wh 写了: 2025年 2月 5日 02:19
为啥杀女婴?
The Lives of Men
The Ming world was a different place for men. Male dominance was
practiced through the ritual and social superiority of men over women.
But this ritual superiority was also the soft underbelly of male dominance,
for it forced families to construct themselves in peculiar ways.
First of all, a family had to have a son.Without a son, the parents and the
father’s ancestors could no longer receive sacrifices, for only male heirs
could tend the ancestors’ spirits. Every society finds ways around its own
rules, and Chinese devised ways to surmount this problem. The lineage
could transfer the son of a brother or cousin into the line of an uncle
without a male heir; or the family could adopt a daughter’s husband into
the family, a practice known as uxorilocal marriage; or a childless man, if
he were a devout Buddhist, could endow a Buddhist monastery to perform
rites in perpetuity for himself and his ancestors.
Where the burden of male ritual superiority fell heaviest was on girls.
A family forced to reduce its size in the face of disasters or financial difficulties
still had to ensure the continuity of the family line, and that entailed
sacrificing its female children, either by selling them or killing
them. Female infanticide was punishable under Ming law, but that was
not a disincentive strong enough to prevent the practice, and most magistrates
turned a blind eye. We can guess at the scale of the practice from
population data, and these suggest that the scale was huge. However
cooked and unreliable the figures were, they consistently point to a gender
imbalance starting around 90 females for every 100 males and sinking
as low as 50 or even less.,【26】 Part of this imbalance may be a statistical
mirage, but the fact is that large numbers of women who should have
been there in a normal population were missing.
。。。。。
Wife-sharing may have been suppressed in Handkerchief Gulch, but
other arrangements were devised to provide sexual satisfaction for the
males who were prevented from marrying. One of the less common was
marriage between men, which was practiced in parts of Guangdong and
Fujian. The standard character for male (nan) consisted of the sign for
“field” (tian) on top and “strength” (li) on bottom. For men who entered
such a marriage with another man, “strength” was replaced with “female”
(nü). Again, the custom was associated with seafaring, on the understanding
that men who were isolated from women for long periods of
time resorted to each other for sexual satisfaction, though the shortage of
women must have played a part in regularizing this type of relationship.【28】
26是他自己的书有些不地道,就去找了一下。
女性的数量本来应该占登记人口的一半,但这种情况极少。少数按
性别记录人口的地方志编纂者,曾报导男性人口远比女性为多。以北直
隶为例,大名府在1502年的人口统计,列出378 167名男性,但只有226
982名女性。5:3的男女比例是已严重偏离了人口的生态平衡。在大名
府的清丰县,男性以2:1的比例超过女性的人数。甚至人口不平衡状况
最轻的内黄县,男女比率的记录为7:5。[31]表一展示了其他五省的情
况,证明了明代中叶人口记录渐渐产生的歪曲程度。女性正在从人们的
视线中消失。
31是《大名府志》(1506),卷3,页20b—27b
这种扭曲的情况反映了什么?可能有三种不同的解释:成年女性人
口正在减少;大量女性逃避注册登记;户主拒绝登记他们家中的女性。
成年女性人口减少是一个因素,但并非事实的全部。社会习俗的确会迫
使很多家庭杀害女婴。虽然男女婴儿皆会被“溺”,但当他们的家庭无力
供养的时候,女性更有可能被杀害,或者不闻不问,任其自生自灭,或
于饥荒时候被卖为婢女或妓女。在她们出生的家庭里,女孩比男孩更容
易被牺牲掉。尽管如此,依然很难想象杀害女婴和不闻不问两个原因足
以在一个世纪之内将1502年清丰县的男女比例降至2:1、海康县的降至
4:1。
第二个可能性——大量女性自己逃避登记注册——似乎更加难以置
信。流徙者的行列中的确有女性,但从文献中屡次提及流动的单身男性
来看,她们的人数应该较男性少。女性也有往来于道路上做商贩谋生
的,但人数也不及男性那么多。她们面对更大的人身危险,同时在强大
的传统文化束缚下,她们不得不留在家里。明代中叶的《金坛县志》提
醒读者:“妇人耻出门户。”[32]因此,尽管不少女性夭折,也有些成年女
性逃避注册登记,导致她们从人口记录中消失的最主要因素,可能是户
主不愿意报告女婴的出生或承认嫁入的女性人口。这些户主何必要为了
那些最终会离开的女性而使该户遭受加税的影响呢?(因为女性出嫁而
要地方官员从户口登记中删减人口数目可能是一件非常麻烦的事。)同
时,他们为什么要为一个可能要求离婚的新娘或一个可能夭折或因外嫁
而改他姓的女性注册户籍呢?
自1442年以后女性在人口记录中的数目下降,既是一种统计产生的
假象,也是一个社会事实——女性人口被抑制,正如她们的人口记录一
样。人口减少的原因,比起杀害女婴,更可能是没有注册登记,但两者
皆证实了一种忽视女性的文化偏见。
甚至在被统计的明中叶时期的女性中,很少有人能为我们所知,也
没有任何可供参考的材料。历史学家可以从人口记录以外的材料(如地
方志中的传记部分)将少数人从湮没无闻中拯救出来,但他们发掘出来
的多数是男性——这也解释为何这本书中所提及的多是男性。与女性相
比,男性轻而易举地拥有更多载入史册的机会:考试中举、取得功名、
担任官职、死节殉难、作文绘画、行善布施、实践孝义。相反,女性只
有一种公共角色可以使她们得以立传或扬名:就是在丈夫死后选择做不
再改嫁的“节妇”。
“Information is power. But like all power, there are those who want to keep it for themselves.” ― Aaron Swartz
在新水木看到的有哲理的回答
月收入 1 万是个什么样的水平?拿的人能接受,看的人说 “活不下去” 的水平。
可怜的美华。上半辈子折腾美国签证,下半辈子折腾中国签证。