RLGN1322 Introduction to Eastern Religions - respond to one of the 3 following prompts. It should be approximately 1500 words in length.It will be double spaced, 12 point font.It should follow a cons

what mothers know subliminally and cognitively, and which they retrieve and apply actively or otherwise in different situations, speaks to a unique insight, which is learned, acquired and embod- ied. the application of this contextual and conditional knowledge inuences and is inuenced by practices, philosophies, traditions,\ and institutions that individual mothers are connected to. moth- er knowledge, therefore, expands with compounding maternal experiences for each mother. thus, one must speak of particular mother knowledge as well as collective mother knowledge imbued with sentience, know-hows, praxes, and affectivity. mother knowledge, even the conceptual, is mostly experiential knowledge; what seems conventional is fortied for mothers by interaction with and understanding of the connections between specic individual(s) and the mother cosmos. different pairings of \ individuals and circumstances produce differently nuanced knowl- edges, which subsist in lifeworld(s) where the natural, spiritual, and social worlds interface. the mother and other(s) encounter this world in what achola pala refers to as different dimensions of motherhoo biological, spiritual, and social (8). to perform in any of these scopes demands a negotiation of familial, cultur - al, societal, political, and economic realities and structures. this is where the completeness of mother knowledge resides because Mothering at Intersections: Towards Centering Mother Knowledge This content downloaded from 137.122.8.73 on Sun, 13 Jun 2021 23:27:02 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 2 here, the particular intersecting identities and actualities of each mother come into play.Particularizing knowledge to specific mothers or mother groups allows us to transition into making generalizations as scholars and scholarship define mother knowledge and create credible frameworks around it for studying mother-related phenomena.

This is because, at once, the particularization of experiences and knowledges allows us to maintain individuals’ mother-wit and voices and, also, affords insight into how far the universalization of mother experiences can be functional or not. Expanded indi- viduation allows for critical generalization, distinguishing the “mother” beyond the person and allowing her to become repre- sentative of collective knowledge and memory. In this collection of academics writing motherhood, in centring mother knowledge, the autoethnographic eye is ever present. This book, by embracing the analysis of the self and the personal, with scholars theorizing while maintaining the voices of the mothers and sons, privileges mother knowledge. Such a focus invites the authors to be subjects writing themselves, or to centre the mothers when the authors are not personally located in the work. This academic production, therefore, endorses the personal narrative and personal political spaces as a requisite for analytical studies on motherhood, and this introduction, accordingly, foregrounds the contributors’ mother knowledge by primarily citing the chapters within the volume. Analysis that erases mother voices expunges the different complexities of motherhood and, worse still, reinforces partial- ity towards patriarchally constructed motherhood. Therefore, commitment to centring phenomenological mother knowledge, and not just knowledge about mothers, informed the selection of the contributions in this collection. The result was the birth (pun intended) of a book that presents diverse ways of knowing, being, and experiencing motherhood and sonhood. What this book responds to, therefore, is the dearth of scholarship on motherhood in relation to sonhood, which has been occasioned by the fact that conceptual and empirical research as well as cre- ative works tend to primarily contemplate parental interactions and influence in same-sex generational dyads: mother-daughter or father-son. The philosophy held by many that fathers raise sons and This content downloaded from 137.122.8.73 on Sun, 13 Jun 2021 23:27:02 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms BESI BRILLIAN MUHONJA 3 mothers raise daughters has compromised investment in research in this area. Although in many heterosexual and co-parenting circumstances both parents contribute to the raising of children from all genders, and many lone and lesbian mothers raise sons without male partners, society in general, consciously or not, still affiliates sons to fathers and stigmatizes particular closeness of sons to mothers, which spawns the pejorative label “mama’s boy.” Considerations of the mother-son relationship focus on subjects associated with the psychological effects of hyper-involved parenting by mothers of sons, attributing therein good and bad mothering of sons. These contemplations presume a uniform approach to the proper parenting of sons. Such a lens assumes gendered parental legacy and focalizes patriarchal estimations of motherhood. Questions raised by Andrea O’Reilly over ten years ago in “A Mom and Her Son: Thoughts on Feminist Mothering” remain pertinent today. She asks: “Have we in our negligence or disin- terest, academic and otherwise, given our sons up to patriarchy, done to them what we have spent our lives fighting against for ourselves and for our daughters?” (387-388). In this volume, she expands on this inquiry and offers in her chapter “In Black and White: African American and Anglo American Feminist Perspec- tives on Mothers and Sons” a historical overview and insights into the development and direction of research on mothers and sons.

Historicizing the theorizing of politics of mothering sons, O’Reilly \ also directly challenges gendered conceptualizations of parenting by presenting an astute critique of the contradictions in feminist mothering, which sometimes inadvertently erode the capacities of mothering and motherhood as sites of revolutionary agency. There is a clear need to de-gender the framing and study of parental legacy and to recognize that parental identities and praxes are not fixed. Fortunately, global shifts in legal, economic, social, and political realities in relation to certain demographic groups, including queer and lone-parenting populations, now unquestioningly demand inquiry into the mother-son dyad, which will inform contemporary fundamental conversations on gender, sexuality, femininity, and masculinity as well as on political and human rights. There is an increase in the number of non-traditional families, as more and more women choose This content downloaded from 137.122.8.73 on Sun, 13 Jun 2021 23:27:02 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms INTRODUCTION 4 lone parenting. At the same time, queer mothers are increasingly parenting alone or with partners. These developments challenge traditional conceptualizations not only of mother and son iden- tities but of family as well. An increase in the numbers of queer and lone parents translates into more families with the only active parental relationship being that of mother(s) to son(s). Gendered parental legacy, therefore, becomes a non-factor. Thus, the topics of mothers parenting sons and sons of mothers compel a range of questions urgently seeking researchers. In view of the foregoing, this delivery (pun intended) of an entire collection on this dyad centring motherhood without deliberately explaining the absence of fatherhood is in itself revolutionary.

This book is an assemblage of analytical, narrative, and creative renderings, which has been produced through multidisciplinary lenses from various mothers, motherhoods, sons, and sonhoods, across difference, and at intersections. The collection features a diversity of mothers—queer, co-parenting, migrant, cross-racial, single or lone, adoptive, differently abled, and attached. Within the chapters, patterns of shared mother experiences and knowledge emerge as do experiences particularized to collectives or individuals.

The authors examine the mother-son pairing as an occupational, relational, and emotional and/or spiritual concept. Firstly, they grapple with questions related to doing motherhood—the occupa- tional or practical facet of motherhood to sonhood. Secondly, the “being-ness” of motherhood is explored, which is the relational conceptualization of motherhood and its biological and social components. Thirdly, the concept of “emoting motherhood,” the emotional and expressive conceptualization of motherhood and sonhood, is also studied. the occupational : doing motherhood located within histories, geographies, cultures, polities, and econ- omies, motherwork often presents differently in raising daughters and sons. the occupational or practical dimension of motherhood is informed and transformed by group and individual conditions.

these settings act on not just the process of mothering but also on the development of the person who will become the mother, This content downloaded from 137.122.8.73 on Sun, 13 Jun 2021 23:27:02 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms BESI BRILLIAN MUHONJA 5 just as they act on the person who is the son. To appreciate these intricately layered stimuli, consider the idea of mothering a black son in Lagos, Nigeria, or as part of a liberal community or a more discriminatory one in U.S. The focus and amount of investment of these mothers parenting sons of the same age are altered in response to their location. More dynamics complicate the vista further, as exemplified in the chapters “Four Decades in the Story of a Transracial Mother-Son Relationship” by Martha Satz, and “A Boy Named Finn” by Quincie Melville on mothering adopted sons cross-racially. Doing motherhood, therefore, is not controlled entirely by mothers, and mother knowledge allows us access to the other not so obvious influences to their motherwork. This book includes various chapters on mothering black sons, mothering cross-racially, and queer parenting, which are educative on the non-existence even within one identity group of a panacea to proper doing of motherhood. Further illustration is availed by the two chapters, “Special Needs” by Laurie Kruk, and “Disability and the Price of Myths about Mothering,” by Pamela Courtenay in relation to parenting differently abled sons or parenting while differently abled. Not just the type of challenge but also cultural, economic and social locations of the mother-son pair matter. Par - enting a child with challenges yet with resources is different than parenting without means or support. Through an interlacing of analytical, heuristic, and experiential expositions within texts and among the texts, this volume presents the layers of complexity at- tached to different mothers parenting a diversity of sons, resulting in an interaction of thoughts, biases, subjectivities, and familiarities\ on motherwork that feeds the mother-son relationship. the relational : being mother , being son the practical aspect of mothering a son is preceded by the denition of a relationship to a son. motherwork is responsibility dened by a relationship. this relationship may be assured biologically, legally or, in some societies, socially and spiritually. the identities mother of a son and son of a mother exist in relation to and are dependent on one another. this is the case whichever form of motherhood one considers, even with “othermothering” as in toni king’s ru- This content downloaded from 137.122.8.73 on Sun, 13 Jun 2021 23:27:02 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms INTRODUCTION 6 mination on the relationship between black female professors and white male students in the chapter, “They Don’t Know They are my sons: a black female professor speaks of teaching across race. A Ritual of Reconciliation.” However, there are instances wherein the naming of the relationship obfuscates the characteri- zation of wrongly assigned, fluid, unfixed, or contested identities,\ as with the parenting of transgender sons or daughters engaged by Christian Potter in the chapter “Queering Confucius: Mothers and Transgender Sons in Contemporary China,” and Rutkowski in “It’s a… Penis!; Or the Epistemology of the Ultrasound.” This brings to fore philosophical questions that highlight the limitations of purely biological definitions of the relationship, such as who is a son or who is a mother? As stated earlier, in certain cultures, a mother is recognized primarily through relationships rooted in biology or legality while in others, social and spiritual motherhoods are also prized. Recognition of the socially constructed nature of gender must necessarily open the door to the question about the gender of the identity “mother.” In so far as this book questions the gendering of parental legacy, it joins the debate by scholars like Oyeronke Oyewumi who question the feminization of motherhood or masculinization of fatherhood beyond biology. Contributing to the multifarious nature of these complex identities and relationships is the fact that the two identities are enveloped in other identities, including sexual identities, diverse masculinities \ and femininities, racialized and ethnic identities, and role-focused identities. The mother-son dyad also interrelates with extended family and community structures, which may involve blended families, divorce, remarriage, adoption, fostering, stepmothering, othermothering, and other bonded or fragmented family scenarios.

The functioning of the relationship is not immune to these exter - nal pressures. This is discernible in the performance of sonhoods in different familial locations as captured in Helena Wahlström’s “Sons Write Mothers in Contemporary Swedish Literature: Mustafa Can’s Close to the Days and Erik Wijk’s Only the Right Words,” Nicole L. Willey’s “Raising Men: My Two Boys, Co-Parenting, and the Fight against Culture,” and Wanda Thomas Bernard’s “Life Lessons from My Mother: Reflections of An Adult Son.” The mother-son relationship, thus, has to be understood as part This content downloaded from 137.122.8.73 on Sun, 13 Jun 2021 23:27:02 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms BESI BRILLIAN MUHONJA 7 of other structures and relationships, and mother knowledge ten- ders insight into the nature of different mother-son relationships and connections with each other and to others. The chapters of this text define the appellations “mother” and “son” as paired in distinctive relationships, which demonstrate unique rituals of motherhood and sonhood informed racially, geographically, politically, socially, religiously, ethnically, and even economically.

The definition and acknowledgement of a mother-son relationship axiomatically signals a reality imbued with emotions, so this vol- ume’s contributing authors also tease out the feeling and emoting of motherhood and sonhood.

the emotional : feeling and expressing motherhood as a relationship, the mother-son pairing presents spiritual and emotional constituents and practices. pala captures this aspect of the mother cosmos when she states that the spiritual dimension of motherhood “expands the scope of motherhood to include the deeper, psychosocial aspect of nurturing and care” (9). pamela courtenay in the chapter “disability and the price of myths about mothering” details the intricate understanding of a human being that can come with being his or her primary caregiver. this mater - nal or paternal understanding is not medical expertise. it is a deeply intuitive form of knowledge loaded with years of daily minute observations and dedicated hypothesis testing. it can be an invaluable aid to medical diagnosis.

(this volume) the nature of nurturing and care demanded as well as the breadth and depth of representations of psychosocial expression is varied for different mothers and sons. consider the following mothers, all represented in this book: mothers and sons with illness; moth- ers of “problem” sons; mothers of black sons; mothers of sons outside their own race; mothers of queer sons and daughters; mothers of biracial sons; mothers of differently abled sons; mothers who work outside the home; poor mothers of sons; and feminist This content downloaded from 137.122.8.73 on Sun, 13 Jun 2021 23:27:02 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms INTRODUCTION 8 mothers. The demands of emotional presence and performance are altered by circumstance. Essentializing mother emotions as intrinsic and universal in nature whitewashes these intricacies.

It also delegitimizes maternal non-practical experiences as areas worthy of study. The implicit claim is that one need not talk about mother emotions because they are inherently embedded in the “mother” label and identity. With no further examination of the nature and variety of emotions, this assumption obliterates the nuances and sophistications of mother knowledge in relation to emotions and, in fact, contributes to the myth of “good” and “bad” mothers\ as well as to the myth of natural motherhood. This volume centres mother emotions as part of mother knowledge and chronicles emotions that mothers are often too afraid to share for fear of being considered failures. Indeed, this bold exposition of a range of simple, complex, and pure emotions by mostly women within the academy, where motherhood regularly attracts penalty, is a political statement. Furthermore, this engagement of emotions confronts the reality that because of the misplaced notion that mothers should self-sacrifice in the service and care of others, they habitually avoid talking about their own emotions and feelings. The study of emotions takes on even greater significance when it comes to raising sons. As boys grow older and boy-codes and bro-codes come into play, emotional expressiveness faces chal- lenges and can be strongly contested by the son and society. The language and emotional rituals of mothering sons, thus, require added specificity in practice—and in scholarship as well. Emotions \ and parenting must be engaged from two angles in scholarship: the emotional expression one assumes is inherent in the mother-son relationship, and the idea of parenting out of emotions occasioned by the aforementioned circumstances and societal structures. Take the example of mothers of queer or black sons who in certain environments or countries, consciously or not, parent with or out of fear. Consider, too, lesbian mothers or lone-female parents who perform with added scrutiny because they are parenting sons. This ever-present fear of not doing enough is captured in the chapters “But I Am A Feminist!: Masculinity, Privilege, and Mothering” by Dara Silberstein, and “Mamas’ Boy: Queer Women Raising a This content downloaded from 137.122.8.73 on Sun, 13 Jun 2021 23:27:02 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms BESI BRILLIAN MUHONJA 9 Cohort of Men” by Sara Graefe. Of importance, too, are mothers of sons with disabilities, who fear for the survival of their children or about how their children will cope. Most mothers confront the anxiety attached to the question of whether they have prepared their sons enough for the larg- er world. For some mothers, however, emotionally informed parenting is a necessary part of childrearing. These emotional reckonings necessitate extra psychological and practical mother - work. Statements such as “I don’t want him to go through what I did” or “I don’t want him to be another Trayvon Martin” 1 are commonplace among this set of mothers. Also on this spec- trum, for example with migrant mothers apprehensive for their progeny, are those who desire that their children would have conditions and experiences similar to their own. Ogunyankin in the chapter “Parenting Cross-Culturally: Migritude and the Contradictions of Black Masculinity” articulates her wish that her Nigerian-Canadian son would share her understanding of blackness. Such an understanding would erase the necessity for “the talk,” illustrated by Davis et al. in the chapter “Bla\ ck Mother-Son Relationships in the Age of Ferguson,” and Renata Ferdinand in “Letters to My Son,” which mothers of black sons in North America assume in a way that mothers in her country of origin do not. Ogunyankin expounds: “As first generation immigrants, my partner and I are acutely aware of the ways in which we became black in Canada…. Our son … will not have a conscious awareness of how he became black, because to him, his blackness would seem natural” (this volume). Indisputably, emotional and psychological demands for certain groups magnify the convolution surrounding mothering sons.

The mother-son relationship is a practice from childhood to manhood and beyond, and so the raising of boys to men is a key project of mothering sons. For some, this is an abstract concept understood unaffectedly as raising anatomically male children into socially acceptable men who perform as “real men,” patri- archally defined, should. For others, the connotation is literal.

Reflect on Toya Graham, the fifteen-minute “mother of the year” from Baltimore. On April 28, 2015, Graham became a polarizing figure globally, at once extolled and vilified for striking her son, This content downloaded from 137.122.8.73 on Sun, 13 Jun 2021 23:27:02 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms INTRODUCTION 10 who had joined protestors following the death of Freddie Gray.

Gray, a twenty-five-year-old African American man, passed away after sustaining spinal and neck injuries while in police custody.

Graham, as she elaborated on her “disciplinary action,” was a mother trying to protect her son. For mothers of sons susceptible to potentially fatal discriminatory handling, their children’s survival to adulthood is a real and ever-present fear. As anthropologist Mieka Brand-Polanco facilely states, “It is not the bad guys who end up in jail, but the vulnerable ones” (Personal exchange).

The profundity of this observation is demonstrated in Nontsasa Nako’s chapter “(Re)calling Sons into Action: Mothers before the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission” as well as in Besi Brillian Muhonja’s chapter “Our Sons;” both capture the inflexible nature of certain societies’ framing of the gaze on the bodies of black males. If societal expectations of manhood inform the parenting of sons, how does one raise a son of and for whom the society has little expectation and support for becoming that very man society desires? For parents of black, queer, differently abled sons, and those from other vulnerable groups who are framed by the larger society in ways that erase them or seek to redirect them, figuring this out presents added emotional responsibilities. In response to or against patriarchally constructed masculinities, mothers acclimate their expectations for the children to those of society by either adapting or contesting them. Whichever route the mother takes, for mothers of vulnerable sons, this requires extra emotional and spiritual lifting because expectations of mothering do not change. Different cultures have expectations of sons, but in practice, these expectations in many cultures seem to extend only to the eldest son. In contrast, expectations on the mother in relation to the “proper” upbringing of sons across cultures appear\ to stay constant. Furthermore, the expectations on the eldest son often come with privileges, such as inheritance and patriarchal authority, which is not necessarily always the case with mother - hood. For mothers in patriarchal societies, raising a good son, and sometimes just raising a son at all, is expected to be reward enough. To understand this, one must separate wifehood and moth- erhood. Many legal rights a woman enjoys as part of a marriage This content downloaded from 137.122.8.73 on Sun, 13 Jun 2021 23:27:02 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms BESI BRILLIAN MUHONJA 11 are attached to their wifehood, not motherhood. Motherhood is often considered its own reward. mothers discourse (with (each ) other (s)) the struggle with raising a son who ts society’s denition of man- hood emerges constantly in this volume with mothers seeking to raise feminist sons who are expected to be actors in a world that denes masculinity in starkly different terms than the mothers do.

the desired result for these mothers, in the face of social constructs supporting multiple jeopardies for many, is to raise feminist in- dependent son good men. the mothers and the authors reect on whether such an approach “others” their sons or curtails them from following their own path. although raising feminist sons has historically been a part of many cultures, the deliberations by these authors present it as still a contentious space. yet new avenues of achieving and enacting this relationship inspire new opportunities and approaches to performing motherhood and sonhood as well as new ways to studying this dyad. the centring of mother knowledge, which this collection offers, is a great starting point in studying the \ complexities of mother-son relationships. the contributors to this volume, from a plethora of perspectives, illustrate how to do so.the editors have resisted the urge to group the chapters into thematic sections, estimating that such an approach would, in fact, contribute to de-centring mother knowledge. sectioning the chapters would foreground different themes, philosophical, or theoretical areas at the expense of mother knowledge and would sever interactions and symbiosis among the diverse chapters and mother voices. instead, interweaving analytical, creative ctional, and creative non-ctional chapters on an assortment of topics and identities offers the reader the opportunity to imagine the chapters as existing in dialogue with one another across histori- cal, geographical, economic, cultural, and political spaces. this arrangement offers the advantage of showcasing the array of multidisciplinary philosophies, theories, frameworks, and formats employed while, at the same time, freeing readers to come up with their own connections regarding whether and how the chapters, or the experiences therein, speak to one another. moreover, such This content downloaded from 137.122.8.73 on Sun, 13 Jun 2021 23:27:02 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms INTRODUCTION 12 an approach prevents categorization and labels, and addresses the challenge of having academic discourse in formats that do not always dichotomize demographic groups, or centre some while “othering” others. Therefore, what might appear as a disconnect between neighbouring chapters, the editors see as a strength of the volume. With this approach, which also allows for the mother-wit cap- tured in each chapter to be recognized autonomously, this volume contends that motherhood studies demands spaces in which dif- ferent mother voices and narratives across the globe can speak to one another. Centring mother knowledge allows for the amplifying of mother voices and mother-wit, for which academics need to create platforms for dissemination. The majority of the chapters in this book have the authors as subjects, as they chronicle and audit their own (her)stories, which forces readers to consider the question of how what mothers know affect their own and others’ ways of knowing and being. The resounding answer by academ- ics who responded to the call for papers for this collection with mostly personal reflective essays on motherhood, mothering and motherwork reveals the depth and breadth of experiences that remain unexplored. It demonstrates that scholars are starved for opportunities to deliver these accounts in styles that maintain their voices and foreground the personal space and politics. Summer Cunningham persuasively sums this up in “‘Mom’s School’ by Ben: An Epistemology of Falling Objects”: “Although, it is true, I\ do love those big books with big words and big ideas. Yet when I think about what it is I love about theory and ideas, it is the way they provide us with the ability to see the world anew through other perspectives: to know differently” (this volume). She adds of the comic produced by her son, and which is central to her chapter, Benjamin’s comic, “Mom’s School,” can be read as a cri- tique of an academic institution that values only certain kinds of knowledge; a reminder that there are other ways of knowing that matter. The knowledge I have gained as a result of being a mother to this child matters…. Likewise, other mothers bring different ways of knowing to academic contexts; their knowledge matters as well. (this volume) This content downloaded from 137.122.8.73 on Sun, 13 Jun 2021 23:27:02 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms BESI BRILLIAN MUHONJA 13 This volume contributes to the project of defining new languages, perspectives and approaches for the study of mothers and sons, and mother phenomena in general. note 1trayvon martin was a seventeen-year-old african american boy who in sanford, florida, on february 26, 2012, on a trip from a local convenience store to buy a drink and candy, was fatally shot by george Zimmerman, a community watch member. Zimmer - man was charged and acquitted of second-degree murder and of manslaughter. works cited brand-polanco, mieka. personal exchange. 9 nov. 2015.

o’reilly, andrea. “a mom and her son: thoughts on feminist mothering.” Mother Outlaws: Theories and Practices of Em- powered Mothering. Ed. Andrea O’Reilly. Toronto: Women’s Press, 2004. 387-400. Print.

Oyewumi, Oyeronke. What Gender is Motherhood?: Changing Yoru’ba’ Ideals of Power, Procreation, and Identity in the Age of Modernity. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. Print.

Pala, Achola. “Dimensions of African Motherhood.” JENdA: A Journal of Culture and African Women Studies. 0.23 (2013):

8-10. Online. Web. 22 Jun. 2015. This content downloaded from 137.122.8.73 on Sun, 13 Jun 2021 23:27:02 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms INTRODUCTION Demeter Press Chapter Title: Queering Confucius: Mothers and Transgender Sons in Contemporary China Chapter Author(syf & + 5 , 6 7 , $ 1 3 2 7 7 ( R Book Title: Mothers and Sons Book Subtitle: Centering Mother Knowledge Book Editor(syf % H V L % U L O O L D Q 0 X K R Q M D : D Q G D 7 K R P D V % H U Q D U d Published by: Demeter Press. (2016yf Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1rrd8d5.18 JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms Demeter Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Mothers and Sons This content downloaded from 137.122.8.73 on Sun, 13 Jun 2021 23:26:13 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 209 13. Queering Confucius christian potter T he people ’s daily , the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party, has covered issues surrounding transgen- der men and women in China since as early as 1957. Most recently, Chinese media coverage of transgender men and women has increased on social media, where Chinese netizens engage with each other over issues of gender, sexuality, and politics. Coverage tends to focus on Chinese transgender 1 women who were assigned male at birth, perhaps partially due to the international fame of dancer Jin Xing (金星), widely regarded as one of the first Chinese openly transgender women to permanently transition through sex reassignment surgery. Over the last few years, responses from both state and social media on issues of transgender citizens have moved away from warnings of moral decay and fear of deviants towards support and tolerance. In part, this is due to the Ministry of Public Safe- ty’s announcement in 2000 that Chinese citizens had the right to choose their own gender. Shortly afterwards, in 2001, The Chinese Classification of Mental Disorders “removed the reference of homosexuality—an umbrella term for sexual “deviants,” includ- ing transgenders—as a psychotic [sic] disorder” (Zhang 191). In 2009, new guidelines for medical regulations were implemented that restricted changes of gender on official identification and documents, which requires gender reassignment surgery. Among the regulations and restrictions are various steps to be taken and checkpoints to be passed: registering with the police, openly living as the gender with which they identify for a few years, being single Mothers and Transgender Sons in Contemporary China This content downloaded from 137.122.8.73 on Sun, 13 Jun 2021 23:26:13 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 210 and over twenty, having no criminal record, undergoing therapy, and informing their parents. The 2010 report on China from the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission criti- cized these new regulations, stating that “in certain aspects these rules fail to meet international standards on individual autonomy and privacy” (Levine).The importance of transnational movements advocating trans- gender awareness, tolerance, and rights is indisputable, even while an “international standard” on individual autonomy and privacy is debatable. Susan Stryker warns of the “ways in which transgen- der activism and advocacy themselves can become complicit with the globalizing logic of neoliberalism” (290). It is important to not isolate gender and transgender identities from local cultural pressures and expectations of gendered roles. Within Chinese culture, these gendered pressures and expectations are often tied to familial roles, relationships, and filial piety. Whether one chooses to meet these expectations or not, there are real conse- quences for the individuals and families involved. Questions of filial piety and the heteronormative roles of sons and daughters have always been complex and dynamic throughout Chinese history. Transgender sons and daughters can further complicate traditional norms and family values. Examining both Chinese state-owned media coverage and corporate-owned social media can provide insight into how transgender discourse is framed and negotiated, especially around the private and highly contested realms of the family. This chapter is exploratory in nature. Previous scholarship on mother-son relationships in China has been limited at best, often regulated to a few pages in works on Chinese kinship. 2 Likewise, although scholarship of transgender studies in North America is well established, if not flourishing, the field of Chines\ e transgender studies is nascent. To the best of my knowledge, the intersection where mother-son relationships meet transgender men is virtually uncharted terrain. As such, this chapter is nec- essarily exploratory. First, I will look at both past and present norms of mother-son relationships before turning to media cov- erage of transgender men in China. I then offer an analysis of a widely circulated article published in 2008, which details the life This content downloaded from 137.122.8.73 on Sun, 13 Jun 2021 23:26:13 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms CHRISTIAN POTTER 211 of a Chinese transgender man as he seeks his mother’s consent for sex reassignment surgery. I look to respond to a number of questions. How is the mother-son relationship exemplified or challenged by transgender men? To what extent and what role, if any, does the mother-son relationship play in media coverage of transgender men? sons , save your mothers ! in early 2015, china’s ministry of justice administered their na- tional judicial examination for prospective lawyers and judges.

when the ofcial answers were published on september 24, one question in particular garnered the attention of chinese netizens as well as responses from both domestic and international media:

“your girlfriend and your mom are both in a burning building. if you could only save one, which one do you choose?” the ofcial answer? you are obligated to save your mother. saving your girl- friend rst, resulting in your mother’s death, is to commit a crime of non-action (dong).while the legal and social implications surrounding this question and its sanctioned answe issues concerning crimes of non-ac- tion, lial duty, and duty as a citize are important, i am more interested in the question itself. the exam question is, essentially, a variation on a classic conundrum posed to men in china. your wife and your mother both fall into a river; whom do you save rst? the question is designed to pit lial piety against romantic\ love, challenging men to put one before the other. such a position reects the tension between classical teachings of confucian phi- losophy, which stressed lial piety, and more recent developments over the last seventy years, which value spousal choice, romantic love, and the conjugal unit. as a bbc correspondent writes, “no-one on the chinese inter - net appears to address the sexist nature of the question. should a woman save her father or her boyfriend rst (hatton). al- though it is perhaps symptomatic of china’s struggles for women’s equality under the shadow of confucian patrilineal norms, the fact that the question is gendered may be less important than the cultural value and importance attached to a son’s relationship This content downloaded from 137.122.8.73 on Sun, 13 Jun 2021 23:26:13 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms QUEERING CONFUCIUS 212 with his mother. This is not to say that there is no value placed on father-daughter relationships in China but simply to highlight the assumed normativity of a powerful bond between mother and son. Whether it is used to tease a young man about his new girlfriend or to illustrate an example of a crime of non-action, the special relationship between a son and his mother is significant in contemporary Chinese culture.For most anthropologists, the mother-son relationship in Chinese culture is best understood in terms of security and traditional patrilineal family and marriage customs. Sons are traditionally expected to take care of their parents as they age, but for mothers, the security that a filial son can bring matters far more than it does to fathers. As Margery Wolf explains, a male grows up in a community learning everything about the people and physical environment around him. People outside of his family are considered outsiders, not to mention those who live outside the community (42). For a new wife and mother who has left her natal family and “married in” to her new family, that of her husband, there is no security or familiarity. She has a new mother-in-law and sisters-in-law to compete with for authority and attention, and giving birth to a son secures her a position of importance in the family. The son becomes insulation against the, sometimes, dangerous terrain of marrying into and moving in with an entirely new family. In turn, the mother nurtures and protects the son, sometimes even to the extent of sacrificing her own safety and position. These sacrifices, however, are not in vain and not without the expectation of a return on the emotional investment. Often, the greater the sacrifice, the closer the bond between mother and son becomes. The mother-son relationship is one of affection, security, and nourishment, especially when contrasted with the father-son relationship, which is one of distance, authority, and respect. For the father, a son may repre- sent the continuation of the family, but for the mother, her son represents emotional security and reprieve from her in-laws as he grows up and financial security as she ages. Wolf contrasts a Chinese father’s desire for respect and obedience at the cost of admiration and affection with a Chinese mother’s dependence on “ties of affection and gratitude that she weaves in the years This content downloaded from 137.122.8.73 on Sun, 13 Jun 2021 23:26:13 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms CHRISTIAN POTTER 213 of her son’s childhood,” and finds that “Chinese culture extracts from a son the obligation of supporting his mother” (43). William Jankowiak argues that even though economic, social, and legal reforms over the last forty years have challenged traditional parent-child relationships, mothers still “exercise tremendous psy- chological control over their offspring” and that the mother-child bond “is sustained in large part through a Chinese tradition that legitimizes and promotes an intense lifelong emotional bond be- tween mother and child” (374-375). Although Jankowiak writes about mother-child relationships, it should be noted that when he discusses his data, the sex of his informants is overwhelming male, which indicates that most are speaking about mother-son relationships. Examples of the deep connection between mother and son are found in Chinese literature. Paul Chao points to stories from both Romance of the Three Kingdoms (Sanguo Yanyi 三国演义) and Water Margin (Shui Hu Zhuan 水) that illustrate the depth of a mother’s sacrifices and affection as well as the obligation of the son (85-86). Most of these stories serve to exemplify Confucian filial piety, but when it comes to mother-son relationships, the portrayal of a son’s struggle to reunite with his mother or to provide for her is crucial. The impact of constructing the narrative of mother-son relationships through depictions of overcoming disasters or obsta- cles has lasted to this day, with news headlines featuring stories of a mother’s great sacrifice for her son or of a son’s struggle to find his mother. A search through news headlines over the last several years reveals hundreds of such reports. “Chinese Mother Forgoes Surgery to Save Money for Sick Son’s Treatment” is a story about a mother who refuses to undergo a necessary surgery in order to pay her son’s hospital bills (Jun). “Trek of a Thousand Villages” tells of a son’s journey of seventeen years to find his long-lost mother (Chen). Perhaps most famously in recent news is the story of a mother who saved her son even as she was swallowed alive by a faulty escalator (Zeng). Certainly, there are other factors at play that draw the public’s attention to these stories—heroic acts, self-sacrifice, and long-lost reunions over time and space—but more often than not, it is the mother-son relationship that lends these reports even more pathos. This content downloaded from 137.122.8.73 on Sun, 13 Jun 2021 23:26:13 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms QUEERING CONFUCIUS 214 the “good transsexual ” in the chinese media Zhang qingfei divides media representations of transgender into three distinct stages beginning from 1949. the rst stage, suppres- sion of transgenderism, lasted from the founding of the people’s republic of china in 1949 until 1976. during this suppression stage, transgender was usually represented by cross-dressing and tied to anti-revolutionary behaviour and betrayal of one’s country.

very few articles were published that even touched on cross-dress- ing, with the exception of ction (Zhang). the second stage, the pathologization of transgenderism, lasted from 1978 to 2000 and centered on the medical and moral ques- tions of it. legalization of transgenderism, the third stage, started with the declassication of homosexuality and other “deviant” sexualities, including transgenderism, as a psychiatric disorder.

in 2003, a new regulation on marriage administration passed, which legally recognized transgender marriages that reected gender changes on identication cards after gender reassignment surgery (Zhang). Zhang observes that “as transgenders hold a stronger conform- ing desire to gender binaries and heterosexuality, their issues are comparatively easier to handle on both moral and legal sides. in line with their expectation, the government of china has helped transgenders to be accommodated into gender binaries” (193).

conforming to heterosexual norms of marriage and gender binaries will secure legal recognition, thus resulting in what Zhang terms a “normalization of transgenderism.” this normalization often frames the discourse on transgender citizens in articles published in the People’s Daily, as I will illustrate later. The significance of this normalization cannot be understated.

In her article “Constructing the ‘Good Transsexual’: Christine Jorgenson, Whiteness, and Heternormativity in the Mid-Twen- tieth Century Press,” Emily Skidmore examines the construction of popular discourses of “transsexual” through American main- stream media, and finds that “white transwomen were able to articulate transsexuality as an acceptable subject position through an embodiment of the norms of white womanhood, most notably domesticity, respectability, and heterosexuality” (271). This content downloaded from 137.122.8.73 on Sun, 13 Jun 2021 23:26:13 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms CHRISTIAN POTTER 215 Chinese media, and in particular the People’s Daily, play an active role in the formation of China’s own “good transsexual.” Chinese transsexual women who have undergone sex reassignment surgery are married and model themselves after Chinese standards of feminine beauty and ideals demarcate “acceptable” transsexu- ality, often at the expense of subjugating other bodies. Popular narratives of transgenderism in the Chinese media tend to revolve around this recognized, legal, and heteronormative construct of a transgender body. If one desires to conform to this construction of transgenderism one of the obstacles to overcome is not only the sex reassignment surgery but, more importantly, the above-mentioned new regulations overseeing sex reassignment surgery, which includes parental notification and/or consent. In many ways, China’s “good transsexual” appears similar to that constructed by American mainstream media but with an added dimension of filial piety under the auspices of parental consent.

How is this consent constructed by the media? How does the mother-son narrative come into play, if at all, in media discourse of transgender men?

mothers and transgender sons in the chinese media “thirty-eight-year-old woman, for love, wants to become a man:

seventy-year-old mother gladly consents” 3 (hereafter “woman, for love”) reads an eye-grabbing headline rst published in the Qilu Evening News. Quickly picked up by other media outlets, the story circulated in both print and online editions in early 2008, just as the new regulations concerning sex reassignment surgery were being discussed. The unnamed journalist tells the story of Lady Jia, a thirty-eight-year-old woman who was assigned female at birth but has always identified as a male, and her struggle to marry the woman she loves. 4 The headline appeals to norms of mother-son relationships by incorporating two of the classic themes discussed earlier: the strug- gles a son endures and the acceptance and affection of a mother.

The fact that it is a woman who wants to become a man makes the headline all the more compelling. The obstacles and hardships the woman undergoes on her journey to become a man reinforce This content downloaded from 137.122.8.73 on Sun, 13 Jun 2021 23:26:13 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms QUEERING CONFUCIUS 216 the sense that her role as daughter is diminished and overshad- owed by the narrative of the son who will do anything to keep the bond with his mother. However, romantic love is being posited as the reason for desiring a gender change. Romantic love and filial piety are not mutually exclusive, but at times, romantic love can be in direct conflict with filial piety. If one understands a mother’s acceptance of and affection for her son as serving partially as a bulwark against the authority and distance prescribed by the form of filial piety between father and son, then even desiring to change genders for the sake of romantic love folds neatly into the nar- ratives of mother-son relationships. For the son, it is the struggle with rigid authority and expectations that sends him seeking the understanding and nurturing mother. For the mother, consent and approval can go a long way towards ensuring more security in her old age. Lady Jia may not yet be recognized as a man legally, but her actions in concert with her mother’s approval say otherwise and suggest a mother-son narrative that is only betrayed by the use of female pronouns. Throughout the article, Lady Jia is referred to using the pronoun for female, 她 (ta), despite the fact that it is clear Lady Jia has been living as a man for many years. Whether intentional on the part of the journalist or not, the use of the female pronoun throughout the article reinforces a construction of gender identity as valid only when legally recognized. On the other hand, the use of the female pronoun could be an active refusal to respect transgender self-identification, or the journalist might simply be unaware. No matter the reason, the use of both “Lady Jia” and the female pro- noun is noteworthy, considering that the story describes in detail Lady Jia’s desire to have her gender legally changed to male. As the story unfolds, the reader learns of the struggle and challenges that Lady Jia is willing to overcome to become legally identified as male by the state and, in turn, to legally marry her long-time girlfriend:

When we started talking about her current girlfriend, Xiao Di, Lady Jia’s mood improved greatly. “On March 16 th, 1994, at 3:30 p.m. we met when she came to the village and performed the flower-drum opera. After just a little while, I spent forever just riding on my motorbike cheering This content downloaded from 137.122.8.73 on Sun, 13 Jun 2021 23:26:13 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms CHRISTIAN POTTER 217 for her.” Since then, the two of them went everywhere as a couple, and everyone around them accepted it. Now, however, Lady Jia’s heart is miserable: “We don’t have a marriage certificate, so it seems like we don’t belong. If I had a man’s body, it’d be fine.” (“Woman, For Love”) As Lady Jia admits, she went everywhere with her girlfriend, Xiao Di, and everyone around them accepted their relationship.

Still, she felt that they did not belong. Lady Jia’s narrative places herself as a deviant, who is unable to feel comfortable until recog- nized by the state in the same fashion as heteronormative married couples. Undergoing sex reassignment surgery for the sake of con- tinuity between her biological sex and her self-identified gender is not the goal. The goal is a marriage certificate and conformity to heteronormative lifestyle. After all the struggle with gender, con- formity, finances, love, and bureaucracy, in the end, Lady Jia found acceptance and support exactly where a son could expect it the most: from his mother. This acceptance, in turn, helps to solidify a traditional and important relationship in Chinese culture, that of the filial son and the supportive mother, which, perhaps, plays a role in the “normalization of transgenderism” in the Chinese media and is similar with conformity to heteronormative marriages and gender binaries. What follows are a few paragraphs detailing how Lady Jia, accompanied by the journalist, contacted a plastic surgeon who offered to perform the sex reassignment surgery for free after hearing Lady Jia’s story. Returning to her hometown to get the necessary documents and evidence, Lady Jia and the journalist came to un- derstand the regulations surrounding sex reassignment surgery.

Though not addressed in the article, the differences between the obstacles Lady Jia faced in 1990 and 2008 were vast. In 1990, the financial cost of the operation forced Lady Jia, in despair, to break up with her first girlfriend and give up her dream of becoming a man. The 2008 requirements, though complex and bureaucratic, left her determined this time to pursue the surgery. Framed this way, the story presents the illusion that financial burdens aside, regulations and requirements prior to undergoing sex reassignment surgery are acceptable and negligible compared to the money in- This content downloaded from 137.122.8.73 on Sun, 13 Jun 2021 23:26:13 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms QUEERING CONFUCIUS 218 volved. Lady Jia, upon hearing that she could not begin the process until she had consent from her family, declared, “I have lived in darkness pointlessly for over 30 years; now when I finally have a little light, I cannot let it slip away” (“Woman, For Love”).The journalist, still a party to Lady Jia’s determined final push towards a new life as a man, writes about Lady Jia’s meeting with her mother:

Soon after, I followed Lady Jia to her mother’s home. When the already seventy-year-old mother heard that a hospital in the province’s capital could perform the operation for free for her daughter, she couldn’t help letting a little smile show. “Ever since she was little, she was just like a boy, and now her younger brother has uremia, if she can become a man then she’ll be able to make a little money, and also her desires will be fulfilled.” And with that, she placed her thumbprint on the family consent papers. (“Woman, For Love”) Lady Jia’s mother’s reaction to her daughter’s plea for consent to become a man can be understood as the mother recognizing that a new relationship will be formed when her daughter transitions to a man. Her acceptance is contingent on the understanding that her son will take care of her, as is his obligation. Drawing a con- nection between Lady Jia’s future transition and her other son’s uremia, a disease that could lead to kidney failure, the mother all but explicitly states that her security is what is at risk. Her affectio\ n, understanding, and nurturing of Lady Jia when she was little and “just like a boy” is proven when she consents to Lady Jia’s surgery. conclusion the mother-son relationship, though never explicitly stated, ap- pears to play a role in both prescribing gender identities and in the formation of the “good transsexual” discourse, in the words of skidmore. for better or worse, this chapter raises more questions than answers. to what extent the mother-son relationship is prin- cipal or whether lial piety itself plays a larger and more central This content downloaded from 137.122.8.73 on Sun, 13 Jun 2021 23:26:13 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms CHRISTIAN POTTER 219 role is an important question. Also necessary is an examination of what the link between legal marriage and parental consent for transgender men and women in China can reveal about the relation- ship between law, filial piety, and gender and/or sexuality. Further research in this area is needed to enrich our understanding of gender in contemporary China. I am working under the assumption that media bias towards transgender women inhibits deeper research into this area. If no media bias exists, what contributes to the fact that there are few articles on transgender men that mention their mothers? It is important to explore whether other transgender men’s stories and relationships with their mothers mirror those found in the narratives of a son’s transition to a daughter. The fact that parental consent is part of the process of obtaining legal gender identity change must affect dynamics in parent-child relationships.

There are many important aspects of Lady Jia’s story that require more research and would help present a more complex and rich picture of the relationship between transgenderism, filial piety, and mother-son relationships in China. Without a thorough look at mother-daughter relationships as well as local, historical, and urban-rural variances in parent-child relationships, it is difficult to come to any clear conclusions. notes 1i am using transgender here as an umbrella term that includes trans, transsexual, and transgender. chinese terms used to self-identify or label a body as trans are equally as contested as their english-lan- guage counterparts.

2a notable exception here is alan cole’s Mothers and Sons in Chinese Buddhism. Cole addresses the intersection of Confucian filial piety, Buddhism, and family relationships and their evolution from the fourth to thirteenth century. While intriguing and com- plimentary to my research, assessing its impact and relevance or relation to contemporary Chinese mother-son relationships proved difficult at this point in my project.

3I translated the headline and article from the original Chinese version into English.

4My searches for articles in Chinese media that touched on both This content downloaded from 137.122.8.73 on Sun, 13 Jun 2021 23:26:13 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms QUEERING CONFUCIUS 220 transgender men and their relationship with their mothers yielded very few results. Fortunately, this particular chapter offers much in terms of both. works cited “38 sui nvzi wei aiqing yao bian nanxing 7 xun laomu xinran tongyi” 38 女子 情要变男性 7 旬老母欣然同意 [38-year-old Woman, For Love, Wants to Become a Man: 70-year-old Moth- er Gladly Consents]. Qilu wanbao. 齐 晚. N.p., 29 Feb. 2008.

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