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The prior centuries have witnessed great upheavals in each element of chinese language tradition and society. on the point of lifestyle, the most impressive alterations have happened within the realm of gender. chinese language Femininities/Chinese Masculinities is a mixture of illuminating old and ethnographic stories of gender from the 1700s to the current. The essays during this hugely artistic assortment are geared up in pairs that exchange in concentration among femininity and masculinity, among topics usually linked to feminism (such as relatives lifestyles) and people infrequently thought of from a gendered standpoint (like banditry). The chapters offer a wealth of attention-grabbing aspect on such various subject matters as proceedings related to widows and homosexuals; excellent spouses of early-twentieth-century radicals; altering photographs of prostitutes; the masculinity of qigong masters; sexuality within the period of reform; and the eroticization of minorities. whereas lots of the essays have been particularly written for this quantity, a number of are reprinted as a testomony to their enduring worth. Exploring the significant function of gender as an organizing precept of chinese language social lifestyles, chinese language Femininities/ chinese language Masculinities is an cutting edge reader that may spark new debate in a variety of disciplines.
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Extra resources for Chinese Femininities/Chinese Masculinities: A Reader
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79 The existing scholarship seems to indicate that contact with the West brought about profound changes; nevertheless, Chinese gender maintained its own distinctive character—in particular, sexuality did not occupy the central role that it does in Western gender. Sexuality seems to have regained importance in the 1990s, but concepts of femininity and masculinity still seem to be primarily anchored in the roles of mother/father and wife/husband. The main change since the Qing is that femininity and masculinity are less anchored in the roles of daughter/son.
42 Accounts of men who changed sex and turned into women were regarded as suspect, she claimed, but those of women who changed into men were not. She noted that once a person was socially defined as male, he had a good deal of latitude in the sexual roles he might play. He could not, however, be taken as a concubine, whereas a eunuch could. This would seem to be evidence that a eunuch was not regarded as a true male in every sense. Furth argued that social gender overshadows sexuality in the definition of male and female but not completely.
Linking these potent symbols to Wolf’s work, she suggested that they might be perceived as dangerous because they are associated with childbirth, an event that threatens the boundaries of the (patriarchal) family. She suggested that women do not consciously use their power of pollution against men, and asked whether men might use it against women, concluding that they do not. Seaman disagreed, arguing that men encourage negative beliefs about women’s sexuality in order to rationalize women’s lower social status and control the threat that women pose to male-centered groups.