He-Yin Zhen 何殷震

Biography

Born to wealthy parents in Jiangsu in 1884

Context

Accelerated modernisation in China in the shape of modern capitalism and imperialism.

Circulation of ideas of liberalism, Christian evangelism, evolutionism, socialism, anarchism, feminism, Marxism

1903: the Women's Bell published by Jin Tianhe, emerging from progressive male circles. Proposed women's rights to education, suffrage, employment, livelihood and human dignity

1850s to 1907, feminist struggles subordinate to national development. Women's emancipation was a means to the goal of national development and sovereignty

Anarchists link feminism to complete social revolution - oppression of women linked to class divisions and exploitation as well as traditional culture

Anarchists criticised militarism and nationalism, condemning superstition and traditional morality. Anarchism would lead to the end of hirarchical social systems like the family

Anarcha-feminism separates feminism from nationalism: women's liberation for moral necessity not for the sake of the nation

Marries Liu Shipei, an influential intellectual, in 1904 and moves to Tokyo in 1907. Meets revolutionaries and anarchists

Pre-eminent feminist theorist and founding editor of an anarcha-feminist journal Natural Justice under the aegis of the "society for the restoration of women's rights"

Broad awareness of women's suffrage movements in Europe and N America

Targets oppression of women in China, in the past and preset, in industralising Japan, and around the world

Early feminist critic of Chinese political economy, modern state, and patriarchy

Philosophy

Key themes:

systematic global critique of the political, economic, moral, ideological bases of patriarchal society

liberation of one oppressed element in society (women) depends on the liberation of all

criticises progressive male intellectuals who subordinated women's interests to nationalist agendas.

Liberalism and capitalism as incompatible with women's emancipation

Self-reinforcing relationship between patriarchy and capitalism

Total revolution to abolish property, family and the state

Nannü and feminism

Woman as a transhistorical global category. Individual identity and a structure, constituted through scholarship, ritual, law, social and labour practices

Womanhood not biological, something constructed socially

Man and woman, categories based on difference. Mutually constitutive, hierarchical relationship between genders

Women's bodily subjection through commodification (in private and public). Not a modern capitalist phenomenon - ontological

男女 social world is already gendered timespace of life

Distinction is rendered ontological as it is institutionalised by patriarchal discourse and the material world

No separation between 男女 and class. They work together to determine lives and prosperity

男女 category of ontological difference must be eliminated

Critique of tradition

Controlling women through taboos and traditions of subservience

Confucian relegation of married women to the private sphere

Natalism and the cult of fertility associated with wealth - women are mandated to have children

Criticises chastity rules and the sexual hypocrisy of men

Chinese women had internalised patriarchal values - creating superficiality and idleness

Misery of arranged marriages and domination in the family

Children must be raised communally to emancipate women

Sexual liberation is necessary but not full liberation

Domination has much deeper roots in capitalism

Shengji and the critique of capitalism

生计 (livelihood) broader than the European concept of class

Institution of private property is the main root of inequality

Male dominance operates through an unequal distribution of wealth. Relationships of dependent and master within the family

Everyone in the capitalist system is dominated. So integrating women into the economy will exchange one form of oppression for another

Distinction between labour as a vital autonomous aspect of individual and communal freedom, and the commodified and enslaved labour of capitalism

Women's participation in traditional handicrafts used to be free and is now commodified

The state is nothing but the enabler of capitalist exploitation

Pacifism

Link between nation building and militarism

Armies are made of working class people who protect the socio-political elites

Military budgets take up money that could be used to alleviate poverty

militarism expresses gender dominance and violent masculinity - women are excluded from the armies

We must adopt a pacifist perspective, refuse conscription and refuse war in passive resistance

Women experience gender based violence in wars and bear a heavy burden: they should be natural pacifists

Liberation

Why does He-Yin Zhen argue that women’s freedom must involve freedom from the state?

Women had to free themselves and affirm their agency

Criticises western feminist achievements as limited: monogamy, divorce, civil marriage, co-education

Against reformism. Integration into existing institutions reproduce injustices

Men are equally oppressed by other men