"...this is a non-devotee instance where the dominant culture actually defined 'disabled' as desirable and sexually attractive." There have been some intriguing posts recently on the social phenomenon of foot binding in China in the 19th century and earlier. The discussion centred on the eroticism of physical disability on a national scale. For a thousand years women with intentionally tiny and deformed feet were considered highly erotic. These deformities were created by tightly bandaging the feet from an early age. Many girls became so deformed and disabled that they had to be carried everywhere. The origins of foot binding are unclear although evidence suggests it started as far back as the Sung dynasty in AD 960-1280. It was eventually banned in 1911. Here is a little information gathered from postings on Yahoo Groups as well as a collection of books for those interested in reading more on the subject. WILD SWANS (an article by Ken Tittle)
What I think has not been mentioned here is that this was a class distinction matter. The upper class women, who had ready access to servants, were able to be disabled because they didn't have to do any physical things, whereas the peasant classes, even the bourgeoisie(sp?) what there was of it, had big, coarse, unbound, indelicate, and therefore, not sexy, feet. To have the luxury of being able to hobble around with small steps and to need to be carried for significant distances was a mark of refinement and status and privilege. It is my suspicion that the attitudes of pride and privilege with which these women bore their moderately severe limitations, the pleasure they would have had in having others watch them hobble around, must have contributed greatly to the sexual attractiveness that supposedly they possessed, just as a confident woman with disabilities, not ashamed of her "deformities" and proud of how she handles her body, can convey a potently attractive and arresting image to those around her. Very different from the embarrassment, cover-up mentality in dressing, etc. that the negative stigma of disability imparts to so many women in our society. Looking at the social functions of this process, it is clear that this practice rigidly established and maintained class distinctions. No woman not born to privilege could ever later rise to be one of the small-footed, disabled ones, and in any interchange with people of upper classes, she would have tended to be embarrassed by her big, coarse feet which made her fit to serve rather than to be served. Stigma. Apart from the interesting perspectives it gives us on stigma, I think those with disabilities might also reflect on this as a situation where these women were disabled, physically limited, and yet not at all handicapped. By that I mean that they were significantly mobility limited, but there were really no disadvantages to them from being crippled -- their needs were met without need to run or climb or jump or walk long distances or be on their feet all day -- and there were significant advantages in terms of social status and sexual desirability. This tends toward what militant disability advocates talk about when they say that "disability is really a social construct" not a physical condition. (And parenthetically, it is still much more handicapping to be disabled and poor than to be disabled and rich. As our societies become more accessible, though, disabilities become less handicapping for all.) It is also an interesting question what this may or may not say to 'devotees.' Clearly this is a non-devotee instance where the dominant culture actually defined 'disabled' as desirable and sexually attractive. To my way of thinking, it is one piece of evidence suggesting that finding women with disabilities attractive and desirable may not be such an abnormal (let alone 'perverted') thing as many devotees apparently grew up feeling it was. Or to put it another way, if there are, as I believe, inherently many things about many physical disabilities that attract (appeal, intrigue, provoke positive emotional responses, and stimulate desires to draw closer), then those things are operative even if there are social stigma saying that people with disabilities are not desirable. I wonder how much of the sometimes tortured psychology of the devotee comes from that confusion and conflict between the reality that they know these women are 'attractive," but their upbringing and the cultural standards claim that disability cannot be attractive, it is damage to the merchandise, decreased value, and worse it is not a subject to discuss or entertain. Don't look. Don't ask. Stay away. Ken Tittle BOOKS ON CHINESE FOOTBINDING The
Lotus Lovers: The Complete History of the Curious Erotic Custom of
Footbinding in China The
Three-Inch Golden Lotus
|
There
were no bones broken or removed in the process. The front of the foot
was pulled down and back, while the heel was pulled down under the
ankle and forward toward the toes. The result was that the instep,
the top of the foot, was curved sharply downward and bulged forward,
and the effect was that the foot was a protuberance at the end of the
leg bulging over the the smaller heel and toes in their little shoe
(or in other words, it was not so much that the foot was so tiny as
that much of the foot was in the protuberance above the
shoe). Binding created a deep cleft -- essentially it folded the
sole of the foot in half by bringing the heel and the front of the
foot together. This cleft was considered a deeply private, sensual,
erotic part of the body, and the ritual of unbinding and performing
hygiene to the foot and cleft, was very intimate, done in
private with a trusted maidservant. It was extremely erotic to share
this with a lover. (Freudians would say that the cleft was a sort of
representation of the vagina, I would imagine, and I would imagine
there is some truth to that.)