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next week for one of my classes, i get to do a little presentation on a historian.
this being dorothy ko.
she's a professor at columbia and teaches a whole course on footbinding. the sexual/fetish aspect, what it means to men, what it means to women, was it a form of empowerment or simply a way to subjugate females or render them virtuous in san cong (three obediences seen as *the* position of women in the Confucian Book of Rites. (women live 3 lives, first following her father, then following her husband, and finally following her son once she is old). what Ko asserts, is that though idealogically, san cong determines a women's identity by a male counterpart, she is truly not helpless. there is a sort of power that she can eventually attain in her lifetime.
anyways, she says, that footbinding is a form of body adornment and not a form of mutilation. it's not for us to determine or judge, but the decision of the women who practiced it. it gave them agency.
bah. writing too much. but i get to compare it to other forms of body manipulation too. and it just so happens that i have a couple ideas concerning high heels and corsets. :)
oh
and my interview in secret magazine was kinda long.
a couple o people have told me i sound elitist in it too
bahahhah
this being dorothy ko.
she's a professor at columbia and teaches a whole course on footbinding. the sexual/fetish aspect, what it means to men, what it means to women, was it a form of empowerment or simply a way to subjugate females or render them virtuous in san cong (three obediences seen as *the* position of women in the Confucian Book of Rites. (women live 3 lives, first following her father, then following her husband, and finally following her son once she is old). what Ko asserts, is that though idealogically, san cong determines a women's identity by a male counterpart, she is truly not helpless. there is a sort of power that she can eventually attain in her lifetime.
anyways, she says, that footbinding is a form of body adornment and not a form of mutilation. it's not for us to determine or judge, but the decision of the women who practiced it. it gave them agency.
bah. writing too much. but i get to compare it to other forms of body manipulation too. and it just so happens that i have a couple ideas concerning high heels and corsets. :)
oh
and my interview in secret magazine was kinda long.
a couple o people have told me i sound elitist in it too
bahahhah
