Sex Segregation in Ancient China - Essay Example

Sex segregation in ancient China (Song Dynasty) Proposal According to my proposal, Sex-segregation should be encouraged. This segregation is based on sex. For example in prisons, men and women should be separated so as to avoid engagement and the temptation to illegal sex in the prisons. This can cause unexpected pregnancy to women being prison and thus adds other disasters to them. At home also sex segregation is important. It is used to make sexes cover their occupations as required. A mother is supposed to stay at home, caring for the babies, make sure that there is general cleaning around the compound, and prepare food for their husbands, and so on. This makes them not to collide with their husbands, avoids stupid quarrellings and be obedient to their husbands, relatives and everyone in the community. Men are supposed to go to work to look for basic needs of their families. They are also supposed to respect their wives, listen to them and treat them as they are supposed to be. Like in early days, men went hunting to get food for their families. Nowadays, things are completely opposite. Women are the most people who have changed from their tradition as we can see. First of all, they wear trousers something that could not be done before. It was very illegal to find a woman wearing a trouser. They are also turning to be the head of families. This means that they are disrespecting their husbands and ruling them out of their authorities. That is why most cases of women are being divorced, beaten, and thrown away by their husbands just because of lack of respect. Sex segregation should be important in the whole world. It should be practiced from childhood so as to learn from it. If they get this, they grow up with a lot of respect to their parents, relatives and the society a whole. They will always have good behavior and will perform well in their respective carriers. Body Sex segregation is the separation of gender (male and female) which is forced by rules, laws and policies in which people are separated by sex. This can be caused by historical practices, societal pressure, and socialized preferences. It can be also be exclusion of one sex to participation of different activities or occupations or institution or even group. It can be partial or completely, and this appears when members of one gender predominate within but do not constitute exclusively, a group or an organization (Ebrey20-103). Sex separation began as the practical custom of simple agricultural societies. Occupations and customs that included gender kept men and women far apart every day. Men went hunting out while women stayed at home performing home activities like caring for children and gathering berries and grains. Early dynasties in China brought about a major change in sexual segregation. Because of type of work and work in different places Men and women were separated for many hours of the day. Judgment of foreign people’s discussion, it is clear that writers from China considered the segregation of men and women Chinese important characteristics of civilization. Writers often focused on the foreigners’ unpleasant habits. They ate using their hand, did body tattooing, shortened their hair, wore woolen clothing, and many other. The writings reinforced identity of Chinese by foreign customs dwelling that differed from China ones. The writers took ridiculing cultures that did not enforce the gender separation. Writers from China denigrated northern Vietnam people because men and women were allowed to bath at the same river. Also, they considered people from Northern Korea because they also allowed both gender to go to musical parties and performance. Most Chinese compared people who could not distinguish between a man and a woman with monkeys. Chinese believed that segregation of gender led to laudable social outcomes e.g. stability and harmony as this was one of their reasons why they were valuing the segregation of men and women. They also believed that there was less sexual misconduct when men and women were kept apart, and this led to more happiness at home. The writers emphasized on the importance of zhenjie along with sex segregation to make sure that good qualities emerged. Women who followed the rules of zhenjie did not involve themselves in premarital sex and highly obeyed and respected their husbands. They remained loyal to them even after their death. They also cared about their son’s education. Most Chinese historians have heard about the revival of Confucianism in the song period declined in the women’s status. Women’s constraints had become more oppressive by the Qing dynasty, but their efforts are tracked back to the song dynasty. During the time, it was difficult for women to move around anyhow. Feminists picked up the charges. One of the Chinese writers stated “the Neon-Confucian philosophers of the song dynasty elaborated the code of feminine ethics by emphasizing the practices of segregation and seclusion, and introducing bound foot practices.” Another writer states “Infanticide was prevalent in the song dynasty being greatly influenced by the philosophy of Neo-Confucianism which denied women their basic human rights.” According to Dun J. Li, sex segregation from the song was a result of acceptance of neo-Confucianism. Zhu Xi advocated strict sexual segregation and also glorified widowhood. His puritanical ideas began to be accepted in the earliest possible moments where widows were encouraged to join their dead husbands. In the Chinas traditional culture, in sex segregation, girls and women were not as literate as boys and men, though there were always some women who could write and read. Most people (male and female) were illiterate. Just like women from the steppe cultures, the society of Han Chinese during the Song and Ming dynasties had a different perception of women. Families expected their women to get married to contribute towards their family’s financial success, during the Southern Song dynasty. Married women received a solid education and both head and manage their new household. Due to the growth in the money economy, families used marriage as a means to expand their wealth and prestige, which changed a Chinese marriage into a business transaction where their daughters were used as bargaining tools. Women were well taught because Confucian scholars at the time argued that well-educated women make better wives and better manage the household. It was believed that a mother who is well educated ensured success for their sons. Women were expected to remain their husbands’ subordinates. They grew as women because of their position as the head of the household, and because of this they were able to exchange ideas. They socialized through women social clubs. All childhood education for girls was for the purpose of preparing them for their future roles as wives, mothers, and daughters-in-law. They were to apply themselves to four areas: womanly virtue, womanly speech, womanly comportment, and womanly work. At age 15, they received the hairpin in a coming-of-age ceremony, and by the age of 20, they should be married. Since Chinese marriage was patrilocal, the wedding ceremony gave attention first to the severing of a womans ties with her natal family and then to her ceremonial introduction to the husbands parents and to their ancestors. She now had an ancestral altar on which a tablet for her would stand. (Daughters cannot have a tablet on their natal families altar.) Once married, the couple was advised to treat each other with the formality and reserve they would extend to a guest and to observe a degree of sexual segregation in the household, except when sleeping. I.e. the man was to occupy the outer quarters of the household while the woman was to remain in the inner quarters. Once formed, the marriage bond should not be broken. The seven traditional grounds for divorce were disobedience to his parents, failure to bear a male heir, promiscuity, jealousy, contracting an incurable disease, talking too much, and stealing. The wife could never initiate a divorce against her husband and even upon his death was expected not to remarry. Her marriage bond was not just with him but with his family as well, and her obligations to them remained (to maintain the ancestral sacrifices, to serve his parents if they were still alive, and to raise her children). Women were advised that just as a loyal minister does not serve two rulers, a chaste woman does not have two husbands. When Confucianism became the state ideology during the Han dynasty (206 b.c.e.-220 c.e.), specific literature for and about women began to appear. The two most important texts were Liu Hsiangs collection of womens biographies, the Lienu Zhuan, and Ban Zhaos Instructions for Women. Ban Zhao was a noted female court scholar who wrote this primer for her unmarried daughters to prepare them for their duties in marriage. The text, though short in length, exerted a tremendous influence over the lives of Chinese women. It began a tradition of instructional literature written by women for women, and Ban Zhao became the archetypal female instructress, so much so that later female authors often adopted her voice in their works rather than using their own. Some of the important later texts by women include the Classic of Filial Piety for Women by Ms. Cheng of the eighth century, the Analects for Women by Sung Ruozhao of the ninth century, Instructions for the Inner Quarters by Empress Xu of the fifteenth century, and A Handy Record of Rules for Women by Ms. Liu of the seventeenth century. While all of these were addressed to an audience of elite women, many of their teachings filtered down to a broader audience in the form of popular primers set to rhyme, such as the Three-Character Classic for Girls. Confucianism was eclipsed by Buddhism and Taoism as the dominant religious traditions for the next 800 years. Only with the advent of the Song dynasty (960-1279) did Confucianism reassert itself, in the form of Neo-Confucianism. While Neo-Confucianism saw itself as having triumphed over Buddhism, it was not without Buddhist influence in its teachings, especially in its greater wariness about the body and human feelings and in its concern for control over these. Consequently, it developed new and stricter programs for self-discipline. The program it articulated for women emphasized to a new degree the importance of chastity, and special attention was given to the chastity of women whose husbands had died. Women who refused to remarry and, when pressured to do so by their parents, either committed suicide or disfigured themselves by physical mutilation (such as cutting off their ears or nose) were singled out for praise. Those women who did remarry were criticized. When one Neo-Confucian leader was asked whether, in the extenuating circumstance that a woman was poor, all alone and about to starve to death, she might remarry, he replied that to starve to death was not a big issue while losing ones integrity was (and for the woman to remarry would be to lose her integrity). Whereas in earlier Confucianism women had been honored for a wide variety of reasons, in later times they were honored almost exclusively for the maintenance of their chastity (and such related heroics as a widows unstinting care for her mother-in-law). Later emperors promoted the chastity cult by publicly honoring chaste widows with special arches built in their honor. Late Imperial China found Neo-Confucian males polarized over the issue of women. Conservatives saw their mission as preserving the purity of women by keeping them secluded from worldly contact. Liberal thinkers, on the other hand, expressing concern for the plight of women, advocated womens education and denounced such practices as a foot-binding, widow suicides, and female seclusion. Changes of any significance and scope, however, were not realized until the various reform and revolutionary movements of the twentieth century that included women among their participants. Confucianism today is viewed with ambivalence: at its best, as having contributed to the ennobling of women, and at its worst, to their subjugation and oppression. Historians from Europe and North America credit feminist theory and history of women for introducing gender as an analyst category, sparking interest in gender identity and performance. Among Chinese historians, study of women and feminist theory has stimulated reams of published work. In Chinas late imperial culture, where elite mobility strategies focused on the civil service examination system, schooling for elite males past the age of ten or so took place almost exclusively in academies and schools outside the home, with the sole aim of training students to pass. An examination degree was a prerequisite for a position in government in late imperial times, and the government was the most prestigious career open to elite men. The civil service examinations and the educational institutions that prepared men to sit for the exams were exclusively male domains since no women held posts in the governments civil service. They learned to compete against one another for recognition and status even while forming self-conscious bonds of solidarity and friendship, based on common examination year, common teachers, common schools, and so forth. Here, too, as young boys, they formed their earliest emotional attachments outside the family. In other words, like the family system, the civil service examination system sustained both the bonds that engaged men as comrades and the conflicts that set them at odds as competitors. It also introduced them to the niceties of personal connections and patronage that were keys to success in the cumbersome government apparatus where they had to negotiate their careers (Guisso 67-120). As for male sojourning, in Chinas core towns and cities with ready access to trade and transport networks, commoner males routinely traveled abroad to engage in business or the trades, joining the elite travelers studying for or taking examinations and holding office. Cloistered daughters in respectable families were married by parental arrangement to young men from comparable backgrounds. Keeping a daughter respectably at home was one key to an advantageous marriage alliance. Meanwhile, as men sojourned abroad, they relied not on women but within male networks based on common native place or common occupation. Guilds and native-place associations, citing the nearest European counterpart supplied welfare, medical care (including death benefits), networks of friends who spoke ones native dialect, and connections to powerful people who could serve as advocates and protectors. In sum, as a result of these three grand structures, late imperial China was a society where the dominant channels of social mobility ensured that men would spend the better part of their social lives interacting exclusively with other men. This was a culture where we could expect homo-social bonding to reach the state of a very high art. The way men learned to be social was in the company of other men. Adrian Aviss article begins with a crucial anthropological observation about the Chinese family system, identifying the tension that lies at its heart. Under the rules of equal inheritance, brothers are equal as co-parceners of their fathers estate. Under the rules of Confucian fiality, on the other hand, brothers are hierarchically ranked siblings who must self-consciously address one another as "elder" and "younger." It was a common nickname boys in the same generational cohort by birth order, hence "Big Eldest," "Little Fourth." Brothers shared a common obligation of filial piety to their parents, but their relationships to one another were highly differentiated. These differences were exacerbated, ironically, by parental behavior because Chinese parents made differential investments in their male offspring based on practical assessments of their chances for success in different occupations. Tracing these basic tensions at the core of the Chinese family system, Davis stresses that fraternal relations were negotiated and that legal cases reveal a variety of conceptions of fraternity. Therefore, a central point we may take from his article is that little boys learned about the strife and competition embedded in hierarchical adult male bonds from their earliest childhood interactions with their brothers. Brothers common moral obligation to filial instantly embroiled them in intense competition for parental-especially maternal-affection and favoritism. Notice, too, that whereas most studies of Chinese childhood focus on child socialization by parents, Daviss article shows that much of child socialization occurred in sibling relationships, not relationships with parents, and brothers socialized their brothers, often in spite of their parents intentions. The division of the family estate contested by two or more married brothers-is the emblem of the inability of parents ultimately to control these competitive filial interests (Brook 105- 138). The exclusionary forces of the marriage market-which discriminated harshly against poor young men-explain why brotherhoods were so important in late imperial Chinese society. But why were brotherhoods subversive? Lee Mclsaacs article on brotherhoods begins to answer this question by pointing out that the language of secret societies used a contradictory code. When addressing one another, society members used the terminology of loyalty and brotherhood, but their codes of conduct invoked the virtues of friendship Mclsaac presents a range of possibilities for male bonding within the context of sworn brotherhoods. At one, extreme is the macho version. This is represented by the coercive leadership style of the Robed Brothers, based on patronage and protection serving the interests of elders. At the other extreme, though, we find young boys at work as sailors, hoping only to avoid being attacked or even killed when setting foot on a strange dock, or strategizing to escape conscription into the Nationalist Army. What does this tell us about these brotherhood bonds? They provided leadership opportunities, power, and perquisites for the few, protection for the many. But they were also fragile bonds, easily quashed-as the Qing government recognized-by seizing key leaders, or readily cooped-as Republican leaders knew-to serve other goals. Philip Kuhns study of an eighteenth-century sorcery scare reveals dramatically how brutal Chinese government and community opinion could be toward the rootless and the homeless. The marriage market ensured that virtually all of the rootless and homeless poor were men. Their attachment to the language of friendship and loyalty, which they used to create fragile bonds of patronage and protection, is one of the great examples of the crucial function of male bonding, enabling the survival of the most vulnerable members of the population (Brook 105- 138). Works cited Brook, Timothy. "The Confusions of Pleasure: Commerce and Culture in Ming China." Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010, 105- 138. Print. Ebrey, Patricia Buckley. The Cambridge Illustrated History of China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009, 20-103. Print. Guisso, Richard, Stanley Johannesen. Women in China. New York, 1999 67-120. Print. Read More