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Title: The Feminist Manifesto
Author: He Yin Zhen
Date: 1907
Language: en
Topics: anarcha-feminism, feminism, 1900s, Chinese Anarchism
Source: https://s3.amazonaws.com/arena-attachments/769777/2de034344a3906fc41afa4d12b842a7d.pdf
Notes: Translated by Meng Fan and Cynthia M. Roe

He Yin Zhen

The Feminist Manifesto

Men and women have been unequal in this world for a very long time. In

India, widows immolate themselves to sacrifice their lives for men; in

Japan, women prostrate themselves in the service of men. In Europe and

America, even though people practice monogamy and thereby proclaim

equality, women are rarely able to partake in politics or vote. So, is

there any substance to their “equal rights”? When we look back at China,

our men practically treat women as subhuman beings. In ancient times,

after a tribe defeated another group, they [the tribesmen] would truss

up the women, bind up their bodies with pillories, and take them as

concubines. This is how men became masters and women slaves. That period

can rightly be called the age of [men’s] plundering of women. In due

time, since stealing other people’s women was likely to induce

conflicts, people developed the custom of sending deerskin as an

engagement “gift.” The ancient marriage rites that mandated the groom’s

family deliver betrothal gifts to the bride’s side are remnants of this

earlier kind of “property-marriage. Women were clearly regarded as a

form of male property. Men are human, but women are merely chattel. That

period can be called the age of [men’s] trading of women. From these two

root causes, inequality between men and women became entrenched. The

specific forms this inequality has taken can be traced from the four

institutions from the past.

The first is inequality in marriage. In ancient times, the more

respected a man’s position in society, the more wives he had. For

example, during the Yin [Shang] dynasty (16th–11th century b.c.e.), the

Son of Heaven could marry twelve women; his marquises, nine;

high-ranking aristocrats, three; other titled men, two. During the Zhou

dynasty (1046 –256 b.c.e.), the Son of Heaven had one queen, three

helpmates, nine consorts, twenty-seven women of family, and eighty-one

ladies of honor. These constituted his wife and concubines. Does this

not indicate that in effect over one hundred women were married to one

man? Since then, there have been no limits placed on the number of

imperial concubines the emperor might retain. Honorable and illustrious

families especially hoarded a lot of concubines. This is the first

aspect of male-female inequality.

The second is inequality in status between husband and wife. Since men

managed to expand their power, they became all the more vigilant against

women. They invented the motto, “Once a woman becomes a man’s wife, she

remains so for life.” A woman is thus allowed to serve only one husband.

What is more: “The husband is high as the wife is low; the husband is to

heaven as the wife is to earth. The wife cannot do without her husband

as the earth cannot do without Heaven.” As a result, a woman follows her

husband’s noble rank in life, and she takes her husband’s family name,

and she posthumously receives her husband’s promotion to a higher rank.

Women are made into men’s subsidiaries. Song dynasty scholars followed

this reasoning when they spoke of “shoring up the yang [male] and

diminishing the yin [female].” This is the second aspect of male-female

inequality.

The third is inequality in work and responsibility. The character for

“woman” (fu 婦) is glossed as fu 服, or “to serve.” The “woman”

character is composed of a woman holding a broom. The Book of Rites

(“Quli”) makes it clear: “In presenting a daughter for the harem of the

ruler of a state, it is said, ‘This is to complete the providers of your

spirits and sauces’; for that of a great officer, ‘This is to complete

the number of those who sprinkle and sweep for you.’” It seems, in this

way, ancient women considered serving and obeying to be their

obligation. Furthermore, men concocted the teaching that women should

not step out of the inner quarters so as to deprive them of their

freedom. From then on, women did not have responsibilities aside from

managing the household; being educated and talented was deprecated; [as

a consequence,] they have taken being servile to be a natural state.

This is the third aspect of male-female inequality.

The fourth is inequality in the system of rites. When a wife dies, the

husband observes mourning for only one year, but a widow must mourn her

husband for three years, and in the coarsest attire (unhemmed

sackcloth). And she is to extend the same severity in mourning her

husband’s parents. But when she mourns her natal parents, she observes

rites of the lesser grade (of one year and wearing sackcloth with even

edges). [The Confucian classic Great Learning says,] “It never has been

the case that what was of great importance has been slightly cared for,

and what was of slight importance has been greatly cared for.” But the

mourning rites do exactly that! Even worse is that in ancient times, a

daughter’s mourning rites for her mother would be downgraded from three

years to one if her father was still alive. This was most egregious.

This, then, is the fourth aspect of male-female inequality.

Even from this cursory review it becomes very clear how men oppress and

subjugate women. It is not hard to fathom why men would want to bully

women; but why, one might ask, are women so willing to submit? Could it

be that the power of social customs and the teachings of pedantic

scholars have come to bind and restrain women? Let me put it plainly so

that all my companions in womanhood understand: men are the archenemy of

women. As long as women fail to be men’s equals, anger and sorrow will

never be requited. Therefore, let me spell out all the things that women

need to strive for one by one:

The first is monogamous marriage. If a man has more than one wife,

keeps concubines or mistresses, or is predisposed to whoring, then his

wife can use the harshest laws to restrain him, so much so that he would

die by women’s hands. If a woman willingly serves a husband with

multiple wives, the entire womenfolk would rise up against her. If a man

only has one wife, but his wife has extramarital affairs, both men and

women should rise up against her.

The second is that after a woman marries, she should not take her

husband’s surname. Even if she retains her maiden name, it is still

unfair because it is her father’s surname but not her mother’s.

Therefore, women like us who are living in the present age should

fashion our surnames from both the father’s and the mother’s [surnames].

After we overthrow the Manchus, neither men nor women should keep a

surname. That would be the principle of supreme justice.

The third is that parents should value sons and daughters equally.

Daughters are no different from sons, and a daughter’s offspring are

full-fledged grandchildren. This way the entrenched custom of slighting

daughters and valuing sons would end.

The fourth is that soon after birth, daughters and sons should be

raised without discrimination. As they grow, they should receive equal

education. As grownups, they shoulder equal responsibilities. All

affairs in society should be women’s business.

The fifth is that if a couple fails to get along after marriage, the

man and wife can separate. Until then, neither should take up with

someone else lest they violate the first goal above.

The sixth is that first-time grooms should be paired with first-time

brides. When bereaved, a man can remarry, but only to a woman who has

married before. Likewise, a bereaved wife can remarry, but only to a man

who has married before. If a first-time bride assents to marrying a man

who has married before, womenfolk should rise to censure her.

The seventh is to abolish all the brothels in the world and let go all

the prostitutes under the sun to clean up the environment of

lasciviousness.

We champion these seven goals, not because we women want to snatch power

and rights into our hands, but because Heaven endows natural rights

equally to men and women. Since men and women are both human, the lack

of equality is unjust and contradicts the principles of nature;

ultimately, what women strive for should not stop short of supreme

justice for all.

But people may counter my suggestions by raising three common

objections. The first is that women endure the toil of childbirth and

afterward have to exhaust themselves in raising the children; thus a

woman’s work and responsibilities are by nature different from men’s.

Those who think so do not understand that what I am proposing is not

merely a women’s revolution but a complete social revolution. The

women’s revolution is but one aspect of the social revolution. After the

social revolution is accomplished, after birth, all children would be

raised in public child care facilities; accordingly, mothers would no

longer have to raise their children by themselves. Once relieved of this

task, women could assume responsibilities equal to men’s.

The second objection may be that since there are more women than men in

the world, it is unfair to mandate that one person can take only one

spouse. But those who object thus do not know that women are more

plentiful because they never fight wars. Active military duty is without

fail a male prerogative; therefore their numbers dwindle by the day.

Now, as women, would we rather not unleash destruction and die on the

battlefield for posthumous honor than be oppressed to death as obedient

concubines? If women indeed carried out the [social] revolution, after

the violence ended, the number of women would certainly be the same as

the number of men.

The third argument one often hears is that since men have many wives,

why shouldn’t women have multiple husbands as a form of redress? The

misunderstanding here is that we women desire equality and will get it,

not by [the passive means of] reform or boycotting, but by the

application of brute force to coerce men to make us equal. But polygyny

is a major male transgression. If women choose to emulate them, how are

we to defend ourselves when men accuse us [of transgressing]? A woman

who has multiple husbands is virtually a prostitute. Those women who are

now advocating multiple husbands use the pretext of resisting men, but

their real motivation is to give full rein to their personal lust,

following the path of prostitutes. These women are traitors to

womanhood.

In sum, men and women are both human. By [saying] “men” (nanxing) and

“women” (nüxing) we are not speaking of “nature,” as each is but the

outcome of differing social customs and education. If sons and daughters

are treated equally, raised and educated in the same manner, then the

responsibilities assumed by men and women will surely become equal. When

that happens, the nouns “men” and “women” would no longer be necessary.

This is ultimately the “equality of men and women” of which we speak.

People in China have recently come to believe that for women to reach

this goal, they must apply themselves to herald—even ahead of men—

racial, political, economic, and other revolutions; they must not allow

themselves to lag behind men again. According to their view, the

revolution between men and women should proceed side by side with

racial, political, and economic revolutions. [They believe] if they

succeeded, women could establish the first real regime of “women’s

rights” in the world. If they failed, women would perish with men, never

to be subjugated by them again. I think this is a narrow-minded view.

Whether people agree with me or condemn me is not my concern here.