Mr. Lu Xun once said that in China, the greatest, most permanent and most universal art is the man pretending to be a woman. People generally think that he is satirizing Mei Lanfang, but they often ignore the cultural connotation of what he said. Lu Xun never forgot his "critique of national character". Men pretending to be women and women pretending to be men are precisely the deformed manifestations of the "great defense of men and women" in traditional Chinese culture, because on the stage, it can not only conform to the public norms of etiquette and religion, but also satisfy the hidden voyeuristic desire between men and women (women see "men pretend", men see "pretend to be women"), so that moral idealism and life realism achieve a perfect combination. But the whole is based on self-deception.
However, the interplay of men and women (Peking opera, Yue opera, etc.) is not only the highest achievement of Chinese art, but also reflects the ideal personality model of the Chinese. Of course, the ordinary personality model of the Chinese is still generally nothing more than male farming and female weaving, men fighting wars and women looking after the house, men leading the outside and female dominating, men should be powerful, heroic and fearless, women should be gentle and virtuous, careful and considerate, and so on. These are general standards. However, when it comes to the "ideal personality", the situation is different. China's ideal man must be a little feminine. He must be knowledgeable and courteous, gentle and elegant, not a martial artist, simple-minded and well-developed limbs, but should know how to obey, loyalty, dedication, even if he leads troops to fight, he also has the demeanor of a "Confucian general". This ideal type is typified by Qu Yuan, who compares himself to a "vanilla beauty", setting a precedent for alluding to the relationship between kings and ministers with resentful women poems and love poems (whether there is such a precedent in the Book of Songs seems to be inconclusive). Even among the "heroes of troubled times", the reckless are looked down upon.
Guan Yunchang may be defeated by Lu Bu, but his most charming thing is that he reads at night after killing someone. Li Kui and his ilk not only failed to be leaders, but were often teased and abandoned as children; Only Song Jiang is qualified to "dare to laugh at Huangchao's husband", and he occupies the first place in the Juyi Hall and the "Jingzhong Temple" built by the Emperor of the Great Song Dynasty. On the other hand, the most ideal women in China must also be "strong women" who "don't like red clothes and love arms", heroines and "heroines". Hua Mulan has been in the army for 12 years, and proudly said that "the male rabbit's feet are fluttering, the female rabbit's eyes are blurred, the two rabbits walk next to the ground, and An can distinguish that I am male and female", here, the standard of "not distinguishing male and female" happens to be "male" rather than "female". Therefore, Mulan is a female "male" (as if saying "round square"). In today's parlance: what gay men can do, lesbians can (or should be) do.
Mu Guiying, Liang Hongyu, Thirteen Sisters, etc., there are more examples of women doing men's things in traditional Chinese culture than any other ethnic group, but the standard is always the standard of men: women are in command to fight, women carry weights, and even women are allowed to do what men want to do but can't do, as if Chinese men are dead. Now it's the head of the heroine Green Forest ("Undefeated in the East" and so on), killing bad men everywhere and saving good men. Chinese football can't beat others, so it pins its hopes on "women's football". In fact, football is a men's sport, and only men can best embody the spirit of football, just as uneven bars and rhythmic gymnastics are women's specialty.
Heroines may have (such as the "mother worm" in "Water Margin" is more realistic), but relying on them to save the defeat is obviously fantasy, self-deception, and self-anesthesia. Falling into the same misunderstanding as women's football is the para sport, which is supposed to reflect the individual personality strength of people who work hard in adversity, but the Chinese always want to use it to "win glory" and "strengthen the national prestige" for the country, but after all, they feel that it is not enjoyable, and they are not relieved if they win. We actually know very well in our hearts that in these projects, only the able-bodied man wins.
Liu Xiaoqing starred in the TV series "Wu Zetian", and sang at the beginning: The first gentleman in the world is a daughter. It seems that Wu Zetian fights for "our" women, and he is not weaker than men. If I were a woman, I would never cheer for Wu Zetian; Think about how she treats the queen and other women who stand in her way (including her own daughter). Generally, women are most afraid of this kind of strong woman, and they would rather find a man to do something, which can save them a lot of difficulties. When a woman arrives at Wu Zetian, she can no longer be regarded as a woman, she is sexual, and she can't win glory for women at all. In China, if someone praises a woman in a man's affairs, it either means that the man is a wreck, or he is advocating sex. I'm not saying that women shouldn't play football, women should play football, but don't use men's standards, play women's style. Women can also remove gloves, scratch with their nails, and tear their hair when they go to the boxing ring, of course, this is not very good-looking, but it has personality and does not distort. The most feared thing is that a woman puts on a man's mask and looks as if she is competing with a man, but in fact it is a woman's loss and a fake personality.
However, the traditional Chinese admiration for female heroes is also limited, and it is based on the absolute premise of male superiority, and the subtext is: No matter how powerful you are, after all, you are a woman, and you are not afraid to jump into the sky. Blowing a woman is just as condescending as blowing a disabled person: "As a woman (or disabled), it's nice to be able to do this." "If you tout a man, if you hold him too high, you will be afraid that he will be ambitious, unless the man is the emperor himself. Therefore, it is generally advisable for men to tout after death. Therefore, although Chinese culture is a male system (patriarchy), it is a "feminine culture" that oppresses all men except one person (the emperor) and makes them all feminine, and this "one" (emperor) has been in a feminine or sexless (eunuch) environment since childhood, and in fact, it is not "masculine".
On the other hand, it is advocating that women are "on par" with men, but if women really want to become the masters of men, most of them will leave the infamy of "cow dagger and chicken Si Chen". In both cases, the essence is one, that is, the strangulation of the individuality (including gender) of the "person" in general (man and woman). The so-called "yin flourishes and yang declines" is just a comparison, and "yang" is so "declining", so "yin" is not "prosperous". No matter how flamboyant women are, their status in China is roughly the same as that of the disabled and children, so Confucius said that "only women and villains are difficult to raise."
In this century, Chinese began to learn a lot of foreign new terms: "personality independence", "marital autonomy", "love first", "women's liberation", "self-improvement and self-confidence" and so on, and many changes have taken place in real life, parents have relaxed their intervention in children's marriage and love, divorce rates have risen, celibacy, extramarital cohabitation and so on. But at the cultural and psychological level, not much has changed, and people still often use the traditional image of "women heroes" to encourage the self-esteem of the "new women". In the 20s, the most influential introduction of Western feminist ideas to China was Ibsen, especially his "A Doll's House", which tells the story of a woman of knowledge, Nala, who has a harmonious relationship with her husband Helmao, who calls her "little bird" and "little squirrel", and the two indulge in the joy of a child's house all day long.
However, when it was revealed that Nala had signed a loan for her husband's treatment, Helmer turned her face and scolded her as a "lowly woman", ruining her future and having no intention of helping her in the same boat. After the risk, Helmer wants to get back together, saying that he will use his "wide wings" to protect his "little bird", but Nala has understood her status as a doll in the family and resolutely runs away. The play caused a sensation in Chinese intellectual circles at the time, and there was no new woman who didn't know about Nala. There are also many women who really run away from the family, do not want to be a man's vassal and ornament, and want to be independent and self-reliant, as equal as men.
However, Ibsen's influence in China changed its flavor from the very beginning. Most of the reasons why Chinese women run away from the family are because of the strangulation of general love by feudal etiquette, rather than to maintain the independence of their individual personality, or to pursue a kind of love based on the independence of individual personality, so they stay at a lower level (see Fang Ping, "Three Women Who Ran Away from the Family", Reading, No. 11, 1982). Usually "running away" occurs when parents befriend their daughter to a stranger, often as a little wife, and sometimes add that the daughter has something else to love. Sometimes they run away because the husband is ruthless, or abuses his wife, or asks for flowers. In short, if they can find a reliable and loving husband like Helmao, most Chinese women will not run away, and Helmo is the "model husband" they yearn for. People only know that Chinese runaway women want to pursue "freedom" like Nala, but they don't see that the level and meaning of this freedom are very different.
If you want to say "free love", then Nala and Helmer are the union of free love, which can also be seen from the fact that Nala runs away freely in front of her husband without being hindered. Therefore, what Nala really pursues is the independence and dignity of individuality, and after Chinese women escape from the family, their fate can only be to join another family, including the revolutionary "big family", but they also lack the requirements of individuality and personality independence, but more unconditionally obey and dedicate themselves to the standards of men. Even Mr. Lu Xun didn't quite understand this at first. In 1923, in "What Happens to Nala After She Leaves", he argued that the real way out for Nala was to fight for "economic rights". As for how to obtain economic rights, he admits that he does not know, only that he has to fight. He chalked up Nala's exodus to a question of seeking a "way out" rather than a question of the awakening of a fundamental sense of personality independence.
Of course, after awakening, you may find that there is no way out, but at least you have the requirements and motivation to "fight"; On the contrary, a person who is not independent in personality and has not awakened, even if he obtains "economic rights", will fall into self-isolation, and he will not take a way out if he is given a way out. In 1926's "Death by Injury", Lu Xun had already seen that even if such a person (such as Zijun) walked out of one home, he would fall into another home, and could only go back and forth between (father's) home and (husband's) home. In fact, Chinese women do not have the question of "what happens after leaving", but they have not really wanted to get rid of the concept of "home" (whether it is a small family or everyone) and have an independent demand to leave.
According to some people's interpretation and play of Lu Xun, the final emancipation of women depends on their freedom from the love life of their small families and their devotion to the "vigorous mass revolutionary movement" and "social transformation". But there is a paradox: the transformer must first reinvent himself. If the "mass revolutionary movement" is carried out by some people who have not been reformed in their bones, it may not become a new shackle and stiflation of personality. So far, women's emancipation in China has been in the name of "breaking through the small family and caring for everyone", guiding women to conform to the standards of the male world on a larger scale; Women come out of the old family in search of a new family or a large family, and when they find it, they also have to make sacrifices for men: either to continue to be a woman, or to do man's things "like men", that is, to gain a "transgender" right to abandon and sacrifice their gender.
It is not difficult to understand that Chinese women, under thousands of years of heavy male oppression, have wanted to change their gender almost from birth, and once they have such a false "right", they will fight for it at all costs. Recently, I heard some young women who are not familiar with the world make a declaration: "I will be a woman for the rest of my life!" "It's not naïve, it's deliberately hypocritical, and it's too monotonous. A person who is only willing to be of one gender is certainly a narrow-minded and uninteresting person. But the right to "transgender" here is a different matter, it is not a free choice, but a forced choice, or even no choice. The brutal war years forced the subject of history to become a purely male force, and in fact there was no time to take care of "women's rights"; However, on the surface, in terms of propaganda, it was an era of women's struggle for liberation, and people's understanding of women's liberation was "women's disguise".
At that time, women wanted to be people, not cows and horses, and the only way was indeed to dress up as a woman. It's here.
In the fifties and sixties, this understanding still prevailed. Women admired wearing Lenin's uniforms, overalls, and military uniforms, and were full of revolutionary phrases and great truths, and the sphere of private life was suppressed to the point of almost non-existent, and organizations replaced parents and even decided people's marriages. In the "Cultural Revolution", the masculinization of women was advocated to the extreme, it was natural for women to do men's things, "weak women" were generally looked down upon, women's unique elegance, delicacy and dignity were discarded as "petty-bourgeois sentiments", and the eight "model plays" made women (and ordinary "people") a stereotype.
The most worthy of women's pondering of the Cultural Revolution is that it originally advocated women's emancipation and demanded that women fight for their rights against men (which is also related to the political ambitions of **), but why did it eventually create an "era without women"? Why do women feel the same sense of pleasure when they abandon their gender, even at the expense of great pain (physical, psychological)? This can only be explained by the fact that the emancipation of women as commonly understood by Chinese is the traditional female disguise, self-deception, and even sexual perversion, which is in line with the needs of a patriarchal society. Chinese women have infiltrated the idea of male power even when they are seeking "liberation"!
Another lesson is that when "the emancipation of man" and "the emancipation of individuality" are not really on the agenda, women's emancipation is nothing more than an empty phrase. Marx believed that women's emancipation is the yardstick of social emancipation, and social emancipation is essentially the emancipation of man and the free development of each individual. Women's emancipation is not to "compete" with men, to defeat men in a male society, or at least to a draw, but to women's own business, that is, to fully understand themselves with their own standards and vision, and to give full play to their female potential.
Recently, in the French drama series "Female Police Officer Julie", the female police chief has two children and is a gentle and attentive mother; Her husband is divorced, but she still comes to the party once a week, and her tolerance allows the children to continue to enjoy the warmth of family. But she is also a competent police officer, and she is known for her meticulousness, sensitivity, intuition and calmness that is unique to women, and has impressed many male colleagues. She is a woman, and she also has the weakness of a woman, and she has no ability to resist when she is hijacked by gangsters, but she is psychologically sound and stronger than gangsters, and she can finally grasp the weaknesses of gangsters and overcome rigidity with softness. The "police flowers" on our TV (and RTHK TV) are different, they are all young and beautiful girls, but they all have excellent "kung fu", and they always convince people at critical moments, which is simply a myth. The question is why Chinese audiences love to watch such myths when they know they are false.
This is inseparable from the concept of the perfect woman in their minds, that is: to maintain the image of a "doll" in the eyes of men, but also to "fly with wings" with men in their careers. But the latter is often still another "play" for men (some men just like "hot" girls). Female audiences position themselves according to this ideal standard of men, the so-called "women are the ones who please themselves". They want to be beautiful, to attract men, and at the same time to be able to stand on an equal footing in front of men and not be bullied. But these two aspects depend on external conditions: the appearance is not changed by oneself, and as for "kung fu", if you want to practice to the point where you can beat the bandits, you have not already become a yellow-faced woman, and most of them are unrealistic. There are just a few sets of performances of fists and embroidered legs on TV, and in order to make people believe in martial arts**, it is always attributed to the guidance of a famous teacher, or a secret "true scripture", which is actually all nonsense.
Women's true self-reliance must not be based on such self-deception. What people, including women, can really directly grasp under any external conditions is their own spiritual independence, and they are committed to building their own inner spiritual world and personality. It's not innate, and it doesn't depend on external chances, but only on oneself. Here, the first and foremost is to learn. Human beings are historical, women are also historical, and feminist consciousness must first be based on the historical self-consciousness of the whole human race (not only women), and absorb all the spiritual and cultural heritage that human beings have created. Most of these legacies were created by men, but women could also learn about women's historical status, condition, and development of ideas, and assimilate them by women's standards. More importantly, when a person talks about history not for the sake of simply doing men's things (such as governing the country) or women's things (such as abiding by women's morals), but for the purpose of enriching one's inner world, this kind of learning has the meaning of human liberation beyond gender. A woman must first become a well-rounded and independent person before she can know how to be a woman.
Secondly, just like the relationship between people in general, a woman must maintain her independence, including her own privacy, in her relationship with a man, even after she has a family. A person who has no privacy or does not value privacy is a person with a poor inner world, this kind of woman not only cannot arouse the long-term interest of men, but also objectively cannot reach equality with men, but is just a "field" for men to gallop. A positive external result of the women's liberation movement in this century is that women also have their own careers and jobs, that is, what Lu Xun called "economic rights", but many women do not make good use of it, but either regard it as a kind of "rice bowl" in the nature of social relief, or become "strong women" in their careers and suppress their women's needs. People have always envied the relationship between "like-minded" couples, but in fact, this is still relatively external, not necessarily solid, and sometimes it seems that the content of life is monotonous and narrow. Of course, there are successes, and the key is that both sides must have their own independent development and creation.
Third, women should not despise themselves, but should dig up themselves as a treasure. In the age of matriarchy, women were sacred. Women's self-indulgence is formed by history. With the development of human civilization to this day, there is no need for women to disguise themselves, but to need real women, and "people" who embody the great and rich motherhood of human beings. Only when women participate in men's activities with their own special qualities will men's affairs become more and more common to men and women in the development of history. However, this should not be transcended and forced at the expense of women's inherent characteristics and rights, but should be advanced step by step on the basis of universal humanitarianism.
For example, we cannot dismiss "ladies first" as disguised discrimination against women in a "postmodern" manner when even the most basic rights of women have not been universally respected by the whole society. The emancipation of women is a very long process, and impetuousness and wishful thinking that does not look at reality and ascend to the sky in one step is not desirable and very superficial. Nevertheless, the principle of feminist consciousness can be explained in one sentence: it is essentially a manifestation of human rights consciousness. Without this foundation, all feminism, no matter how radical or ostentatious it may seem, is illusory. ▇
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