her house except when I bear her in my arms to her
palanquin, my stride is heroic, my voice is that o f a
roaring lion, my wisdom is of the sages. To her I am
the world; I am life itself. 9
Chinese men, it is clear, stood tall and strong on
women’s tiny feet.
The so-called art of footbinding was the process of
taking the human foot, using it as though it were insensible matter, molding it into an inhuman form. Footbinding was the “art” of making living matter insensible, inanimate. We are obviously not dealing here with art at all, but with fetishism, with sexual psychosis. This
fetish became the primary content of sexual experience
for an entire culture for 1,000 years. The manipulation
of the tiny foot was an indispensable prelude to all
sexual experience. Manuals were written elaborating
various techniques for holding and rubbing the Golden
Lotus. Smelling the feet, chewing them, licking them,
sucking them, all were sexually charged experiences.
A woman with tiny feet was supposedly more easily
maneuvered around in bed and this was no small advantage. Theft of shoes was commonplace. Women were forced to sew their shoes directly onto their bindings. Stolen shoes might be returned soaked in semen.
Prostitutes would show their naked feet for a high
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109
price (there weren’t many streetwalkers in China).
Drinking games using cups placed in the shoes o f prostitutes or courtesans were favorite pastimes. Tiny-footed prostitutes took special names like Moon Immortal, Red Treasure, Golden Pearl. No less numerous were the euphemisms for feet, shoes, and bindings.
Some men went to prostitutes to wash the tiny foot and
eat its dirt, or to drink tea made from the washing
water. Others wanted their penises manipulated by the
feet. Superstition also had its place —there was a belief
in the curative powers o f the water in which tiny feet
were washed.
Lastly, footbinding was the soil in which sadism
could grow and go unchecked —in which simple cruelty
could transcend itself, without much effort, into
atrocity. These are some typical horror stories o f those
times:
A stepmother or aunt in binding the child’s foot
was usually much harsher than the natural mother
would have been. An old man was described who delighted in seeing his daughters weep as the binding was tightly applied.. . . In one household, everyone
had to bind. T h e main wife and concubines bound to
the smallest degree, once morning and evening, and
once before retiring. T h e husband and first wife
strictly carried out foot inspections and whipped those
guilty o f having let the binding become loose. T h e
sleeping shoes were so painfully small that the women
had to ask the master to rub them in order to bring
relief. Another rich man would flog his concubines
on their tiny feet, one after another, until the blood
flowed. 10
110
Woman Hating
. . . about 1 9 3 1 . . . bound-foot women unable to Bee
had been taken captive. The bandits, angered because
o f their captives’ weak way o f walking and inability to
keep in file, forced the women to remove the bindings
and socks and run about barefoot. They cried out in
pain and were unable to move on in spite o f beatings.
Each o f the bandits grabbed a woman and forced her
to dance about on a wide field covered with sharp
rocks. The harshest treatment was meted out to prostitutes. Nails were driven through their hands and feet; they cried aloud for several days before expiring.
One form o f torture was to tie-up a woman so that her
legs dangled in midair and place bricks around each
toe, increasing the weight until the toes straightened
out and eventually dropped off. 11
END OF F O O T B I N D I N G E V E N T
One asks the same questions again and again, over
a period o f years, in the course of a lifetime. The questions have to do with people and what they do —the how and the why o f it. How could the Germans have murdered 6, 000, 000 Jews, used their skins for lampshades, taken the gold out of their teeth? How could white
people have bought and sold black people, hanged
them and castrated them? How could “Americans”
have slaughtered the Indian nations, stolen the land,
spread famine and disease? How can the Indochina
genocide continue, day after day, year after year?
How is it possible? Why does it happen?
As a woman, one is forced to ask another series of
hard questions: Why everywhere the oppression of
women throughout recorded history? How could the
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111
Inquisitors torture and bum women as witches? How
could men idealize the bound feet o f crippled women?
How and why?
T h e bound foot existed for 1, 000 years. In what
terms, using what measure, could one calculate the
enormity o f the crime, the dimensions o f the transgression, the amount o f cruelty and pain inherent in that 1, 000-year herstory? In what terms, using what
vocabulary, could one penetrate to the meaning, to the
reality, o f that 1, 000-year herstory?
Here one race did not war with another to acquire
food, or land, or civil power; one nation did not fight
with another in the interest o f survival, real or imagined; one group o f people in a fever pitch o f hysteria did not destroy another. None o f the traditional explanations or justifications for brutality between or among peoples applies to this situation. On the contrary, here one sex mutilated (enslaved) the other in the interest o f the art o f sex, male-female harmony, role-definition, beauty.
Consider the magnitude o f the crime.
Millions o f women, over a period o f 1,000 years,
were brutally crippled, mutilated, in the name o f
erotica.
Millions o f human beings, over a period o f 1, 000
years, were brutally crippled, mutilated, in the name
o f beauty.
Millions o f men, over a period o f 1, 000 years,
reveled in love-making devoted to the worship o f the
bound foot.
Millions o f men, over a period o f 1, 000 years, worshiped and adored the bound foot.
112
Woman Hating
Millions of mothers, over a period of 1, 000 years,
brutally crippled and mutilated their daughters for the
sake o f a secure marriage.
Millions of mothers, over a period of 1, 000 years,
brutally crippled and mutilated their daughters in the
name o f beauty.
But this thousand-year period is only the tip of