My feed
Premium

Please
or
to access all these features

Feminism: Sex & gender discussions

China's 'self-combed' women - independence within a patriarchy?

2 replies

CaoNiMa · 04/07/2014 07:37

I found this article very interesting - from yesterday's Guardian, about a group of women in South China who chose to live outside the traditional family system:

www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/03/survivors-ancient-chinese-custom-self-combed-women?CMP=fb_gu

OP posts:
Report
caramelwaffle · 04/07/2014 23:24

Absolutely fascinating.

In another country nearby - Japan - right now, many women are eschewing marriage, or marriage and children.

Seemingly for "careers" however I think it runs much deeper than this.

Report
DonkeySkin · 06/07/2014 17:33

It's always intriguing and heartening to hear about ways that women have managed to cultivate sub-cultures of independence within patriarchal societies.

Often that independence is highly limited though and involves renouncing sexuality, as seems to be the case with the self-combed women.

Have you heard of China's Sworn Sisters, who were women who effectively married each other in the 19th century in the Pearl River Delta area? I was so happy to learn that in a time when vast numbers of Chinese girls were being crippled from childhood in the service of male erotic pleasure, some women managed to escape that and forge a revolutionary lesbian sisterhood.

There were various ways in which sworn sisters were pledged to each other.... a pair of girls or women would take mutual vows never to marry and never to part company. The Chinese term for sworn sisters was “shuang chieh-pai, “ “mutually tied by oath.” Very often, these girls or women had spent a large part of their childhood together... Sworn sisterhood, however was not limited to twosomes. It often comprised a larger association of many women who were committed to each other in friendship and who formed an organized antimarriage grouping.

carolyngage.weebly.com/blog/sworn-sisters-and-marriage-resisters

Report
Please create an account

To comment on this thread you need to create a Mumsnet account.