Sex as a ritual: Transforming women's sexual being from 'human-like' to 'animal-like' in Taiwan

Abstract

This paper aims to explicate the cultural meaning of sex in the Chinese society of Taiwan with reference to marriage in the Chinese kinship system in Taiwan. Through an examination of how Taiwanese informants talk about sex and their sexual behaviours, we demonstrate that their discourse on sex involves not only the notion of active-male/passive-female but also a symbolic transformation of the 'human-like' woman into an 'animal-like' man. This is arguably the core meaning of sex in Taiwan: sex is a ritual through which women's sexual beings are symbolically transformed from 'human-like' into 'animal-like'. As we shall show, the transformative nature of sex has a significant parallel with the logic of marriage in Chinese kinship system in Taiwan. In other words, there is a significant parallel between marriage in kinship system and sexual discourses in Taiwan. In conclusion, we shall spell out the epistemological implications of this parallel to the studies of Chinese societies: the relevance of kinship studies to the understanding of Chinese societies. © 2010 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.