Porno kings, stiff bananas and cyber sex ed

What was your reaction when Chen Hui, the 28 year old boss of several major Chinese porn sites, was sentenced to life in prison recently? Our favorite sexologist, Li Yinhe (李银河) wrote about this in her blog, where she said that the sentence was way too heavy, that China was stuck in the sexual "dark ages," and that porn itself is a form a speech, rather than a sexual "action" (such as prostitution), and that if there is a market for porn, that it ought to be available. We think she means that if the porn isn't available to kids, but is something that willing adults want to spend their money on, that's perfectly fine. She also raises the question of why this one "porn king" got a life sentence while tons of others are still out there doing business. And doesn't this set a bad legal precedent -- will the judicial system continue to mete out life sentences (since the only thing worse than life in prison is capital punishment, and in most cases you can't get that for being a porn king)?

Whenever Li Yinhe says anything there's always a whole bunch of counter-arguments from various experts who say that Li Yinhe doesn't understand the law, etc. Li argued, for example, that most Western nations don't have "smut laws" of the same sort that China does. We're not sure exactly what they are talking about. As far as we know, iin the US porn is a legitimate business. You just have to make sure that you are delivering the content to the willing adult consumer, and not to his seven year old nephew surfing the internet after school.

Li Yinhe makes one other point worth considering: she says that there is a "class bias" in all of this -- that is, you have to consider porno as entertainment which, at least in China, is if not targeted at least consumed a whole lot by the lower classes. She no doubt has in mind the single migrant worker that has to do something after splurging and spending all his money on a lousy hand-job. This argument came in a blog entry, and we don't know what proof or evidence she has, if any, of that assertion. She also doesn't tackle the issue, at least not in the blog, of how porn relates to the exploitation of women.

Human sexuality is a strange thing. After this article prompted deep reflections on what it is that gets people off, we read another article about 18 year-old girl that refuses to eat bananas after seeing a condom display at a local store. (It's hard-hitting reportage like this that makes staying in China so worthwhile.) The girl was with her mother in some shopping area when they came across this condom ad, where she probably saw a long, stiff "banana" that had been peeled and showed the "fruit" inside. Her mother saw her looking at this and quickly took her away. A few days later, the mother packed the daughter a banana for lunch and the girl said, "Ugh, that's disgusting." This from a girl who's loved eating bananas for as long as they could remember.

How do you deal with sexuality? Try as you can to stuff it into the dark corners of the bedroom and the massage parlors, it just keeps rearing its ugly head and bursting repeatedly into your life at the most inopportune times and places (like when shopping with your daughter).

Because of what happened to this girl, there will be a little less fellatio in the world. Now consider that in light of China's f*cked up gender ratio and a potential crackdown on porno, and you get the picture. Sex and sexuality cause confusion and frustration for individuals and thus for society, and we can't envision that ever changing. Maybe that's why the No. 15 Middle School in Changsha, Hunan Province, has opened its own sexual education website. Can you hear the collective sigh of relief among the parents in Changsha? Now they don't have give that "birds and bees" talk: "No, you can't get pregnant if a man blows his load in your mouth! Goddamnit! Read that website more closely before you pester me with those inane questions!"