Chinese Models of Gender Crossing

This study considers three categories of transgender experience. Although a variety of terms for these categories are noted, for convenience they are labeled erxing (two-shaped) corresponding roughly to intersex, nü hua nan (FTM), and nan hua nü (MTF). The period of study is primarily the Ming (1368-1644 CE) and Qing (1644-1911 CE) eras, though earlier material is also noted. The material is structured in five sections: an introduction discussing the source materials, a discussion of each of the three categories, and a brief summary of conclusions. [Note: As usual, I’ll be skimming very briefly over the sections of less relevance to the Project.]

The introduction discusses the concept of cultural legibility and how cultural frameworks define how individual experiences and identities are understood and received. Chinese transgender narratives are scattered throughout a variety of document types, characterized as non-normal phenomena, though sometimes ones with significant—and occasionally positive—social meaning.

The chapter offers a review of transgender theory and how the field has tended to normalize western experiences and interpretations. But the frameworks that “associate a person with a particular gender are social and cultural decisions” meaning that theoretical structures developed within one culture cannot automatically be applied to similar phenomena in a different culture. The failure of transgender theory to engage with Chinese material is understandable, given that the majority of transgender scholars are unfamiliar with Chinese material and Chinese scholars have not established transgender studies as a field of interest. (Several previous publications on transgender and homosexual topics in China are noted. It isn’t clear to me whether they include material relevant to the Project, but also they’re in Chinese.)

The transgender narratives covered here include stories of physiological sex change, sex/gender embodiments outside the gender binary, and performative gender-crossing (with no spontaneous change of anatomy). More than one element may be present.

The documentary sources include official dynastic histories, medical treatises, legal casebooks that are considered to be factual, and the most prolific source, story collections of a genre named xiaoshuo which may sometimes be based on historic events but typically fictionalize them.

Stories about physiological transformations of MTF and FTM transgender individuals are not typically concerned with surgical interventions (with the exception of a few MTF examples involving voluntary castration) but rather treat the transformation as complete and miraculous, as evidenced by results such as bearing or siring children. In other cases, descriptions of a gradual change in genitalia may represent intersex conditions that became apparent at puberty. However with the exception of the xiaoshuo stories, such transformations typically are simply reported with no details or follow-up.

Transgender stories may be presented as part of a political narrative as an omen foretelling or reflecting other social events or changes. They may be used to illustrate medical principles regarding yin/yang balance. Or they may support a moral story about rewards for proper behavior. These themes are not exclusive, but do tend to related to specific transgender categories and specific historic eras. For example, erxing narratives were often presented as omens of civil disorder or commentary on perceived imbalances of power distribution.

Erxing narratives might concern probable intersex people or a person of one sex presenting as the other gender. Both cases might be presented as omens of political import, as previously mentioned. But erxing narratives also brought in an element of medical theory, in which disturbances or imbalances of qi caused such individuals to appear in the population. However early medical writings (I’m assuming “early” means before the Ming/Qing eras that are the primary focus) could take a more neutral view, describing erxing individuals as simply part of natural human variation.

MTF narratives vary greatly depending on era, sometimes representing homoerotic themes based on personal choice and desire. Relevant to this was a major sociological change between the relative sexual libertinism of the Ming era and an emphasis on sexual conservatism and morality in the Qing era. FTM narratives in the Qing era were most typically treated as morality tales in which virtuous parents who lack a son are rewarded by a daughter changing sex.

The proliferation of transgender narratives in xiaoshuo literature includes clusters of stories that elaborate on or fictionalize briefer references from earlier historic records. For example, the earliest reference to the figure Li Liangyu in 1568 simply notes that he changed from a man into a woman. However later stories about this character add details to provide context and explanation for how and why this could have happened.

I have not taken specific notes from the chapter on erxing.

The following material from the chapter on nan hua nü (MTF) stories add useful context. After presenting one of the elaborate versions of the Li Liangyu story, Xie notes that these stories treat what is believed to be real regarding the individual’s gender to be more important than likely physiological truth. If the story presents the character as becoming a woman, then other attributes such as menstruation are given as evidence, and only when these signs are apparent does the character adopt the social attributes of womanhood such as wearing female-coded clothing and engaging in foot-binding. (Note that this is only one of the versions of the story.) MTF narratives of the Ming era are dominated by variants of the Li Liangyu story, which is grounded in a heterosexual framework. He begins as a husband and father and ends as a wife and mother. But some elements of the stories point to concerns about the feminization of men, and in the late Ming era the focus of nan hua nü stories shifts to deliberate human choice within a context of homoeroticism and desire, rather than being a matter of divine intervention. A footnote references the practice of “sworn brotherhood” as a euphemism for male-male marriage in Fujian province. The couples were typically age-differentiated, with the older partner mentoring the younger regarding life plans and marriage (which was considered compatible with the arrangement).

The chapter on nü hua nan (FTM) presents a solid case that these narratives are utterly dominated by moralistic tales involving acquiring a son. Stories in this group were occasionally recorded before the Qing era, but primarily are associated with Qing moral literature. The primary driver in the stories is parental desire for a son, with a much weaker thread of daughters desiring to become a son to fulfill their parents’ needs. The change is primarily mediated by divine intervention as a reward for living a virtuous life. These changes are never depicted as unwanted or randomly spontaneous.

Xie notes that cases of 5-alpha-reductase deficiency could provide a biological basis for apparent cases of spontaneous FTM transformations. One of the Ming narratives could be consistent with this explanation as it describes a gradual transformation from (apparent) young woman to man around the age of puberty, discovered due to sexual relations with a different woman that resulted in pregnancy.

A handful of pre-Qing narratives are noted, with perhaps half of them being framed as political omens, and others reported with no explanation, whereas the Qing narratives are all construed as familial morality tales. The Qing narratives all occur within the storytelling genre, not in histories.

As a desire for sons existed throughout the studied period, why would these stories be clustered in the Qing era? The answer most likely is found in the moralistic turn of Qing society. The standard format for these narratives is a couple (or widowed parent) who has no son but has a daughter. A desire for a son is expressed, often involving direct application to a divine figure. Sometimes there is a looming marriage for the daughter which creates a deadline. The wish is granted (sometimes accompanied by an unexpected event such as a lightning strike, or a health crisis). The daughter becomes a son and there is much rejoicing. The son is accepted as male and is capable of functioning as one. Any original marriage plans are annulled (though the new son may be offered a wife from that same family). The transformation is specifically attributed to the virtuous lives of the parents, or more rarely to the filial piety of the child. There is no element of the daughter desiring a change for personal reasons (such as romantic attraction) but only for to fulfil a family lineage. (This contrasts significantly with MTF narratives that often are depicted as being driven by an existing homoerotic relationship that the transformation regularizes.)

Xie discusses changes in official sexual morality and an emphasis on filial piety in the Qing era that provided the motivation for framing such stories in moral terms. One part of this cultural shift was the spread of “morality books” that laid out an accounting system for good and bad deeds, to guide expectations for one’s karmic balance. This system of moral accounting was a framework for literary works of all types and themes, not only nü hua nan (FTM) stories. There is no parallel pattern for MTF narratives in the Qing era as such a transformation would not be viewed as a “reward.” (The article spends a lot of time explaining the rather obvious fact that under such a strongly patriarchal society, the relative value given to men and women affected the meaning given to gendered narratives.)

One narrative in this group uses the morality/getting-a-son structures to satirize “transactional virtue” in which a non-virtuous couple are promised a son if they reform their ways, but their attempts to weasel out of the bargain are reflected in delayed or incomplete gender achievement.

The dissertation concludes by discussing how all of the individuals in these transgender narratives are presented as “ethical objects” (i.e., people on which meaning is projected) rather than “ethical subjects” (those whose own actions and agency create meaning in their narratives).