Gender and Sexuality in Modern Chinese History

This book tracks the transformation of sexuality and gender in China, from late imperial times to modern times.

Susan L. Mann (Author)

9780521683708, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 30 September 2011

256 pages, 35 b/w illus.
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.4 cm, 0.35 kg

'Gender and Sexuality in Modern Chinese History provides readers with a thoroughly lucid and insightful synthesis of this complex field and its challenges. Spanning centuries, Mann moves adeptly between late imperial China and the developments of the twentieth century … [and] provide[s] a remarkable synthesis and guide to this dynamic and developing field that will enrich the study of gender and sexuality in modern China for students and researchers alike.' The Journal of Asian Studies

Gender and sexuality have been neglected topics in the history of Chinese civilization, despite the fact that there is a massive amount of historical evidence on the subject. China's late imperial government was arguably more concerned about gender and sexuality among its subjects than any other pre-modern state. How did these and other late imperial legacies shape twentieth-century notions of gender and sexuality in modern China? Susan Mann answers this by focusing on state policy, ideas about the physical body and notions of sexuality and difference in China's recent history, from medicine to the theater to the gay bars; from law to art and sports. More broadly, the book shows how changes in attitudes toward sex and gender in China during the twentieth century have cast a new light on the process of becoming modern, while simultaneously challenging the universalizing assumptions of Western modernity.

Introduction
Part I. Gender, Sexuality, and the State: 1. Family and state: the separation of the sexes
2. Traffic in women and the problem of single men
3. Gender relations in politics and law
Part II. Gender, Sexuality, and the Body: 4. The body in medicine, art, and sport
5. Adorning, displaying, concealing, and altering the body
6. Abandoning the body: female suicide and female infanticide
Part III. Gender, Sexuality, and the 'Other': 7. Same-sex relationships and transgendered performance
8. Sexuality in the creative imagination
9. Sexuality and the 'other'
Conclusion: gender, sexuality, and citizenship.

Subject Areas: Gender studies: women [JFSJ1], Asian history [HBJF]