A response to a response - Amanda

Sorry I didn't read or post to the blog before today's meeting. I could have perhaps formulated a more articulate response to Kelly's question about gender constructs and sex in the case of Chinese history. However, after thinking a little bit more about this tonight, it occurred to me that there are definitely two large, looming aspects of the so-called "pre-modern" Chinese sexuality that I didn't discuss: same-sex relations and concubinage. Men and women (particular men) were not shunned for pre-martial same-sex relations for most of Chinese history. After marriage, they were dissuaded from this practice not for what we would call "moral" reasons, but because it was widely held that men should be more concerned with procreation in order to uphold their family line. This was the same reason for concubines, of course. For similar reasons, women were not necessarily discouraged from lesbianism except when it interfered with marriage and procreation. The medicalization of sex and sexuality and what it meant to have a "modern" marriage and family, obviously imported from Western models of modernity (which May 4th intellectuals fully embraced in the 1910s and 1920s, wishing to completely dispel any and all Confucian ideals of the family and marriage), fundamentally shifted the focus from family, status, and patriarchy to modern concepts of gender, the nuclear family, and biological sex differentiations but equality between sexes. So I guess what I'm trying to say here is that in the Chinese case, the regulation of sex was initially caught up not so much with morality as with pro-creation and carrying on the family line. And yet: for widowed women, it was deemed inappropriate (according to traditional Confucian practices) to re-marry or have sexual relations with a man. Many women, for financial reasons (such as taking care of the farm and household) didn't follow this proscription. Actually, this does seem to be a gender issue here. That's not to say men could do whatever they wanted to do: pro-creation and filial piety were still of utmost importance.

In terms of relating this to Foucault's discussion of sex and sexuality--I find this particularly difficult because I don't think he's allowing for much wiggle room between a sexualized/de-sexualized environment. In fact, I think he is caught up in modern binary concepts and power relations behind sex and sexuality and needs to step back and look at how pre-modern conceptions of sexuality, particularly in the case of China, did not necessarily revolve around pleasure (though that's not to say it wasn't pleasurable in some cases)--isn't "free love" a modern concept anyways?

~Amanda

Oh, I have another question I am not prepared to try and answer: were would eunuchs fit into the picture for Foucault?