This is a translation of an article originally published in Mandarin
What is sexual liberation?
Sexual liberation means freeing everyone from the oppression and constraints of gender stereotypes.
Sexual liberation means freeing everyone from discrimination and oppression at the workplace, school, at home, or in society.
Sexual liberation means freeing everyone from the “gendered duty” imposed by the established prejudices.
Sexual liberation means all people are born with the right to explore and decide or change their gender identity, sexual orientation, sexual preferences, and even biological sex, free of discrimination.
Sexual liberation means empowering complete emotional and body autonomy. Let everyone’s love and sex become no longer the properties of others, no longer the prey to violent coercion or financial pressure. Let consensual love no longer suffer legal and moral punishment and witch hunts.
Sexual liberation means no one needs to give up body or emotional autonomy to survive.
Sexual liberation means empowering all to work together to fight and eliminate sexual violence.
Sexual liberation means empowering all to free and unobstructed choices, for a single partner, for polyamory, for frequent changes of partners, or no sex at all!
Sexual liberation means returning sex and love to its purest form of affection.
Fight for legal reform and protection
Fighting for sexual liberation is fighting for legal reforms and protection as an important starting point, as one means to comprehensively reduce and curb violations to gender equality. The struggle can also educate all members of society on the issue. Examples include the current laws to punish and prevent domestic violence, the law governing gender equality at the workplaces, or the legalization of gay marriage in 2019, and so on.
If Taiwanese society is to move further towards sexual liberation, we need to codify unilateral divorce, to return marriage to an equal and voluntary contract, rather than a contract of servitude. Another example is the complete decriminalization of extramarital relationships so that one’s bodies and emotions are no longer the property of others. In the education system, we need to help the young generation learn about their body, values, clothing and behavior free of traditional gender stereotypes, learn to embrace a healthy and natural attitude towards sex and relationships, learn the diversity of sex and love, and learn to explore their own preferences and identities instead of being shamed by religions and traditions. The healthcare and medical laws should also guarantee safe and free abortion for all women and remove the need for partner or parental consent, giving women real body autonomy. Of course, this includes the decriminalization of sex work. Sex workers should no longer be punished and persecuted by laws and police.
There are many more struggles that we cannot list them all. However, the fight for gender equality cannot stop at fighting for legal reforms. Otherwise, those reforms will be built on thin air.
The direction of striving for gender equality and liberation
To achieve true sexual liberation, we need to pursue a social vision where:
- Women no longer bear the sole burden of housework. Automation and public services should take over.
This frees women from the gendered duty of housework, eliminating some of the gender roles and stereotypes imposed on women by tradition. We cannot eliminate the gender role purely by education, communication between partners, or advocacy. The housework here refers not only to domestic chores, but care work for infants, the elderly, and disabled family members, etc.
Furthermore, gender equality and sexual liberation is an ideological struggle:
- We must promote the ideological and cultural struggle against traditional gender roles and for the liberation of the society from them. We need to promote gender equality and sexual liberation through media, pop culture, etc. Especially in the education system, we must keep the next generation free from the toxicity of traditional gender prejudices, cultivating a progressive mindset towards gender.
The role of the education system is indispensable in combating existing gender oppression and sexual violence. It plays an important role in the formation of a new generation of social psyche. Children of the new generation should be educated with the ideas of gender equality and sexual liberation in schools.
In addition to the superstructure, we cannot ignore the material basis:
- Take care of everyone’s major life events, healthcare, and education with public services. Public education for all, fulfilling work and careers for everyone, so that no one willing to work suffer from unemployment. A decent life for everyone without being the burden of others.
Only by ensuring everyone’s ability for survival and decent life, can we free them from the shackles of family, marriage, relationships, or prostitution and realize the true autonomy of sex and love.
When members of society are forced to live by family, marriage, relationships, or prostitution, in order to survive, it is impossible to achieve true sexual liberation. There are also the tragedies of domestic violence, marital rape, toxic relationships, human trafficking, and forced labor in the sex industry.
We must provide all with the material basis to break free of the gender roles that have existed for thousands of years. Cis men should no longer be forced to play the role of protectors of cis women, and in turn no longer dominate and control women’s emotions and bodies. This gender power inequality is the source of cis men’s violence against women.
Correspondingly, this also will free cis women from the need to regard themselves as subordinates of men, to depend on their partner for survival and needs, to be forced into the role of mothers. This would lay the basis for eliminating sexual violence and gender discrimination that have oppressed women for millennia.
The movement for sexual liberation will inevitably draw attacks from conservatives, such as the forces of religion:
- Religion plays a role that cannot be ignored in gender oppression. Religion is not only a continuation of the feudal tradition of gender oppression, but also actively plays a role in the current dynamics of gender oppression. For example, the oppression of women in Islamic countries by Islamic Fundamentalists, the Christian witch-hunts of queer people and the non-celibate, and the “duty” of childbirth imposed by many religious or animistic beliefs on women and men. Religions originated from people’s insecurity and uncertainty for the future, as they seek inner comfort and temporary support through imagined supernatural power. Once people’s life and happiness are supported and guaranteed, religions will lose their influence, and people’s sex and love will no longer be oppressed and restricted by religions.
No single person or even the government has the power to eliminate religion. They originate from people’s voluntary anti-intellectualism and insecurity about the future and the resulting spiritual needs. Religions will only lose their hold on people when we free people from that insecurity and with the assistance of public scientific education.
A society with strong religious influence is of course far from sexual liberation.
How to get started?
We cannot fight for sexual liberation simply by lifestyle choices. Lifestyle choices don’t change people’s mind, nor can they truly remove gender oppression and discrimination from our lives. To fight for gender equality and sexual liberation, we need to actively support various progressive reforms, and organize a movement against gender oppression. Not only in support of those communities that are criminalized, but also against those forms of gender oppression found on campus, in the community, and at workplaces.
To fight for sexual liberation, we need more than single-issue NGOs with a few professional activists. We need mass organizations rooted in workplaces, campuses, and communities, so we don’t just talk about sexual liberation on certain days but talk about it widely in every corner of the society.
Such a mass organization should not only promote gender equality but also needs to train everyone involved to become an activist, through various educational programs and activities for the communities, workplaces, and campuses.
However, as mentioned above, the struggle for sexual liberation requires an ideological and cultural struggle, as well as the creation of a true socialist society where people’s needs are taken care of. These are the indispensable conditions for gender equality and sexual liberation, and of true emotional and body autonomy.
This requires everyone who fights for sexual liberation to also fight for public services—in the form of socialized housing, public healthcare care, public education, etc under workers control and management. In this way, we can eliminate the sexual oppression and exploitation of the old society and establish true freedom.
