In China’s tightly managed digital ecosystem, fame built on intimacy is among the most fragile. The sudden disappearance of a self-styled “sexual intelligence” guru from major Chinese platforms this winter is the latest reminder that while the country’s influencer economy thrives on confessional language and emotional candor, there are still sharp red lines around how sex, desire, and gender roles may be discussed in public. The ban, quietly enforced but loudly debated online, reflects the state’s growing sensitivity to content that treats intimacy too openly — especially when it circulates widely among young women.
The influencer at the center of the controversy had amassed a substantial following on platforms such as Douyin and Xiaohongshu by selling courses promising to help women improve confidence, attraction, and relationship outcomes through what she branded “xing ai zhi neng” (性 intelligence, loosely “sexual intelligence”). Her videos mixed pop psychology, gendered advice, and frank talk about desire and emotional leverage, often packaged in short, algorithm-friendly clips. But regulators and platform operators eventually concluded that her content crossed multiple boundaries: offering quasi-therapeutic advice without credentials, reinforcing rigid gender hierarchies, and, most critically, discussing sex and power in ways deemed overly explicit for mass consumption.
Official criticism avoided moral panic language, instead invoking familiar regulatory frames. Authorities and state-aligned commentators argued that such content misleads consumers, spreads “unscientific” views of relationships, and risks harming young audiences. Platforms were reminded of their duty to promote zhengneng liang (正能量, “positive energy”) and remove material that distorts values around love, marriage, and gender. Within days, the influencer’s accounts vanished, her courses were taken offline, and her name became unsearchable — a standard but effective form of digital erasure in China’s content governance system.
This case is far from isolated. In recent years, Chinese platforms have repeatedly purged creators whose work touched too directly on sex, even when framed as education or empowerment. Popular bloggers who discussed female sexual pleasure (xing yu, 性欲), orgasm gaps, or marital dissatisfaction have found posts removed or accounts restricted. LGBTQ creators have seen content flagged for “abnormal aesthetics” (fei zhengchang shenmei, 非正常审美), while relationship coaches using frank language about dating strategies are often accused of “vulgar traffic farming.” The pattern is consistent: the more openly intimacy is discussed, the higher the regulatory risk.
The state’s discomfort is not simply with sex itself, but with scale and tone. Sexuality discussed privately, euphemistically, or within medical contexts remains largely tolerated. What alarms regulators is mass visibility combined with emotional authority. Influencers who speak confidently about desire, attraction, or power dynamics — particularly women addressing other women — challenge the traditional boundaries between private life and public discourse. Once such conversations migrate from anonymous forums into algorithm-boosted feeds, they become harder to contain, reinterpret, or reframe.
This sensitivity has intensified as platforms like Xiaohongshu have become de facto spaces for young women to discuss everything from dating fatigue to marital regret. While the state has publicly encouraged marriage and childbirth, it has shown far less tolerance for unfiltered discussions of why many women feel disillusioned with traditional relationship scripts. Content that frames intimacy as negotiation, strategy, or personal fulfillment rather than duty or harmony sits uneasily with official narratives emphasizing social stability.
Crackdowns often arrive wrapped in technocratic language. Regulators stress the need for professional qualifications, scientific grounding, and platform responsibility. Yet critics note the uneven enforcement. Male influencers offering financial or entrepreneurial “success formulas” frequently operate with similar lack of credentials but face fewer moral objections. By contrast, women discussing sex and emotional agency are more readily framed as dangerous, manipulative, or destabilizing.
What emerges is a distinctly Chinese paradox: an internet saturated with dating apps, romantic dramas, and flirtatious advertising, yet deeply uneasy with unscripted conversations about real intimacy. The banned guru did not invent this tension — she simply exploited it too visibly. Her removal signals a clear warning to others operating in the gray zone between lifestyle advice and taboo knowledge: speak softly about sex, or risk being silenced entirely.
As China continues to refine its governance of online culture, the boundaries around intimacy remain among the most sensitive. The lesson from this case is not that sex cannot be discussed at all, but that when it is discussed too openly, too confidently, and too widely — especially by women — it ceases to be merely personal. It becomes political.
Auntie has seen this low-rated soap opera before, and it never really changes. Dress it up as “consumer protection,” “scientific standards,” or “moral clarity,” and it’s still the same old story: women talking about sex, desire, confidence, and power always get scrutinized more closely than the men who sell crypto fantasies, hustle myths, or fake success courses.
Let’s be clear — a lot of these so-called “sexual intelligence” gurus are nonsense merchants. Overpriced courses, recycled stereotypes, the same tired promise that if women just tweak their behavior, love will magically appear. Auntie is not here to defend bad advice or pseudo-psychology. Snake oil deserves to be called out.
But what fascinates me is where the line gets drawn. In China’s digital universe, sex and intimacy are tolerated only as long as they remain vague, sanitized, and politically harmless. The moment desire becomes a system, a language, or — heaven forbid — a tool of self-definition, the alarms go off. Not because people might be misled, but because desire is unruly. It doesn’t obey scripts. It doesn’t always align with zhengneng liang (正能量, “positive energy”).
What really unsettles authorities is not bad advice — it’s autonomy. When women start openly discussing attraction, boundaries, pleasure, or emotional labor, they step outside the officially approved pathways of kexue (科学, “science”), marriage, and demographic duty. Suddenly sex isn’t just personal; it’s political. And politics, as Auntie knows, hates competition.
There’s also something deeply ironic here. China worries endlessly about falling marriage rates, delayed childbirth, and disengaged youth. Yet every organic conversation about intimacy gets filtered through censorship or “professional qualification.” You cannot regulate people into desire. You can’t algorithm your way to genuine connection. You can’t bureaucratize longing.
Auntie suspects this crackdown will not kill the market — it will just drive it sideways. Advice will migrate to coded language, private groups, overseas platforms, and whisper networks. It always does. Desire doesn’t disappear; it reroutes.
The lesson? This isn’t really about sex education. It’s about who gets to speak, who gets to profit, and who gets to define “healthy” intimacy. And until women’s voices are trusted as lived experience rather than potential disorder, every ban will feel less like protection and more like fear — fear of what happens when people start narrating their own bodies without permission.