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
Gynocide: Chinese Footbinding
109
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
110
Woman Hating
. . . 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
