This study of the regulation of sexuality in the Qing dynasty explores
the social context for sexual behavior criminalized by the state,
arguing that the eighteenth century in China was a time of profound
change in sexual matters. During this time, the basic organizing
principle for state regulation of sexuality shifted away from status,
under which members of different groups had long been held to distinct
standards of familial and sexual morality. In its place, a new regime of
gender mandated a uniform standard of sexual morality and criminal
liability across status boundaries--all people were expected to conform
to gender roles defined in terms of marriage.
This shift in the regulation of sexuality, manifested in official
treatment of charges of adultery, rape, sodomy, widow chastity, and
prostitution, represented the imperial state's efforts to cope with
disturbing social and demographic changes. Anachronistic status
categories were discarded to accommodate a more fluid social structure,
and the state initiated new efforts to enforce rigid gender roles and
thus to shore up the peasant family against a swelling underclass of
single, rogue males outside the family system. These men were demonized
as sexual predators who threatened the chaste wives and daughters (and
the young sons) of respectable households, and a flood of new
legislation targeted them for suppression.
In addition to presenting official and judicial actions regarding
sexuality, the book tells the story of people excluded from accepted
patterns of marriage and household who bonded with each other in
unorthodox ways (combining sexual union with resource pooling and
fictive kinship) to satisfy a range of human needs. This previously
invisible dimension of Qing social practice is brought into sharp focus
by the testimony, gleaned from local and central court archives, of such
marginalized people as peasants, laborers, and beggars.
