認識歷史中的性與性的歷史是中國婦女史一大難題。本文旨在說明研究性的歷史在概念、史料、及方法上的難處，進而用纏足與性為引子，探討如何能嚴謹的將性、慾望、情色及身體寫進婦女史。在概念上，中國男女的性與情慾並不能涵括在個人主義的認識範疇下。今天，從事婦女史的學者對「性別」已有共識，即意識到男女之別是社會文化的產物，隨歷史時空轉移而變化。同樣地，我們必須開始對「性」的歷史性及建構性作同樣的反思。而對「性」的反思則必須從身體觀開始。在史料及方法上，研究性史必須在傳統的思想史、政治史、社會史及文化史之外另闢途徑。在各種的論述當中「性」往往被披上神祕的面紗。我們在解讀這些史料的時候若能借助文學研究的文類、文體及文本分析，當能避免望文生義所帶來的偏差。本文試圖解讀三段描述纏足與性的文本，從而探討「性」的文化屬性、性與身體的互構關係，及認識婦女意識、慾念的曖昧性。歸根結底，對身體與「性」的反思，最終帶來的是我們對歷史的個體及主體認識的動搖。如果歷史的主體既不是「個人」亦非「性別群體」或其他社團，而是不斷呈現中的自我，及與之互動的人、我關係，這一部婦女史又會以什麼樣的面貌出現﹖

　　　　　Western feminism is built on the ideology of the autonomous individual, which goes hand in hand with a view of the body as a container for the inner self. The premise of this essay is that these are aradoxical feminist aspirations because the idealized individual who enjoys these rights is originally presumed to be a property-owning man. As such, these ideals are by no means universally applicable. The goal of this essay is to build a China-centered feminist agenda that is based on alternative views of sexuality, freedom, and agency. The bulk of the essay is an analysis of three interpretations of footbinding by writers from disparate locations: a1970s radical U.S. feminist, a thirteencentury Confucian male scholar, and an eighteenth-century Chinese footbound woman. Whereas the first imagined a new cosmology in which good sex is homoerotic and liberatory, the Chinese male and female shared the view that individual pleasure is but one of the goals of sex, and that good sex will lead to conception of fetus. These divergent notions of the uses of sex bespeak fundamental cultural differences on the cosmological location of individual bodies and their social significance. In conclusion, this essay argues that beyond the dualities of self and other, domination and resistance, or body and mind lies a new way of seeing and knowing. This realm of freedom is not predicated on the isolated and fragmentary self that ensued from individualism, but on a dynamic view of the self-as-process, a self that is always in the making.