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You cannot be a feminist. You can only become one,
through a never-ended process
in which you started with observing the world around you,
and you feel, ask questions, think,
and try to make sense of it –
justify or resist, love or dissent, uncertainly.
Then, the whole process runs again.
You observe, feel, question, think, hesitate, and get angry,
over and over again…
That was the first time I learned about feminist thinking in a class Gender and Law in National Chung Hsing University, Taiwan, back in 2007. There were not many module options regarding gender or sexuality issues in relation to law, at least at the time when I did my first degree. In fact, in Taiwan, Law Schools do not pay much attention to gender and feminist studies, although in Taiwan we have experienced very robust sexual rights and gender equality social movements since the 1980s when the Martial Law was lifted (Lee, 2017).
Even so, most of legal professionals do not consider gender as a ‘useful category’, in Joan Scott’s (1986; 2011) words, of social relations that deserves a critical examination in law. More specifically, they see the question of ‘women’ – a collective status designated for female bodies only, as if the identity itself were fixated in legal history of Taiwan – in terms of the dominant/subordinate relationship vis-à-vis ‘men’. Yet, they do not see the essential problem of patriarchy and all the power asymmetries it induces, including, for sure, the Men/Women binary and heterosexism.
This was the context in which I became interested in and found problematic a series of gender questions which I had taken for granted, and thanks to Prof Wang Hsiao-Tan’s inspiration, though not in a systematic manner, I eventually detected the power of feminism. To me, since then, ‘gender’ has become a useful category to ask questions and make sense of the world, especially with regard to identifying the discomforts with the expectations from family and from society upon the way I express myself. But, it is not enough.
Much later in 2012, through the lectures of Mr Chang Hong-Cheng, I learned ‘sexuality’ as another category of social relations (see Rubin, 1984), in which a set of legal discourses is maintained as a truth. It is not just a question of discrimination on a case-by-case basis; rather, it is another series of questions – encompassing one’s body, emotions and intimacies – that represent a social phenomenon, which is subject to problematisation and unaddressable simply by law. Hence, I ask, ‘How do I know who I am?’ It is an oxymoron: who ‘I’ am, for whom how I know it.
In addition to the ‘enlightenment’ on an intellectual level, feminist thinking provides me more with regard to ‘empowerments’. That is, the moments of feeling feminism are like undertaking many small adventures of self-understanding and thus self-help, along a journey of vulnerability: at different points of that journey, meeting different people at different times in different places, subscribing to different subject positions. Suddenly, I feel feminism in a different way, to stand up against different enemies and shout aloud. It is, if I can name it in this way, the feminist ‘felt sense’, as Eugene Gendlin (1991; 1992) would call.
It is non-verbal, an impulsive moment that you encounter the incomprehensive need of the self. With or without a proper word to describe the situation, it is a starting point of looking for a strategy of self-empowerment. Feminism, in this light, offers the ground from which I have an access to liberation, even just temporarily – threaded through a line of flight from all the knowledges concerning how to think and behave as a proper man, an obedient son, an outstanding student, and a good citizen.
Asking questions about the ‘worlds’ in which I see my multiple ‘selves’, for a blogger like me, is never a mundane work; rather, it is an ongoing process of interrogating how this world sees me and how I respond: at home, on campus, from Taiwan to the UK, within and outside the ‘gay’ world. Many interactions, ruminated upon by myself, are symbolic in terms of managing self-impressions – in a dramatic or modest way (Goffman, 1956) – and putting up a good fight. Namely, at times I desire to learn how to describe the part of the world I dislike.
Meanwhile, I wonder how certain situations are created and whether there are others who feel the same unease and wrongfulness as I do. I fight, but I am also struggled with a fight without a name. I reach out for the ‘name’ that is worth all the exhaustion and passion. Thus, in this essay, I begin with four stories, respectively regarding my sexual orientation, body image, cultural background, and eventually, theoretical position, which implicitly guides my everyday performance and, much more explicitly, entails me accomplishing self-reflection as a becoming-feminist.
through a never-ended process
in which you started with observing the world around you,
and you feel, ask questions, think,
and try to make sense of it –
justify or resist, love or dissent, uncertainly.
Then, the whole process runs again.
You observe, feel, question, think, hesitate, and get angry,
over and over again…
That was the first time I learned about feminist thinking in a class Gender and Law in National Chung Hsing University, Taiwan, back in 2007. There were not many module options regarding gender or sexuality issues in relation to law, at least at the time when I did my first degree. In fact, in Taiwan, Law Schools do not pay much attention to gender and feminist studies, although in Taiwan we have experienced very robust sexual rights and gender equality social movements since the 1980s when the Martial Law was lifted (Lee, 2017).
Even so, most of legal professionals do not consider gender as a ‘useful category’, in Joan Scott’s (1986; 2011) words, of social relations that deserves a critical examination in law. More specifically, they see the question of ‘women’ – a collective status designated for female bodies only, as if the identity itself were fixated in legal history of Taiwan – in terms of the dominant/subordinate relationship vis-à-vis ‘men’. Yet, they do not see the essential problem of patriarchy and all the power asymmetries it induces, including, for sure, the Men/Women binary and heterosexism.
This was the context in which I became interested in and found problematic a series of gender questions which I had taken for granted, and thanks to Prof Wang Hsiao-Tan’s inspiration, though not in a systematic manner, I eventually detected the power of feminism. To me, since then, ‘gender’ has become a useful category to ask questions and make sense of the world, especially with regard to identifying the discomforts with the expectations from family and from society upon the way I express myself. But, it is not enough.
Much later in 2012, through the lectures of Mr Chang Hong-Cheng, I learned ‘sexuality’ as another category of social relations (see Rubin, 1984), in which a set of legal discourses is maintained as a truth. It is not just a question of discrimination on a case-by-case basis; rather, it is another series of questions – encompassing one’s body, emotions and intimacies – that represent a social phenomenon, which is subject to problematisation and unaddressable simply by law. Hence, I ask, ‘How do I know who I am?’ It is an oxymoron: who ‘I’ am, for whom how I know it.
In addition to the ‘enlightenment’ on an intellectual level, feminist thinking provides me more with regard to ‘empowerments’. That is, the moments of feeling feminism are like undertaking many small adventures of self-understanding and thus self-help, along a journey of vulnerability: at different points of that journey, meeting different people at different times in different places, subscribing to different subject positions. Suddenly, I feel feminism in a different way, to stand up against different enemies and shout aloud. It is, if I can name it in this way, the feminist ‘felt sense’, as Eugene Gendlin (1991; 1992) would call.
It is non-verbal, an impulsive moment that you encounter the incomprehensive need of the self. With or without a proper word to describe the situation, it is a starting point of looking for a strategy of self-empowerment. Feminism, in this light, offers the ground from which I have an access to liberation, even just temporarily – threaded through a line of flight from all the knowledges concerning how to think and behave as a proper man, an obedient son, an outstanding student, and a good citizen.
Asking questions about the ‘worlds’ in which I see my multiple ‘selves’, for a blogger like me, is never a mundane work; rather, it is an ongoing process of interrogating how this world sees me and how I respond: at home, on campus, from Taiwan to the UK, within and outside the ‘gay’ world. Many interactions, ruminated upon by myself, are symbolic in terms of managing self-impressions – in a dramatic or modest way (Goffman, 1956) – and putting up a good fight. Namely, at times I desire to learn how to describe the part of the world I dislike.
Meanwhile, I wonder how certain situations are created and whether there are others who feel the same unease and wrongfulness as I do. I fight, but I am also struggled with a fight without a name. I reach out for the ‘name’ that is worth all the exhaustion and passion. Thus, in this essay, I begin with four stories, respectively regarding my sexual orientation, body image, cultural background, and eventually, theoretical position, which implicitly guides my everyday performance and, much more explicitly, entails me accomplishing self-reflection as a becoming-feminist.
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