Gender and Sexuality in Modern Chinese History

Gender and Sexuality in Modern Chinese History PDF Author: Susan L. Mann
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139502484
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 257

Get Book Here

Book Description
Gender and sexuality have been neglected topics in the history of Chinese civilization, despite the fact that there is a massive amount of historical evidence on the subject. China's late imperial government was arguably more concerned about gender and sexuality among its subjects than any other pre-modern state. How did these and other late imperial legacies shape twentieth-century notions of gender and sexuality in modern China? Susan Mann answers this by focusing on state policy, ideas about the physical body and notions of sexuality and difference in China's recent history, from medicine to the theater to the gay bars; from law to art and sports. More broadly, the book shows how changes in attitudes toward sex and gender in China during the twentieth century have cast a new light on the process of becoming modern, while simultaneously challenging the universalizing assumptions of Western modernity.

Gender and Sexuality in Modern Chinese History

Gender and Sexuality in Modern Chinese History PDF Author: Susan L. Mann
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139502484
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 257

Get Book Here

Book Description
Gender and sexuality have been neglected topics in the history of Chinese civilization, despite the fact that there is a massive amount of historical evidence on the subject. China's late imperial government was arguably more concerned about gender and sexuality among its subjects than any other pre-modern state. How did these and other late imperial legacies shape twentieth-century notions of gender and sexuality in modern China? Susan Mann answers this by focusing on state policy, ideas about the physical body and notions of sexuality and difference in China's recent history, from medicine to the theater to the gay bars; from law to art and sports. More broadly, the book shows how changes in attitudes toward sex and gender in China during the twentieth century have cast a new light on the process of becoming modern, while simultaneously challenging the universalizing assumptions of Western modernity.

Women, Gender, and Sexuality in China

Women, Gender, and Sexuality in China PDF Author: Ping Yao
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317237501
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 206

Get Book Here

Book Description
Women, Gender and Sexuality in China: A Brief History serves as a focal textbook for undergraduate courses on women, gender, and sexuality in Chinese history. Thematically structured, it surveys important aspects of gender systems and gender practices throughout Chinese history, from the earliest period to the modern era. Topics include the concept of yin-yang, life course and gender roles, kinship systems and family structure, marriage practices, sexuality, women’s work and daily life, as well as gender in Chinese mythology, religions, medicine, art, and literature. In narrating how various traditions and practices were formed and evolved throughout Chinese history, this textbook draws heavily on personal stories and historical records. Features in this textbook include: Primary source sections for each chapter, introducing students to types of documents that have been used by scholars in conducting research Thirty-three translated texts of various genres, including epitaph, bronze inscription, medical text, imperial edict, legal case, family letter, ghost story, divorce paper, poetry, autobiography, etc. Dedicated biography sections for five distinguished women Offering richly layered accounts of women, gender, and sexuality, this textbook is essential reading for students of Chinese history, gender in world history, or the comparative history of gender.

After Eunuchs

After Eunuchs PDF Author: Howard Chiang
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231546335
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 291

Get Book Here

Book Description
For much of Chinese history, the eunuch stood out as an exceptional figure at the margins of gender categories. Amid the disintegration of the Qing Empire, men and women in China began to understand their differences in the language of modern science. In After Eunuchs, Howard Chiang traces the genealogy of sexual knowledge from the demise of eunuchism to the emergence of transsexuality, showing the centrality of new epistemic structures to the formation of Chinese modernity. From anticastration discourses in the late Qing era to sex-reassignment surgeries in Taiwan in the 1950s and queer movements in the 1980s and 1990s, After Eunuchs explores the ways the introduction of Western biomedical sciences transformed normative meanings of gender, sexuality, and the body in China. Chiang investigates how competing definitions of sex circulated in science, medicine, vernacular culture, and the periodical press, bringing to light a rich and vibrant discourse of sex change in the first half of the twentieth century. He focuses on the stories of gender and sexual minorities as well as a large supporting cast of doctors, scientists, philosophers, educators, reformers, journalists, and tabloid writers, as they debated the questions of political sovereignty, national belonging, cultural authenticity, scientific modernity, human difference, and the power and authority of truths about sex. Theoretically sophisticated and far-reaching, After Eunuchs is an innovative contribution to the history and philosophy of science and queer and Sinophone studies.

The Emerging Lesbian

The Emerging Lesbian PDF Author: Tze-Lan D. Sang
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226734781
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 400

Get Book Here

Book Description
In early twentieth-century China, age-old traditions of homosocial and homoerotic relationships between women suddenly became an issue of widespread public concern. Discussed formerly in terms of friendship and sisterhood, these relationships came to be associated with feminism, on the one hand, and psychobiological perversion, on the other—a radical shift whose origins have long been unclear. In this first ever book-length study of Chinese lesbians, Tze-lan D. Sang convincingly ties the debate over female same-sex love in China to the emergence of Chinese modernity. As women's participation in social, economic, and political affairs grew, Sang argues, so too did the societal significance of their romantic and sexual relations. Focusing especially on literature by or about women-preferring women, Sang traces the history of female same-sex relations in China from the late imperial period (1600-1911) through the Republican era (1912-1949). She ends by examining the reemergence of public debate on lesbians in China after Mao and in Taiwan after martial law, including the important roles played by globalization and identity politics.

Sexuality in China

Sexuality in China PDF Author: Howard Chiang
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 0295743484
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 269

Get Book Here

Book Description
What was sex like in China, from imperial times through the post-Mao era? The answer depends, of course, on who was having sex, where they were located in time and place, and what kind of familial, social, and political structures they participated in. This collection offers a variety of perspectives by addressing diverse topics such as polygamy, pornography, free love, eugenics, sexology, crimes of passion, homosexuality, intersexuality, transsexuality, masculine anxiety, sex work, and HIV/AIDS. Following a loose chronological sequence, the chapters examine revealing historical moments in which human desire and power dynamics came into play. Collectively, the contributors undertake a necessary historiographic intervention by reconsidering Western categorizations and exploring Chinese understandings of sexuality and erotic orientation.

A Companion to Chinese History

A Companion to Chinese History PDF Author: Michael Szonyi
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1118624602
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 475

Get Book Here

Book Description
A Companion to Chinese History presents a collection of essays offering a comprehensive overview of the latest intellectual developments in the study of China’s history from the ancient past up until the present day. Covers the major trends in the study of Chinese history from antiquity to the present day Considers the latest scholarship of historians working in China and around the world Explores a variety of long-range questions and themes which serves to bridge the conventional divide between China’s traditional and modern eras Addresses China’s connections with other nations and regions and enables non-specialists to make comparisons with their own fields Features discussion of traditional topics and chronological approaches as well as newer themes such as Chinese history in relation to sexuality, national identity, and the environment

Cultural Politics of Gender and Sexuality in Contemporary Asia

Cultural Politics of Gender and Sexuality in Contemporary Asia PDF Author: Tiantian Zheng
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824852982
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 241

Get Book Here

Book Description
In globalizing Asia, sexual mores and gender roles are in constant flux. How have economic shifts and social changes altered and reconfigured the cultural meanings of gender and sexuality in the region? How have the changing political economy and social milieu influenced and shaped the inner workings and micro-politics of family structure, gender relationships, intimate romance, transactional sex, and sexual behaviors? This volume offers up-to-date, grounded, critical analysis of the complex intersections of gender, sexuality, and political economy across a diverse array of Asian societies: China, Japan, Cambodia, Vietnam, India, Pakistan, Hong Kong, Thailand, and Taiwan. Based on intense ethnographic fieldwork, the chapters disentangle the ways in which gendered and sexual experiences are impinged upon by state policies, economic realities, cultural ideologies, and social hierarchies. Whether highlighting intimate relationships between elite businessmen and their mistresses in China; nightclub performances by Thai men in Bangkok; single women’s views of romance, motherhood, and marriage in Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Tokyo; or male same-sex relationships in Pakistan—each chapter centers around the stories of the gendered subjects themselves and how they are shaped by outside forces. Taken together they provide a provocative entrée into the cultural politics of gender and sexuality in Asia. By foregrounding cross-cultural ethnographic research, this volume sheds light on how configurations of gender and sexuality are constituted, negotiated, contested, transformed, and at times, perpetuated and reproduced in private, intimate experiences. It will be of particular interest to students and scholars in anthropology, sociology, political science, and women’s and LGBTQ studies.

Mastery of Words and Swords

Mastery of Words and Swords PDF Author: Jun Lei
Publisher: Hong Kong University Press
ISBN: 9888528742
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 233

Get Book Here

Book Description
The crisis of masculinity surfaced and converged with the crisis of the nation in the late Qing, after the doors of China were forced open by Opium Wars. The power of physical aggression increasingly overshadowed literary attainments and became a new imperative of male honor in the late Qing and early Republican China. Afflicted with anxiety and indignation about their increasingly effeminate image as perceived by Western colonial powers, Chinese intellectuals strategically distanced themselves from the old literati and reassessed their positions vis-à-vis violence. In Mastery of Words and Swords: Negotiating Intellectual Masculinities in Modern China, 1890s–1930s, Jun Lei explores the formation and evolution of modern Chinese intellectual masculinities as constituted in racial, gender, and class discourses mediated by the West and Japan. This book brings to light a new area of interest in the “Man Question” within gender studies in which women have typically been the focus. To fully reveal the evolving masculine models of a “scholar-warrior,” this book employs an innovative methodology that combines theoretical vigor, archival research, and analysis of literary texts and visuals. Situating the changing inter- and intra-gender relations in modern Chinese history and Chinese literary and cultural modernism, the book engages critically with male subjectivity in relation to other pivotal issues such as semi-coloniality, psychoanalysis, modern love, feminism, and urbanization. “Jun Lei’s brilliant book offers a wealth of information and insights on how intellectuals such as Liang Qichao and Lu Xun shaped notions of Chinese masculinity in the tumultuous late Qing and May Fourth periods. Its account of how China’s interactions with the West and Japan impacted ideas of masculinity in modern times is compelling reading.” —Kam Louie, author of Theorising Chinese Masculinity: Society and Gender in China and Chinese Masculinities in a Globalizing World “What are political and cultural consequences when a Chinese man looks and behaves like a woman? Jun Lei probes the psychic, intellectual, and nationalist underpinnings of that question. This provocative book offers an engaging story and insightful analyses about how male writers grappled with the effeminate look and strove to revitalize manliness.” —Ban Wan

Transgender China

Transgender China PDF Author: H. Chiang
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 113708250X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 470

Get Book Here

Book Description
This volume brings together experts with diverse disciplinary backgrounds in the China field, from cultural studies to history to musicology, to make a timely intervention—from the historical demise of enuchism to male cross-dressing shows in contemporary Taiwan—to inaugurate a subfield in Chinese transgender studies.

At Home in the World

At Home in the World PDF Author: Xia Shi
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231546238
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 279

Get Book Here

Book Description
During the years spanning the late Qing dynasty and the early Republican era, the status of Chinese women changed in both subtle and decisive ways. As domestic seclusion ceased to be a sign of virtue, new opportunities emerged for a variety of women. Much scholarly attention has been given to the rise of the modern, independent “new women” during this period. However, far less is known about the stories of married nonprofessional women without modern educations and their public activities. In At Home in the World, Xia Shi unearths the history of how these women moved out of their sequestered domestic life; engaged in charitable, philanthropic, and religious activities; and repositioned themselves as effective public actors in urban Chinese society. Investigating the lives of individual women as well as organizations such as the YWCA and the Daoyuan, she shows how her protagonists built on the past rather than repudiating it, drawing on broader networks of family, marriage, and friendship and reconfiguring existing beliefs into essential components of modern Chinese gender roles. The book stresses the collective forms of agency these women exercised in their endeavors, highlighting the significance of charitable and philanthropic work as political, social, and civic engagement. Shi also analyzes how men—alive, dead, or absent—both empowered and constrained women’s public ventures. She offers a new perspective on how the public, private, and domestic realms were being remade and rethought in early twentieth-century China, in particular, how the women navigated these developing spheres. At Home in the World sheds new light on how women exerted their influence beyond the home and expands the field of Chinese women’s history.