作者 ｜
顧燕翎(交通大學共同科)
摘要 ｜
秋瑾是一位海峽兩岸都家喻戶曉的革命先烈，在眾多婦運先驅者之中，也是最早擺脫性別角色限制，和最受後世肯定的一位。不過在教科書和媒體中，一向把她定位在民族英雄，表彰其革命功勳，而鮮少論及其女性意識，或對婦運的貢獻。一些西方及日本學者研究秋瑾時，雖略涉及其女性主義思想，但偏向於籠統地歸諸西方成日本的影響。
秋瑾生長在清末，一個傳統秩序和觀念受到嚴重挑戰，社會急遽轉型，女性主義萌芽的時代。她以個人而非男性妻女的身份留名青史，也大大有別於歷史上其他女傑，如秦良玉、沈雲英等人。因此對婦女研究者而言，她思想形成的原因，是否為女性主義者，以及她對於婦女地位、兩性關係、婚姻與家庭的看法，都屬於極值得研究的問題。作者於1988至1989年訪美、加期間，至史丹福大學與多倫多大學搜集有關秋瑾生平及著作的資料，包括其書信、年表、著作、友人對她生平的追述及其他相關史料，詳加研究，撰成此文。
全文共分為生平、家庭背景與性別角色認同、婚姻生活、從秋瑾的著作看她的自我成長、秋瑾的女性主義思想、理想的女性角色與兩性關係等六大部份。作者認為她的性別角色認同隨著她人生的三個階段(少女時代、少婦時代、獨立生活時代)而有顯著的轉變。她雖然因為受到時代條件的侷限，和生命過於短促，未能發展出成熟的女性主義理論，卻有充分的證據顯示，無論就理論或行動而言，她都是一位本土性極強的女性主義者。
Title ｜
CHIU CHIN, THE FIRST CHINESE FEMINIST
Author ｜
Yen-Lin Ku(Division of Humanities and Social Sciences, National Chiao Tung University)
Abstract ｜
The first wave of feminist movement in China emerged in the late nineteenth century when the earliest feminists, Chiu Chin, He Chen, Chen Chieh-fen and others began to form women’s organizations and publish magazines, albeit protests of unfair treatment of women could be spotted in the works of prominent male writers as early as in the seventeenth century. Among the pioneers, Chiu was the best-known and cast the strongest influence, not only for her role in the Revolution, but also for her propagation of gender equality in words as well as in deeds. Before western feminism was ushered in, Chin’s call for equality and humanitarianism was indigenous to Chinese culture; and therefore, the study of the development of her thoughts and life style is most revealing in terms of the universality of the appeal of feminism.
Unlike the majority of Chinese women of her time, Chiu was brought up and educated with her brothers. Fascinated by heroic stories, she expected to become a heroine and never realized her gender would be a major obstacle until she was married into a rich Hunanese family. In her eight years of married life, she was torn between her heroic dreams and the need to survive as a daughter-in-law in a strange family which did not share any of her values. She went through the darkest stage of her life, lamenting being born a woman and blaming her parents for having misarranged her marriage. Moving to Peking with her husband in 1903, she began a new stage of her life by making intellectual friends, reading “new” books, and thus formulating nationalist ideas and contending reform strategies. At the same time, her marriage deteriorated. In order to gain more freedom of movement, she began to attire herself in man’s suit. The next year, she left her husband and went to study in Tokyo, where she was actively involved in the Revolution and the feminist movement. In 1907, she was beheaded in Chekiang province after her plot of military uprising was exposed prematurely.
The sources of gender inequality, according to Chiu Chin, is twofold. On the one hand, men use “lies,” fabricating rules of obedience and myth of inferiority to keep women in servitude, and “barbarous measures,” such as footbinding, to consolidate their own supremacy. On the other hand, women give in to men’s rule by foregoing their part in making a living and totally depending on men’s support. As a result, she suggests women to 1. seek education and gainful employment to be self-supportive; 2. to form women’s groups for mutual support and to rebut men’s fiction.
Like other early Chinese Feminists, most of whom came from the elite layer of society, Chiu was overoptimistic about the prospect of social reform. She believes that sexual equality and liberation could be achieved as one result of the Revolution; and mutual respect in marriag would be obtained once women proved themselves to be equal partners of men by being economically independent. Unfortunately, her early death at the age of 30 did not allow her to develop more sophisticated forms of ferminism. Nevertheless, compared with other female leaders that followed her in both the KMT and the CCP, Chiu was outstanding in her courage to confront dominant male values as well as assertion of individual freedom and dignity for women.
Keywords ｜
Ferminism, Nationalism, Gender Role, Social Transformation, Sisterhood