Sexuality and Governmentality in Mongolia: The case of Osorjamaa “Normality Vs. Abnormality”

Focusing on sexuality gives an insight to understanding the politics of everyday gendered struggle (and politics) in society as well as expanding not only the present knowledge of sexuality but creates space to redefine the discourse of sexuality to shape the future.

This writing forms a space to identify the existing gendered power by the state ideology of Socialist Mongolia still co-existing in contemporary Mongolia through the case of Osorjamaa, a young boy who has more followers (180,000) than most politician because of his non-binary gender expression on social media.

I will briefly cover a historical background of Mongolian sexuality studied by a Mongolian researcher Baasanjav Terbish, followed by a recent case study (of Osorjamaa), and conclude with my re-thinking on sexuality discourse and power relations in Mongolia that is rooted in both pre and post-socialist regime.

Sexuality as the ‘act’ of sex Vs. the desire to be ‘normalized’ through freedom of discourse

Terbish (2013) briefly studied the history of sexuality in pre and post-socialist regime of Mongolia. According to Terbish (2013), the monastic understanding of homosexuality was nonclassificatory based. There was never a separate identity neither a social order for those who acted upon homosexuality. The term sexuality itself was defined not as in discourse matter but upon the very ‘act’ of sex itself in this study. Even if sexuality is seen beyond the act but as decensoring one’s desire to announce freely of own sexual orientation or perhaps the desire to ‘be’ free of violence, the state exercises its power through denial and censorship (Terbish, 2013).

By simultaneously discouraging sex as desire and encouraging it as a means of procreation, the state involuntarily sexualized the population (p.257). This exercise of power shows the shifting relationship between power and sexuality by different political regimes that governed Mongolia in pre and post-socialist regimes. If we take a close look at the growing discourse on social media of the LGBTQ community members coming out and freely sharing their freedom to express and act on chosen sexuality, we are witnessing the very shift of these power relations. However, we can clearly see the ‘governmentality’’s interlinks of an individual’s self-concern being intertwined with the population’s concern (Foucault, 1991). The end result is the institution such as LGBT Center of Mongolia, which has been receiving tremendous support from international organizations in protecting human dignity and fighting against gender-based discrimination in Mongolia.

However, Osorjamaa’s been not only a victim of political scandal during election seasons, but also a victim of continuous violence, discrimination and harassment by the people (upon population’s concern) in public spaces due to his non-binary gender expression.

Osorjamaa’s case on ‘normality’ and ‘abnormality’

The latest interview on local e-news website eguur.mn published an article “My sexual orientation is normal” with a photo of Osorjamaa dressed in a turtle neck, with almost no overt make-up, looking more masculine than the virally spread ‘image’ of him in society.

In 2016, a viral video of a young Mongolian boy who migrated from the rural area to the city in 2010 became a public subject to online harassment, hatred, and trending topic of youth and elders to talk and laugh while songs, memes and the general views of him was titled as ‘mentally abnormal’. His interview’s tone and argument were to take back the identity of a ‘homo’, and declares that he was paid by some government agency to make 3 viral videos dressed feminine to evade the public media attention from political news during the election time in 2016.

However, the key convincement is his sexual orientation to be back to ‘normal’ as if after years of constant physical and emotional harassment by strangers in the street, online shaming and even police officers’ neglect calling him names were the key reasons to claim his ‘normality’ in the society. This case reveals the continuation of the censorship silence and the power relations of state regime and sexuality today.

Soon after this interview, he made a public re-turn maintaining his sexual expression as he/she prefers and took an active participation in TV discussions during the election 2020. There’s even a film made that perpetuates the word “depression” in its trailer with disturbing harassment scenes of him in the streets. Osorjamaa was assaulted by a stranger (apparently under alcohol use) recently because ‘neither he looks male, nor female’.

The silence lives

According to UNDP and USAID, at the personal level, significant violence towards LGBT persons has been recorded, including severe forms perpetrated by ultra-nationalist groups and individuals as well as instances of harassment and stigma (p.9). Not from the local state, but from interventions of donor organizations funding, the LGBT center was able to carry out its operation since 2009 after being rejected by the state registration office multiple times.

Currently, the center operates mainly on donor organization’s funding economically and building awareness on ‘coming out’ and ending gender-based discrimination. However, the state censors the core belief of this institution through censorship and denial or porn in Mongolia, as well as lack of constructed sex education as the regimes of the pre and post socialist regime.

A neoliberal feminist approach limited to presuming “gender equality” may solve this continuous harassment and violation of human rights may not be the sole solution here. Because an approach with a neoliberal feminist values makes the question at fault!

To understand the dynamics and the interlinks between sexuality and power, we need more closer look at the politicized history of gendered sexuality and the role of the state and ‘governmentality’. To better understand gender-based violence towards the minority, perhaps it is not about pushing our ideology on the very new term of gender equality, but to understand Foucault’s bio-power through practice of the disciplinary power on the body both through control of body and population. The interrelation and interlink of the state and its reciprocal dependency on the economy itself is the core to a better understanding. Is Gender Equality the answer? Wrong question. The state ideology is.

“repression operated as sentence to disappear, but also as an injunction to silence, an affirmation to nonexistence, and by implication, an admission that there was nothing to say about such things, nothing to see and nothing to know. “ (Foucault, p.4)