Sex and Equality in Republican China

Abstract

Centered on the controversy that erupted over a proposal to include men in the adultery law in the 1935 revised criminal code, this article demonstrates the role of public opinion in legal reform and reveals a new public urgency in the Republic to regulate male sexuality. The debate over the adultery law pitted women's groups, which invoked the Guomindang-endorsed discourse of equality between men and women to oppose retention of the late imperial law that punished only wives for adultery, against lawmakers, who sought to protect a man's relationship with his concubine—now considered adulterous— from the law. As the debate expanded, commentators expressed increasing concern over the threat posed by male adultery to family, society, and nation. In the end, the activism of women's groups and public consensus on the need to regulate male sexuality combined to pressure lawmakers to include men in the adultery law.