Woman Haling
rious belief developed among Chinese men that footbinding produced a most useful alteration of the vagina. A Chinese diplomat explained:
The smaller the woman’s foot, the more wondrous
become the folds o f the vagina. (There was the saying: the smaller the feet, the more intense the sex urge. ) Therefore marriages in Ta-t’ung (where binding
is most effective) often take place earlier than elsewhere. Women in other districts can produce these folds artificially, but the only way is by footbinding,
which concentrates development in this one place.
There consequendy develop layer after layer (of folds
within the vagina); those who have personally experienced this (in sexual intercourse) feel a supernatural exaltation. So the system o f footbinding was not really oppressive. 6
Medical authorities confirm that physiologically footbinding had no effect whatsoever on the vagina, although it did distort the direction of the pelvis. The belief in the wondrous folds of the vagina of footbound
woman was pure mass delusion, a projection of lust
onto the feet, buttocks, and vagina of the crippled
female. Needless to say, the diplomat’s rationale for
finding footbinding “not really oppressive” confused
his “supernatural exaltation” with her misery and
mutilation.
Bound feet, the same myth continues, “made the
buttocks more sensual, [and] concentrated life-giving
vapors on the upper part of the body, making the face
more attractive. ” 7 If, due to a breakdown in the flow
o f these “life-giving vapors, ” an ugly woman was foot-
bound and still ugly, she need not despair, for an A -1
Gynocide: Chinese Footbinding
103
Golden Lotus could compensate for a C-3 face and
figure.
But to return to herstory, how did our Chinese
ballerina become the millions o f women stretched over
10 centuries? T h e transition from palace dancer to population at large can be seen as part o f a class dynamic.
T h e emperor sets the style, the nobility copies it, and
the lower classes climbing ever upward do their best
to emulate it. T he upper class bound the feet o f their
ladies with the utmost severity. T h e Lady, unable to
walk, remained properly invisible in her boudoir, an
ornament, weak and small, a testimony to the wealth
and privilege o f the man who could afford to keep h e r—
to keep her idle. Doing no manual labor, she did not need
her feet either. Only on the rarest o f occasions was she
allowed outside o f the incarcerating walls o f her home,
and then only in a sedan chair behind heavy curtains.
T he lower a woman’s class, the less could such idleness
be supported: the larger the feet. T h e women who had
to work for the economic survival o f the family still
had bound feet, but the bindings were looser, the feet
bigger—after all, she had to be able to walk, even if
