Chinese women, gender, and sexuality: A critical review of recent studies

Abstract

This article identifies and critically examines four recurring concerns or biases in recent writings on Chinese gender and sexuality that are representative of research interests in the field: (1) The tendency to focus on the most miserable and extreme cases of women's suffering in order to produce a more dramatic effect. This inclination is especially evident in, but not confined to, literary analysis where the tendency is to make a moral case as opposed to uncovering an ethnographic insight. (2) The exclusive focus on the perspective of one gender, which results in disregarding the role of social class in the formulation of generalizations about women's lives. (3) A de-emphasis on men's place within the subjective domain, which contributes to overlooking the importance that emotional bonds exert in uniting couples together. (4) The erotic is the manifestation of only one thing, namely, the culture's prevailing sexual ideology, which encourages the viewing of male/female interaction as an exercise in power and dominance, and discourages interpretation of the erotic as a sex-linked aesthetic experience that necessitates a different conceptual framework than one anchored in concepts of dominance and inequality.

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Notes on contributors

William Jankowiak

I would like to thank the following people who provided inspiration or comments on parts or all of the paper: Jim Bell, Joseph Bosco, Susan Brownell, Don Brown, Thomas Fenton, Gilbert Herdt, Carrie Humphrey, Matthew Kohrman, Robert Moore, Charles Lindholm, Victor Nee, Ellen Oxfeld, Alvin So, Jonathan Spence, Anand Yang, C. Todd White, Claudia Woodman, and four anonymous reviewers.