作者 ｜
鄧津華(美國哈佛亞洲區域研究碩士班)
摘要 ｜
本文探討中國大陸、台灣以及新加坡地區的民俗宗教信仰，並提出宗教並不僅是壓抑婦女地位，其實也是她們發揮創造力的力量，並轉換了她們生活上的不平等地位。
宗教的禁忌禁止經期中或有身孕的婦女接近與神祇有直接聯繫的媒介，但在此同時，婦女卻能將自身的污穢轉變成符咒而施之於男性，這便是婦女能改變自身環境成為有利條件的實例。在中國大陸、台灣及新加坡某些地區，女神師扮演村民跟神祇媒介的角色而享有特殊的地位。在廣州及新加坡，有些婦女選擇出家生涯以便逃避婚姻而保持了在姐妹會中的獨立生活。十九世紀時，珠江三角洲便出現了此類姐妹會發展成反婚姻運動;她們利用宗教儀式的角色得到社會大眾對她們違反傳統行為的認可，研究女性神明的象徵可以得知婦女所能取得的特殊地位以及她們在所處的文化環境中為了創造有利條件而須憑藉的行象。
本文結論在於:中國婦女雖然能通過宗教形式轉換她們在生活中的地位，但在此過程中她們同時也間接認同了社會上對婦女的消極定義。因此，婦女是否真正能逃避男性社會的壓抑這個問題還需再作檢討。不過，無可否認的，宗教對婦女並不純粹是一種壓抑的力量，婦女可以通過宗教管道創造有利的生活條件。
Title ｜
RELIGION AS A SOURCE OF OPPRESSION AND CREATIVITY FOR CHINESE WOMEN
Author ｜
Jinhua Emma Teng(Master, Regional Studies East Asia, Harvard University)
Abstract ｜
This paper will examine Chinese religion and folk beliefs in various regions of China, Taiwan and Singapore to demonstrate that religion functioned not only as a source of oppression, excluding women from important religious worship, but also as a source of creativity, enabling women to gain power unavailable to them in secular culture.
Religious taboos surrounding menstruating women or women in childbirth prevented women from gaining direct access to power associated with a constant and close relationship to high or pure gods. At the same time, women could turn the power of their pollution around on men, in the form of black magic charms, to destroy the ritual power of male cults. This was one form of negative power to which women had access. In other regions of China, Taiwan and Singapore female shamans gained power in their communities as ritual intermediaries between village inhabitants and the gods and ghosts. In Canton and Singapore, women joined vegetarian houses in order to avoid marriage and maintain autonomous lives in a community of sisterhood. This type of female community developed into a marriage resistance movement in the Canton Delta in the nineteenth century. Marriage resisters used religious ritual to gain social sanctions for their unconventional behavior. An examination of the symbolism of female deities sheds light on the kinds of power attributed to women and on the images available to women as models in their struggles to find tools in their cultural environments with which to create fulfilling lives.
This paper asks whether women could find any elements within existing religion that could enable them to escape oppression and gain power in their communities, concluding that it appears that women who empowered themselves through religious means, did so at the cost of implicitly accepting the negative beliefs about woman’s nature. Thus it must be asked whether women can ever fully subvert or escape male gender ideology. Most importantly, this exploration of the diverse attempts at creativity in different regions of China demonstrates that religion was never a wholly oppressive force but also offered women the means to create meaningful lives for themselves.
Keywords ｜
Women, Religion, Sexuality and Reproduction, Goddesses, Taboo