Woman Hating: A Radical Look at Sexuality

slowly and with little balance.

Footbinding was a visible brand. Footbinding did

not emphasize the differences between men and women —it

created them, and they were then perpetuated in the

name o f morality. Footbinding functioned as the C erberus o f morality and ensured female chastity in a nation o f women who literally could not “run around. ”

Fidelity, and the legitimacy o f children, could be reckoned on.

T he minds o f footbound women were as contracted

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Woman Hating

as their feet. Daughters were taught to cook, supervise

the household, and embroider shoes for the Golden

Lotus. Intellectual and physical restriction had the usual

male justification. Women were perverse and sinful,

lewd and lascivious, if left to develop naturally. The

Chinese believed that being bom a woman was payment

for evils committed in a previous life. Footbinding was

designed to spare a woman the disaster of another such

incarnation.

Marriage and the family are the twin pillars of all

patriarchal cultures. Bound feet, in China, were the

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

Gynocide: Chinese Footbinding

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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