Monthly Archives: February 2022

By the 1920s, ice skating had taken North China by storm. A trendy new form of exercise associated with Western values and lifestyles, it was well-suited to the regions long, cold winters. Although nationalist proponents of skating called on men to take to the ice and battle Western colonizers, skating arguably had the greatest impact on women, as ice-rinks became a stage for Chinas emerging new woman to demonstrate her modernity.

The concept of the new woman was born out of the clashes between Chinese and Western cultures during the late Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). It was, in essence, a canvas onto which reformers most of them men could project their imaginations of Chinas future.

Progressives of the time advocated for Chinese women to model themselves after their Western counterparts, from the French revolutionary Jean-Marie Roland de La Platire to Alexandre Dumas fictional La Dame aux Camlias. These women, fictional and otherwise, were held up as symbols of modern civilization, and Chinese women were divided into two categories according to how well they performed idealized Western femininity. Of the two categories, traditional women i.e., those that upheld traditional Chinese values were dismissed as being at odds with the values of modern society. Societys new women, on the other hand, were championed as icons of female emancipation who would help bring China out of the feudal era and set it on course to become a modern nation.

For women, modernity was less of a choice than an obligation. In the late Qing and early Republican eras, Chinese women were saddled with heavy responsibilities. To be deemed fit as mothers of the Republic, they had to both convey a positive image of China to the international community and nurture a new generation of strong, modern men and women capable of revitalizing Chinas national bloodlines.

Left: Winners of a skating masquerade event photographed for the magazine The Young Companion, Issue 55, 1931. Right: Winners of a skating masquerade event photographed for The Pictorial Supplement of The Peiping Morning Post, Vol. 31, Issue 1520, 1937. Courtesy of Yang Yufei

Urban women of the time largely accepted the responsibilities that came with the new woman label. They rejected traditional practices such as foot-binding and enrolled in the nations new schools, where they took part in sports, another new concept closely tied in reformers minds to strengthening the nation and preserving its people. Delicacy fell out of style in favor of healthy beauty, while sexual equality and free love were discussed and even pursued.

It was precisely in this context that the rising trend of ice skating found favor with modern women as a healthy, Western-approved sport in which both sexes could take part on an equal basis.

For Chinese women of the 1920s, the feeling of gliding on the ice must have resembled the feeling of heading full speed toward a revolution. In a sense, their experiences werent all that different from those of the new men of the time: Both sexes perceived a widening chasm between Chinas old and new societies, between China and the world, between weak and strong.

1/5 Xiao Shufang takes part in a figure skating competition in 1935. Courtesy of Wu Zuoren International Foundation of Fine Arts, Xiao Shufang Archives

2/5 Xiao Shufang paints on an ice sled in 1935. Courtesy of Wu Zuoren International Foundation of Fine Arts, Xiao Shufang Archives

3/5 A 1935 oil painting by Xiao Shufang. Courtesy of Wu Zuoren International Foundation of Fine Arts, Xiao Shufang Archives

4/5 Xiao Shufang paints on an ice sled in 1935. Courtesy of Wu Zuoren International Foundation of Fine Arts, Xiao Shufang Archives

5/5 An oil painting by Xiao Shufang shows Beihai Park in the 1950s. Courtesy of Wu Zuoren International Foundation of Fine Arts, Xiao Shufang Archives

To some, skating was truly liberatory. Xiao Shufang, the niece of famous musician Xiao Youmei, would later become better known as a painter, but throughout the 1920s and 30s she was a famous ice-skater at rinks across Beiping, as Beijing was then known. Forty years later, recalling her memories of skating on the citys North Sea, Xiao linked this joyful experience with the tide of social change brought about by the Xinhai Revolution that finally toppled the Qing. In her paintings of ice skating scenes, Xiao evoked the atmosphere of excitement and new possibilities that came with being young at this crucial juncture in Chinas history.

However, more often than not, Chinas new women found themselves unable to completely cast off the shackles of traditional femininity. In particular, one of the most pressing dilemmas facing women who wanted to leave the home and take on more public roles in society was how to redefine their interactions with the opposite sex. And ice skating rinks provided them with an important venue in which they could seek and test out potential solutions to this dilemma.

At skating masquerades briefly in vogue during the Republican period that followed the Qing it was extremely common for female performers to dress as men, and vice versa. Whats interesting is that the male characters portrayed by women typically included high-ranking figures such as nobles and judges, while the female characters portrayed by men were usually elderly aunties and matchmakers from the countryside. Female skaters choice to dress as men recalls one of Chinas most well-known revolutionaries, Qiu Jin, who also frequently dressed in mens clothes. I want to first dress up as a man until my spirit, too, is male, Qiu once said.

On one level, this reversal of gender roles reflected the ongoing destabilization of patriarchal values and helped validate the new woman. On another, it suggests that, although womens status was on the rise, their self-affirmation nonetheless still depended on the appropriation of male symbols.

Other skaters, both at masquerade events and in their everyday lives, looked not to men, but to Western women as models for liberation. Young students in particular were a highly noticeable presence on ice rinks with their short hair, high-collared sweaters, knee-length skirts, and meticulously practiced Western figure-skating techniques. Their graceful execution of popular moves like waltzes inspired many women to follow in their footsteps.

An archival photo entitled Who is the Younger Sister? shows a woman (center) dressed in mens clothing during a masquerade event in Beijing, 1933. Courtesy of Yang Yufei

In their interactions at ice rinks, young men and women often consciously played the part of Western gentlemen and ladies, demonstrating their reverence for Western social etiquette. By collaborating and performing together, men and women produced new scenes of modernity and gender relations.

Though ice skating seemed to represent a plausible route to emancipation and equality, many female skaters nonetheless continued to view themselves through their male partners eyes, rather than see themselves as truly independent. Under the appearance of gender equality lurked the specter of misogyny.

In articles and literature about skating from the 1920s and 1930s, there is no lack of anecdotes denigrating women for their participation in on-ice performances. For example, the 1930 novella To Moscow by Hu Yepin highlights the ways in which both men and women were seen as using skating masquerades to advance their personal aims. In Hus story, Xu Daqi is an eloquent politician who realizes that skating masquerades are an infinitely more effective means of attracting the attention of reporters and the public than dispatches from government conferences and tries to convince his partner, Su Chang, to take part in one of these events with him. But Su rejects the idea due to her perception that female skaters were merely making bizarre poses for the pleasure of men. In Sus view, skaters were simply molding themselves according to the tastes and demands of men as a means of gaining social capital.

All this is to say that, at least in their interactions with men, new women faced many of the same barriers as their traditional counterparts. They had gained the semblance of equality through Westernized forms of empowerment, but not the substance.

As with so many of the modern activities Chinese women participated in during the early post-imperial era, skating was a kind of controlled experiment part of the Chinese nations urgent pursuit of Western-style modernity rather than a genuinely free form of expression. Women who were involved in winter sports still behaved according to their own cultural schema and constantly faced conflicts with men, with tradition, and with their own internal values as they struggled to redefine their identities on the ice.

Chinas women have come a long way since the 1920s. Gu Ailing, an 18-year-old woman of Chinese and American descent and one of the best skiers in the world, is probably the biggest star representing China at this years Winter Olympics, though she is far from the only one. As we marvel at Gus athleticism, lets not forget the Chinese women who braved the snow and ice before her. No revolution can be perfect, and true emancipation cannot be achieved overnight. But their courage, their contradictions, and their quiet revolutions helped lay the groundwork for everything that has come since.

Translator: Lewis Wright; editors: Wu Haiyun and Kilian ODonnell; visuals: Ding Yining.

(Header image: From left to right, skaters Gao Shuzhen, Xiong Minzhen, and Lin Xiulian in the 1930s. Photos taken by Li Yaosheng, Song Xindeng, and An Guolin, respectively. Courtesy of Yang Yufei)

More:

Skating Toward a Revolution - Sixth Tone

More than 100 countries across the world have criminalized marital rape; India stands in the dubious company of the likes of Saudi Arabia and central African countries in this regard.

For the past several weeks, Delhi High Court is finally grappling to arrive at a conclusion in the matter of Writ Petition 284 of 2015: the Public Interest Litigation filed by a batch of petitioners against the Union of India, challenging the exception provided in the Indian Penal Code, Section 375, exempting forced sexual intercourse by a man with his own wife from the offence of rape, the wife not being less than 15 years of age. In an earlier separate case, the Supreme Court has read down the age limit to 18 years of age but surprisingly left the larger issue of marital rape untouched.But legalistic quibbles appear to dominate the current battle rather than simple factual recognition of the unexceptional fundamental right of the woman to her bodily integrity and dignity, whatever her age or marital status. This case is one of an assertion of sexual autonomy that demands protection of bodily integrity, that is freedom from force and oppression and not that of sexual autonomy per se or freedom to licentiously do with the body whatever the individual pleases. Two very different concepts of sexual autonomyfreedom from and freedom tothat must be clearly differentiated and should elicit different attitudes.Can 21st century Independent India possibly allow continuation of an exception based on archaic colonial laws encoding the concept of the wife as the property of her husband? Recent decadeswhich have seen the most horrific explosion of both sexual and domestic violence in this countryhave also seen considerable enlightened change in laws governing sexual violence and crime, notwithstanding the huge gaps remaining in their interpretation and implementation. Yet, marital rape of an adult woman by her husband still remains on the States statutes. Is not this a surprisingly chauvinistic privileging of male sexual desire and rights that is sadly enabling of an overall environment of male impunity, totally reprehensible in the contested marital context and not without much wider impact? Equally, violative of the basic constitutional right of equality of all citizens?Rapeto take by force, to sexually violateis listed by the Geneva Convention as an outrage upon personal dignity, an extreme of humiliating and degrading treatment on par with torture and threat to life, a crime against humanity when perpetrated on scale in war or in peace. Eminent jurisprudence emanating from the International Criminal Tribunals constituted for former Yugoslavia and Rwanda has ruled: Sexual violence strikes at the very core of human dignity and physical integrity. It underscores that rape inflicts the severe physical and psychological pain and suffering that characterizes torture. Can we be serious in considering that this can be accepted as a natural happening in ANY circumstance whatsoever?But the Solicitor General of India, instead of moving forthwith to condemn the offending exemption and support its removal on behalf of a government repeatedly committing itself to womens empowerment, is procrastinating. He argues that India must not blindly follow the West by criminalizing marital rape and has quoted unique problems due to various factors like lack of literacy, lack of financial empowerment of a majority of females, mindset of society, vast diversity, poverty etc. He calls it a question of womens dignity and family values since Indian society regards marriage as a sacred sacrament and criminalizing marital rape would destabilize the institution that is a basic building block of the society. He further buttresses arguments by citing misuse of Section 498A on account of dowry harassment and fears corroborative medical evidence of bodily injury may be rendered useless circumstantial and corroborative evidence will become futile in case of marital rape making it difficult to determine when consent was withdrawn.Really? In the first instance, more than 100 countries across the worldnot just the liberal Westhave criminalized marital rape; India stands in the dubious company of the likes of Saudi Arabia and central African countries in this regard. Then, the very factors quoted as our unique problems actually make it imperative for the state to protect the interest of the vulnerable and change the societal mindset that accords subservient situation to the large mass of women. As for the misuse of another section of the law by some womenand the possibility that this could happen with the elimination of this exemptioncan this ever be an argument to retain a law that is oppressive of all married women and makes a mockery of a womans bodily integrity that is at the core of her dignity? The SGs perception of womens dignity beats comprehension.However, not to be dismissed is the contention that Indian society overwhelmingly considers the institution of marriage as a sacred sacrament and a valuable building block of society that must not be destabilized. This is a sterling attribute in the flummox of our turbulent modern times. But isnt it precisely because Indian society still overwhelmingly considers marriage as a sacrament that ideally alone should bring about the union of a man and a woman that it is important to ensure the institution is nurtured and safeguarded from oppressions that hollow it? Equally, imperative to make it in full consonance with the guarantees of gender equality enshrined in our Constitution?Fortunately, diverse enlightened religious perspectives recognizing core human intimacy to be inextricably interwoven within the institution of marriage also proclaim the same as a web of mutual rights, duties and obligations discharged with mutual respect, love and honour. What place can force possibly have in such thinking but one to be shunned? Leave aside feminist assertions for consent, religious thinking that accords the physical sexual act as a sacred aspect in the union of two persons, thus squarely invests the most intimate of intimacies within mutual understanding and consentgained by love and respect. Marriage ceremonies of almost all hues enjoin upon both the man and woman to work towards creating conditions that bring about desired core intimacy, not its gratification by brutal force. In case of irretrievable breakdown of the marriage that prevents such happening, the recourse for the man should be through the civil remedy of divorce not rape.Those of us who have worked a lifetime with women out in the field know only too well how often and how many wives are daily stripped of their dignity and bodily integrity at the hands of husbands returning home drunk, on drugs, or just in a misguided effort to regain self-esteem trampled upon in their own outer spheres and who have the mindset that sex with their wives is a birth right, to be taken any which way. Worth recalling is that well-known axiom: That some men can rape is the intimidation that keeps all women in fear.Bodily integrity is not a Western fad, but the most basic human right of every woman and an idea whose time is now long past due. The right course ahead would be for the government/Supreme Court to speedily move Suo Moto to set right this anomaly of marital rape.

Rami Chhabra is a media veteran, who pioneered the first feminist columns in the national press. She has served the country in various capacities, including in GoI and as Member, National Population Commission.

Visit link:

The anomaly of marital rape - The Sunday Guardian

The Sex and the City cast (sans Samantha) crashes into a brave new 2022.

Spoiler alert: The last few paragraphs of this story contain spoilers for the finale of And Just Like That.

If one adjective describes HBO's And Just Like That, it's "cringey."

In the late '90s, the original Sex and the City was an edgy show about single women's sexual independence. Decades later, And Just Like That not only contains minimal sex, it misses major opportunities to explore the complexities of sexuality. How is a series that once broke a mold now so... square?

In the reboot, Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) resurfaces with an abridged entourage of Charlotte (Kristin Davis) and Miranda (Cynthia Nixon), each shuffling through a midlife crisis: death of a spouse, parental alienation and erotic self-awakening. Samantha (Kim Cattrall), the character who pushed the most sexual boundaries, with a DGAF spirit and refreshing wit, left for greener pastures.

Entertain your brain with the coolest news from streaming to superheroes, memes to video games.

And Just Like That is a story about Gen Xers trying to navigate what feels like a foreign new world. In the first episode, Carrie gets flustered over the mere mention of public masturbation on a sex and dating podcast. Later, she awkwardly asks her long-term partner, Big, whether he... ever tickles the pickle.

Carrie and Co. also struggle to understand nonbinary characters: Rock, Charlotte's kid, and Che Diaz, Miranda's love interest. When Miranda reveals that she and Che had mind-blowing sex (in her words, "a finger"), Charlotte wonders if her friend is suddenly gay, bluntly concluding, "You are not progressive enough for this!"

Sex and society have a complex relationship. Mainstream television often either reflects that complex relationship or overlooks it. TV tells us what audiences desire and what is acceptable, acting as a moral and cultural barometer, according to the authors of the 2012 book Television, Sex and Society.

So what does And Just Like That say about today's sexual norms? For one, Carrie's squeamish approach to masturbation makes her the most noncredible sex columnist ever.

"It's a shocking sign of how much we're just indicating conversations around sexuality versus really having them," said sex coach Jessica Habie, who's developing her own drama series, Here She Comes, which she hopes will push the country toward new pleasure-filled dimensions.

Representations of sex on TV have exploded since the time of I Love Lucy, when showing pregnancy on TV was considered too risqu. Janet Hardy, sex educator and co-author of the book The Ethical Slut, remembers married couples on television sleeping in separate beds. Today "a popular mainstream show like Modern Family can show a gay family lovingly and without judgment," said Hardy, who grew up at a time when same-sex sexuality was against the law.

The Golden Girls paved the way for casual sex talk during brunch.

In the 1980s, The Golden Girls laid the foundation for women talking openly about casual sex and gay issues -- even topics like AIDS -- on mainstream television. (They were in their 50s, around the same age as the characters in And Just Like That.) After Sex and the City's last season in 2004, The L Word gave visibility to lesbian sex, and Girls invited us to view messy relationships that came with shame and vulnerability. Today, HBO's Euphoria and Netflix's Sex Education teach us not only about a multitude of gender identities and relationship models, but also consent, violence and disability -- and the main characters are in high school.

Compared with those shows, And Just Like That feels, for younger viewers, like a remnant of a bygone age. Generation Y (millennials) and Z (zoomers) have access to almost every sexual proclivity, via social media and through internet porn. As sexual representation becomes more inclusive and fluid, some people from older generations feel alienated, according to Habie.

The estrangements in the Sex and the City reboot aren't only about sex and gender. Race, which was barely dealt with in the original show, is inserted in a forced and tone-deaf way. Miranda can't comfortably navigate a university classroom where there's a Black professor with braids. And Charlotte tries to appear "woke" for a party with Black acquaintances, so she and her hubby preplan which Black artists and authors to name-drop.

These painful scenes seem at least somewhat self-aware -- the Black dinner party episode is called Some of My Best Friends. When an ideal is turned on its head and painted as absurd, that makes for parody.

"I'm very much reminded of The Brady Bunch Movie," said Damon Jacobs, a New York City-based HIV prevention specialist and psychotherapist. The 1995 film took the wholesome Bradys from the original 1970s sitcom and transported them into the modern world. Outside of their idyllic bubble, the popular family appears silly and nave. Could the creators of And Just Like That succeed by inviting fans to mock their favorite characters' outdated narrative?

When Sex and the City premiered in 1998, it had a winning formula. The main characters were well-off, white, heterosexual and cisgender New Yorkers. Sure, they talked about blowjobs over brunch, but they were also glamorous and didn't seem to be impacted by gender inequality -- in the bedroom or the boardroom. Their fantasy world was palatable to a broad array of viewers, from soccer moms to curious teenagers.

The dominant guide to relationships at the time was Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus by relationship counselor John Gray. The piece of pop psychology sat high on bestseller lists for years (as well as on my parents' bookshelf), describing men and women as members of "the opposite sex" -- an archaic term assigning two fixed biological categories, each with innate behaviors.

Less widespread was The Ethical Slut, a groundbreaking guide to relationships outside of conventional monogamy, which appeared a year prior to Sex and the City's debut. Talk of open marriage or polyamory was socially rejected then, but Hardy said 1997 had cracked open a few doors in mainstream depictions of sexuality -- Ellen Degeneres came out of the closet publicly and Buffy the Vampire Slayer depicted a powerful heroine having vampire sex. Still, she said, "I can't think of any television show that showed a fully sexual woman without judgment at that time."

That's why Sex and the City was considered cutting-edge and revered by so many, including gay and queer men, according to Jacobs. "For the first time you had this fictional depiction of people talking frankly and openly about sex in a way that promoted agency and empowerment," he said. The series -- which had gay creators and writers -- came out in the shadow of the AIDS crisis, when many people deeply feared the consequences of being sexually active.

Oh, how we miss you, Samantha.

The characters, chiefly Samantha, gave license to talk about sexual desire without shame or worry. Coinciding with the emergence of antiretroviral medications and treatment, the show rarely mentioned condom use and never dealt with HIV or AIDS. Jacobs, a great admirer of the show, appreciated how Sex and the City helped normalize conversations around pleasure. "It represented in my cohort this fantasy of freedom that we didn't really have," he said.

Though Sex and the City had a large queer following, the show approached LGBTQ characters with stereotypes and tokenism: Carrie's gay bestie, Stanford, is more of a decoration than an independent person with lived experiences, and bisexuality is presented as mere experimentation and confusion. All these years later, And Just Like That hasn't done much better.

Though Che plays a central role in the new series, Jacobs points out that the audience doesn't learn about them through their own scenes or storylines. Beyond the show's discussion of preferred pronouns, there's only a shallow exploration of the issues facing trans, nonbinary and gender-nonconforming individuals. It's more like box-checking. We never hear, for example, what it's like for 12-year-old Rock to come out as nonbinary at school, or to face the disappointment of their heteronormative parents.

Euphoria digs deep into the gender and sexual identities of its characters.

Habie notes that neither the original Sex and the City nor the reboot depicts the gender and sexuality spectrum, which spans a multitude of identities and orientations. And Just Like That tries to step out of its antiquated boy/girl divide by simply adding the "other" label. "Now you have your triangle -- you have one more option," Habie said. Case in point: Che's podcast is called X, Y and Me.

Younger generations truly get the idea of spectrum in a way that some older folks don't, according to Habie. Youth have been exposed to a flood of sexualized content, and though not all of it is sex-positive or authentic, it's far from the buttoned-up social norms that shaped pop culture before the sexual revolution. Plus, they have access to modern, science-based books about sexuality, like Emily Nagoski's Come As You Are, which recognizes the wide range of women's tendencies and preferences.

Young people are also sharing more about their sexuality publicly, giving us a glimpse into their lives that's made its way to popular television. HBO's Euphoria, a show about teenagers dealing with drug addiction, sexual abuse and trauma, has a complexity and expansiveness other shows don't, said Habie. The young characters are represented as unique individuals who just happen to be on journeys exploring their sexual and gender identities -- they aren't unique solely because of their sexual and gender identities.

Hardy appreciates Netflix's Sex Educationnot only because the teenage characters are empowered to make adult sexual decisions -- the show also emphasizes accurate and sensitive education as the key to sexual happiness. "Sex isn't treated as a bargaining chip or a status marker; it's shown as a way to give and receive touch, affection and pleasure," Hardy said in an email. And the show "does not judge anybody's kinks or orientations."

Sex Education has a lot of sex and a lot of education.

Miranda's sexual storyline in And Just Like That is the most authentic, and the most deserving of more depth. Her relationship with Che is a catalyst for a journey of self-discovery that involves coming to terms with stasis in her marriage. At 55, Miranda realizes she's given up a part of herself, including her own sexual agency.

The struggle to maintain desire in long-term relationships is real. It's a topic addressed by Jacobs in his practice as well as by renowned psychotherapist Esther Perel. "The challenge for modern couples lies in reconciling the need for what's safe and predictable with the wish to pursue what's exciting, mysterious and awe-inspiring," Perel writes in Mating in Captivity. Miranda couldn't find passion inside her monogamous relationship, and maybe she didn't want to.

But the show only glosses over these common challenges. As a result, instead of empathizing with Miranda's choice to pursue her own happiness, viewers have bemoaned that her husband Steve was left in the dust -- even earning the beloved character a #justiceforsteve hashtag. Though the show acknowledges the existence of open marriages, the final episode follows a conventional template: a powerful sexual awakening is reduced to an affair, and the primary relationship terminates in divorce.

Che initially assumes Miranda is in an open marriage, but it's never discussed as an option.

Still, the finale reveals how the three main characters are open to embracing change. "The future is unwritten," Carrie says on her podcast, as she transcends her grief to find romance as a widow. Charlotte learns to accept Rock's determination to be unlabeled, and Miranda allows herself to be vulnerable. Personal transformation at any age is a valid story that deserves to be told.

In Habie's view, if a show were to accurately address the sexuality of women in their 50s, it would focus on the role of psychological arousal -- things like masturbation, role playing and fantasy, which become more pivotal as women age and their hormones change. "Good sex is about expansiveness, discovery and curiosity," she said. Older women often go through a second puberty as they tap into their eroticism, leading many to the best sex of their lives.

It would be good for youth to see how sex changes as we mature, just like it's good for their parents' generation to learn how attitudes about gender, sexuality and relationships are evolving. Until we have more genuine stories being told, the younger generation is leading the way. Said Hardy, "I'm really looking forward to seeing the kind of world they create."

More:

And Just Like That finale proves it: Sex and the City reboot has a sex problem - CNET