It's always intriguing and heartening to hear about ways that women have managed to cultivate sub-cultures of independence within patriarchal societies.
Often that independence is highly limited though and involves renouncing sexuality, as seems to be the case with the self-combed women.
Have you heard of China's Sworn Sisters, who were women who effectively married each other in the 19th century in the Pearl River Delta area? I was so happy to learn that in a time when vast numbers of Chinese girls were being crippled from childhood in the service of male erotic pleasure, some women managed to escape that and forge a revolutionary lesbian sisterhood.
There were various ways in which sworn sisters were pledged to each other.... a pair of girls or women would take mutual vows never to marry and never to part company. The Chinese term for sworn sisters was “shuang chieh-pai, “ “mutually tied by oath.” Very often, these girls or women had spent a large part of their childhood together... Sworn sisterhood, however was not limited to twosomes. It often comprised a larger association of many women who were committed to each other in friendship and who formed an organized antimarriage grouping.
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