Li Yinhe talks about sex

Chapter 46 Sex

Chapter 1 My Views on Women
A woman is a person first and a woman second.

My view of women may be a bit "advanced", which is very close to the views of Western postmodern feminism.One of its basic viewpoints is that the traditional division of men and women should be gradually eliminated.In my opinion, all the views about what women should be and what men should be in the past are not necessarily correct, not necessarily "natural" and "innate" as people think, but by culture. Constructed, and then "internalized" by people to the extent that they think it is "natural".

In my opinion, women are people first and women second.Marx once said: "I have everything that people have." So, why can't women have what men have?Postmodern feminists fiercely criticize the normalization of so-called femininity, believing that it is a means of oppressing women by male culture.Postmodern feminism opposes essentialism on gender issues. Its main argument is that it denies the practice of dichotomizing the two sexes and their characteristics, and does not approve of absolutely summarizing female characteristics into physical, irrational, tender, maternal Mental, dependent, emotional, subjective, lack of abstract thinking ability; summarize male characteristics as spiritual, rational, brave, aggressive, independent, rational, objective, good at abstraction Analytical.It emphasizes the denaturalization and destabilization of the two gender characteristics of men and women, and believes that every male individual and every female individual are different in thousands of ways.It opposes the thinking method of binary opposition in Western philosophy, so what it wants to do is not to reverse the binary structure of male and female opposition from male superiority to female inferiority to female superiority to male inferiority, but to completely overthrow this structure and build a bisexuality. , A chromatographic system that includes a series of secondary colors.Although this point of view sounds farthest from reality and the most difficult to understand, it undoubtedly has great charm. It makes us jump out of all previous debates and opens up a new world for our understanding of gender issues.

Over the past period of time, Chinese media have been discussing the issue of "masculinization" of women.This discussion involves the same issue as postmodern feminists, but in completely opposite directions. Postmodern feminism is trying to blur gender distinctions, making women more "masculine" and men more "feminine"; However, the media hopes to re-strengthen the blurred gender differences, making women "more like women" and men "more like men".

Indeed, since the 50s when my country encouraged women to go out of the family to participate in social production activities, "no distinction between men and women" has become fashionable. It is not only a challenge to the unequal social status of men and women, but also a challenge to the traditional concept that men are superior to women.This fashion reached its peak during the Cultural Revolution.It not only shows that women want to do the same things as men, but also reaches the level of covering up the physiological and psychological differences between men and women intentionally or unintentionally.That era created a group of women who thought they had "masculinity" or were seen by men as "masculine".At that time, women not only had to conceal their femininity, but also felt ashamed of wanting to show femininity, thinking that it was an outdated and backward thing. Since the 80s, women's gender awareness has resurfaced after decades of silence.The most obvious manifestation is that women began to pay more attention to clothing and makeup.Once the consciousness of expressing "feminine characteristics" is awakened, it immediately becomes very intense.The revival of female consciousness has a lot of performance in various media.

In denying the "masculinity" of women in the previous decades, there has been a tendency to overcorrect, which manifests itself in an idea close to essentialism: since women are the direct creators and nurturers of human life, they are With instinctive love, this love of life endows women with a unique cultural awareness and mentality.Women should fulfill their functions as the creators and nurturers of life, and play the unique social role of motherhood and women.The essentialism of this kind of thinking is manifested in several aspects: First, it assumes that women love life "instinctively" because they can reproduce; but men also contribute sperm to life and are also the "direct" creators of life. Without "love of life instinct"?Second, it assumes that male culture "turns life into machinery" and female culture emphasizes the "biological nature" of people, which lacks evidence.Such statements are exactly the same as some people in the West think that men are associated with "culture" and women are associated with "nature", and this division is essentialist.This essentialist gender concept is deeply rooted in social consciousness, and sometimes it is even expressed in the form of scientific knowledge, such as thinking that women are not as logical as men;

A big difference between China's traditional gender concept and the West is that Westerners often regard the relationship between men and women as a relationship of struggle, while the Chinese have long regarded the relationship between men and women as a relationship of coordination and complementarity.The concepts of yin and yang harmony and yin and yang complementarity have always been deeply rooted in people's hearts.However, this does not free the Chinese from the essentialist position of ascribing certain characteristics as "masculine" and others as "feminine";The position of postmodern feminism against essentialism is quite subversive to the above-mentioned cultural concepts, because it fundamentally denies the so-called dichotomy between men and women.For the Chinese, who deeply believe in the dichotomy between yin and yang, this position is difficult to accept, even more so than Westerners.This is quite similar to the difference in the history of French and British revolutions: France’s oppression intensified, resistance intensified, and the two sides were at odds, resulting in a bloody revolution and the establishment of a republic; Britain was gentle and relaxed, and the two sides continued to compromise and retreat, resulting in a peaceful "Glorious Revolution". Keep the monarchy.In the process of gender equality, Western feminism is passionate, full of vigor, vigor, and full of antagonism and hatred; while the Chinese women's movement is gentle and soothing, calm and soft, with a harmonious and complementary atmosphere.But in my opinion, and precisely because of this, it may be more difficult for the Chinese to give up the concept of essentialism than for the West, and it will take longer.

(End of this chapter)