but like racing cars, which is a bit strange, and because my mother never let me wear bottoms above my knees, which she finds too indecent - now I can understand her limitations. sex and the habits and disciplines placed within patriarchal structures, but at the time, all I could realize was that if I were a boy, I could wear casual shorts without having to fight with my mother about it. A very classic concept in Chinese culture is the "doctrine of the mean" emphasized in the "Book of Changes". The so-called "restrain oneself and return to propriety, achieve harmony" and "doctrine of the mean is a virtue, and it is the most complete". I have always felt that it is very applicable to Women: You need to be feminine, but not too feminine. There is a scale of judgment that spans over the female body. On the left side of the scale is the "tomboy" who is unloved, and on the right side is the romantic "slut." Women need to pursue a safe zone that can balance the two throughout their lives. Here, you may suppress yourself and give up your rights, but you will cater to society and reduce bullying.

On the one hand, sex education is close to zero in mainland China (especially in less developed provinces). Therefore, the exploration of body and sexuality, for me, is a process of crossing a river by feeling for the stones. The river is winding and fast, and active or passive injuries are common. While the tradition of sexual repression continues, and because this is human instinct and the origin of human nature, sex begins to exist anywhere except sex. Pornographic elements are mixed in all kinds of daily life, such as dining gloves shaped like condom packaging, which bring about the pleasure and bad taste brought by breaking taboos, and bring abnormal guidance to teenagers in their sexual budding and mature stages. Film and television literary works always tend to describe middle school as a pure utopia, but based on my actual life experience, sexual humiliation and violation are not uncommon in every middle school. The problem with most gender crimes is that no one teaches girls how to physically protect themselves, and no one teaches boys how to deal with their sexual urges. When I was young, I was sexually assaulted twice, once by an acquaintance and once by a stranger in a public place. Self-healing is long-lasting and lasts a lifetime. I once opened up about this experience to a previous boyfriend, and his first reaction was to doubt the veracity of the story. I lament that understanding between the sexes is so difficult, empathy is so rare, and the growth of the "first sex" can be strong to the point of arrogance in the carefully woven social framework dominated by men throughout the ages.

On the other hand, the education of intimate relationships has obvious gender differentiation characteristics. Byron mentioned, "Man's love is something different from man's life, but woman's love is woman's entire existence." The word love has completely different meanings for men and women, which is the cause of serious misunderstandings and even divisions between them (Simone de Beauvoir, 1972). Long-standing romantic narratives and love myths have provided girls with a script for intimate relationships: love should be filled with flowers and chocolates, sweet words and last forever. Religions, social thinkers, writers, and mass media all worked together to create a romantic legend with many followers. Disney fairy tales are a typical symbol. The princess's self-realization needs to be completed through the prince's redemption. The success of romantic love heralds the success of a woman. Society encourages every woman to imagine herself as a princess, but the princess must be beautiful and slender. Her beauty and beauty are a letter of recommendation for entering the world of love. After entering, her ability to move freely is tested: she must be strong enough to devote herself to the family, And he has to be weak enough not to cover up the light of the house husband - under the romantic sugar coating, is the essence of being the "other". For men, subjectivity is preserved in the autocratic sovereignty of love, masculinity is taught to be insensitive, strong and arbitrary, and men's excessive emotional expression and self-disclosure are regarded as weakness. There is a huge gap in misaligned cultivation, so decoding information in intimate relationships requires crossing a structural strait.

To be honest, after entering university, the open and inclusive atmosphere and the humanities and social sciences major I studied changed me a lot. The basic education I experienced in mainland China was strictly exam-oriented. The most obvious features were single evaluation standards and serious competitive thinking. The report card is like a judgment book. Students need to base their self-worth on scores and learn to suppress their unique personalities and chaotic thoughts. "Social Darwinism" permeates every high school, where individual identity and background are forgotten, and intimacy and sex become taboos. Now, more than four years after graduating from high school, I am finally able to honestly face my body and identity, and respect my own needs as a human being. In the continuous construction of society, gender is fluid. In fact, human beings themselves are also fluid. The meaning of everything created from the human mind exists and can only exist as long as the human mind exists. "Melancholic Tropics" is the enlightenment book that got me interested in social sciences. The fact is, as it is written in the book, "Yet I exist. I certainly do not exist as an individual, because in this respect, I am just A bet and a battlefield, a bet and a battlefield that is always in danger, are nothing but a society, a society composed of billions of nerve cells in my head, and the robot of my body. The stakes and battlefields of struggle.”

From an anthropological perspective, human beings are biological and social complexes, shaped by natural attributes and acquired cultural experiences. And I was often shaped during the long journey of social migration. "Migration" has been an important keyword in my growth so far. Because of my further studies, I left my hometown early and went to several other distant cities. Now it seems that the whole process of migration, breathing, resting and wandering, makes me feel more and more the value of self-identity and the impact of modern civilization on people. I began to learn to reflect on and embrace my gender and identity. I think a soft and powerful heart can give people a sense of belonging to home. Helen Macdonald wrote in "Flight at Dusk", "Home can be carried with you, it is not just a fixed place. Perhaps it was the birds who imparted this idea to me, or they brought me here." In the wild, on a clear, cool, cloudless autumn afternoon, I once witnessed a row of peregrine falcons crossing the sky. Their high-pitched, slightly hoarse calls, flying diagonally through the pouring daylight, struck me as a distant resemblance.