chinese comfort women patriarchy
Required book: Qiu Peipei, Chinese Comfort Women: Testimonies from Imperial Japan’s Sex Slaves, Oxford UP, 2014. (you have to buy this as an ebook so you can cite from it)
Prompt:
How did patriarchy create the conditions in which the comfort women system could thrive? In what ways did patriarchy contribute to the suffering of comfort women before, during and after their time as sexual slaves?
The victimization of comfort women had three major components:
1) Being forced into military sexual slavery.
2) Their suffering inside military brothels
3) Their experiences after their return home, continuing until the present day.
Develop your answer in reference to all three phases of experience.
Using the book wisely:
The book is divided into three major sections — a history of the comfort women system, testimonies from comfort women, and the period since the end of World War II.
In terms of evidence used to support your point, you should use quotes from section two, which are primary source interviews with Chinese women.
However, you should use the context provided by the rest of the book to figure out the larger answer to the question.
The book does specifically discuss patriarchy in a few places, but it is also evident throughout even when not explicitly identified.
Parameters of the assignment:
Seven full pages double spaced
Times New Roman, 12 point, standard margins
You need to cite your sources — either use footnotes (if you are uploading a file — cutting and pasting tends to delete footnotes in Canvas) or as parenthetical references. To use a parenthetical you would write the number of the page at the end of the sentence as follows:
o”Emily Gilkey loves cookies very, very much” according to leading historian Patrick Palmer (55).
oThis is NOT the standard approved way of citing things for other more official essays, but in this case you’re all using only one source and it is the same source so you only need to indicate the page number which in this made up example is 55.
what patriarchy is?!
An unjust social system that favors men over women, socially, politically, culturally etc.
Men hold primary power in terms of social privilege, moral authority and control of property.
Men are the primary decision makers in terms of military or political leadership
The society primarily determines the value of women in relationship to men, and/or in terms of their sexuality
Patriarchy was strongly present in both Japan and China, but it manifested itself in different ways with respect to comfort women. Think about these differences as you develop your answer.
