all toes but the big one were pressed against the inner
surface. Whenever I ate f ish or freshly killed meat,
my feet would swell, and the pus would drip. Mother
criticized me for placing pressure on the heel in walking, saying that my feet would never assume a pretty shape. Mother would remove the bindings and wipe
the blood and pus which dripped from my feet. She
told me that only with the removal o f the flesh could
my feet become slender. If I mistakenly punctured a
sore, the blood gushed like a stream. My somewhat
fleshy big toes were bound with small pieces o f cloth and
forced upwards, to assume a new moon shape.
Every two weeks, I changed to new shoes. Each
new pair was one- to two-tenths o f an inch smaller than
the previous one. The shoes were unyielding, and it
took pressure to get into them. Though I wanted to
sit passively by the K’ang, Mother forced me to move
Gynocide: Chinese Footbinding
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0
1
around. After changing more than ten pairs of shoes,
my feet were reduced to a little over four inches. I
had been in binding for a month when my younger
sister started; when no one was around, we would
weep together. In summer, my feet smelled offensively because of pus and blood; in winter, my feet felt cold because of lack of circulation and hurt if
they got too near the K'ang and were struck by warm
air currents. Four of the toes were curled in like so
many dead caterpillars; no outsider would ever have
believed that they belonged to a human being. It took
two years to achieve the three-inch model. My toenails pressed against the flesh like thin paper. The heavily-creased plantar couldn't be scratched when it
itched or soothed when it ached. My shanks were thin,
my feet became humped, ugly, and odiferous; how I
envied the natural-footed! 5
Bound feet were crippled and excruciatingly painful. T h e woman was actually “walking” on the outside o f toes which had been bent under into the sole o f the
foot. T he heel and instep o f the foot resembled the sole
and heel o f a high-heeled boot. Hard callouses formed;
toenails grew into the skin; the feet were pus-filled and
bloody; circulation was virtually stopped. T h e foot-
bound woman hobbled along, leaning on a cane, against
a wall, against a servant. T o keep her balance she took
very short steps. She was actually falling with every
step and catching herself with the next. Walking required tremendous exertion.
Footbinding also distorted the natural lines o f the
female body. It caused the thighs and buttocks, which
were always in a state o f tension, to become somewhat swollen (which men called “voluptuous”). A cu
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Woman Haling
rious belief developed among Chinese men that footbinding produced a most useful alteration of the vagina. A Chinese diplomat explained:
The smaller the woman’s foot, the more wondrous
become the folds o f the vagina. (There was the saying: the smaller the feet, the more intense the sex urge. ) Therefore marriages in Ta-t’ung (where binding
is most effective) often take place earlier than elsewhere. Women in other districts can produce these folds artificially, but the only way is by footbinding,
which concentrates development in this one place.
There consequendy develop layer after layer (of folds
within the vagina); those who have personally experienced this (in sexual intercourse) feel a supernatural exaltation. So the system o f footbinding was not really oppressive. 6
Medical authorities confirm that physiologically footbinding had no effect whatsoever on the vagina, although it did distort the direction of the pelvis. The belief in the wondrous folds of the vagina of footbound
woman was pure mass delusion, a projection of lust
onto the feet, buttocks, and vagina of the crippled
female. Needless to say, the diplomat’s rationale for
finding footbinding “not really oppressive” confused
his “supernatural exaltation” with her misery and
mutilation.
Bound feet, the same myth continues, “made the
buttocks more sensual, [and] concentrated life-giving
vapors on the upper part of the body, making the face
more attractive. ” 7 If, due to a breakdown in the flow
o f these “life-giving vapors, ” an ugly woman was foot-
bound and still ugly, she need not despair, for an A -1
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103
Golden Lotus could compensate for a C-3 face and
figure.
But to return to herstory, how did our Chinese
ballerina become the millions o f women stretched over
10 centuries? T h e transition from palace dancer to population at large can be seen as part o f a class dynamic.
T h e emperor sets the style, the nobility copies it, and
the lower classes climbing ever upward do their best
to emulate it. T he upper class bound the feet o f their
ladies with the utmost severity. T h e Lady, unable to
walk, remained properly invisible in her boudoir, an
ornament, weak and small, a testimony to the wealth
and privilege o f the man who could afford to keep h e r—
to keep her idle. Doing no manual labor, she did not need
her feet either. Only on the rarest o f occasions was she
allowed outside o f the incarcerating walls o f her home,
and then only in a sedan chair behind heavy curtains.
T he lower a woman’s class, the less could such idleness
be supported: the larger the feet. T h e women who had
to work for the economic survival o f the family still
had bound feet, but the bindings were looser, the feet
bigger—after all, she had to be able to walk, even if
slowly and with little balance.
Footbinding was a visible brand. Footbinding did
not emphasize the differences between men and women —it
created them, and they were then perpetuated in the
name o f morality. Footbinding functioned as the C erberus o f morality and ensured female chastity in a nation o f women who literally could not “run around. ”
Fidelity, and the legitimacy o f children, could be reckoned on.
T he minds o f footbound women were as contracted
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Woman Hating
as their feet. Daughters were taught to cook, supervise
the household, and embroider shoes for the Golden
Lotus. Intellectual and physical restriction had the usual
male justification. Women were perverse and sinful,
lewd and lascivious, if left to develop naturally. The
Chinese believed that being bom a woman was payment