Of Leftovers

An interesting comic strip for you to peruse as it unfurls:

Super Leftover Girl!

It's Simplified but readable enough - the basic idea being challenging the idea that "leftover women" (剩女) are to be pitied because they are single at the ripe old age of 30 (so ancient!!!11!!!!1), that they are unfortunate, unwanted, too demanding, too picky, too "modern", and should be ashamed of the fact that they're not yet married. As if marriage is the only important accomplishment in a woman's life. Sigh.

It's becoming less of an issue in Taiwan - yes, there are a lot of awesome single thirtysomething women, but you'd be surprised how many of them want to be single, or are at least at peace with their singleness. For every thirtysomething Taiwanese female friend of mine who wishes she was married, I can name about three who are either OK with being single, are in a relationship that's as strong as a marriage or who have actively sought to stay that way.

I think this is great - it means more women are realizing that while marriage may be fine (I happen to be quite pro-marriage, as it's been pretty great for us), it's not the only good thing a woman can accomplish in life - a husband and children are not deigned by her fate as a woman to be the best thing she'll ever achieve or have, nor are they they only things she should want. And it means more men might wake up and smell the feminism, and start accepting things like equal partnership in housework and child-rearing, and an equal say in family decisions. It's happening slowly, but it is happening. There's been a change I've noticed even in the last five years, and I'll write about it later.

But really, what I feel about "leftover women" is this: if I were one, I'd be proud to be one. I wouldn't feel any less than I do as a married woman. I'd think of it like Thanksgiving. There's the big meal, the turkey, all the pomp and tradition, people doing what's expected of them regardless of what they actually want, and lots of family issues and generational change issues being forced into the forefront over dinner's invariably cacophonous conversation (well, at least in my family). You don't really get to decide what you want - tradition decides it for you. You're basically a trussed-up turkey, especially if you're a woman (at least men, historically, have had more choice in terms of career and travel, even if they haven't had total choice).

But if you're a leftover, that means you're the turkey sandwich. You're absolutely tasty, you're very satisfying, and you're what's chosen because it is what's wanted. You are food that's desired, not food that has been predetermined by a set menu. You are ultimately more personal, more content, and more satiating. There's no friction, no collective social trauma, over a Black Friday turkey-and-cranberry-sauce sandwich. You make what you want and you get what you want. You choose. You are chosen.

And I'd much rather be the turkey sandwich than the trussed-up turkey!

Sa jiao sa jiao la

Here's an interesting article - note I did not say I agreed with it, merely that it was an interesting read - on 撒嬌 or the idea of womanly coquettishness. 

I am way too busy to write a typically long post, so here's my immediate reaction:

This runs so counter to the personality pretty much every Taiwanese friend I have that I don't believe it's as common anymore as the article says it is (although I *have* seen it in action among strangers). My female friends don't do this - and my male friends don't like it. While they are interesting and intelligent people, I wouldn't say they're weird, quirky or "the exception rather than the rule" - I think they're one subset of people from a younger generation that is slowly eschewing this sort of gender role...gender role...gender role what? Well, I hesitate to say bullshit but my instincts scream it, because I have zero tolerance for "gender roles". Individual roles, sure, but gender roles can suck it.

There are other things I don't like about the article - no mention at all of foreign women dating Chinese or Taiwanese men and how they might be affected by this cultural issue, the *(non-threatening)* in parentheses to denote women's careers (how condescending!), the somewhat
outdated assumptions that I've found don't ring as true in Taiwan...even if they used to, and even if they still exist to some extent. I also find it funny that the article notes the "strong, manly presence" of the male partner in these relationships as though it is the only thing, or the best thing, the man brings to the table. As if.

If the widespread acceptance of 小三 or "mistresses" in China and Taiwan is anything to go by, sa jiao doesn't even really do what the author of this piece claims it does, which is enable a woman to test and ensure her partner's devotion, love, and putting of her needs above his own. Which, anyway, since when is either partner's needs "above" the other's, and since when is a healthy relationship one in which love needs to be "tested" or "proven"? 

I also think that a lot of Taiwanese women who date Western men generally do it because they don't want to sa jiao...and plenty of Western men pretend to be exasperated by it but secretly love it. They whine, but deep down they don't want a woman who doesn't appear to need them in this way. I don't really care for that sort of attitude, but hey, those guys can like what they like and I can keep my distance (honestly, I don't even want friends who view women in that way), and we're all happy.

As a Western woman, I do have to admit that while I see the cultural aspects of sa jiao and can basically tolerate it from that perspective, I do have biases and one of my biases is anti-sa jiao: I do lose a bit of respect for men who like it (Asian or Western) and for women who engage in it (Asian or Western). I should probably be more openminded, but you know, the first step is admitting your biases.

There is an obvious answer here: my female friends in Taiwan don't engage in sa jiao because I do gravitate toward women who don't act that way, and my male Taiwanese friends wouldn't be my friends if they liked coquettish women (even in friendship) or were with a woman who was jealous of their female friends (even though I am zero threat, in fact, if it were possible to be a negative-number threat I would be).

The article mentions that needing a man and not being too independent are considered "positives" in Chinese culture - although again, I am around so many women in Taiwan who are not needy but are independent, and they've been doing just fine in the dating world - I'd like to see sa jiao die a natural death not because it's considered "wrong" to be coquettish, but because it stops being considered a good thing for a woman to act (or be) needy, clingy or dependent...because it's not a good thing.

If my friends are anything to go by,  already dying.

A Rocketship Through The Glass Ceiling? Methinks not.

I'm over the moon (pun intended!) that China is sending its first female astronaut into space - although not over the moon that China, a country I do not believe should be the world's leading power seeing as it can't even do basic human rights, is leading the way in space exploration now that NASA has been more or less taken out of the picture.

That said, I'm not sure I'm ready to shout, as Jezebel did, that China is sending a "rocket ship through the glass ceiling".

Liu Yang's trip is clearly a great step forward for Chinese women being more visible in varied career paths, and does provide another strong role model for not just girls in China, or Asia, but around the world, but saying that China has now shattered the glass ceiling is like saying that electing Obama "cured racism" in America.

Because, nuh-uh, no it didn't.

This worries me because if the comments I occasionally get on this blog (some of which I publish, some of which I don't, depending on how coherent and worthy of a response they are) and see on other sites is any indication, people brainwashed by CCP propaganda are now going to go around saying things like "there's no sexism in China! We have a female astronaut!" in the same tone that the racism-deniers use in their "Obama" defense above. I mean, they already say things like "that hurts the feelings of the Chinese people", "Tiananmen never happened" and "most Taiwanese people know that they are Chinese and want to re-join their brothers on the Mainland, it's the evil DPP that keeps them away" and "everyone in China speaks Chinese*" and "Foreigners caused SARS" and "there aren't any gay people in China**".

It's a great, visible step forward, but that doesn't mean the subtle and not-so-subtle sexism women in China (and elsewhere, but we're focusing in China here) have to wade through in their lives is now magically gone.

Women are still going to face job discrimination, discrimination by parents, traditional gender expectations in life, in work and in marriage, second-class treatment and the usual melange of earning less for the same work, snarky comments, incorrect beliefs and assumptions, and admonitions to kow-tow to the all-powerful men's sense of face. (Actual quote from someone I knew in China: "a woman can't be smarter than her boyfriend or husband, because if a woman is smarter than a man, it makes the man lose face, so a woman should marry a man more clever than she is". GAAAAHHHHHHH).

Of course, there are exceptions - I just have to say that before anyone gets all "that's not always true" - you're right, it's not always true, but it's true often enough that it's worth saying out out.

The person who said the above probably isn't going to change his mind because now there's a Chinese woman going to space. The judge who was going to give my boss's son to her abusive ex-husband until she threatened to kill herself in the courtroom is probably not going to be less of an asshole because there's a Chinese woman going into space. The guy who asked me "did your father approve of your trip to China?"*** is probably not going to be less of a douche. The entire town of people who shunned my coworker's now-ex wife because she divorced a man who beat and threatened to kill her probably aren't going to have a change of heart.

So...yay, it's great, but not totally yay. Not yet. Show me real, ground-level change in China and then I'll say "yay" for real.

While I applaud Liu Yang and want very much to see more women like her, just like racism in the US, sexism in China - and racism in China and sexism in the US, because we live in a pretty screwed-up world - is not going away anytime soon and this certainly did not erase it.



*Most (not all) people in China do speak Chinese, but the implication in this statement is that it is the native language of all Chinese citizens (I'm not even going to get into the "they call Cantonese and Mandarin dialects" part of this). If you ignore, say, the Tibetans, the Uighurs and several other ethnic minorities, then that is correct. But, hey, you can't ignore them. Except people do.

**These last two things were statements people actually made to my face in China.

***My answer was "I don't know. I never asked him."