On Feminism

It has been quite a while since I last really put pen to paper. The two books I finished reading, I was too lazy to jot down even notes on them; it seems my state has again fallen into a slump… Today is March 8, International Women’s Day, so let me write down some thoughts.

I have said before that I am a kind of “female feminism of a male chauvinist sort.” If one were to look at some of the concrete views I call feminist, they might still seem, in the eyes of many women, to be utterly male chauvinist; yet I believe that male chauvinism is still this age’s “default configuration.” Women, under ordinary circumstances, are often unconscious male chauvinists as well. Whether one is male or female, if one does not go through some kind of intellectual awakening or conscious process, I do not believe one can rise above male chauvinism.

Recently, Guangxi Normal University Press published a thick volume called A Reader in Feminist Theory, nearly 500,000 characters long. I picked out several essays to read, and from these few articles alone, the book is not to my taste.

“Feminism” and “women’s studies” are both translations of the same Western word. But the meanings of these two translations are not the same. There are also “humanism,” “humane-ism,” and “humanitarianism,” which are all renderings of the same word; likewise “idealism,” “mentalism,” and “idealism” are all translations of the same word. In these cases, the different Chinese expressions reflect the multiple layers of meaning contained in these concepts.

The shift from feminism to women’s studies reflects two different stages in the development of this current of thought. Simply put, feminism demands equal rights, while women’s studies emphasizes difference. Of course, this is not to say that feminism is the first stage and women’s studies the second stage that follows it in such a simple sequence. Women’s studies and feminism are also synchronous relations: when difference feminism voices its opinions, there will also be feminists who fiercely rebut it, accusing those who emphasize difference of being the ones who have fallen into male chauvinism and cannot extricate themselves. Difference feminists are “increasingly inclined to try to transform the ideology that enslaves us into a historical, religious, and obsessive-compulsive glorification of women’s physiological potential.” They argue that gender is socially constructed (which I do not dispute), and further claim that woman is a “class,” merely a political and economic category rather than a “natural” one. From there, they go on to eliminate the “myth of woman,” to “refuse to be a woman,” and then further to “eliminate the heterosexist social system” (Reader, p. 198).

Let me mention here, incidentally, the topic of homosexuality. This is a complex issue, and an important one. According to statistics from Europe and America, people with homosexual tendencies make up roughly one-tenth of the total population! Moreover, homosexual behavior has also been observed among many animals. What do these things mean? I think they precisely show that the existence of homosexuals is “natural.” If the existence of homosexuals were merely the product of society, then their existence could also be blamed on the pathology of the social system. What reason is there to insist that the existence of homosexuals is a revolt against the traditional “heterosexist social system”? Why not say instead that the existence of homosexuality proves the pathology of society? But the problem is that homosexuality is probably not shaped by education and environment; rather, it has some natural cause. At the very least, it is not a manifestation of social pathology, though it may still be a kind of natural pathology. Nature is not necessarily reasonable; not discriminating against something does not mean regarding it as reasonable or healthy. We say that China has 100 million hepatitis B virus carriers; we say that hepatitis B carriers should not be discriminated against; but this obviously does not mean that carrying the hepatitis B virus is something honorable, nor does it mean that hepatitis B carriers are a healthier population. The same is true of any disabled person or sick person: not discriminating against them does not mean singing their praises. However one puts it, the social system of civilized humanity is built on heterosexuality, built on monogamy (of course, between one man and one woman). If one rejects these, why not simply propose polyandry or group marriage? To deny love, marriage, and family is to deny the entire edifice of human civilization at its roots; some so-called Marxist feminists do indeed advocate this. For such extreme claims, there is hardly any rebuttal left to make. As a pluralist, I do not approve, but I can express support.

It must be admitted that this rebuttal to “difference” is not entirely unreasonable. But like other postmodern theorists who emphasize social construction, to reject “nature” altogether is truly to go too far. Of course, no one would deny the obvious physiological differences between men and women; what they advocate is that such physiological differences should not be used as the basis for differences in the roles men and women play in society. Yet although human society should first and foremost be “against nature,” should natural differences really have no impact whatsoever on the form society takes? Forcing unlike things to become “equal” is not only against nature—wouldn’t it also be unfair? (Moreover, even if all the differences between “women” and men were entirely socially constructed, as a pluralist I celebrate difference and diversity, just as the unique characteristics of Easterners and Westerners are also products of society, though I regard such pluralization as a good thing.)

In general, there are two kinds of injustice. The first is so-called “substantive” bias; the second is “formal” bias. The first kind manifests itself in applying double standards to others—for example, “only the state official may set fire; the common people may not even light a lamp” is a classic case. The oppression and resistance emphasized by ordinary equal-rights movements mainly refer to this aspect. Feminism first of all seeks equal human rights for women, equal pay for equal work, and equality of standards. But the second kind of bias is more hidden: it consists in applying a single standard to different people. For instance, using the same physical fitness test requirements for athletes and university professors is obviously unfair. This kind of discrimination becomes especially apparent when the institutional demands made by Blacks and women for equality are gradually being met. For example, if one gives IQ tests to white and Black children at the same time, the results often show that white children score higher—but one is clearly using exactly the same test paper and the same grading standard, so what complaint could there be? Isn’t it a fact, statistically demonstrated, that whites as a group are smarter than Blacks? In fact, precisely the application of the same standard to people from different environments and educational backgrounds is the root of unfairness! If we were to design an IQ test that placed more weight on arithmetic operations for Chinese children and American children to take, we could also “prove” that Chinese children have higher IQs, but such a practice would be unjust from the very beginning.

In fact, what I want to emphasize is this: the homogenization and “quantification” of everything in modern society is the greatest source of such injustice. But here, I will not delve further into this modernity issue for the moment.

These two levels of equality often conflict with each other. For example, a unified college entrance examination system can promote the first kind of equality, but the single-plank bridge of exam-oriented education will in turn produce the second kind of inequality. In fact, China’s ancient imperial examination system, and its notorious “eight-legged essay,” were extremely “equal” in the first sense; yet precisely because they pursued uniformity too much, they suppressed the diverse development of thought. But if one only emphasizes plural standards, that also does not work in practice. The contradiction between these two kinds of equality seems to be something that can only be resolved in utopia and the ideal state.

When it comes specifically to feminism, the contradiction between these two kinds of equality becomes especially acute. The rallying cries of “Who says women are inferior to men?”, “Who says men are strong and women weak?”, “Who says men belong outside and women inside?” still carry a strong male-chauvinist coloring.

I believe that the attitude of “fighting to be the best” is itself extremely masculine. A more worthy matter for reflection is: why is “strong” synonymous with “good”? Why are weakness and softness inferior to strength and hardness? Why is “keeping house” inferior to “working outside”?

Of course I support women’s freedom to choose work and their right to equal pay for equal work; but on the other hand, I also greatly admire the so-called “housewife” who gives up work and merely “supports her husband and educates her children.” I even believe this is a career more suitable for women than any modern occupation! Is this view “male chauvinist”? I, however, think that this is my feminism. In my view, career and money-making are far less important than the family; the “housewife” is in fact a far more important and far more sacred social role. And the environment of the entire modern workplace—such an environment full of slaughter, bringing people excessive pressure and tension—is itself wholly masculinized! I do not know why finding a job is called “job hunting,” but the modern workplace really is more like a stage for “hunting” than a place for “gathering.”

Men hunt, women gather; or men plow, women weave—these gender-based divisions of labor are indeed social constructions, but such constructions are by no means wholly unreasonable. The key lies in the fact that, in a male-supremacist culture, the side of the social division of labor associated with men is then regarded as the higher status one. What must first be broken is precisely this conceit, but that does not mean one must deny the differences between men and women in playing social roles and bearing social divisions of labor.

It is said that when Premier Zhou once saw Beijing’s first female traffic police officers, he attentively asked whether such a job, requiring them to stand in the sun all day, was suitable for them, and whether there would be inconveniences. Premier Zhou first allowed female traffic officers to wear skirts on duty; and when he learned that the working environment really did affect their health, he simply withdrew the female traffic officers in stages. Does this count as “male chauvinism”? Does it count as “oppressing women”? Another example: in China there are still several occupations where “gender discrimination” in hiring is legally protected—for instance, miners… I seem never to have heard that any women’s movement organization has put forward demands such as women should also become miners, women can also be good miners, or female miners should be guaranteed a certain proportion. In these cases, special restrictions on women are not discrimination, but rather are out of concern for women’s protection.

Women are naturally gentle and weak, and therefore ought to receive more care and attention; while men ought to bear more hardship (and even these hardships cannot compare with the greatness of women carrying a child for ten months). As the saying goes, when the sky falls, the tall one bears it—who told men to be tall? Men should shoulder more, not because men themselves are great, but because women are great. Women need not feel inferior because they are the protected “weak ones.” One must know that humanity is not great because it is strong, but precisely because it is weak—Pascal put it well: man is a reed, the slightest drop of water can bend it; but it is a thinking reed.

Speaking of this, two more questions related to feminism arise. First, is humanity’s greatness really only in “thought”? I think not; humanity’s “emotion” is equally—or perhaps even more—important. Second, is it indeed the case that men tend toward “thought” and women toward “emotion”? I think not necessarily. But from the traditional understanding of thought and emotion, perhaps it really is so—if thought is confined only to logical reasoning and mathematical proof, men probably do excel more in this regard (regardless of whether this phenomenon is caused by biology or shaped by society). But the question is, can only the style and mode that follow such patterns count as “thought”? Is it possible that there exists a feminine perspective on the world and a feminine style of thinking? I believe it is possible.

Strictly speaking, I myself cannot yet be called a feminist, because I merely support, from a pluralist standpoint, a certain feminism of my own imagining. But if I were truly to become a feminist myself, that would require me to take feminism as my basic perspective or starting point, and I am not yet able to do that. As I come to understand feminist writings more fully (at present, I understand almost nothing), my position could change at any moment. Moreover, talking about these topics easily leads to being misunderstood or offending people. Add to this the fact that I have not written anything for many days, and now that I am writing this essay I feel incoherent, so I will stop here for the time being and return to the discussion after several years.

March 8, 2007, 4:23 p.m.

Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.