Woman Hating: A Radical Look at Sexuality

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Woman Hating: A Radical Look at Sexuality Page 9

by Andrea Dworkin


  twin pillars o f these twin pillars. Here we have the joining together of politics and morality, coupled to produce their inevitable offspring—the oppression of women based on totalitarian standards of beauty and a

  rampant sexual fascism. In arranging a marriage, a

  male's parents inquired first about the prospective

  bride’s feet, then about her face. Those were her human, recognizable qualities. During the process of footbinding, mothers consoled their daughters by conjuring up the luscious marriage possibilities dependent on the beauty of the bound foot. Concubines for the Imperial harem were selected at tiny-foot festivals (forerunners of Miss America pageants). Rows upon rows of women sat on benches with their feet outstretched

  while audience and judges went along the aisles and

  commented on the size, shape, and decoration of foot

  and shoes. No one, however, was ever allowed to touch

  the merchandise. Women looked forward to these

  festivals, since they were allowed out o f the house.

  The sexual aesthetics, literally the art o f love, of

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  the bound foot was complex. T h e sexual attraction o f

  the foot was based on its concealment and the mystery

  surrounding its development and care. T h e bindings

  were unwrapped and the feet were washed in the

  woman’s boudoir, in the strictest privacy. T h e frequency o f bathing varied from once a week to once a year. Perfumes o f various fragrances and alum were

  used during and after washing, and various kinds o f

  surgery were performed on the callouses and nails.

  T h e physical process o f washing helped restore circulation. T he mummy was unwrapped, touched up, and put back to sleep with more preservatives added. T h e rest

  o f the body was never washed at the same time as the

  feet, for fear that one would become a pig in the next

  life. Well-bred women were supposed to die o f shame

  if men observed them washing their feet. T h e foot

  consisted, after all, o f smelly, rotted flesh. This was

  naturally not pleasing to the intruding male, a violation o f his aesthetic sensibility.

  T h e art o f the shoes was basic to the sexual aesthetics o f the bound foot. Untold hours, days, months went into the embroidery o f shoes. T here were shoes

  for all occasions, shoes o f different colors, shoes to

  hobble in, shoes to go to bed in, shoes for special

  occasions like birthdays, marriages, funerals, shoes

  which denoted age. Red was the favored color for bed

  shoes because it accentuated the whiteness o f the skin

  o f the calves and thighs. A marriageable daughter made

  about 12 pairs o f shoes as a part o f her dowry. She

  presented 2 specially made pairs to her mother-in-law

  and father-in-law. When she entered her husband’s

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  home for the first time, her feet were immediately

  examined by the whole family, neither praise nor

  sarcasm being withheld.

  There was also the art of the gait, the art of sitting,

  the art of standing, the art of lying down, the art of adjusting the skirt, the art of every movement which involves feet. Beauty was the way feet looked and how

  they moved. Certain feet were better than other feet,

  more beautiful. Perfect 3-inch form and utter uselessness were the distinguishing marks of the aristocratic foot. These concepts of beauty and status defined

  women: as ornaments, as sexual playthings, as sexual

  constructs. The perfect construct, even in China, was

  naturally the prostitute.

  The natural-footed woman generated horror and

  repulsion in China. She was anathema, and all the

  forces o f insult and contempt were used to obliterate

  her. Men said about bound feet and natural feet:

  A tiny foot is proof of feminine goodness.. . .

  Women who don’t bind their feet, look like men,

  for the tiny foot serves to show the differentiation.. . .

  The tiny foot is soft and, when rubbed, leads to

  great excitement.. . .

  The graceful walk gives the beholder mixed feelings o f compassion and pity.. . .

  Natural feet are heavy and ponderous as they get

  into bed, but tiny feet lightly steal under the coverlets.. . .

  The large-footed woman is careless about adornment, but the tiny-footed frequently wash and apply a variety o f perfumed fragrances, enchanting all who

  come into their presence.. . .

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  T h e natural foot looks much less aesthetic in walk-

  ing. . . .

  Everyone welcomes the tiny foot, regarding its

  smallness as precious.. . .

  Men formerly so craved it that its possessor

  achieved harmonious matrimony.. . .

  Because o f its diminutiveness, it gives rise to a

  variety o f sensual pleasures and love feelings.. . . 8

  Thin, small, curved, soft, fragrant, weak, easily

  inflamed, passive to the point o f being almost inanim ate—this was footbound woman. Her bindings created extraordinary vaginal folds; isolation in the bedroom increased her sexual desire; playing with the shriveled, crippled foot increased everyone’s desire.

  Even the imagery o f the names o f various types o f foot

  suggest, on the one hand, feminine passivity (lotuses,

  lilies, bamboo shoots, water chestnuts) and, on the other

  hand, male independence, strength, and mobility (lotus

  boats, large-footed crows, monkey foot). It was unacceptable for a woman to have those male qualities denoted by large feet. This fact conjures up an earlier assertion: footbinding did not formalize existing differences between men and women —it created them.

  One sex became male by virtue o f having made the

  other sex some thing, something other, something

  completely polar to itself, something called female.

  In 1915, a satirical essay in defense o f footbinding,

  written by a Chinese male, emphasized this:

  T h e bound foot is the condition o f a life o f dignity

  for man, o f contentment for woman. Let me make this

  clear. I am a Chinese fairly typical o f my class. I pored

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  too much over classic texts in my youth and dimmed

  my eyes, narrowed my chest, crooked my back. My

  memory is not strong, and in an old civilization there

  is a vast deal to learn before you can know anything.

  Accordingly among scholars I cut a poor figure. I am

  timid, and my voice plays me false in gatherings of

  men. But to my footbound wife, confined for life to

  her house except when I bear her in my arms to her

  palanquin, my stride is heroic, my voice is that o f a

  roaring lion, my wisdom is of the sages. To her I am

  the world; I am life itself. 9

  Chinese men, it is clear, stood tall and strong on

  women’s tiny feet.

  The so-called art of footbinding was the process of

  taking the human foot, using it as though it were insensible matter, molding it into an inhuman form. Footbinding was the “art” of making living matter insensible, inanimate. We are obviously not dealing here with art at all, but with fetishism, with sexual psychosis. This

  fetish became the primary content of sexual experience

  for an entire culture for 1,000 years. The manipulation

  of the tiny foot was an indispensable prelude to
all

  sexual experience. Manuals were written elaborating

  various techniques for holding and rubbing the Golden

  Lotus. Smelling the feet, chewing them, licking them,

  sucking them, all were sexually charged experiences.

  A woman with tiny feet was supposedly more easily

  maneuvered around in bed and this was no small advantage. Theft of shoes was commonplace. Women were forced to sew their shoes directly onto their bindings. Stolen shoes might be returned soaked in semen.

  Prostitutes would show their naked feet for a high

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  price (there weren’t many streetwalkers in China).

  Drinking games using cups placed in the shoes o f prostitutes or courtesans were favorite pastimes. Tiny-footed prostitutes took special names like Moon Immortal, Red Treasure, Golden Pearl. No less numerous were the euphemisms for feet, shoes, and bindings.

  Some men went to prostitutes to wash the tiny foot and

  eat its dirt, or to drink tea made from the washing

  water. Others wanted their penises manipulated by the

  feet. Superstition also had its place —there was a belief

  in the curative powers o f the water in which tiny feet

  were washed.

  Lastly, footbinding was the soil in which sadism

  could grow and go unchecked —in which simple cruelty

  could transcend itself, without much effort, into

  atrocity. These are some typical horror stories o f those

  times:

  A stepmother or aunt in binding the child’s foot

  was usually much harsher than the natural mother

  would have been. An old man was described who delighted in seeing his daughters weep as the binding was tightly applied.. . . In one household, everyone

  had to bind. T h e main wife and concubines bound to

  the smallest degree, once morning and evening, and

  once before retiring. T h e husband and first wife

  strictly carried out foot inspections and whipped those

  guilty o f having let the binding become loose. T h e

  sleeping shoes were so painfully small that the women

  had to ask the master to rub them in order to bring

  relief. Another rich man would flog his concubines

  on their tiny feet, one after another, until the blood

  flowed. 10

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  . . . about 1 9 3 1 . . . bound-foot women unable to Bee

  had been taken captive. The bandits, angered because

  o f their captives’ weak way o f walking and inability to

  keep in file, forced the women to remove the bindings

  and socks and run about barefoot. They cried out in

  pain and were unable to move on in spite o f beatings.

  Each o f the bandits grabbed a woman and forced her

  to dance about on a wide field covered with sharp

  rocks. The harshest treatment was meted out to prostitutes. Nails were driven through their hands and feet; they cried aloud for several days before expiring.

  One form o f torture was to tie-up a woman so that her

  legs dangled in midair and place bricks around each

  toe, increasing the weight until the toes straightened

  out and eventually dropped off. 11

  END OF F O O T B I N D I N G E V E N T

  One asks the same questions again and again, over

  a period o f years, in the course of a lifetime. The questions have to do with people and what they do —the how and the why o f it. How could the Germans have murdered 6, 000, 000 Jews, used their skins for lampshades, taken the gold out of their teeth? How could white

  people have bought and sold black people, hanged

  them and castrated them? How could “Americans”

  have slaughtered the Indian nations, stolen the land,

  spread famine and disease? How can the Indochina

  genocide continue, day after day, year after year?

  How is it possible? Why does it happen?

  As a woman, one is forced to ask another series of

  hard questions: Why everywhere the oppression of

  women throughout recorded history? How could the

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  Inquisitors torture and bum women as witches? How

  could men idealize the bound feet o f crippled women?

  How and why?

  T h e bound foot existed for 1, 000 years. In what

  terms, using what measure, could one calculate the

  enormity o f the crime, the dimensions o f the transgression, the amount o f cruelty and pain inherent in that 1, 000-year herstory? In what terms, using what

  vocabulary, could one penetrate to the meaning, to the

  reality, o f that 1, 000-year herstory?

  Here one race did not war with another to acquire

  food, or land, or civil power; one nation did not fight

  with another in the interest o f survival, real or imagined; one group o f people in a fever pitch o f hysteria did not destroy another. None o f the traditional explanations or justifications for brutality between or among peoples applies to this situation. On the contrary, here one sex mutilated (enslaved) the other in the interest o f the art o f sex, male-female harmony, role-definition, beauty.

  Consider the magnitude o f the crime.

  Millions o f women, over a period o f 1,000 years,

  were brutally crippled, mutilated, in the name o f

  erotica.

  Millions o f human beings, over a period o f 1, 000

  years, were brutally crippled, mutilated, in the name

  o f beauty.

  Millions o f men, over a period o f 1, 000 years,

  reveled in love-making devoted to the worship o f the

  bound foot.

  Millions o f men, over a period o f 1, 000 years, worshiped and adored the bound foot.

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  Millions of mothers, over a period of 1, 000 years,

  brutally crippled and mutilated their daughters for the

  sake o f a secure marriage.

  Millions of mothers, over a period of 1, 000 years,

  brutally crippled and mutilated their daughters in the

  name o f beauty.

  But this thousand-year period is only the tip of

  an awesome, fearful iceberg: an extreme and visible

  expression of romantic attitudes, processes, and

  values organically rooted in all cultures, then and

  now. It demonstrates that man’s love for woman, his

  sexual adoration of her, his human definition of her,

  his delight and pleasure in her, require her negation:

  physical crippling and psychological lobotomy. That is

  the very nature of romantic love, which is the love based

  on polar role definitions, manifest in herstory as well

  as in fiction —he glories in her agony, he adores her

  deformity, he annihilates her freedom, he will have her

  as sex object, even if he must destroy the bones in her

  feet to do it. Brutality, sadism, and oppression emerge

  as the substantive core of the romantic ethos. That ethos

  is the warp and woof of culture as we know it.

  Women should be beautiful. All repositories of

  cultural wisdom from King Solomon to King Hefner

  agree: women should be beautiful. It is the reverence

  for female beauty which informs the romantic ethos,

  gives it its energy and justification. Beauty is transformed into that golden ideal, Beauty —rapturous and abstract. Women must be beautiful and Woman is

  Beauty.

  Notions o f beauty always incorporate the whole of a
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  given societal structure, are crystallizations o f its values.

  A society with a well-defined aristocracy will have aristocratic standards o f beauty. In Western “democracy”

  notions o f beauty are “democratic” : even if a woman is

  not born beautiful, she can make herself attractive.

  T h e argument is not simply that some women are

  not beautiful, therefore it is not fair to ju d ge women on

  the basis o f physical beauty; or that men are not judged

  on that basis, therefore women also should not be

  judged on that basis; or that men should look for character in women; or that our standards o f beauty are too parochial in and o f themselves; or even that judgin g

  women according to their conformity to a standard o f

  beauty serves to make them into products, chattels,

  differing from the farmer's favorite cow only in terms o f

  literal form. The issue at stake is different, and crucial.

  Standards o f beauty describe in precise terms the relationship that an individual will have to her own body.

  They prescribe her mobility, spontaneity, posture,

  gait, the uses to which she can put her body. They define

  precisely the dimensions of her physical freedom. And, o f

  course, the relationship between physical freedom and

  psychological development, intellectual possibility, and

  creative potential is an umbilical one.

  In our culture, not one part o f a woman’s body is

  left untouched, unaltered. No feature or extremity is

  spared the art, or pain, o f improvement. Hair is dyed,

  lacquered, straightened, permanented; eyebrows are

  plucked, penciled, dyed; eyes are lined, mascaraed,

  shadowed; lashes are curled, or false —from head to

  toe, every feature o f a woman's face, every section o f

  her body, is subject to modification, alteration. This al­

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  teration is an ongoing, repetitive process. It is vital to

  the economy, the major substance of male-female role

  differentiation, the most immediate physical and psychological reality of being a woman. From the age of 11 or 12 until she dies, a woman will spend a large part

 

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