Reimagining Femininity: Toward an East Asian Feminist Discourse Beyond Masculine Constructs

How can Confucian feminism be possible? I propose it is possible by revealing masculine discourse lurking within Western feminism, and by redefining femininity to build a new feminine discourse beyond masculine one. I also seek an image for a new form of feminism from the Dao, a central concept in East Asian religious and philosophical traditions.

I will first investigate how masculine discourse has operated within mainstream Western feminism and then point out the limitations of Confucianism’s post-colonial responses to Western feminist critiques. It will be revealed neither Western feminism nor Confucian responses to its criticisms have challenged masculine discourse that governs our society. Next, I will present the Dao as a source to overcome this masculine discourse and examine its viability. Femininity will be redefined, thus a new form of feminism will be proposed.

What is masculine discourse"? Gilles Deleuze pointed out that Western Enlightenment gendered reason and rationality as masculine and feminized its opposite attributes(Hannah Stark). This gendering process, of course, includes the perception of the masculine as superior and the feminine as inferior. This misogynistic attitude is not a modern invention. Long before, Western epistemology and metaphysics have been the embodiment of misogynistic phallogocentric attitudes, and the God of mainstream Judeo-Christianity is the purest epitome of such attributes, a projection of the ideal male figure (e.g., Catherine Keller and M. J. Rubenstein).

Despite feminism’s many commendable achievements, masculine discourse still dominates society. Feminism's almost literal abandonment of femininity is ironic. In mainstream Western feminist discourse, the term "feminine" has been taboo because it has been perceived as confining women's gender roles to specific images it suggests. However, the more fundamental problem lies in the ongoing institutional discrimination against attributes and values associated with femininity within masculine discourse. While feminism rightly exposes the unfairness of treating these attributes as essential to biological femininity, it almost fails to acknowledge how unfairly those attributes themselves have been treated historically.

While feminism has dismantled the boundaries of private (womanly) and public (manly) spaces (Western version of nei-wai), liberating many women from nei, unfortunately, it has not liberated nei itself and the so-called feminine attributes associated with it. Western feminism breaks down the nei-wai boundaries by forming recognition struggle between men and women over wai (Elizabeth Gorsz). And yet, the hierarchy between nei and wai has become more solidified or at least remains the same. Men and women with masculine attributes monopolize social credit, while men and women with feminine attributes receive very little of it. In this sense, the criticism that feminism is not infrequently reinforcing meritocratic masculine discourse has been consistently raised (e.g., Luce Irigaray, Judith Butler, Catherine Keller, Erin McKenna, Elizabeth Gorsz, Jack Halberstam).

The main point of feminism's criticism of Confucianism is that its nei-wai norms are still dominant, that is, it still does not sufficiently allow women to transition from nei to wai, keeping them confined within the domestic sphere. Representative Confucian responses to this criticism often rely on post-colonialism and cultural relativism: To understand the nei-wai distinction, one needs to fully understand the sociocultural context in which it has been formed in China, and at least theoretically and historically, its boundary is "negotiable" (e.g., Li-Hsiang Lisa Rosenlee).

This defensive stance of Confucianism against the feminist invasion still acknowledges the nei-wai norms as a regulatory ideal, even if it is negotiable. It does not, however, critically examine (1) the fact that women have unfairly been pushed into nei and (2) the social depreciation of nei (although nei and yin are never depreciated in Chinese cosmology but rather are understood to have a higher status than wai and yang). Thus, Confucian responses to feminism also fail to discern masculine discourse hidden in feminism.

Responding to feminist critique based on yinyang complementarity and reciprocity does not alleviate the postmodern aversion to essentialism, as long as the gendered yinyang thinking still seems to endorse an eternal link between biological sex and gender. To dispel the charge of essentialism, it is necessary to acknowledge gender as a social construct and thoroughly reject that link consummated in and reinforced by the nei-wai norms. We need to critically examine the misogynist aspects of the terms yin and yang and of the establishment of the nei-wai norms (e.g., Rosenlee). Only then will the argument that the dualistic gender frame of yin and yang is a useful resource for a new feminism—namely, yinyang thinking is about generation, not standardization—compared to Western epistemology that produces the world from a monosexual or genderless being can be persuasive (e.g., Zhang Xianglong).

Finally, the Dao, which encompasses yin and yang and is sometimes equated with yin, will be proposed as an imagery for an alternative East Asian feminism. The following questions will be addressed: Is Dao feminine? Which characteristics of it can be used as material for a new feminism? (e.g., Robin R. Wang) How do those characteristics help overcome masculine discourse? What kind of beings does this new feminism represent? (e.g., Jea Sophia Oh)

The primary goal of the new feminism is to achieve a society in which the “feminine” attributes and values receive fair credit. To this end, feminism needs to redefine femininity (e.g., Judith Butler and Audre Lorde) and expand to represent and liberate all entities "feminine"—individuals, groups, natural environments, knowledge systems, etc.—that have been subalternized as non-existent within masculine order (e.g., Gayatri Spivak, Namsoon Kang, and Jea Sophia Oh).

A new feminism must overcome both essentialism and the grammar of masculine discourse. Western thought has attempted to overcome them from within (Nitta Yoshihiro). These attempts are now exploring the possibilities of a viable alternative truly committed to difference—as, for example, in the Deleuzian politics of imperceptibility (“becoming-woman," "becoming-animal," "becoming-plant," " becoming-molecular," "becoming-imperceptible”), Byung-Chul Han’s erotic phenomenology of "being-able-not-to-be-able," or Jack Halberstam's “queer ethics of failure."

Can East Asia draw upon its own internal resources to reinvent a new femininity that transcends masculine discourse rather than simply being an antithesis of it? This project will seek to answer these questions.