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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Woman Hating
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
