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This book analyzes major Chinese governmental publications that deal with sexuality in 1950, when the new Marriage Law was enacted, and 1980, with the Second Marriage Law. Evans (Chinese, Univ. of Westminster) is well grounded in both feminist and Chinese studies, which allows her to deepen her analysis with references to China's present-day pop culture and conversations she has had with Chinese colleagues. Her major finding is that Chinese discourses consistently use medical and/or scientific explanations of gender differences to, essentially, denigrate women. Evans's analysis is consistent with much that has been written on China's political system?that it cannot survive without maintaining order and stability. However, she assumes that the audience is fluent in postmodernist language.
- Sales Rank: #2140022 in Books
- Brand: Brand: Bloomsbury Academic
- Published on: 1997-02-01
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.37" h x 1.09" w x 6.36" l, 1.24 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 270 pages
- Used Book in Good Condition
From Library Journal
This book analyzes major Chinese governmental publications that deal with sexuality in 1950, when the new Marriage Law was enacted, and 1980, with the Second Marriage Law. Evans (Chinese, Univ. of Westminster) is well grounded in both feminist and Chinese studies, which allows her to deepen her analysis with references to China's present-day pop culture and conversations she has had with Chinese colleagues. Her major finding is that Chinese discourses consistently use medical and/or scientific explanations of gender differences to, essentially, denigrate women. Evans's analysis is consistent with much that has been written on China's political system?that it cannot survive without maintaining order and stability. However, she assumes that the audience is fluent in postmodernist language. For academic collections.?Peggy Spitzer Christoff, Oak Park, Ill.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review
"Scholarly analysis and imaginative insight combine to provide the reader with an original and up-to-date textual study of sex and sexuality in China ... in emphasizing female sexuality, this sensitive study explores the hitherto missing dimension of previous studies of women and gender in China." Elisabeth Croll, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
"Political change has taken most of the limelight in studies on China since 1949. Yet many other areas of life have been revolutionized, as Evans's perceptive study of women and sexuality in China shows. Her book is scholarly and innovative, yet highly readable. She breaks new ground in showing why gender relationships are of central importance for the revolutionary state." Delia Davin, University of Leeds
"Women and Sexuality in China is an important book. It disrupts many of our commonsense understandings of sexuality in socialist China: that the 1950s were a time of puritanical silence, for instance, or that the 1980s brought unfettered liberatory conversation on sexual matters. With skilful use of popular and scientific texts, Evans shows us that there has always been talk about sex in the People's Republic of China, and that state concerns continue to shape sexuality in the growing market economy. This is a subtle and nuanced work that greatly enhances our understanding of the connections between sex, gender, and changing visions of modernity in China." Gail Hershatter, University of California, Santa Cruz
"Harriet Evans uses an impressively wide range of sources - the official and popular press, women's magazines, sex manuals and surveys and medical advice pamphlets - to define and differentiate the various attitudes towards sex in modern China and then sets them in their cultural and political context ... She makes an important contribution to the understudied subject of sex and sexuality in China ... compelling reading." The Times Literary Supplement
"Thoroughly researched ... throughout this important study, Evans traces consistent threads, and significant shifts, in the representation of women and sexuality in the nearly fifty years of communist rule." China Information
"[A] path-breaking study ... [and] a welcome contribution to the literature. This is both an erudite and imaginative study making full use of the author's considerable language skills, interviews in and long experience of China which ... allows her sensitively to balance and carefully to document her arguments ... [It] deserves a wide audience." The Times Higher Education Supplement
"Timely and well-researched book." China Q
"Essential reading." The China Journal
"This is a remarkable book, which gives textual and anecdotal support to the intuitions of most female China watchers. The notes, references and index are all excellent aids for the serious reader and contribute to an impressive, instructive work." Journal of Gender Studies
From the Back Cover
Since the early 1980s sex and sexuality have become prominent themes of public debate in China, after three decades during which discourses on sexuality were subject to stringent ideological controls.
This book analyses the ways in which sex and sexuality have been discussed in The People's Republic of China since 1949. It examines a wide range of materials - the official and popular press, women's magazines, sex education publications, self-help guides and medical advice pamphlets - and compares and contrasts the various discourses of sexuality and the meanings associated with 'woman' that emerge from them. It considers the role of the state in matters of sexuality, and argues that women's sexuality has been consistently targeted as a site for the regulation of general standards of sexual and social conduct.
This is a highly original contribution to the growing body of literature on women and gender in China. It will appeal to students and scholars of modern and contemporary China, and to all those engaged in current debates about sexuality and gender in international feminist scholarship.
Most helpful customer reviews
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful.
A review
By Angelina Chin
Harriet Evans¡¦ Women and Sexuality in China is a well-researched book. The sources include sex education publications, women¡¦s magazines, medical pamphlets, newspaper, official and popular press, women¡¦s magazines, sex manuals. Unlike other books about sexuality on China, Evans has done thorough study on almost all the materials available and has used them more critically than many others. Although I have reservations about her analysis, I am very impressed by her collection of sources and her sincere engagement.
Evans argues against the view that sex has ¡§taken off¡¨ in China in the last decade and that there is stark contrast between the liberalization of the 1980s on sexuality and the Maoist decades. She stresses the continuity from the 1949s to the present by drawing references to the sex related materials published in the 1950s as a result of the Marriage law and argues that the rhetoric and ideology between the now and then are similar. Similar to Frank Dikotter, she believes that medical experts were the authority and they controlled the discourse of sexuality: ¡§Medical experts claimed the authority of modern science to expound the view that biological differences in reproductive and sexual development determined all major distinctions between women and men in sexual and social behavior.¡¨ (3) Her main argument is that even though there are differences between the 1950s and the 1980s, the 1980s still ¡§echoed many of the concerns of the former discourse.¡¨ (3) Also, one of her main concerns is the state¡¦s use of science to enforce the hierarchical gender relationships and tie women¡¦s gender characteristics with reproductive function. She wants to show that women¡¦s sexuality has always been controlled and appropriated for other purposes of the state that serve for the ¡§well-being¡¨ of the society, such as socialist cause and population control.
Evans emphasizes how the theory of biological naturalism was used to define men and women. It stresses the natural characteristics of active and passive. Nevertheless, in the 50s, in promoting the socialist female image, female gender characteristics were deemphasized and a style of ¡§socialist androgyny¡¨ was presented and the signs of feminine beauty was suppressed: ¡§Images of female body suggestive of sexual interest and removed from associations with utilitarian practicality became a metaphor for subject positions with which women could identify only at their peril.¡¨ (136) Evans argues that the official critique on conventional signs of feminine beauty ¡§signifies an attempt to revise gender constructs associated with female appearance so as to correspond with the ideological shift toward the public sphere matters associated with sexual and bodily management.¡¨ (136) I think here is one of the places where Evans can further analyze the contradictions and contestations in meanings of the ideological change. It seems that she could not elaborate freely as she could about the refeminization of female appearance in the mid 1950s. (Or did I overlook her deeper analysis?)
Since the late 1970s, there is a rise of popular discourses, however, Evans argues that the objectification of women for male pleasure and use is reinforced. Even though the discourse is not dominated by the state, it perpetuates the inequality. Nevertheless, Evans also shows that challenges exist and there are some alternative female voices. Despite this new contesting scene, Evans argues that the use of eroticized female image is more prominent. It is interesting that Evans observes the difference in state perception of urban and rural population on the issue of commercialization of women. It seems that the official discourse is arguing that ignorance and poverty the sale of women in the rural society. ¡§The condemnation of prostitution, pornography, and sexual crime is part of an official discourse that is moulded more by moralistic assumptions about sexual propriety, women¡¦s in particular, than by an understanding of gender hierarchy.¡¨ (188) Here Evans contends that it is ¡§gender hierarchies of power¡¨ that is underlying the discourse. Her criticism seems too vague and moralistic. She seems to have taken the efforts and ideology of the official discourse seriously. Is her portrayal and criticism too simplistic? It seems like she is criticizing out of political and social contexts. Moreover, it seems to me that Evans tries to justify some of her arguments by assuming the responses of the readers. There are points that she uses the views of some Chinese women she encountered to generalize as attitudes of ¡§many women¡¨. (18) Sometimes, the responses and behaviors of the common people are just assumed: ¡§ordinary men and women did not conduct their sexual lives according to these texts any more than they necessarily supported or believed in the subject positions they offered.¡¨ (16) How does she know? From what she says, Evans is aware of the constitutive power of the texts and claims that gender and sexuality are culturally constructed: ¡§The sense of being a woman or man is formed within the context of dominant discourses and categorizations, regardless of how individual women and men consciously articulate their responses to them.¡¨ (15) ¡§Whether or not individual persons consciously acknowledge the dominant gender categories of these discourses, they also participate in reproducing them by making representations and self-representations ¡V both consciously and unconsciously ¡V with reference to them.¡¨ (19) (See discussion on p.18-20) Does she demonstrate her argument well throughout her book? Or is it just a statement made in the introduction?
I am not quite convinced by Evans¡¦ overall argument. She seems to be reinforcing the narrative that women is objectified and oppressed. I think representations of women sexuality can be a subversive force, but her interpretation does not seem to tell us alternative interpretations of power. It seems that women¡¦s agency is dismissed in her picture. Even though that she suggests some optimistic alternative discourse arising in the 1980s challenging the dominant views on women¡¦s sexual pleasure, the heterosexist discourse of conjugal responsibilities and category of ¡§woman,¡¨ she still believes that the active-male/passive-female model is still intact. Evans seems to be trying too hard to push her point and dismisses the alternative discourses too quickly. I think it is a waste of materials if all she merely wants to argue that women are still under the hierarchical sexist order. I think she could have complicated the picture more by look deeper into the texts and set them in social contexts.
I am not so clear why she wants to bridge the gap between the 1950s and 1980s. Because of this agenda, I think she tries to fit everything into a neat narrative. It seems paradoxical, if one of her goals is to demystify what is assumed about the sexual liberation in the 1980s. Also, although she marks the years of the publications in most cases, her analyses are sometimes confusing and out of historical contexts. It is not clear what time period and whose voice she is talking about. I also don¡¦t find much analysis on the Cultural Revolution years. I suspect that one of her problems is that she tries to avoid socio-economic or political issues. She carries assumptions about Chinese society even though she tries to avoid it. It seems to me that she does not go inside the society and only attempts to analyze from without.
She seems to be suggesting that the hierarchical natural normative model was a creation of the state or part of the dominant discourse, but the connection between the discourse and the state is elusive. For the sections on the recent period, she argues that the public sexual discourse is not in the control of the state but it in many ways still upholds the old ideology and guards sexual behaviors, yet I am not satisfied with her picture about the tension and contrast between official, semi-official and the popular discourses. .........................
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
not reliable enough
By A Customer
i am happy that this book pays attention to homosexuality in china. finally! it is something worthy respect. however, i also find that the section on homosexuality in the book is not reliable enough (PP. 206-15). especially, P. 208 is too simplified. maybe it is because that the writer relies on Bret Hinsch's book (published in 1990). however, since Hinsch's book is a bit old now and not accurate enough, any scholarship easily dependent on Hinsch will end up problematic. i also find the writer, i mean evans, has to be more critical of the documents from the chinese officials.
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