No Sex, Please, We're Taiwanese

Josephine Cheun-jue Ho had been in Japan for just a week, enough time to see the

ALSO SEE: Colloquy Live: Read the transcript of a live, online discussion with Josephine Ho, a sexology researcher in Taiwan, on whether academics who study socially controversial topics may take moral positions on those topics, and whether universities may set limits on the research.

cherry blossoms bloom and die, she says, before discovering that she had become infamous back home. On April 10, the English professor, who founded the Center for the Study of Sexualities at Taiwan's National Central University, received a phone call from her assistant telling her that religious groups had publicly accused her of promoting sex between humans and animals.

The groups said they were outraged to find, within Ms. Ho's online databank on deviant sexual behaviors, a link to a Web site containing a gallery of photographs of bestiality.

Although she had spent seven years on the project, the professor shut down the databank rather than subject her university to likely pressure from Taiwan's Ministry of Education. She assumed that that was the end of the matter. But two months later, the Publications Appraisal Foundation, which lobbies the government to censor publications that the organization deems "harmful to children," filed a legal complaint on behalf of Ms. Ho's critics, including several religious and educational groups.

The complaint urges the district court in Taipei, the capital, to prosecute Ms. Ho on a charge of violating the island's obscenity laws, an offense punishable by a two-year prison term or a $30,000 fine.

"I was puzzled," says Ms. Ho, sitting on an upholstered bench at the Center for the Study of Sexualities. "I thought, 'How can anyone sue for a hyperlink?' I couldn't believe that they would bring a lawsuit to silence me."

She's not the only one shocked by the complaint. More than 2,000 academics on the island, along with 800 from elsewhere, have signed a petition opposing the lawsuit. The Urgent Action Fund for Women's Rights, a nonprofit organization based in Boulder, Colo., has given Ms. Ho a $4,200 grant to pay her legal fees.

Ms. Ho's work has evoked mixed reactions. Known both here and abroad for her support of prostitution and her refusal to pass judgment on many unorthodox sexual behaviors, the 53-year-old professor is, in the minds of many conservatives, the most public symbol of what is wrong with modern Taiwan.

"Young people can't differentiate what's good and what's bad," says Frank Chi Ming, a researcher at Taipei's Fu Jen Catholic University and leader of an anti-abortion movement here. "Ms. Ho could have a bad influence on them for their entire lives."

Ms. Ho and her supporters, by contrast, see the effort to curtail her research as a dangerous echo of Taiwan's past, when the country was under martial law, and freedom of speech was severely limited.

Hsu Yu-Shen, a gay writer and sexologist, says Ms. Ho is being punished for speaking about sex the same way citizens used to be punished for talking about independence from mainland China, at a time when the ruling party saw Taiwan as part of one China. "She's fighting for the independence of sex," he says.

Such divergent views are of little surprise in a country that has undergone a radical political and social transformation during the past 25 years. Today Taiwan is evolving into vibrant, Western-style democracy. People no longer worry that expressing political discontent will land them in jail. Each election season a wide spectrum of political parties campaigns aggressively on the streets.

Yet with that freedom has come a fear that the country has lost its moral bearings. Newspapers fill their pages with juicy tales of government scandals and pictures of scantily clad women, alongside stories on sexual trends such as bondage. Prostitution is rampant -- and, in much of the country, legal.

Lawyers on both sides of the case say the complaint against Ms. Ho is unprecedented, and, if successful, could restrict academic freedom in Taiwan and change how the Internet is administered here.

Many academics are shocked that someone would even attempt to file such a lawsuit. "Academic freedom has not been an issue before, " says Amie Elizabeth Parry, an associate professor of English at National Central University, who finds the research environment in Taiwan similar to that in the United States, where she earned her doctorate. "There's a strong value placed on multiculturalism."

'Children Love Animals'

Critics of Ms. Ho say that they support academic freedom, provided it stays within the classroom. Where she crossed the line, they argue, was in adding the bestiality link to her Web site. Ms. Ho, however, believes that the real issue is that religious groups think her tolerance for sexual diversity goes too far.

Her basic theory is that a sexual act -- whether pedophilia, masturbation, or bestiality -- is wrong only because of the attendant guilt and shame, which are the result of social mores. When asked if she supports bestiality, she says: "I cannot answer that question. As an academic, I study how cultural taboos change. If I were doing research on death, would I have to die first?"

She does acknowledge believing that some sexual activities are wrong. "Violating people's will is wrong," she says. "Rape is wrong in that sense. Being forced by your husband to have sex is wrong. Being forced to marry someone is wrong." But, she adds, the activities must be judged case by case. She finds it reprehensible that society ignores the stigma that is inflicted on those who engage in morally unacceptable sexual acts.

Ms. Ho has fought for prostitutes to be allowed to work legally, a position that she says derives from her belief in "women's sexual autonomy." While there have been documented cases of aboriginal teenagers who were forced into prostitution in the 1980s, Ms. Ho contends that today, women who engage in sex work do it by choice. That includes teenage girls, who, she says, are more sophisticated than adults give them credit for. She objects to outlawing prostitution by teenagers "without knowing the details of the transaction and why they are doing it."

One of the island's most vociferous opponents of prostitution is Sister Therese Tang, executive director of the Good Shepherd Sisters Social Welfare Services, a group run by the Roman Catholic Church. Her mission, she says, is to help "lost sheep," young women who have fallen into prostitution, which is legal outside of Taipei for anyone over 21.

She is also one of the plaintiffs in the legal complaint against Ms. Ho. Inside Sister Tang's cramped office here, she flips through the pictures that appeared on the linked site: photos of women having sex with a zebra, a snake, and a horse, among other animals. Her wrinkled face, under a few strands of gray hair that poke out from her habit, contorts as she glances at each one in turn.

"Children love animals," she says. "Why would you put this on a Web site where children can see it?"

Sister Tang is familiar with Ms. Ho's work. In 2001, she contacted the Ministry of Education to complain that the Web site of the professor's sexuality-studies center was advising girls to become prostitutes. "It told them to go happily and have intercourse and come back with money," she says.

Advising Prostitutes

Ms. Ho denies that she has encouraged adolescent girls to go into the business. "I advise prostitutes how to go about their jobs wisely," she says. "They should be able to communicate among each other so they can manage their business more wisely. It's a very pragmatic approach."

Facing pressure from the university in 2001, Ms. Ho moved the databank from the university's server and bought space on a commercial Web site, where the information remained until the recent controversy.

But the databank's removal from the Internet gives her opponents little gratification. Hsu Wen-Pin, executive director of the Publication Appraisal Foundation, still seeks to take action against Ms. Ho -- if only to teach her a lesson. "We support academic freedom," he says, "but only within limits."

He and his staff members comb through Taiwan's publications looking for material that they feel might harm children. Piles of pornographic magazines are stacked on a conference table in the foundation's office, along with newspaper clippings of pictures of women in lingerie.

Mr. Hsu, a short man with gray, crew-cut hair, says his group takes on responsibilities that once belonged to the government. "Taiwan is too free, too democratic," he says. "Everyone respects everyone else's agenda."

The plaintiffs are not seeking financial damages. It is important simply to press the legal complaint, Mr. Hsu says, because "if you don't accept that you are wrong and you still argue, then the court should decide who's right and who's wrong. If [Professor Ho] agreed that she was wrong, we wouldn't be suing her."

Conscientious Professor

Ms. Ho favors blue eye shadow and has short, spiky hair. A cellphone hangs from her neck. She exudes the energy of a college student. In early September, on her second full day back in Taiwan from a five-month visiting professorship in Japan, she plunges into the start of the academic year by holding a thesis-writing seminar for a dozen students. Though most of her research focuses on sexual behavior, she teaches several English classes as well.

Her colleagues are impressed by her capacity for work. "When there's 50 things to do, and when I'm ready to pull my hair out, she's composed and she finds ways to get things done," says Ms. Parry.

After receiving two doctorates, one in education, from the University of Georgia, and one in English, from the University of Indiana at Bloomington, Ms. Ho returned to Taiwan in 1988 to join the English department of National Central University. Since then, she has published 10 books, started the university's sex-studies center, and begun an annual meeting on the island for academics to discuss gender and sexuality -- in addition to teaching several courses each semester.

She has been married to a fellow English professor for 22 years but says they are too busy to have children. One of the few times that she had a break in recent years, she jokes, is when she went through 12 hours of surgery in 2000 to remove a benign brain tumor. Colleagues say that Ms. Ho was such a conscientious professor that before she went into surgery, she made sure she had graded all her students' papers.

Ms. Ho plans to spend the next three years conducting research on body transformation, including piercing, tattooing, transsexual operations, and plastic surgery. She has fought against what she sees as the victimization and stigma of "sexual minorities," like transgendered people and prostitutes.

The Gender and Sexuality Rights Association of Taiwan, a nonprofit group that circulated the petition in support of Ms. Ho, suspects that one reason for the religious groups' campaign against her is that she has accused them of using "sexual victims," like teenage prostitutes, to help them gain political power and government funds for conservative projects.

Ms. Ho's research center reflects her provocative personality. The center's office is decorated with a reproduction of "L'Origine du Monde," by Gustave Courbet, a painting of a woman's naked midsection. A plastic life-size human penis sits on a shelf of books. The center houses a collection of Japanese sex comics and binders full of clippings about sexuality and gender issues from Taiwanese newspapers going back for more than a decade.

Officials of the university, anxious to differentiate it from other institutions, were enthusiastic when, in 1995, she proposed the idea of starting a center that focused on gender and sexuality, she says. Now, however, she believes that political considerations have made it difficult for them to support her work.

National Central administrators say officially that they are maintaining a "neutral" position until the court has decided the matter. "Professor Ho is a very respected teacher," says one high-level official who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity. "Students say a lot of good things about her."

But while she is responsible as an instructor, she has been irresponsible as a researcher, the official continued: In giving advice to young people, she should have exercised moderation. The university believes that she did not, and that she therefore overstepped the bounds of academic freedom. "Her actions have damaged the university's reputation and have raised concern among parents and professors," the official said.

Jimmy Jue, an official who has since left the university, told The Chronicle in early July that Ms. Ho might be dismissed.

Despite the threat that she may lose her job, Ms. Ho seems carefree as she shows a reporter around the center. "I am skilled in many things," she says coyly. "I am a good typist. I could be an editor. I do dishes. I could clean a house." On a more serious note, she says she worries about the impact the legal complaint will have on "other scholars, sexual minorities, and the way people talk about taboo things."

Ms. Ho's demeanor darkens when she is told of Mr. Hsu's demand that she apologize for the link in her database. She clenches her jaw. "I am not apologetic," she says. "I did not do anything wrong. I was not operating on animals. Maybe I'm a bad influence, but they are a worse influence."

From the Bible to Freud

Ms. Ho says her criticism of the island's religious groups is based on her own experience with religious and social intolerance. "I know the horrible nature of self-righteousness," she says. In a country ruled by martial law, she was raised under the guidance of strict parents, who, like many Taiwanese mothers and fathers at the time, forbade her to read novels during the school year, fearing that doing so would hurt her studies.

Ms. Ho says she sought out a Protestant church when she was 13 years old, in the hope that it could resolve her inner conflict over masturbation. Throughout high school and college, she says, she studied the Bible and prayed every morning.

She left for the United States in 1976 on a full scholarship at the University of Georgia. In Taiwan's political and education environment, "you were told to do things," she says. But now her eyes were opened to a system that taught students to challenge, rather than obey, authority. When her classmates spoke up during lectures, Ms. Ho says, to her it was like poetry.

To compete with her classmates, whenever professors posed a question, she would shoot up her hand, even if she didn't have anything to say. Then, if called upon, she would scramble to think of something intelligent. In the American higher-education system, she says, "I had the pleasure of studying, being challenged and humiliated."

In the early 1980s, as she began studying the works of Marx and Freud, whom she counts as her two biggest influences, her devotion to religion subsided. In their philosophies, she found ways to explain how sexuality functions, both in her own life and in society.

Back in Taiwan after a 12-year absence, she was no longer the timid, religious student she had been when she left. Soon after her return, she began studying sexuality. "I noticed that the expression of women's bodies had not changed much," she says. "Women still tried to present themselves as pure and demure." But she also saw a new undercurrent of sexuality in popular novels describing illicit affairs. And she saw the proliferation of "love motels," with rooms that rent by the hour, in the cities. Sociologists and physicians were discussing abortions -- legal in Taiwan -- more openly.

She had chosen an apt time to return. Martial law had been lifted the year before, prompting a period of political and social change, and helping universities gain more contact in the outside world.

'Very Provocative'

Ms. Ho first gained attention, and perhaps a bit of notoriety, when she participated in a march against sexual harassment in 1994. An organizer asked her to go onstage to speak. Choosing words that rhyme in Chinese, she called out: "We want orgasms, not sexual harassment!" Even among a crowd of feminists, the words were instantly memorable, says Chang Hsiao-Hung, an English professor at National Taiwan University, who is one of the country's leading feminists.

"She's very provocative," says Ms. Chang, who describes herself as less radical than her colleague. "Her radical views have created a space for people to speak. It means that my arguments will be accepted easier."

After Ms. Ho began defending prostitutes' right to work in 1997, however, she created a divide among gender-studies scholars. "A lot of people, including feminists, are uncomfortable with her," says Ms. Chang. "They can't stand her. Teenage prostitutes are discriminated against, but to glorify them as heroines is to simplify the question."

A Liberated Society?

Taiwanese academics say the complexities and contradictions that have developed within Taiwanese society have created a breeding ground for a legal complaint like the one filed against Ms. Ho. Taiwan is "very schizophrenic," says Ms. Chang: "We cannot tell if Taiwan is a liberated society or if it is an old, conservative society."

Ms. Ho waits to hear whether the court will decide to prosecute. The changes in Taiwanese society, reflected by a radical professor who unabashedly discusses masturbation and bestiality, do not sit well with her opponents. Ms. Ho says she has already felt a backlash. National Central has informed her that it will monitor her Web site -- even without the controversial databank -- for offensive material. And, she says, the university has stopped supporting an Internet project on plagiarism on the Web that she planned to start this semester for 10 of her graduate students.

But, Ms. Ho, in her in-your-face manner, plans to spend the rest of her academic career in Taiwan trying to open up the sexual arena for public discussion. She says, with a defiant smile, "Ready or not, gays, bisexuals, and pedophiles are here. Are you going to deal with them?"