SOAS Research Online

Abstract

Going beyond contemporary identitarian understandings of ‘transgender’ and the dominant Western ‘mid-century’ transsexual historiography, this thesis explores more diverse, fluid, and non-medicalised forms of male-to-female gender-crossing in Ming-Qing China from four perspectives: the materiality, spatiality, legality and temporality of trans-femininity. It demonstrates how normative gender boundaries were perceived and achieved in relation to material objects, space, law and time; and analyses how gender-crossing and resulting trans femininity could be realised, understood and regulated through the process of crossing these distinct forms of gender boundaries accordingly. Through this fourfold approach, this thesis argues that trans-femininity was inherent and indispensable to the gender and social system of Ming-Qing China. On the one hand, trans-femininity was embedded within, and directly derived from, existing gender norms, as it was practised, conceptualised and materialised based on orthodox forms and regulations of femininity and (failed) masculinity. On the other hand, normative gender also relied on trans-femininity, as the constant defining and policing of trans femininity helped enforce existing gender and social norms, including the heteropatriarchal order, Confucian female virtues, and related social hierarchies. Additionally, this thesis critically engages with the ‘homonormative’ tendency in the study of Ming-Qing Chinese queer history, by providing a trans re-reading of some of the ‘classic’ Ming-Qing homoerotic sources that have been frequently used to historicise male homosexuality. These include fictional works such as xiaoshuo (novels) and drama depicting male-male romance; biji (miscellaneous jottings) and yeshi (unofficial histories) by scholar-officials; and theatre-related sources including huapu (Flower Registers) documenting cross-dressing dan actors. To discover forms of trans-femininity beyond the same-sex framework, this thesis also examines various forms of gender-crossing documented in legal cases, newspapers and literary writings, and draws comparisons and similarities among the formations and perceptions of trans-femininity across these sources