{"id":2851,"date":"2006-02-21T20:39:51","date_gmt":"2006-02-21T12:39:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sex.ncu.edu.tw\/jo_article\/?p=2851"},"modified":"2016-12-11T20:44:17","modified_gmt":"2016-12-11T12:44:17","slug":"%e5%b0%88%e8%a8%aa%e4%bd%95%e6%98%a5%e8%95%a4%ef%bc%9a%e8%88%87tokyo-journal%e8%ab%87%e5%8f%b0%e7%81%a3%e6%80%a7%e5%88%a5%e8%ad%b0%e9%a1%8c%e7%9a%84%e7%99%bc%e5%b1%95","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sex.ncu.edu.tw\/jo_article\/2006\/02\/%e5%b0%88%e8%a8%aa%e4%bd%95%e6%98%a5%e8%95%a4%ef%bc%9a%e8%88%87tokyo-journal%e8%ab%87%e5%8f%b0%e7%81%a3%e6%80%a7%e5%88%a5%e8%ad%b0%e9%a1%8c%e7%9a%84%e7%99%bc%e5%b1%95\/","title":{"rendered":"\u5c08\u8a2a\u4f55\u6625\u8564\uff1a\u8207Tokyo Journal\u8ac7\u53f0\u7063\u6027\u5225\u8b70\u984c\u7684\u767c\u5c55"},"content":{"rendered":"

\uff08\u9019\u662f2006\u5e74Kyoto Journal<\/em>\u91dd\u5c0d\u53f0\u7063\u7684\u6027\u7814\u7a76\u767c\u5c55\u5411\u6211\u9032\u884c\u7684\u8a2a\u8ac7\uff09<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Gender as an issue and a concept was, people believe, first formalized in a 1973 book on women\u2019s rights written by our current vice-president, Annette Lu. \u00a0In the book, New Feminism<\/em> (\u300a\u65b0\u5973\u6027\u4e3b\u7fa9\u300b), put out by her own publishing house at the time, Lu proposed that you have to treat women as human beings before treating them as women \uff08\u5148\u505a\u4eba\u518d\u505a\u5973\u4eba\uff09. \u00a0I think that is usually considered to be the first document on feminism in Taiwan. \u00a0The book was very influential. \u00a0Even my husband, who was a college student then, and many other male scholars read the book with excitement. \u00a0I was at the time leaving to do my master’s degree in the US so I didn’t really get a chance to read it then.<\/p>\n

1970s was the days of martial law in Taiwan, and discussion of politics was strictly prohibited. \u00a0The idea of women’s \u201chuman rights\u201d was quite exciting because it was not as sensitive as talking about political rights; it was more like caring for the weak, thinking about the weaker sex – things like that. \u00a0It was a delicate moment when women’s rights got a little bit of legitimacy because it could harbor a conception of \u201chuman rights\u201d that would be closer to the way we use the concept today, rather than the way the ruling party, the KMT [Kuomintang, or Chinese Nationalist Party], had been using it to describe mainland China’s government, saying ‘They don’t honor human rights, but we do’ – when actually they don’t. \u00a0So when Annette Lu talked about women’s<\/em> human rights, the book found favorable readers mainly among male intellectuals.\u00a0 In other words, it didn’t have widespread repercussions among the general public who were fearful of political activism. \u00a0Understandably, there was no movement to follow up on Annette Lu’s ideals of women’s human’s rights. \u00a0Things would have to wait until the lifting of martial law in the late 1980s.<\/p>\n

But even before that significant political moment, Taiwan\u2019s social environment was changing rapidly as more and more women entered the job market with the shift in economic structure.\u00a0 And when that happened, family structure was experiencing dangers as women became more and more restless.\u00a0 Let me give you two symptomatic examples.\u00a0 In 1982 and 1983, there were two novels everyone in Taiwan was talking about; both were written about women by women novelists. \u00a0The first one was Lee Ang’s (\u674e\u6602) Sha Fu <\/em>(\u300a\u6bba\u592b\u300b), which literally means \u201ckilling the husband.\u201d \u00a0It’s about this girl who was raped by a neighbor butcher when she was like 15 or 16, and out of shame, she married the man as it was the common thing to do. \u00a0The butcher tortured her, starved her, and raped her repeatedly. \u00a0In the end, the woman butchered her husband as he used to do the pigs.\u00a0 This novel expressed a certain anger from women about being mistreated in marital relationships.\u00a0 The other novel was Liao Huei-Ying\u2019s (\u5ed6\u8f1d\u82f1) Bu Gui Lu <\/em>(\u300a\u4e0d\u6b78\u8def\u300b). \u00a0It’s about a woman who had an affair with a married man.\u00a0 But contrary to the enticing temptress in affairs, this women was everywoman and the affair dragged on and on in the novel.\u00a0 This novel was read as a reflection of the great number of single women who were filling the work places and developing complicated relationships with the married men around them. \u00a0Both novels were very much talked about at the time, and I think they were the signs of the times: women were moving out of their traditional roles, if not in ideas, at least in action.<\/p>\n

In the early 1980s, Taiwan was not without small women’s groups. \u00a0But these were not really militant or consciousness-raising groups, just social gatherings where women, mostly housewives, talked about charity or environmental matters.\u00a0 They became more interested in political matters as Taiwan\u2019s social movements picked up momentum in the democratization process toward the end of the 1980s.\u00a0 But it was only when a specific group of women arrived, armed with feminist concepts and feminist language, that a real \u201cwomen\u2019s movement\u201d came into being.<\/p>\n

In the ’80s and ’90s, you see a wave of Taiwanese overseas students returning from advanced studies in western countries. \u00a0One reason was that the American economy was stagnating; there were fewer employment possibilities for overseas Chinese students so a bunch of intellectuals came back to Taiwan. \u00a0And of course, the lifting of martial law in Taiwan in 1987 accelerated the flow. \u00a0There was hope, and the political atmosphere seemed to allow more possibilities. \u00a0Personally, as someone who studies cultural change, I was also eager to find out what happens when the political arena loosens its grip on daily life? \u00a0How do people cope? \u00a0How do people change from this Red Scare mentality to normal life? \u00a0So I came back to Taiwan in 1988.<\/p>\n

BTW, there is a very interesting correlation between the American economy and the outflow of intellectual resources in Taiwan. \u00a0In the ’60s and ’70s, everyone was going to the States, because that’s where the money was, that’s where jobs were, that’s where you went for your studies. \u00a0But in the early ’80s, the Reagan years, American economy was getting tougher and a lot of overseas students were coming back to Taiwan seeking employment. \u00a0At the time, the educational policy in Taiwan was also broadening, with new universities and new programs being established at a very fast speed. \u00a0Now these people who returned were trained in the US in the ’80s when American feminism reached its stage of fruition on college campuses as previous protesting college students became college professors who turned their ideas into theory.\u00a0 This was exactly the environment in which many women leaders of Taiwan were trained.<\/p>\n

Locally, in the 1990s, after the lifting of martial law, social activism had gotten some degree of legitimacy through the workers’ movement and the political dissidents’ movement.\u00a0 And on the women\u2019s front, study groups were beginning to be organized by college girls reading translations of feminist texts or even in the original English language.\u00a0 They were in desperate need for a set of concepts to grasp the changing social reality of Taiwan. \u00a0So in the 1990s, you finally had a discourse, a way to talk about women’s plight. \u00a0In the past, you would say, nu ren hen ku ming<\/em>, women have bad fortune \uff08\u5973\u4eba\u5f88\u82e6\u547d\uff09. \u00a0You tended to see women as individuals: this one had a bad husband, this one was lucky, and things like that. \u00a0But now women\u2019s groups were developing a sense of identity, a sense of social grouping, social hierarchy, and ways to analyze society, ways to hope for a <\/em>different standing. \u00a0It was western texts that gave them the conceptual tools to understand the gender situation; but it was Taiwan\u2019s rapid social change that provided the context in which these texts were understood and applied.<\/p>\n

Those were exciting moments.\u00a0 Feminists were pretty much together then, but it didn’t last long. \u00a0In 1994, there was a dramatic moment when the seeming uniformity of feminist ideals was broken\u2014over the issue of female sexuality.\u00a0 Previously, everything said about sex by feminists had been “negative,” basically condemnations of rape and other types of abuse. \u00a0But that year, when feminist condemnation of sexual harassment became more and more sex-phobic, some of us began talking about female sexuality in a more positive and self-empowering sense. \u00a0This made some feminists really unhappy and uneasy because the paradigm went from one in which men were ‘sexual animals’ and women pristine ‘goddesses’ to one in which women had sexual feelings and desires too. \u00a0Moreover, these sexual feelings could range, and didn’t have to be limited to the man you marry or to man at all.<\/p>\n

What we, the \u201crenegades,\u201d were proposing in 1994 was this: sexuality refers to how I deal with my body and women should have full say in that. \u00a0The conception of sexuality as being coterminous with the marital bond severely limits what women can do with their sexuality and how they develop their personality, even how they handle their intimate relationships. \u00a0Of course, in a society that is highly sex-phobic and sex-negative, such talk by women was considered blasphemous and damaging.\u00a0 Media response was overwhelming and the \u201cgood women feminists\u201d – the mainstream feminists – began thinking: ‘We don’t want a bad name and say that we could be sluts too, that we could have sexual needs too.’ \u00a0In other words, the mainstreamers refuse to recognize that there are \u201cother\u201d women in this world, women who may have very different values and desires and pleasures.\u00a0 The end result of the split was people who talked about female sexuality positively were excommunicated from feminist groups. \u00a0By \u201cexcommunicate\u201d I mean \u201cexile\u201d: your name was stricken from upcoming programs, member\u2019s name lists, or email listings. \u00a0\u00a0No communication is available.<\/p>\n

But the really big split came in 1997 when the Taipei City mayor, now president, Chen Shui-bian ( \u9673\u6c34\u6241), abolished the Taipei prostitute system. \u00a0Licenses were taken away from 128 remaining legal prostitutes, mostly middle-aged or older, mostly illiterate or with elementary school education, earning moderate incomes, and had worked most of their lives as prostitutes. \u00a0Of course we sex positive feminists stood by the sex workers and fought the government – and also the mainstream feminists. We organized panels, skits, and direct actions in front of City Hall, trying to win some breathing space for these sex workers. \u00a0In the end, they got a two year grace period, but after that they went into history. \u00a0Incidentally, those renegades who held positions as staff workers or whatever in women’s groups – NGOs – were fired from their posts for supporting sex workers and going against the mayor whom the good women\u2019s groups supported.<\/p>\n

In the process of these continuous battles, the Center for the Study of Sexualities was born. \u00a0The three of us, Karl Ning, Ding Mai-fei, and myself were all teaching at National Central University and decided to create a platform by organizing a research collective. \u00a0In 1995, we established the Center, deliberately putting a slash between the words xing<\/em> (\u6027, sex and sexuality) and bie<\/em> (\u5225, difference) in its Chinese title, because in Chinese, xingbie<\/em> would mean ‘gender,’ conceived as ‘men and women,’ while we wanted to disturb that easy conception. \u00a0So we put the slash there to not only pay attention to sexuality and difference, but also emphasize the semi-autonomy of Xing<\/em> (\u6027, sex and sexuality) from gender.\u00a0 That’s why the center was named the Center for the Study of Sexualities and Difference – but it was too long, so later we shortened the English to the Center for the Study of Sexualities. \u00a0There are now 11 research collectives in Taiwanese universities devoted to the study of gender, but we are the only one that claims a theoretical position that will pay attention to other social differences and sexuality in particular.<\/p>\n

The Sex Center is most famous for its publications, so far 19 books and other journal issues and even a comic book, and conferences.\u00a0 Before we held our first 4-sex conference (nicknamed thus because its title included sex education, sexology, homosexuality studies, and gender studies) in 1996, conferences where the subject of sexuality might come up were conducted along the lines of sociology, sexology or public health, but mostly along the line of medical science. \u00a0We were the first one to introduce a historical-social-political dimension to the study of sexuality and to include movement-related issues. \u00a0It is rumored that our conferences often turn into \u201ccome-out\u201d sessions for gays and transgenders too.<\/p>\n

The Sex Center is involved in a lot of direct action – activities sponsored by gay and lesbian groups or marginal sexuality groups. \u00a0Looking back, I think that since 1995, the Center has intervened in every single controversy in relation to sexuality in Taiwan. \u00a0If something happens, we react, we make a statement, we write to editors, hold press conferences, or we do research to counter and provide a different discourse. We are simply doing our best to counter existing prejudices.<\/p>\n

\u8f49\u8f09\u672c\u6587\u8acb\u4fdd\u7559\u7db2\u9801\u8a3b\u8a18<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\uff08\u9019\u662f2006\u5e74Kyoto Journal\u91dd\u5c0d\u53f0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[421,105,222,272,242],"class_list":["post-2851","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-22","tag-421","tag-105","tag-222","tag-272","tag-242"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sex.ncu.edu.tw\/jo_article\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2851","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sex.ncu.edu.tw\/jo_article\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sex.ncu.edu.tw\/jo_article\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sex.ncu.edu.tw\/jo_article\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sex.ncu.edu.tw\/jo_article\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2851"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sex.ncu.edu.tw\/jo_article\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2851\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sex.ncu.edu.tw\/jo_article\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sex.ncu.edu.tw\/jo_article\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sex.ncu.edu.tw\/jo_article\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}