This is an important topic and it cannot be described by a single article. Therefore it is just the beginning of the story. The story about sexual politics of Democratic Kampuchea and sexual politics in the context of a contemporary Marxist thought. The sole reality about gender relationship in DK was that they were forced. Forced in majority cases without regard to wishes and reservations of newlyweds. This, at one time was one of the things that confused me the most in DK. I could not bear the notion of the forced marriages, being raised on humanist Russian literature, where one of the most hated and fought thing for writers was a forced marriage. It also seemed to be completely away from progressive Marxist ideas of free love and casual sex. There were none of it in Kampuchea. The marriage was forced and the sex was procreative. Husband and wife could meet each other every 10 days. To consummate. To beget the future children. Not for a pleasure, for DK seemed didn’t know this word. So there was a completely different practice from Angkar which formally shared Marxist ideology.
The absolute requirement for the correct marriage was the correct class position. Only those who belonged to the same class could marry each other. And only those who were deemed worthy by Party or occupied higher positions could chose or reject their spouse. Thus Hun Sen while serving as a division commander refused to marry the daughter of his chief, he eventually was allowed to marry Bun Rany. Though most of the Khmer Rouge leaders came from rich and bourgeois background they were eager to build the pure proletarian elite. The class position was everything in the future Kampuchea, autobiography, required for the most cadres was made to support of disapprove claim for a higher role.
“To strengthen revolutionary stand” meant to follow the line of Angkar. “Throw away feelings and compassion take the fierce stand in struggle”. Thus marriages were considered the matter too important to just happen. Words “love” and “sympathy” were exchanged for “class struggle” and “class hate”. To love meant to love your class and thus marriage was made an act of the class position. “In class society, everyone lives as a member of a particular class, and every kind of thinking, without exception, is stamped with the brand of a class.” Angkar little corrected Mao’s thought. Everything had to be taken from the class position. Thus Angkar outran Marx in Marxist consistency. They fought everything that capitalist society has left, exchanging it for revolutionary models.
To challenge the idea of “forced” we should not forget that this word is used as an act of making somebody to do something. And it’s bad. It challenges our thoughts of freedom and free choice. But where the studies that “forced” in gender relationship is not a needed thing? Where studies of what is really needed in gender relationship? Does gender relationship have to just limit itself by a random act of a random meeting somewhere in the bar or a nightclub? Or maybe gender relationship is something to be closely controlled and planned? Angkar knew the answer. Angkar didn’t let the world know about its experiments otherwise it risked to lose the majority of supporters. And Angkar was made the only object to love…
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This ‘class’ business was always bending reality to fit the theory. However, they were conservative when it came to the family, contradicting the view that they sought to destroy it. They wanted to strengthen it, albeit with this particular set of relations, like with many others, anchored by their obedience to Angkar.
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