Prelude to the Feminist Movement

Guest post by our Douggie Dunn:

Women have always suffered. Very few early civilizations followed a matriarchal system, none of which formed the basis of any of the main ruling societies in recorded history. It was simply the way of life in harsher times, and in no continent were women more subjugated and objectified than in Asia. Even today, while an industrial age and western influence has allowed the larger eastern countries to slowly change their stance, man of the Islamic states in eastern Asia still have no concept of women's rights and freedom.

Chinese philosophy tends to revolve around one fundamental principle: Yin and Yang. Everything thin the world is built out of two forces. Two incredibly sexist forces. Light, Warm, Positive and Active Yang, against the Dark, Cold, Wet, Negative and Passive Yin. For thousands of years was femininity viewed in this dark light. Especially important, was the passive trait, and no culture took it further than China.

While women in the west were still expected to work to a certain degree, 17th century China followed a different path, most notably with it's incredibly painful practice of foot binding. While the practice of wrapping up a young girl's feet so they grew into tiny stumps was associated with childish beauty and the nobility, there are many documents attributing foot binding to it's practical purpose of keeping the women immobilized at home, restricting women from taking part in a social life, politics, or any part of the outside world. The binding of the feet bound the soul. Because of the uselessness associated with women, China had what is presumed to be the highest known rates of infanticide. Philosopher Han Fei Tzu a member of the ruling aristocracy around 250BCE, wrote: "As to children, a father and mother when they produce a boy congratulate one another, but when they produce a girl they put it to death."

While the physical binding was used in China, Japan took a more psychological route. Women were raised to be subjective, and men were raised to take advantage. A brainwashing that was so strong in Japan's homogenous island nation, that it wasn't until after the World War II, when the western world started to assert it's global dominance in culture through TV, along with the U.S. naval base in Okinawa that life in Japan started to change from a Machismo Militarist to something a little more like the rest of the world. Still, even today the term “Japanese Wife” refers to the stay-at-home wife, who has dinner ready when the man comes home, who takes the husband's abuse so that she might transfer the weight of his worldly troubles, as is her duty.

Asia of course, was not the only place on earth to have born down on women. Certain Greek cultures had to make having children a law, for even the thought of sleeping with one was considered dirty, and Francisco de Orellana's Amazons were never proven to be anything more than myth. Still, it is important to be aware of the situation in the past, especially considering that Asia never had the strong open “bra-burning” movements that flooded the western world. While Canada was one of the first countries in which women's suffrage was granted in 1917, it wasn't in China until 1950, the dawn of the “Made in China” era, but I'll talk more on that later.

If you're interesting in finding out more, you won't be satisfied looking online, there just isn't anything out there. However, most libraries carry an excellent selection of historical and modern feminist works. Many of which, easily enough, are sorted by country.