Tabloid female sex confessions and everyday pro-sex feminism: The case of the Apple Daily Taiwan

Abstract

This article construes the reader-contributed female sex confessions of a Taiwanese tabloid newspaper as contingent cultural instruments, looking into how these confessions are implicated in the formulation of sex-positive feminism. The confessional discourse is interpreted as autobiographical acts with dialogic overtones. The article argues that the highly commercial and communal form of the tabloid confessions fortuitously facilitates positive discourse of female sexuality in a society in transition. It is demonstrated that part of the pro-sex feminism promoted by cultural elites, especially post-feminist discourse of entitlement, is echoed in the confessions. However, dealing with life situations of ordinary people, the community-based tabloid feminism differs from the model discourses in its pragmatism. Although female sexual desires are fully justified, they are balanced in consideration of other necessities, such as security, stability, or romantic love.

Keywords

Autobiographical act confession cultural instrumentality dialogic sex-positive feminism

Introduction

Female sex confession has been critically investigated from feminist perspectives. It is viewed as an institution that governs or regulates women’s lives, while the possibilities of transgression, negotiation, and resistance have been disputed (Gammel, 1999; Mandziuk, 2001; Yang, 2004). For some, it is a tool for expressing collective feelings, affirming communal experiences, or intervening in the status quo (Felski, 1998; Wilson, 1988). A collection of confessions may provide a mosaic of sexual scripts, replacing the dominant grand discourse (McAlister, 2017).

The different conclusions concerning female sex confession suggest its instrumental divergence. The nuanced differences in form and context matter profoundly and require due attention, especially when tackling the recent confessional boom in a diverse range of media forms (Radstone, 2008: 40–51). The idea of examining the implications of the structural attributes and contextual factors of media confession paves the way for the study of the reader-contributed female sex confessions in the Apple Daily Taiwan (the ADT)¹, the first and most successful Taiwanese tabloid newspaper. This case exemplifies a highly commercial and communal form of female confession, arising at a time when sex-positive feminism and global confessional culture converge in an Asian society. It is intriguing to see what discourse it would bring about and what instrumentality it would contribute to. Grounded on Smith and Watson’s concept of autobiographical acts and Bakhtin’s theory of the internal dialogue, the case study approaches the discourse of the ADT’s female sex confession as autobiographical acts with dialogic overtones, exploring how a particular confessional genre facilitates fortuitously the reformulation of sex-positive feminism in the form of self-narration. The findings of this study aim to illuminate the contingent instrumentality of female sex confession, enriching our understanding of its possible role in a society in transition, where the new sexual codes compete with traditional values and where women are opening up to disclosure of sexual feelings in the global trend towards the ‘confessing society’ (Fejes and Dahlstedt, 2013: 1).

The case study is based on a long-term observation of the ADT’s sex confessions page, a three-year day-to-day data collection, and in-depth interviews with the page’s editor. In this article, I first delineate the theoretical framework, which highlights Smith and Watson’s schema of autobiographical acts as well as Bakhtin’s dialogue theory, with additional references to others’ formulations of confession. The context section briefly reviews local sex-positive feminism promoted by the media and cultural elites, while the content research section explains my research methods and provides structural and textual analysis of the ADT’s female sex confessions. The editing policy of the ADT’s confessions page is illustrated in association with its narrative format and ideological tendency. A series of thematic discourses is analysed as typical cases that exemplify the dialogic patterns of the confessions. The discourse analysis focuses on the confessional acts that create the confessant’s identity and position, explicating how such acts affirmatively respond to existing pro-sex feminism as a solution to the confessant’s life situation. Finally, I conclude the article by contemplating the part played by the tabloid confessions in the discursive construction of pro-sex feminism and the social reality reflected in the confessional discourse. The terms ‘sex-positive feminism’ and ‘pro-sex feminism’ are used interchangeably here, while ‘discourse’, ‘utterance’, and ‘act’ are employed according to the context. All the quoted examples are translated from Chinese into English by the author.

Confessional discourse as autobiographical actswith dialogic overtones

Confession and its contingent instrumentality

Radstone (2008: 40–51) indicates that in discerning the power relations within institutional confessions, Foucault rightly manifests their instrumental aspects. As Radstone argues, concerns about instrumentality penetrate critical approaches to confession, whether they see it as a means of social control, meaning negotiation, consciousness-raising, identity construction, self-location, psychotherapy, or the reflection of social reality.

For Foucault, the link between confession and subjection seems to be immanent in institutional confession, owing to the hierarchal relationship therein. To make a confession, as such, is not merely to speak about oneself but to reveal the ‘true self’ in response to a requirement and in exchange for feedback from the institutional authority who requires any such confession:

The confession … is also a ritual that unfolds within a power relationship, for one does not confess without the presence (or virtual presence) of a partner who is not simply the interlocutor but the authority who requires the confession, prescribes and appreciates it, and intervenes in order to judge, punish, forgive, console and reconcile … a ritual in which the expression alone … produces intrinsic modifications in the person who articulates it … it unburdens him of his wrongs, liberates him, and promises his salvation. (Foucault, 1990: 61–62)

This account for the interchanging relationship explains how confession becomes an institutional instrument through which the individual becomes transformed and ‘salved’ in placing themselves at the mercy of the relevant authority. It nonetheless suggests that the instrumentality is not fixed, since it is determined by the addressor–addressee relationship and the purpose of confession. What if the relationship is not hierarchical but communal? What if the feedback that the confession solicits is understanding and resonance, rather than punishment, forgiveness, consolation, and reconciliation? Felski (1998: 87–92) contends that western literary confessions since the 18th century are mainly concerned with the affirmation and exploration of subjectivity, rather than the expression of guilty feelings in appealing to a higher authority. In accordance with this tendency, feminist confessions seek to assert repressed or hidden female experience, predicting the recognition and empathy of female readers. Despite the fact that total intimacy and authenticity are not entirely possible, feminist confessions are thought to construct communal identities in addressing women’s collective experiences. Guenther’s (2006) analysis of Bridget Jones’s Diary as a post-feminist confession presents a similar viewpoint, arguing that the confession of a ‘failed self’ calls for communal identifications among readers who find the protagonist’s thoughts comparable to their own.

These arguments bring us a step closer to approaching the ADT’s reader-contributed female sex confessions. When addressed to a peer community, female sex confessions customarily plead for empathetic perceptions rather than authoritative feedback. Speaking to a believably sympathetic audience, the confession is nevertheless subjected to the addressees’ judgments. To make it well received, the confession has to appeal to the sexual code supposedly shared by both the addressor and the addressees. How is the shared code represented and reconfigured in the community-oriented female sex confession? How do we look at the question systematically with reference to its conditions of production and its instrumentality? To answer these questions, I turn to Smith and Watson’s formulation of autobiographical acts.

Autobiographical acts and their dialogic patterns

The concept of autobiographical acts was proposed by Bruss (1976), who adopted Austin’s (1962) idea of ‘illocutionary act’ and explored the dimensions of actions in autobiographies. Advancing the concept, Smith and Watson create an extensive checklist for examining the formation of autobiographical acts by expanding Plummer’s (1995) schema for addressing the telling of sexual stories. For the purposes of this research, I have highlighted a few of the elements and some of their features. A life narrative (for instance, a confession) consists of a sequence of autobiographical acts. The coaxer is the one who solicits the narrative/acts; it may be any person, institution, or set of cultural imperatives. In published autobiographical narrative, the coaxer is usually the editor, whose policy and practice may affect the final shape of the narrative. The site of storytelling creates a situation for disclosing the self and establishing expectations about the stories to be told. The producer of self-narration is understood as the autobiographical ‘I’, who may speak in various voices, perform certain identities, or occupy specific positions. These voices, identities, and positions are essentially socio-cultural or ideological. The addressee of autobiographical acts may be universal or a distinct category of people, or even the narrators themselves. In published narrative, the addressee is imagined, or, as narratology has it, implied. Discerning the addressee is crucial for understanding the intent of a narrative and the truth constructed therein. The structuring modes of self-enquiry in autobiographical acts may take form in generic conventions that provide templates for storytelling. Finally, an autobiographical narrative can be consumed. The actual consumers/audience may not necessarily be the implied readers; however, their expectation and prior knowledge about the textual pattern may affect the formation of the narrative (Smith and Watson, 2010: 64–92).

The schema as highlighted summarizes the complex set of structural elements that constitute an autobiographical act. Construing the multiplicity of the self-narrator’s voice, Smith and Watson (2010: 81) refer to Bakhtin’s theory of the internal dialogue, which I consider of paramount importance and on which I will elaborate here. The internal dialogue is a concept for explicating the complex process in which practical language comes into being. Among others, it illuminates the close relation between personal voice and social voice. Bakhtin argues, words are always historical, unless they are created by the speaker on the spot. The meanings and intentions they have carried never fade away entirely. Whenever an utterance animates pre-existing words, the social voices woven into the words reverberate. The relation between the utterance and the social voice reverberating in that utterance is understood as dialogic. It is within such an internal dialogue that a social ideology is reproduced or reformulated through everyday utterances. People express themselves and find solutions to the problems of daily life by selectively assessing and assimilating the discourse of others. Thereby, cultural meanings and social ideologies carried by words are echoed. When examining a confession, it is essential to inquire into the thought, desire, and motivation exposed therein, observing where the internal dialogue resides and how the dialogue reconstitutes the social discourse that the confession echoes (Bakhtin, 1981: 275–276, 337–350, 1986: 92–96).

To sum up, confessional discourse, as autobiographical acts with dialogic overtones, is resonant and constitutive of socio-cultural discourses in making claims about the confessants. Composed of a set of structural elements, confessional acts enter into a dialogue with socio-cultural discourses situationally, with which their instrumentality varies. In the case of communal confession, the confessional acts animate and reconstruct the discourse that embodies ideologies presumably shared by the community, pleading for the recognition of community members. The reader-contributed female sex confessions of the ADT represent such a case. Written by ordinary readers, the confessions are considerably communal in the sense that the addressors and addressees are probably from the same readership. Like other types of media confessions where audience understanding and sympathy are pursued (Mathews, 2007), the ADT’s confessions, as part of a tabloid’s content, are inclined to appeal to popular feelings and beliefs. Centred on women’s sex lives, these confessions, as will be further investigated, constantly have a dialogue with sex-positive feminism.

Sex-positive feminism in Taiwanese media

Feminism in Taiwan, a predominantly Chinese society, has been advanced progressively in association with the politico-economic transformation in recent decades. Women became an increasingly important wage labour force after the 1950s in the wake of industrialization. With the growth of the middle-class society, both martial law and the ban on the organization of new political parties since 1949 were lifted in 1987. The press was deregulated in 1988. A series of social movements concerning environmental protection, labour rights, ethnic revival, and women’s rights arose as reactions to the political reform. Currently, Taiwan is a multiparty democracy with an active civil society and a highly privatized and globalized media sector.

The liberalizing of the society smoothed the way for gender movement. Feminist voices first appeared in the mid-1970s, when the idea of the ‘new woman’ was raised against the Confucian female role model that defines women’s values by their domestic achievements. The landmark feminist magazine Awakening was launched in 1982. Following in the footsteps of western second-wave feminism, the Awakening group and its allies engaged themselves in consciousness-raising campaigns and legal/institutional reforms for gender equality. Since the late 1990s, a number of acts pertaining to women’s rights have been passed, including those dealing with domestic violence, sexual assaults and sexual harassments, as well as those aiming at boosting gender equality both in education and in the workplace. A more recent effort is focused on gender mainstreaming, implemented mainly in governmental and educational institutions. Despite these achievements, discontents exist. Local feminists split up in the mid-1990s, disputing over the question of whether sexual politics were imperative at the time. Josephine Ho and her colleagues departed from the Awakening’s cause and called for positive attitudes towards female eroticism, sexual minorities, pornography, and the sex industry. Both the groups take part in the local LGBT activism, which emerged in the late 1990s and grew fast. Taiwan Pride is presently the largest gay pride event in East Asia. In May 2019, the government approved a bill that serves as the basis for same-sex marriages.

Having been criticizing sex-bias in gender policies (e.g. Ho, 2014, 2017), Ho advocated pro-sex feminism in a series of popular books, including her 1994 renowned work The Gallant Woman: Feminism and Sexual Emancipation (1994a, in Chinese). The book suggests women stop taking sex as a ‘men win, women lose’ relation and play active roles in sex. To enjoy diverse sexual pleasures, the constraints of monogamy and heterosexuality should be rejected. Love is unessential in happy sex and possibly an obstacle to excitement, as are monogamy and ‘normal’ sex. The emancipation discourse is elaborated in her later books, including Lustrous Women (1994b, in Chinese; my translation), which tells supposedly true stories of ‘women with jouissance’ through the author’s voice.

Two years before the publication of The Gallant Woman, the Chinese versions of The Kinsey Institute New Report on Sex and The Hite Report hit the market. The former triggered active discussions on sexuality in the local media (Lee, 2010). Around the same time, the Chinese versions of a few leading international women’s magazines, including Cosmopolitan, Elle and Marie Claire, were launched here on account of the liberalization and globalization of the media sector. Targeted at young middle-class women, these magazines create their identities by promoting female sexual subjectivity. They define sex as a human rights issue and instruct their readers to seek sexual pleasure in romantic (heterosexual) relationships. Having an orgasm is equated with emancipation, while being active in sex is celebrated as a means of empowerment. Prescribing self-understanding as the solution to bad sex/relationships, the editors encourage readers to confess about their sex lives. These confessions are produced in highly mediated forms, such as surveys and interviews, or framed with the editor’s commentaries, so that they would never substantially go beyond mainstream morality (Yang, 2004). Conforming to heteronormativity, these magazines nonetheless clear the battleground for later pro-sex feminism and the ADT’s female sex confessions.

The global launch of the HBO comedy Sex and the City in 1998 increased the influence of western sex-positive media feminism. Due to its popularity, the series has been constantly rerun on local cable television channels. Research shows that it was particularly well received among a young female audience, who felt encouraged to imagine and talk about sex (Yu, 2006). The theme of romantic love remains an essential part of the series (Southard, 2008). However, the four heroines in Sex and the City are presented as active consumers of sex, whose sexual encounters are at times more recreational than relational; the importance of female orgasms is emphasized, while sex toys, fetishes and masturbation are freely discussed in the series (Adriaens and Bauwel, 2014).

Such media feminisms constitute part of post-feminism. Unlike the second wave, post-feminism is keen to justify the ‘sexy, feminine, and beautiful’ female body. Women are said to be ‘entitled’ to sexual pleasure as much as they are entitled to the pleasure brought forth by consumption, romantic love and physical beauty (Gill, 2009; Lazar, 2009; McRobbie, 2009). The famous L’Oréal tagline ‘Because I’m worth it’ perfectly represents the spirit of female entitlement (Lazar, 2009), which has spread to Taiwan with the global commercial campaigns and market expansions of transnational media conglomerates. Eva Illouz’s observation of the 1920s’ American urban romantic culture elucidates the connections between women’s economic independence and their entitlement to fun. Both women’s education level and visibility in the workplace were increasing during the 1920s, which made easier the relaxation of sexual mores among the middle classes. Women were prompted to pursue leisure like men would do and look for intensity and fun in both romance and marriage (Illouz, 1997: 26–28). This helps to explain why the ‘pleasure’ discourses mentioned earlier are palatable to younger Taiwanese women, who are generally well educated and economically viable enough to seek equality in both leisure and romance. In the present media discourse, professional, fashionable and sexy female images usually signify independence, self-liberation and pleasure (Chen, 2000; Chiu, 2001; You, 2017).

A less-discussed influence is from Japanese popular culture, well translated and received here because of the colonial history and cultural proximity. Popular writer Liu Li-er's articles on the ADT’s sex columns page are representative of this type of cultural translation. She depicts the emergent Japanese (heterosexual) female subjectivity in which women show a relaxed attitude towards their sexual desires, following a behaviour code that places their sexuality before loyalty. Extramarital sexual affairs are comfortably admitted as secret pleasures with little moral judgement. The ADT’s sex columns page and sex confessions page were adjacent and edited by the same person, which suggests overlapping readerships and an ideological continuity.

Overall, the past two decades witnessed the burgeoning and dispersion of sex-positive feminism, despite the residual ideologies (for instance, Taiwanese news reports of celebrities’ love scandals still tend to represent sexually active women negatively, Huang, 2012). In 2003, the young-women-based ‘Feminine Sex Board’ was launched on the then largest local anonymous online community. The allegedly first local women’s self-help book for sex Man Ai (Slow Love) was published in 2007. Sex guru SallyQ’s blog won its popularity by sharing her tries of sex toys. Publications concerning women’s sexual needs are sold in major bookshops. Positive media representations of female sexual subjects are common, while female eroticism becomes a common theme in literature. Previously an affirmative discourse of women’s sexual desire was almost absent in the Taiwanese public sphere. Female romances with sexual content were mainly sold in small bookshops for secret reading. Till the 1980s, Taiwanese cinemas were populated with Hong Kong sex films representing women’s sexual pursuits as causes of disasters and signs of moral degeneration, as in the classic 16th-century Chinese novel Jin Ping Mei (The Plum in the Golden Vase. See Roy, 1997).

In 2003, the ADT’s female sex confessions joined the recent media turn to positive discourse of female sexuality. The following section explicates how they may actively respond to pre-existing pro-sex feminism. It will first illustrate the structural elements of the confessions that facilitate positive discourse of female eroticism. Then, it will provide an analysis of the dialogic patterns of the confessional discourse, identifying the specific role of the ADT’s sex confessions in the construction of local pro-sex feminism.

The case of reader-contributed female sex confessions in the ADT

The year of 2003 saw the birth of the ADT and a new wave of local confessional culture. The daily page ‘Human Affairs’ (my translation) was originally dedicated to sex issues, mainly consisting of reader-contributed sex stories, plus a medical Q&A column and a comic strip. The majority of the sex stories were written in a confessional form, disclosing hidden experiences and secret feelings anonymously. Although they had gradually reduced in number, sex confessions remained part of the page’s content before it closed in 2015.

My day-to-day data collection began in August 2008 and ended in August 2011. In total I collected 868 stories, which can be loosely defined as sex confessions (i.e. disclosures of hidden behaviour or secret feelings concerning sex from the first-person viewpoint). Of these, 461 were related as straight women’s stories, 389 as straight males’, and 18 as gay men’s and lesbian’s stories. All the straight women’s stories were looked through, and those exhibiting reflections on sexuality were picked out and classified according to discursive similarities. Three salient thematic discourses were identified, and typical cases were selected for close reading. I focused on words and phrases that manifested the confessant’s definition and evaluation of her actions, singling out examples for textual analysis. I kept going back to the ‘Human Affairs’ page afterwards to observe its change and collect new representative samples. To better understand the readership and the editing policy of the sex confessions, I conducted in-depth interviews with the page’s long-time editor. To avoid bias, I compared the information obtained from the interviews with the findings of my long-term observation.

The rise of sex-positive, personal narratives of ordinary women

Being the best-selling local newspaper, the ADT is well known both for its sensationalism and for its market-orientation (Ho, 2007). ‘Human Affairs’ to a great extent followed these guidelines. To know better her readership, the editor observed the identities of contributors and acquired information from both her acquaintances and the readers’ discussion groups, regularly conducted by the newspaper to learn about the readers’ appetites. As far as the editor knows, the page enjoyed a broad readership, ranging from housewives, white-collar workers, students and professionals to hostesses; on average, at least two-thirds of the readers in the discussion group would read the ‘Human Affairs’ page; the number of the page views of each story was usually around 80,000 to 100,000 and occasionally more than 200,000. According to the editor, the page was closed despite its satisfactory page views after the newspaper found it much more profitable to make use of free sensational contents from social media. The ADT’s online database shows that a total of 6461 ‘Human Affairs’ stories were published; all of them were free for access and could be easily searched before the ADT implemented a paywall in 2019.

The ADT is self-positioned as a newspaper for younger readers who are impatient of lengthy articles. The stories in the ‘Human Affairs’ page are mostly as short as a few hundred Chinese characters (usually about half the number in an English translation) and hardly ever exceed a thousand characters. According to the readers’ discussion groups, the readers preferred to read ‘true’ self-stories, especially those told by people they considered to be as ‘ordinary’ as those they would meet in everyday life. The editor tried bringing in contributions from a female quasi-columnist, but this was rejected by the readers with comments such as ‘boring’ or ‘self-appointed guru’. In principle, contributions from all genders were welcomed, but in reality, the page tended to call for heterosexual women’s stories mainly because of the readers’ interests; straight men’s stories, often ending up with boasting about their sexual charms, attracted less attention from readers of all genders. Consequently, a great number of heterosexual women’s sex confessions were published on the page, as shown in the data.

The readers’ interests also affect the themes and tones of the confessions. ‘Human Affairs’ was officially defined as a page that revealed human nature without setting any moral thresholds, a strategy to attract the maximum readers and the most secret stories. Periodically, the page called for stories of certain themes, such as ‘women watching pornography’, ‘cheating’, ‘faking orgasm’, and so on. The editor particularly welcomed sex stories that disclosed true but less spoken feelings and desires, especially when they were contributed by female readers. Nevertheless, she would exclude stories that overemphasized negative feelings or contained personal attacks. To her knowledge, the ADT’s readers of all genders enjoyed the voyeurism of peeping into others’ private lives, although they would rather not see too many unpleasant details or excessive misery. While authoritative moral lessons were thought to spoil the fun, intensive interrogations and harsh condemnations were not favoured either. As a heterosexual woman herself, the page editor considered it crucial for women to discuss their sexualities and would suggest the female contributors add personal reflections and interpretations in their self-disclosures. This, however, was conducted carefully to avoid inviting moral preaching and agonizing repentance. Being both the coaxer and the editor of the confessions, she had to remain highly aware of page views and readers’ comments when she promoted her agenda. Consequently, the female sex confessions on the page tend to display women’s physical desires with little conservative moral judgement, while the personal interpretations and reflections are prone to render positive, and at times celebratory, views of women’s sexuality. Positive as they are, I consider them confessional. As contended, confessions in contemporary milieux are not limited to those that convey shameful feelings; disclosures of personal sexual experiences driven by compulsive self-narrations or protected by anonymity would also qualify (McAlister, 2017).

The making of ‘authentic’, communal sex confessions

Contrary to the common misconception that the editor may have amended the stories to make them racier, the original manuscripts were, on average, more sensational than the end products. The editor revealed that she constantly removed over-explicit descriptions of sexual conduct from the manuscripts to minimize protests from more conservative readers. It is arguable that the ‘Human Affairs’ page, as a site of storytelling, may have been taken as a safe place for readers to exhibit some of their most secret thoughts and experiences. Since the contributions come from anonymous readers, there is always an issue of credibility. To secure the ‘authenticity’ of the page, the editor tended to leave out suspicious contributions, such as those that appeared too legendary or over-exaggerated, in other words, beyond the readers’ imagination of social reality. As the editor had observed, although male readers tended to question the truthfulness of the stories, female readers were inclined to believe it.

To present the greatest variety of ‘true and ordinary’ stories, the editor would leave the manuscripts unedited as much as she could. Nevertheless, the ADT’s female sex confessions frequently share similar writing styles, themes, and ideologies. In the opinion of the editor, the contributors would imitate each other. In Bakhtin’s terms, the similarities are the result of internal dialogue. In general, these confessions are written in plain language with some common terminologies – for instance, ‘ai ai’ (or ‘love love’, to translate literally) for ‘tso ai’ (make love). Stories usually begin with a retrospective outline of the narrator’s own past experiences from the first-person point of view, and, will end with a conclusion that makes sense of such experiences, while words of self-reflection and self-positioning may appear at any point. Across various situations and storylines, these self-reflexive utterances co-construct a number of thematic discourses where two layers of internal dialogue are inherent. In the first layer of dialogue, the latter contributions actively respond to the former ones, as a result of which the formal and thematic similarities come about. The second layer of dialogue exists between the confessional discourse and the social discourses they reformulate. Through periodic reception, the contributors may discern the profile of the general readership, according to which they envisage their implied readers to whom their stories will appeal. Seeking recognition, the confessants may craft their stories in a way that is both understandable and acceptable to the implied readers. Thus, they are inclined to appeal to the supposedly shared codes of the readers’ community that they are also part of. The following discussion focuses on a series of thematic discourses which is salient to the page. It outlines the themes and storylines of each discourse and provides textual analysis of typical cases. As Smith and Watson (2010: 76–78) indicate, autobiographical acts would situate the narrator in a socio-cultural identity or position. I will identify the ad hoc functions of the confessional acts in the cited examples and demonstrate how these acts enable the creation of the confessants’ identities and positions which correspond to the sexual codes of the model discourses.

Entering a dialogue with model discourses: Themes and discourses

Theme one: celebrating sexual pleasure. The first point of focus is the discourse that celebrates the liberated female sexuality. This line of confessional discourse usually appears in two types of stories: the first type features happy confessions of good sex, while the second is characterized by unhappy confessions of bad sex. In the second type, the storytellers make clear their attitudes about rejecting relationships with men they have assessed as having little sexual capacity, irrespective of what else such relationships could provide. Happily or not, these stories freely admit the narrators’ sexual aspirations and make claims to female eroticism. The tone is assertive and celebratory. The declarative acts of personal desires or women’s eroticism usually come up with expressions of self-understanding. The following is a typical example:

I admit I love sex. I was totally obsessed with sex since the very first day I had it. Whoever wants to be my boyfriend has to satisfy me completely, whatever the size and shape of his penis. Otherwise, the relationship can only end up as a one-night stand. Disposable! … Maybe it is because of my openness to sex, I have met many men of various ‘capacities’. All I want is to live happily. I will take it as long as the relationship can provide me with satisfactory and exciting sex; I wouldn’t mind if the guy is married or not, if he aims for sex or love. Why would I? (‘A horny woman, lusting for sex all the time’, 19 July 2009; my translation)

This quotation consists of a series of statements of personal facts and positioning. The words ‘love’ and ‘obsessed with’ accentuate the confessant’s psychic attitude towards sexual pleasure. The confessant’s ample sexual experiences (having ‘met many men of various “capacities”’) are justified as a consequence of her ‘openness to sex’. The utterances that state the criterion her partner must meet (to provide her with ‘satisfactory and exciting sex’, regardless of his marital status or whether he aims for sex or love) imply that a woman’s desire for sexual satisfaction can take priority over the pursuit of love or the constraints of marriage and monogamy. The declaration ‘All I want is to live happily’ explains her moral code, while the closing question ‘Why would I?’ functions as a statement that affirms the code. Overall, these statements reformulate the emancipation discourse in the voice of an ordinary woman who partially personifies the discursive model. Meanwhile, they bring to light an imagined social reality in which the liberated female sexuality, as represented, is tolerable at least for the page’s readers.

In some cases, the imagined social reality is made visible in a clear-cut sense. One example reflects the ‘recreational rather than relational’ discourse in Sex and the City, presenting a self-portrait of an independent woman who enjoys her sex life without committing to any long-term relationships. Concluding on her sex life, she states enthusiastically:

Women, how lucky we are to live in an age when we can be the masters of our own sex lives and relationships! (‘Simply sex for a longer friendship’, 28 December 2010; my translation)

The concluding remark situates the confessant in the identity of an autonomous woman who celebrates the spirit of her time (in which women ‘can be the master of our sex lives and relationships’). The appraisal ‘how lucky we are’ renders clear the confessant’s optimism, and the word ‘women’ at the beginning of the sentence refers to the interlocutors with whom the confessant is engaging in this dialogue, that is, women of her time. This case typifies a usual position of enunciation in which the confessant explicitly identifies herself as a member of the female community and universalizes her personal experience as something shared by all of the community.

Theme two: tackling the dilemma. The second thematic discourse to be examined is concerned with the ‘bad for sex but good for others’ dilemma. Stories contributed to this line of discourse are told by protagonists who are sexually discontented with their partners but are maintaining the relationships for the sake of love or other benefits. A young woman has a boyfriend that seems to have everything a woman could desire: he is tall, handsome, sporty, humorous, and gentle, loving her so much that all her friends are envious. However, the untold truth is that, unfortunately, Prince Charming has an ‘undersized’ penis, which has caused a serious problem for her sex life. After revealing her boyfriend’s misunderstanding of her as sexually indifferent, she confesses to the readers:

How can I tell him this is why I would rather not have sex with him! Apart from the penis size, he serves all my needs … Everyone envies me for having such a perfect lover but knows nothing about my emptiness and how I have to comfort myself with sex toys. Who says size doesn’t matter? (‘Handsome man, tiny penis, 19 September 2010; my translation)

The dialogue with sex-positive feminism takes place implicitly, since the rightfulness of the confessant’s yearning for better sex is hinted at in expressive acts analogous to Reddy’s ‘emotives’. According to Reddy (1997, 1999), emotives are first-person emotional claims that appear to describe the feelings of the speaker but in fact have direct impacts on these feelings; emotives can be intentional, serving as instruments that embrace, revise, or reject cultural or discursive structures. The first line of the quotation ‘How can I tell him this is why I would rather not have sex with him!’ can be regarded as an indirect emotive which implies the confessant’s feelings of helplessness, while the words saying that nobody knows about her ‘emptiness’ act as an oblique lament. Both the indirect emotives justify her discontent for not having a satisfactory sex life (having to comfort herself with sex toys secretly and unwillingly). The question ‘Who says size doesn’t matter?’ acts as a truthful claim (‘size does matter’) confirming the essential necessity of male sexual capacity (as well as female sexual satisfaction) for a happy, intimate relationship. Another case in point discloses a woman’s pre-marital affair with a sexually attractive but unsuitable man. The confessant decides to marry her fiancé because he is comparably more reliable in terms of family life, despite the fact she is not physically satisfied by him. Reflecting on her decision, the confessor concludes her story as follows:

It is said that women have sex for love. This perhaps does not apply to me. I’ll love my husband, but that does not prevent me from loving his (the co-worker’s) body. I am pretty clear about it. Marriage is something that I want. Life should be simple and stable; however, memories of wonderful experiences are also indispensable. (‘A bride-to-be, a womanizer, and an unforgettable one-night stand’, 22 December 2009; my translation)

This extract contains a number of assertive acts that account for the confessant’s self-positioning in the ongoing situation. First, she distinguishes her sexual code from the common argument about female eroticism (‘sex for love’) by explaining ‘This perhaps does not apply to me.’ Similar to the previous case, emotional claims are made to justify the confessant’s desires. The love for her husband and the love for the desirable male body are both declared, which paves the way for the utterances asserting her double needs: the want for ‘simple and stable’ life and the want for ‘wonderful (sexual) experiences’. The utterance ‘I am pretty clear about it’, appearing as a statement of self-awareness, indeed affirms her behaviour (seeking the fulfilment of both needs). The accentuation of the double needs is in tune with the discourse that sees women’s sexual pleasure as equally significant and righteous as other aspects of their lives. Along with others in the same vein, the confession suggests the rise of a new transaction pattern in which women no longer trade sex for love or livelihood but give up sexual pleasure in exchange for love or practicalities, such as stability or a proper family life.

Theme three: justifying the affair. Evidently, the confessant in the foregoing example is unapologetic about her affair. This type of attitude is not uncommon among the ADT’s confessions. For some, being monogamous (but not necessarily loyal) is a strategy with which to cope with life situations rather than compliance with dogmas. The strategic position is related to the third discourse I will touch upon: the justifiable affair. Confessional discourse in this vein usually deals with two situations: cheating on one’s partner/husband (as in the previous case) or being a mistress. In either case, the reasons for having the affair are finely explained and the comforts or pleasures derived are given emphasis. Commonly, it is subtly justified as irresistible for being, first and foremost, sexually satisfactory, and, in addition, passionate, supportive or fulfilling. The following extract exemplifies this subtle method of self-justification. The story describes a young woman’s sexual relationship with a married man. She breaks up with him after his wife finds out the affair. Years later, she looks back and reflects:

I considered myself only a mistress, and I never wanted to wreck his home … I simply wanted to find a shoulder to lean on … The affair gave me a lot of happiness, but also guilty feelings in the end. There shouldn’t be shame in love; if I felt ashamed at times, it was not true love … For me, the passionate affair in the past now exists as a beautiful memory (‘A flight attendant and a mistress only, not a home-wrecker’, 5 November 2014; my translation).

The confessant begins her self-justification by positioning herself as a woman who needed emotional support (‘wanted to find a shoulder to lean on’ and ‘never wanted to wreck his home’). The assertion ‘there shouldn’t be shame in love’, associated with the claims of guilty and shameful feelings, makes explicit the confessant’s understanding of her relationship with the man. The sexual affair, however, is explained away as ‘happy’, ‘passionate’, and ‘beautiful’. Highlighting the emotional intensity in the sexual affair, this line of discourse does not go so far as the emancipation model, which sees marriage as an unnecessary obstacle. Rather, it echoes more the emergent sexual code held by younger Japanese women as represented in cultural translations, in which having an affair is not a sin but something which happens incidentally for fulfilling human needs, including the needs for sexual pleasure and romantic feelings.

Throughout the three thematic discourses, the argument of entitlement is found. Irrespective of the situation, a woman’s right to sexual pleasure is argued to be worthy of esteem. Here, the tagline ‘Because I’m worth it’ reverberates in a new scenario. Nevertheless, ‘human rights’ are not always pursued without a struggle. The desire for a satisfactory sex life competes with emotional and practical needs, and in this matter, traditional sexual morality is less relevant than realistic concerns. A new moral parameter emerges in the ADT’s female sex confessions. In selective appropriations of model discourses, solutions to life situations are sought and interpreted, through which pro-sex feminism is reformulated in the voice of ordinary women telling stories of their own experiences.

Conclusion

This article begins with a reconsideration of the contingent instrumentality of female confession. Noting the existence of voyeurism and commercialism, it probes into the case of the ADT and expounds its internal dialogue with pro-sex feminism with regard to its structural and contextual features.

It is shown that the highly market-oriented, anonymous tabloid confession page fortuitously facilitated sex-positive female confessions in appealing to younger readers at the time when pro-sex feminism and media confessional culture intersected in a society opening up to democratization. It is also evident that the editor as the coaxer of the confessions played a crucial role in this regard. Two layers of internal dialogue arise when the confessants make sense of their experiences. The first layer of internal dialogue takes place between the confessions. Within this layer of dialogue, thematic discourses come into being both across the storylines and the time span. The second layer of dialogue takes place between the confessional discourse and the pro-sex feminism advanced by the media and cultural elites. Both layers are attributed to the communal orientation of the ADT’s confessions. Three thematic discourses are untangled, with textual analysis of typical examples, amplifying traces of the elite-proposed feminism that supplies discursive models to the confessional acts. It is worth noting that the tabloid confessions, resonant of the model discourses, collaborate on their own moral code in dealing with personal situations. Overall, women’s entitlement to sexual pleasure is affirmed with pragmatism. What is at stake is no longer the ‘trading sex for love’ model or the ‘women-losing’ mentality, and neither does the Confucian sexual morality rule. Rather, what matters is the creation of a balance between sexual aspirations, emotional needs, and everyday practicalities.

If sex confession is deemed to function as a cultural instrument, how do we assess the instrumentality of the ADT’s female sex confessions? Although it would be arbitrary to name the motivations of the confessions, it is arguable that they can be taken as a means of disclosing hidden experiences and expressing positive thoughts and feelings about sex without risking self-exposure. They exist as anonymous, collective self-representations which, whether true or fiction, embody the female eroticism that is assumed to be somewhat socially acceptable. More significantly, embedded in people’s life stories, the truth discourse on female sexuality in the ADT’s confessions compounds a ‘practical and ordinary’, everyday version of pro-sex feminism where both the echoes of and differences from previous feminist discourses are found. Being a media discourse, it expects future animation outside the circle of the contributions in the page. The ‘Human Affairs’ page lasted for 12 years and created a large number of social speeches. They can be responded to both psychologically and linguistically. Their dialogic effects are worthy of further attention, including how they are received by readers and how they are reformulated in various cultural forms.

Nevertheless, the production of everyday pro-sex feminism is not free of power relations; the readers’ interests as a whole ultimately determine the formation of the confessions. It is also very likely that those who do not agree with the ideologies present on the page would not choose to read the confessions, or indeed to become the contributors. In other words, the positive discourse of female sexuality is constructed situationally, and the representation of social reality is unavoidably biased. The selective reanimation of pro-sex feminism signifies its progress over recent decades, considering that some of the less radical views have now been taken as personal values. The biased representation mirrors a shared imagination of, or expectation for, the social acknowledgement of female eroticism. The anonymity of the confessions connotes the contributors’ awareness of the fact that any social acknowledgement is uncertain, and if there is any, it is only locational. As to what brings forth the progress of pro-sex feminism, and whether its everyday version, constituted by the confessional discourse, is well acknowledged, further independent study is required.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology, R.O.C. under Grant 100-2410-H-006-055-MY2.

ORCID iD

Yow-Jiun Wang

Note

Yow-Jiun Wang is an associate professor in the Department of Taiwanese Literature at National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan and holds a doctoral degree from Stirling Media Research Institute at University of Stirling in Scotland. Her current research interests include discourse theories, gender and cultural issues in the media, and memory studies.

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