>If you read two books that go back to the period of the Civil War,
>_Fanshen_ and Jack Belden's _China Shakes the World_, it becomes visible
>(a) why China still 'needs' a feminist movement but (b) why from inside
>China it would appear that "women were already emancipated." A sense of
>emancipation (for anyone) is historical, not absolute, and exists in
>terms of comparisons with what has been and what is.
sure, but what would you have done in that feminist theory classroom? these kinds of arguments did not make headway with Rose who happened to view feminism in the US has a ridiculous waste of time, too. She sort of reminds me of our own Chris Doss: the whole effort was on educating everyone else about how wrong they were, so much so that any criticism of China by anyone who wasn't Chinese or an approved source was ruled out from the git-go.
At the time, I was just more interested in hearing what she had to say and I was deeply disturbed by the visible discomfort in the room. Everyone just wanted to correct her, without first listening.
Kelley