Qionghua and the Technicolor Dreamshow

Last night a friend and I watched, for the first time, the National Ballet of China's production of The Red Detachment of Women. It's apparently what they showed Nixon when he came to hang out in '72. From the start, of course, we expected the experience to be deeply ironic: after all, ballet doesn't exactly stick out as the most proletarian of art forms. Though, in a pretty ridiculous tract published during the early 70s in MIT's The Drama Review under the heading "Documents from China," some defender of the production claimed that Detachment was deliberately designed to overcome the counterrevolutionary evils of classical ballet.Regardless of whether the ballet form is capable of transcending its roots in the muck of bourgeois decadence, the leading sponsors for the National Ballet were Mercedes-Benz, a luxury airline, and the Bank of China. Hmm.

As for the show itself, I am totally an outsider when it comes to dance and performance art generally. But here's what I did notice.
(1) The colors made me feel like I was watching a bunch of Legos onstage. Fierce, unyielding primaries for the leads and villainously pastel for the main landlord, "Southern Tyrant." Subtlety is not the name of the game for the "Model Operas" of the Maoist years. Red blazoned on arms and waved in the form of a huge snapping flag. Deliriously bright backgrounds ostensibly depicting idyllic Hainan Island ("the Hawaii of China").
(2) Speaking of the lack of any pretension to subtlety*: there are lots of revolutionary poses struck, firm, determined revolutionary nods made, and (on the other side) lots of sleazy bowing and old-fashioned handclasping. The music is (unsurprisingly) militant-folksy-cheery and major-key when the Good Guys are on and cool-cat jazzy when the Bad appear (the latter also get much dimmer lighting for an extra bit of "Bad Old Society" smarm).
(3) One innovation I found actually appealing was the fight scenes that drew heavily upon the physical vocabulary of martial operas. (Of course, it was also pretty...unique to include masses of company dancers wielding their bayonets en pointe, but that element of Red kitsch is given away right in the posters for the ballet--it's downright iconic.) If there had been a gong, clapper, and eight-cornered drum instead of a full symphony for some of the battle scenes, it would have felt a lot more like some clip from Romance of the Three Kingdoms than a struggle of the oppressed proletariat against landlord depredations.
(4) The interesting lack of a prima ballerina, and the similarly interesting sexual dynamics among the principals. While Wu Qionghua is certainly the protagonist, there's also Hong the party advisor to the Detachment and the commander of the Detachment. With the latter, Qionghua dances half-a-dozen pas de deux and exchanges several dramatic embraces; with the former, zero on both counts. It was all very Anchee-Min-Red-Hot-Lesbian-Tension** or Sexy Iron Girl (-on-girl), and it made me wish I were doing work on gender and sexuality of the Maoist years.

Anyway, it was a technically superb production and so worth the $30 to go see it at the bombastic National Opera House. If any of my gentle readers are intrigued, I believe there are various clips scattered about the usual places on the Internet for a glimpse of the action.

*Subtlety, as we all know well, is the first sign of counterrevolutionary corruption.
**Not intended to disparage Min's book or lesbians, of course!

Some Tips from Dr. Sex

Hail, my gentle hypothetical reader. It's been a very long while indeed since the last entry, but I sincerely hope the contents of this post will ameliorate somewhat my lamentable laziness.

Allow me now to introduce the subject of this post:

It's one of those portraits where a snide comment is superfluous.

Dr. Sex, also known as Dr. Zhang Jingsheng (张竞生), was born in 1888 in Guangdong province.* He studied at Peking University, participated in underground revolutionary activities, and was in the first batch of study-abroad students funded by the fledgling Chinese Republic in 1912. He got his Ph.D. from the University of Lyon in 1919, writing his dissertation on Rousseau.

As we all know, what happens in France...doesn't stay in France. Dr. Z had himself some bontemps and returned to take up a post as Professor of Philosophy at his alma mater, but then was ejected summarily after publishing Sex Histories (性史), at first called Sex Histories Part I, in 1926. Over the winter holidays (Coincidence...? Nay, gorging on food and being huddled inside makes everybody think about perversity, a universal condition across the distances of time and space.) Zhang sent out surveys to university students in the city, then edited together some of the responses into a book. Infamously, Sex Histories flew off the shelves and caused all manner of ruckus, including massive traffic jams. Its twelve accounts range from one by his then-wife, entitled "My Sexual Experiences," to "Looking Back On Gaining Knowledge in Childhood," by one "Jing zai" (roughly, "Respectful Dude").

As Haiyan Lee has described, Dr. Z's aesthetics mixed utilitarianism, German Romanticism, iconoclasm, social-Darwinian eugenics, and radical social utopianism into a hearty stew in which "beauty" became something each citizen of the "Republic of Beauty" had to diligently create and scrupulously uphold. This fantastic land, while full of apparent forward-thinking--viz. Dr. Z's resolute advocacy of nude, mixed-sex outdoor exercise--was decidedly not liberal or even individualistic: Beauty came in the singular, and one either met its criteria through the proper cultivation of one's erotic and aesthetic body, or one failed and became a threat to the overall beauty of society. "Nymphomaniacs," same-sex sexual liasions, and even women who wore trousers were all regarded Un-Beautiful, and warranted "correction"-- in the former case by labial surgery. Ideal men were tall, had deep orbits, high-bridged noses, and broad shoulders--that is, not Chinese. In short, Dr. Z's ideology presents another troubling example of how ideas that seem like they should be worthy of celebration and colorful parades also come with a mandatory set of less palatable accompaniments: in this case, personal liberation simultaneously endorsed with fascist domination through "biopower" remind us again of the extent to which authoritarian ideals were inextricable from the global development of modern state and society.

With that schpiel out of the way, I should note that Dr. Z's fate was an unhappy one: after the sensational publication of Sex Histories, Part I, he prepared a manuscript for a sequel (in which he planned to write about his own experiences) and was on the cusp of submitting it for publication when the backlash hit. Media appended him with snide nicknames, including "Dr. Sex," "Dr. Prostitution," and "Great Licentious Worm."** He held onto the manuscript, but the eagerly awaited Part II appeared anyway--and, according to some sources, the series magically continued until Part X. Zhang put furious ads in the papers declaiming against the people who were stealing his name brand, but to no apparent avail.

This brand was evidently still powerful (if rather tinged with salacious implications) well into the later years of the Republic, because I was able to pull a dodgy-looking volume from the nether planes of WorldCat called Strange Stories of Sexual Desire: Interesting Histories of the Art of Sex (性欲奇谈：性艺趣史). Said volume was seemingly put out by Zhang's own publishing house, The Bookstore of Beauty, and has "Edited by Dr. Zhang" prominently displayed on the title page beside the photo of a rather uncomfortable-looking nude (the chaise lounge against which she awkwardly leans look decidedly scratchy). But there is exactly zero mention of the good Doctor in the contents; instead, "Medical Doctor Wei," who narrates these Interesting Histories appears to be a woman; her name is her sole identifying feature. Real editing was ostensibly handled by one Jiang Xiaoping. In other words, by the 1930s Dr. Z was clearly hot-stuff enough that his name could help hawk anything sexy.***

Anyhow, back to the reason you, my dear hypothetical reader, have bothered to scroll down this far: Dr. Zhang will now be answering your questions, educating YOU in order that you may become a better citizen of the Republic of Beauty!

(1)On "harmonizing before having sexual intercourse":
"...first it is necessary that man and woman enter the realm of beauty at the same time. ...If either one has not yet entered the realm of beauty, that one suffers qualms throughout the night. ...In this instance I think it's best for the one who can't sleep to go to another room, read books related to all kinds of sexual learning, and supplement knowledge for the next occasion."****

(2)On female ejaculation:*****
"Women possess many types of nether fluids: one type is fragrant water and emerges from within the clitoris. The second type is vaginal fluid, and is discovered when the penis is in contact. The third is "Bartholin fluid," which is a type of fluid from the glands at the vaginal opening and is expelled only when the woman fully comprehends the joys of sex and is fully satisfied. When expelled, it shoots far [lit. "hits far away"] like a man's ejaculate. ... When this "third type of water" is expelled, the woman is as if drunken or dazed...then she becomes tired afterward, much like the state before and after male ejaculation. ...From this "example from nature," [during female ejaculation, paralleling the male's delivery of sperm,] the ovaries must be working intensely to send the ovum [lit. "egg beads"] down to the uterus to fuse with the sperm [lit. "seminal bugs"]."

(3)On changing oneself into a "beloved" husband:
"...when he awakes in the morning he should comb his hair prettily. If his wife dislikes the beard, then everyday he must not forget to shave assiduously like the overseas Chinese students in America. He should always be dressed in up-to-date fashion. ..."The greatest taboo is to come into touch with [your wife] when she is in a bad humor." ..."It is best if you and your wife live in separate houses, but if you can't you mustn't forget to partition the room or at the very least to sleep in separate beds."

(4)On "strengthening weaknesses of the sexual organs":
"the man should frequently wash his privates in cold water...avoid having intercourse excessively and must not use aphrodisiacs. He should also be diligent in washing his body."

"...woman's laxness is an extremely common defect in our country...they have never even once made an injection into the private parts and they are particularly indifferent to washing. Therefore their flesh is unhealthy and it prevents the development of sexual desires...when menstruation has finished one should inject water once into the vagina and usually do this several times monthly. Again one must bathe continuously....after washing, rub with a soft cloth until the flesh gets warm and desist when you feel like you're generating electricity. ...At the time of intercourse you must come to it with enthusiasm and conduct yourself with courage."

"...the sexual organs are overly concealed [in children]." [Zhang next describes a type of open-crotch pants for small children.] "...this is good, for in this way the sexual organs are continuously exposed to the outside air and the feelings of sensation are fostered. Secondly ...daily if possible, wash the child's sex organs and after washing rub them until they are warm. Thirdly, think of ways to prohibit masturbation and other similar kinds of dissipation..."

(5)On the proper conduct of intercourse:
"First, the number of times that the male ejaculates...should not be excessive and the sperm must not be ejaculated too quickly....Once or twice a week is sufficient for those in the prime of life....However the time for one occasion must be lengthened, at least more than twenty minutes and better if extended to from forty minutes to an hour."

"The tempo can be helped by filling or emptying the urinary bladder...before intercourse it is good for the male to fully urinate and for the woman to store up her urine. ...[This] slows ejaculation while...accelerating...the "third fluid. ...The most important thing is that the woman take initiative. It is forbidden for her to...become like a wooden doll...never etiquette and formality or a training course in Confucian ethics."
***

What a delightful pudding of hyper-sensitivity to "hygiene" with a touch of an abiding fear of male enervation through excessive ejaculation ("spermatorrhea"), all infused generously with clear, "scientific," and fascistically arbitrary delineations of acceptable sexuality and deviance! Delicious. The good Doctor will be in all week to help with egg beads, third fluids, and generating electricity from your privates.

Good night, and don't let the seminal bugs bite!

*A.K.A. Revolutionville.
** Oh journalists!
***He's actually made quite a comeback in the Reform years, as a simple Google (or better yet, Baidu) sesh will indicate.
****He so smooth. Look at that shameless product placement! Oh Doc, I wanna be just like you one day EMAIL THIS ENTRY TO ALL YOUR FRIENDS.
*****All passages except this one are taken from Howard Levy's 1967 translation.

Comic Books, Old School Chinese Style

The term's finally coming to an end, and so I guiltily update a horrifying two months since my last entry. To make up a little for this transgression, I've got some juicy stuff to share.

While doing some poking around in old books earlier this year, I ran across illustrations in some late Ming (early 17th century) gongan xiaoshuo, or "court-case tales." (NB: xiaoshuo is the Modern Chinese word for "fiction," but the fictiveness of the genre in late imperial times was not nearly as clear-cut as that label might imply. Thus I use a zillion synonyms, but never "fiction.")

Anyway, these pictures take up about a third of the page;

(This and all following images from the Mingjng gongan, or Bright Mirror Cases. )

block-printed like the text, they are not exactly the pinnacles of late imperial Chinese artistic genius--in fact, they are frequently quite stereotypical in their graphic vocabulary, with all the women looking like one another, all the magistrates much apparently cloned from one man, etc. Not unlike Lego characters in the recent series of popular films adapted into Lego-based action games, even when these figures' heads are lopped off they retain more or less the same expression--one of slight bemusement:

(Oh dear, it looks like this evil monk, being unable to seduce me, has lopped my head off in his fury. Teehee?)

Nonetheless, the presence of these illustrations suggests something of how the vast majority of Chinese people might have accessed stories that literate folk could read at length in the body of these xiaoshuo. The stereotyped images also have the flavor of the courtroom drama, put on and accessible to even the most "rootless" of illiterate rural people. As one would expect from the Cops of 17th-18th century China, most of the stories are pretty sensational, with lots of blood, sex, and plot twists. Notably, I've found two stories in this collection alone with women who have sex and impregnate each other.

But just about all gonagan xiaoshuo end with the successful, clever resolution of the case by a righteous judge, and, often, most unpleasant punishments for the guilty parties. More than occasionally, these sentences far exceeded the statutory regulations.

(If "a wicked monk buries the woman [he murdered, see above] and plants a tree atop her grave" isn't pretty sensational, then you, dear Reader, have probably watched a little too much true crime TV, especially since the monk is apparently a late Ming version of the Hulk or something, able to uproot entire full-grown trees.)

Here I want to post a complete graphic account of a case so you can pretend to be an illiterate person--little kid, young wife, old codger, bandit--of your choice and follow along, just like an episode of CSI as a comic, except Old and Chinese, which can only make the experience better...right? Thus I present "Lord Governor Chen Solves the Case of a Rape and Murder."


A local gentleman, Deng Kui, treats the scholar son of an acquaintance, Zhang Wenli, to a meal.

(Thebpody text notifies us that Deng Kui's young wife, Yu shi,* is "flowerlike in complexion and moonlike in radiance, more beautiful than Xishi and Imperial oncubine Pan of old, with hands delicate as new-sprung lily-buds and brows as fine as willow-leaves just appearing on the branch." During the Pure Brightness festival, Deng and his old mother go out to pay the customary tributes to his father's grave, leaving Yu shi home alone. BAD IDEA.)


Zhang Ba [Zhang the Eighth] tries to rape Yu shi and, failing to overcome her, murders her.

(The body text describes the young idler Zhang the Eighth, who had long lusted after Yu shi, and, when he saw the young woman's husband and mother-in-law both heading toward the graves on Pure Brightness, decided to make his move. Unfortunately for him, Yu shi shouted invectives at him and tried to flee. Suddenly realizing his difficult situation, and espying some fancy jewelry and cltohs, Zhang the Eighth grabs a kitchen knife, kills the poor Yu shi, and seizes some of the cloths and jewels before running and hiding in the hills behind the house.

Coincidentally, the young scholar Zhang Wenli passes by the Deng household and heads inside to say hello--with the ulterior motive of maybe catching another glimpse of the beautiful Yu shi. He ends up discovering her "corpse, saturated with fresh blood and lying on the floor," which scares the soul from his body. In terror, he leaps on his horse and dashes away. Zhang the Eighth, still crouched in the hill, sees all of this clearly. You may see where this is going.)

Kui returns home, sees his wife's murdered corpse, and begins to weep uncontrollably.

(The mother-in-law and Deng Kui report matters to the local headmen immediately. Zhang the Eighth makes a timely appearance, saying that he had been chopping wood in the hills and had seen Wenli ride in, then leave a short while later in a panic. "His family is rich and just has the one son," Zhang suggests to Deng. "You should take this body and carry it to their door, otherwise they'll probably try to bribe the officials with all they've got."** But Deng is reluctant--the Zhangs might send people out to grab Yu shi's corpse and thus eliminate the evidence, so he takes matters to court.)

Deng Kui turns in a petition to the county magistrate accusing Wenli.

(The text reproduces Deng's accusation as a standard "petition" form--perhaps as a way to satisfy armchair detectives who should have been studying up on the Book of Odes or the Spring and Autumn Annals instead, so they could become a magistrate and read real, but probably much more boring, petitions.)


The magistrate sends out constables to arrest Wenli.

(The magistrate, Shen, is "an impatient and harsh man" equipped with "a steely sense of justice." He's furious after reading the plaint, and straightaway sends off constables. I do like this dude's pose with those manacles--can you hear the Cops theme music in the background here?)

Zhang Shimao, Wenli's dad, sets out some wine and goodies for the two constables.

(The next morning, having deflected the police for the evening, Shimao has Wenli file his own petition, accusing Deng Kui of making false accusations: "last year Deng lent my father some silver as startup capital, which we have not yet repaid. Thus he is plotting to cheat us of money.")

Magistrate Shen conducts the inquest of Yu shi's corpse.

(The corpse has a wound on the side and another on the neck[--this does seem obvious, considering the picture shows her decapitated...]. Magistrate Shen calls in the local headmen and Zhang #8 for interrogations. I wonder what that weasel's going to say?)


Zhang the Eighth stubbornly testifies against Wenli, who is injustly condemned.

(At first resistant to confessing, even after forty strokes of the bamboo rod and collapsing in a faint, Wenli eventually confesses after being trussed up in the leg-press and having his head knocked with sticks. Even though he still denies any knowledge of the clothes and jewels, Magistrate Shen ignores him and writes up a case summary.)
Shimao appeals the case to the Provincial Judicial Commissioner's office.

(There's another "plaint" here recording what Shimao filed on the provincial level, going over the prefect's head.)

Luckily for the hapless Wenli, the Nanjing-based Governor Chen is on a tour of inspection and arrives in Huizhou prefecture at just the right moment.

("A youthful holder of the jinshi degree [the third and most advanced in the bureaucratic tests]," Chen is "bright as a mirror, able to see as clearly as a vase of ice, and careful in the details, down to matters as fine as the new-grown autumn down of birds and beasts.")

The Governor interrogates the murder in detail.

("Lift high the bright mirror, Sir," pleads Wenli, "and shine through my injust condemnation." Zhang #8, though, maintains that he had seen the entire rape-attempt-cum-murder from the hill where he was chopping wood. The Governor asks if he, being at such close range, had heard the woman screaming, which she must've done as her murderer attacked. "This humble person did hear," says Zhang #8. "Well, if you heard her cries, why did you not report the matter, instead waiting for Deng Kui to do so? Your words seem unreliable." Zhang #8 has nothing to say.)

A crow flies in and pecks the head of Zhang the Eighth.

(Just as the Governor is hesitating over Zhang #8's inconsistent testimony, a crow flies right in, pecks Zhang #8 on the head once, then flies off again. Everyone's shocked, until Governor Chen sternly shouts that it was Zhang #8 who had done the deed. The fellow refuses to confess until he's gotten two rounds of the leg-press and a hundred knocks from the sticks. When he finally does admit to his crime, he adds that "Heaven couldn't allow my stubborn accusation and injustice toward Wenli, and now you, Sir, are as just as the blue sky. I am resigned to paying with my life.")

The great Governor sentences Zhang the Eighth to the death penalty.

(The Governator also declares that, because Yu shi had resisted rape to the death, she would be commemorated as a chastity martyr, which probably means some silver distributed to her husband's family to erect a paifang, or arch, and a likely biography in the local gazetteer--though such institutions are much better documented as well as a lot more extensively maintained in the Qing than the late Ming.)



Wenli is cleared of the crime and sent home a free man.

(I dig his jolly look here. The blob in the sky could be anything--a comet? A dying bird? A melting sun? A cloud? But those little dark marks near the horizon are definitely supposed to be bamboo. Bamboo shoots, probably. Yum. What a lush landscape they have in Huizhou.)

The gentry and the common people alike praise the righteous, moral governance of Lord Chen.

(More blobbity things in sky, and either a really "mad cursive" inscription*** or a surprisingly postmodern representation of Lord Chen's justice. This last page of the story is taken up by an eighteen-line poem. I quote, "Emperor and lords rule with righteousness and the four seas are clear/the star of virtue hangs high and the eye of Heaven is open." Aha! Those blobs must be THE EYES OF HEAVEN. Do these lines sound a bit apocalyptic to you too, dear Reader?)

Golly, that was an epic post. No commentary--just the observation that these could be awesome if some competent people decided to make 'em into a TV series.

Next time, on THE STAR OF VIRTUE, join us for mutually impregnating lesbians and patron deities of literature--all in the name of JUSTICE, of course!



*shi has sometimes been translated as "woman," [for instance Spence's Death of Woman Wang] but it literally means "of the clan of". If only one surname is mentioned before shi, it is the woman's father's name; if there are two given, for instance Zhang Wei shi, the first is her husband's and the second her father's. Oh, the delights of Cofnucian patriarchy.
** Lest Zhang #8 seems maniacal here, this tactic was actually practiced often enough that it entered a substatue in the Great Qing Code.
***Behold:

RAGE

Compared to many Great and Important, not to mention Tragic and Depressing things there are to rage/fret about today, this is going to seem incredibly puny and unimportant. But the rage, it is real.
Recap of the circumstances: I go to the grocery store and buy some packaged salad (did I hear mentions of arugula-eating liberals?). I go to the Chain Bookstore in the strip mall (highfalutin name aside, it is clearly a strip mall) and chance upon volume 4 of One Thousand and One Nights, in manhwa form (the Korean rendition of the compound manga, or manhua).
[Spoilers ahead.]
Anyway, this is a pretty well-done piece of work, in terms of storytelling, art, and translation. The major innovation here is that the Scherezad of familiar lore is now a young (male) scholar named Sehara who stands in for his sister's draft slot into the savage, tormented, positively Heathcliffian Sultan's harem (Sultan is depicted in image above). Yes. A cute lad is drafted into this man's harem. So when I say there are some man-love undertones here, no one should be surprised. And for your information , no, that is not the sole factor motivating my sustained readership. The stories are highly and darkly dramatic (which is to say, verging on silly) in the mode of Yuki Kaoru, redoubtable authoress of works that inspire youth to don black wings and white face paint and lie around in puddles of rose petals or jungles of bandages mooning about death and incest and things of that nature.



[Above: Angel Sanctuary, representative work of Yuki-sensei. Below: Our young, sprightly protagonist.]

In this installment, we get more backstory about just why Insane Sultan is in fact Insane, hates women, pokes their eyes out/murders them, etc. Of course the cause (apart from infidelity by his stepmother/wife, which is understandably traumatic) is his deceased mother, who had an affair and was beheaded by her irate husband before the very eyes of her soon-to-be-wacko child. This all comes out, complete with manful tearshed, after our young scholar tells a depressing revision of a classical trope, "The Woodsman and the Angel." The usual rendition has a kindly woodsman chancing upon a pool in which angels come down from the celestial realms to take baths (must be good water in that pool), meets one, marries her, has two children with her, and then defends her from heavenly authoritarianism, often to bittersweet effect. (The myth behind Chinese Valentine's Day on the 7th day of the 7th lunar month is similar.)

Sehara, however, has done his research, and delivers only straight facts. In his less pleasant version, the angel is a noblewoman on the eve of her wedding to her beloved and the woodsman a rapist who is devoted to her and the two kids she helps him raise, but also beats her and refuses for years to give herb ack the clothes he stole from her. On one of his birthdays the older child, from whose perspective the events are more or less recounted, meets a strange, very handsome man in the market who wears the same necklace he's got around his own neck. From there things get ugly quick: hands torn off in bear-traps, strangling, axes in the back, terrified children, et al. Bad end: dead adults, crying children, mother rises to the heavens in angel(?) form.
Terrifying, but logical and fairly nuanced revision (I'm simplifying here. Plus, the ambiguities of the visual medium would require quite a lot more space to translate).

What's irritating, though, is the author's disclaimer at the end of the volume, a mere page or two after he's got Sehara and Traumatized Sultan embracing, the latter crying his face off. Noting that he had been called a feminist after the book was published, he declares that he is not, and that though he likes "equality for women, the push for it has gone too far. Men and women should not fight!" There's also some bits about how God made men and women to lurrrrve each other and, finally, how he approves of Gender Studies over Women's Studies (though he said Feminist Studies, I believe, which I am not sure is the same thing at all), but that was because the problem should be looked at in a "men are from Mars, women are from Venus" way. What?
I thought the author was female, but as it seems it is a gentleman. This still doesn't change the interesting and ragey implications of disavowing one's feminism. I think Amanda at Pandagon sums it up well in this post: "Much of the mainstream media appears to think a feminist is any woman who have ever been paid to do work. This is in contrast to what feminists think a feminist is, as well as the dictionary, which is someone---male or female---who supports women’s full equality."

I've always had what I've felt to be an unfounded view that Koreans are more anti-feminist and anti-LGBT than the denizens of Greater China and Japan (though perhaps from certain perspectives all three might seem pretty bad). But an environment in which deep Protestantism, post-military-dictatorship-technocapital glitz, sometimes jingoistic nationalism, and sustained reverence for Confucian principle (whichever are meant by that phrase) run together, there realy does seem to be rather little space for feminism. And if the writer of a popular manga in the 2000s who depicts possibly--just maybe--feminist themes, then he has to disclaim his own work? That certainly doesn't make Korea's case for progressive views on gender and sexuality.