In all of my years writing, I never had the opportunity to type S-e-x S-c-a-n-d-a-l into a lead or headline. Now I honestly can and did--with only a touch of tongue-to-cheek clucking--because the story broke into the mainstream Chinese press and, for even this kind of 'sexy story,' received a lot of unexpected and unusual attention. The first article below, which appeared yesterday on the front page of the printed edition of China Daily, involves, in various areas, some of my journalism students.
Below that, you will find an articlewritten forWOWby one of its founders, editors and special contributors, Li Mu, a.k.a. Lianne Li. Between the China Daily piece, and Ms. Li's reporting, which appears here as a guest contribution from WOW and Lianne, I believe you can get the overveiw of an issue that frankly for me is an absurdist time-warping from the American 50's. That, in its larger view, may be worth chewing on if one is inclined towards matters of contemporary anthropology.
Here is the China Daily version of the story so far:
Sex, lies and surveys: Point is, is there a point?
Zhou Liming 2005-12-15 06:04
Media obsession with female students' chastity, or the lack of it, has moved up a notch with a student paper at a top Beijing university refuting a report on the high rate of sexual activity.
The survey was conducted in response to an online claim that only a small minority of female students at Beijing Foreign Studies University (Beiwai) were unfamiliar with sex.
"I feel this is unfair. Female students as a group have been the target of a demonization campaign," said He Min, a junior majoring in journalism, who spoke on the condition that her real name not be revealed.
Chinese media, especially the tabloids, seem to be fixated on the private lives of female college students.
There are numerous reports of college girls moonlighting in houses of ill repute, with some putting their number very high.
A posting titled "The night life of a Beiwai girl," which has been making the rounds on the Internet, claims to be a first-person account of a "san pei" (escort) girl in the city's Sanlitun bar district.
Also, an online survey, purportedly conducted by the Beijing Film Academy's "Single Men Society," concluded that, by the time they graduate, only 15.86 per cent of female students at Beiwai are virgins.
The poll was conducted by a dozen people through "social networking and online data gathering" and "does not guarantee its accuracy," said the report.
He Min, the Beiwai student who was riled by it, defended their "good name" with their own poll, which was done on campus.
The result, published in "107 Investigation," a student newspaper, said that only 11.5 per cent of female students engaged in sex during their college years.
"This is a resounding rebuttal of the online figure," said He.
Discussions on Internet forums show that most Chinese are troubled by a sense of sliding morals, which they attribute to a growing materialistic craving. The loss of virginity at a young age is often seen as a manifestation.
Some experts have different views.
"The Beiwai students were trying to protect their values," said Ai Xiaoming, a feminist scholar. "But it played right into the traditional virginity obsession."
As Professor Ai argued, the whole fracas is pointless except that it has highlighted how ironclad thousands-of-years-old concepts of a male-dominated society are and how they still grip public imagination.
"What does it matter whether a student is a virgin or not? As long as it's a voluntary act, I don't see any problem with it," she told China Daily.
"The fixation on a woman's chastity is more important to men than to women."
And then there is the article by Li Mu, courtesy of WOW.
Virgin Ratio at BSFU: The Making of a Story
By Li Mu (Lianne Li)
"This is the first investigation on the sexual condition of female students in BFSU. It mainly focuses on the general conditions of campus sex, the level of sex knowledge, and sexual attitudes. We would like to gather data in order to know the genuine sexual condition within the campus." That was the lead of an article titled An investigation on the sexual condition of BFSU female students, published in the third issue of the monthly BFSU campus paper, 107 INVESTIGATION.
The investigation was an effort to better understand female students at Beijing Foreign Studies University, a female-dominated school that has a reputation for pretty girls and being a "dyejigger" corrupting female virtues. A college virgin ratio chart that was spread all over the Internet claimed that the percentage of virgins among BFSU graduates was only 15.86%, despite no scientific or empirical research on female sexual activity in China's colleges.
In November, 6 girls from the Journalism Department at BFSU designed 13 questions for the sex investigation questionnaire under the supervision of a teacher. The questionnaire asked about the recipients' knowledge and source of the ongoing gossip, their attitudes and knowledge of sex and the ways in which they wished to obtain sexual education. Only one of the questions asked whether they had sex during college. Over 600 recipients from different grades returned the questionnaires, and the investigative report was written according to the data, featuring interviews of some of the respondents and medical staff at the campus hospital.
"We wished to receive considerable responses from what we had done, but we never expected such a huge influence," says one of the girls among the investigation group. On December 9th, a reporter from Chinatimes came to interview Luo and Liang, who participated in the investigation. "He kept asking us whether we were trying to rebut what the gossip had imposed on us, but we denied it because that was not on our mind when we were doing this," said Luo. However, the headline on the report published on December 12th came out as BFSU Girls Carried Out a Sex Investigation to Rebut On-line Gossips.
The report emphasized the finding that only 11.5% of the responding students had sex, quoting Luo anonymously, saying that she believed only a small number of students were sexually active and that the bad impression that had been stamped on BFSU girls was unfair. Although Luo never mentioned in the interview that the girls were "6 virgins," the reporter manufactured it by extracting it from a sentence in Luo's personal blog, which actually pleaded for tolerance from readers on campus, saying that the six of them had no experience with sex and the other issues investigated.
Although a later article in the Legal Evening Post (Fazhiwanbao) published most of the investigation's results with no special emphasis on any one part, almost all of the major on-line news media put up the Chinatimes article and played games with it. One secondary report was even headlined as 6 Virgins Carried Out a Sex Investigation in BFSU.
The virgin ratio determined by the investigation became one of the most hotly debated topics of on-line bulletin boards. By December 14th, there had been 1448 comments on the bulletin board of Netease alone, with a whole page specially devoted to the topic. Many expressed disbelief and disapproval of the investigation. According to a vote-in survey on sohu.com, only 18.27% of the 4000 participants considered the result convincing, and over 70% of them disagreed with the argument that only 10% of female students were sexually active.
What's more, half of the visitors considered the investigation to be a joke. Some said the investigation was "trying to mask things by making them obviously contradictory." Some feminists even openly condemned the purpose of the investigation. "The gossipers are mean indeed, but to rebut it, the investigators themselves must have been supporters of masculine pressure that stressed women's virginity and the idea that sexual relationships are filthy," said a commenter on Netease.
"The whole idea of the virgin ratio chart didn't flash into our mind until we were setting about doing a backdrop for reporting on the investigation," complained Luo. "The media has distorted our aim of the investigation, and the public misunderstood it. What we are doing is disclosing the basic sexual behavior of the girls so that people can extend a better understanding towards them all."
What the report really meant to deliver was the ignored corner of the debate: the university had long neglected sex education. The statistics showed that even among female graduate students, there were some who admitted knowing very little necessary sexual knowledge. The major source of the girls' sex knowledge was found to be books, pornographic films and the Internet; over 80% responded that they had no idea of any lectures on sex held on campus or on the distribution of condoms.
Although the focus of public concern still lies on a meaningless ratio, some scholars are starting to support the investigation. When interviewed by Chinatimes, Fang Gang, PhD, a scholar on the Sociology of Sex at Renmin University, believes that it is important for people to know why female college students were considered to have casual sex lives. He said: "These girls are young and attractive, which is why people like to think of them that way and why they become targets of sexual desire. It's a mark of the masculine sexual possessiveness in our male-dominant society. It is not right for society or the media to distort their image."