Sex, Culture and Modernity in China

2. The Passive Sex: The Naturalization of Gender Distinctions

2 THE PASSIVE SEX: THE NATURALIZATION OF GENDER DISTINCTIONS THE EMERGENCE OF 'WOMANHOOD' The authority and prestige of neo-Confucian knowledge, on which prescriptive claims about gender hierarchy were founded, gradually eroded during the last decade of the nineteenth century and finally disintegrated with the disappearance of the last dynasty in 1911. Natural sciences were introduced instead to represent gender distinctions as biologically determined structures . The shift from metaphysics to science in discourses about gender differences was particularly evident in the dozens of childbirth manuals, gynaecological treatises, books of medical remedies, family handbooks, marriage guides and primers on sexual hygiene which proliferated in the 1920s and 1930s. In these modernizing discourses of sexuality and reproduction, physical bodies were no longer thought to be linked to the cosmological foundations of the universe: bodies were said to be produced by biological mechanisms inherent in 'nature'. Although the shift from Confucianism towards the natural sciences in prescriptive claims about the social order was important , it would be wrong to underestimate the extent to which new social and economic realities had already transformed gender relations in late imperial China. The economy of the coastal regions was gradually commoditized after the late sixteenth century, foreign trade became prominent and fuelled regional specialization in export commodities, and a high rate of urbanization created new opportunities that altered the quality of gender relationships. Greater contact between both sexes in workplaces and recreational sites fuelled a far-reaching debate about the position of women and the role of the family. 1 Cri1 W.T. Rowe, 'Women and the family in mid-Ch'ing social thought: The case of Ch'en Hung-mou', Late Imperial China, 13, no. 2 (Dec. 1992), p. 8. 14 THE EMERGENCE OF 'WOMANHOOD' 15 tlclsm of the subordinate position of women was increasingly articulated by orthodox scholars and writers of fiction. Yu Zhengxie (1775-1840), a celebrated scholar and official, wondered 'Why does the world make a distinction between men and women?'2 A new ideal of 'companionate marriage', evoking the myth of a predestined attachment between two lovers, appeared in some Qing novels,3 while polygamy was criticized in a number of erotic stories. Official campaigns also promoted a common ideal of domestic life during the same period, a classical revival which emphasized the privileged role of wives and stressed domestic harmony. Like Victorian writings on the subject of women, mid-Qing authors accorded great value to woman's role as a wife, manager and guardian of the 'inner apartments'; the idea of complementarity between spouses became prominent in writings on the family.4 Even divorce became a contentious issue, and a historian and expert in evidential scholarship (kaozhengxue), Qian Daxin (1728-1804), overtly argued in its favour on the grounds that marriage was not a natural bond but a human institution.5 A result of economic and cultural affluence, rising literacy rates led to the development of a highly literate women's culture.6 Guidebooks for the education of women proliferated, printed in affordable editions 2 Paul Ropp, 'The seeds of change: Reflections on the condition of women in the early and mid-Ch'ing', Signs, 2, no. 1 (1976), p. 15. 3 Keith McMahon, 'A case for Confucian sexuality: The eighteenth-century novel, Yesou puyan', Late Imperial China, 9, no.2 (Dec. 1988), pp.32-55. 4 Susan Mann, 'Grooming a daughter for marriage: Brides and wives in the mid-Ch'ing period' in Rubie S. Watson and Patricia B. Ebrey (eds), Marriage and inequality in Chinese society, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991, p.205. 5 Yuasa Yukihiko, 'Shindai ni okeru fujin kaiho ron', Nippon Chugoku gakkai ho, no.4 (1952), p. 115, quoted in W.T. Rowe, 'Women and the family in mid-Ch'ing social thought: The case of Ch'en Hung-mou', Late Imperial China, 13, no. 2 (Dec. 1992), p. 17. 6 Dorothy Ko, 'Pursuing talent and virtue: Education and women's culture in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century China', Late Imperial China, 13, no. 1 (June 1992), pp.9-39. 16 THE NATURALIZATION OF GENDER DISTINCTIONS characteristic of a new commercial print culture.7 A shift in gender arrangements also led to a heightened concern about women and children in the neo-Confucian family. From the late Ming onwards, Charlotte Furth notes, medical thought advocated common erotic goals for both men and women and supported the social status of women as wives and dependants...