Abstract:
In this thesis, I aim to study how sex and intimate relationships between heterosexual couples is being constructed within posts on Chinese social media. Also, I discuss what the discursive space made possible and demarcated by the dominant discourses is like for Chinese young people who are starting, having or ending an intimate relationship. My research is based on a social constructionist framework with a feminist post-structuralist theorization of knowledge, discourse and subject positions. And I used thematic analysis to analyse the data retrieved from Weibo, a Chinese social networking site similar to Twitter. According to my research, the dominant construction of sexuality on Chinese SNS is primarily on a patriarchal dis-course, where men's sexual desires and families are prioritized. Intimate relationships are frequently constructed as transactions, where two genders are seated opposite each other. Sex is constructed as resources possessed by women and in exchange for emotional satisfaction and financial support from men. The negotiation process between genders is inextricable from the patriarchal logic rooted deeply in traditional China and the consumerism and capitalism that has flooded in since decades ago; and at the same time, such transactions are camouflaged under the name of love. As a result, I argue that a neoliberal discourse and a romantic discourse of intimate relationships not so much deconstruct the traditional patriarchal gendered power relations as they might appear, but instead solidify them.