Making Sense of Jiese: An Interview Study of Members from a Porn-Free Self-Help Forum in China

Abstract

About 6 million men in China engage in jiese (abstaining from masturbation and porn) and call themselves jieyou (porn-free self-help community members) . In this article, we sought to unpack how the idea of jiese took root in Chinese historical, social, and cultural contexts by interviewing 32 jieyou . Guided by the sensemaking theory, we conducted a critical discourse analysis of participants’ responses and ended up identifying four major themes: embodied experiences, jiese as rational and noble, reconstructing the subjectivity of jieyou , and nationalistic sentiments. We found out that jieyou tended to justify their abstinence by seeking sources of legitimacy in traditional Chinese culture, the ideology of healthism, science, and patriotic discourses. We argue that jiese reflects young men’s contradictory cultural practices of conservatism, self-medicalization, and neoliberal governmentality.

“I Feel Like a Fraud Who Acts Like a Feminist”: The Discussion Themes and Sexual Scripts in the Porn Free Women Online Forum

“…Upon self-identifying as pornography addicts, women become increasingly vulnerable to a coexisting framework of self-regulation and social norms. The phenomenon of self-diagnosis of addiction has surged in recent years, particularly within the neoliberal paradigm that stipulates individual conduct (Zou et al, 2023 ). Within the prevailing therapeutic milieu, the label of an “addict” carried considerable implications, suggesting an individual’s surrender to excessive desires.…”

“…Moreover, the victimization rhetoric adopted by women often manifests in self-portrayals as victims of their past trauma and partner-inflicted sexual abuse. Contrastingly, men often depicts themselves as victims of extrinsic factors, such as perceived feminist and capitalist conspiracies (Burnett, 2022 ; Zou et al, 2023 ).…”