Routledge Culture, Society, Business in East Asia Series. Abingdon, OX; New York: Routledge, 2017. xiii, 223 pp. (Tables, figure.) US$170.00, cloth. ISBN 978-0-415-81033-3.
With rapid economic and sociocultural changes, post-reform China has witnessed transformations of gender relations and sexual norms. While a plethora of literature has documented the changing dating landscape in China, little is known about the private domain of young people’s dating lives, when romance and intimacy encounter disagreements and conflicts. In Gender, Dating and Violence in Urban China, Xiying Wang delves into the experiences of courtship and romance of a diverse group of young urbanites in Beijing to uncover various forms of dating violence in China. By exploring the topic of dating violence, the book vividly reveals the changing gender roles and sexual ideals, as well as the enduring gender inequality in the intimate dating relations of young urbanites. Wang frames the topic with discussions of state policy, market forces, and sociocultural transformations in China.
Based on interviews and focus groups conducted over a decade, the book first presents the hierarchical dating landscape among young single people in Beijing. Taking an intersectionality approach, Wang reveals the ways in which state policy, market forces, cultural meanings, and racial construction have shaped young people’s dating experiences. First, the state household registration system has created a dating hierarchy in which the right to Beijing residence status may be a critical factor in the choice of a dating partner. Meanwhile, market forces that differentiate young people’s socioeconomic status and the lasting gendered ideal for women’s beauty and youth and men’s success and wealth have further stratified the dating market. State household registration policy and market forces have pushed rural migrants into the margins of the urban dating landscape as their low socioeconomic status renders them undesirable for urbanites. Wang also documents a few cases of international dating and reveals the Chinese perception of racial hierarchy that penetrates into the dating scene. The hierarchal dating landscape fosters power struggles within dating relationships and may lead to violent behaviours when power negotiations fail.
The book follows with a nuanced discussion of the changing gender dynamics in the dating market and their impact on dating violence. Wang proposes to study both physical violence and psychological violence, such as emotional abuse and manipulation, to better understand dating violence, and finds that psychological aggression has become predominant among violent behaviours in young people’s dating lives. Challenging the stereotypical image of “abusive men and abused women,” Wang introduces a new dating mode of the “sassy girl” and “tender boy.” Unlike the traditional ideal of virtuous wife and good mother for a woman, sassy girls are aggressive, willful, and ambitious. Wang argues that the popularity of the sassy girl image is a response to the rise of girl power occurring in China and the West. The image of tender boys, who extend tenderness and warmth to their girlfriends and accept their willfulness and aggression, redefines masculinity in China, and on a practical level, Wang argues, could be a successful strategy to win a woman’s heart. However, despite the emergence of the new dating mode, the expectation for women to be submissive in dating relations persists and may result in violence against women when a woman’s perception of gender equality clashes with her boyfriend’s expectation for her obedience.
The book continues to discuss dating violence by examining the uneasy, yet very important, topic of sexual coercion and virginity loss. It reveals a shocking finding that many young women’s first experiences of sex contain elements of coercion, although most of the coercive behaviours are considered minor. Wang tackles the puzzling paradox of young women’s willfulness and aggressiveness to their male partners in public and their experiences of sexual coercion in private. Wang argues that despite their “sassy girl” image in public, traditional ideals of femininity that define a woman’s passivity and receptiveness to her male partner’s sexual desire and advances still dominate young people’s sexual lives. Wang also reveals young women’s “time-based and stage-based subjectivity” (139) in regard to virginity loss. Young women continue to be gatekeepers of their virginity, due to persisting societal expectations regarding a woman’s virginity at marriage. However, after unwanted virginity loss, they are more willing to accept their sexual desire and identify themselves as sexual agents. Wang argues that the persistence of the virginity complex and young women’s experiences of sexual coercion demonstrate that the so-called “sexual revolution” is far from being finished. Instead, gender inequality and sexual double standards continue to have a significant impact on young people’s intimate relations.
Delving into different forms of violence among a diverse group of young people, the book brings to light an important, yet not fully explored, topic of dating violence in urban China. While young urban women’s rising power in their intimate relations in the public eyes presents a promising picture for women’s status in China, their experiences of dating violence in private reveal the continuing patriarchal ideals in the most intimate domain of their lives.
Lihong Shi
Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, USA