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Xue Mo (born 1966), Yi Girl, 2011

Oil on linen

Chapter 81: JTTW, TwoSet, slippers and the literal demonisation of women

I wrote this some months ago. My perspective has shifted a bit since then. So has my relationship with YouTube, the internet and media generally. But I figured I might as well post it anyway.

So, chapter 81.

Tripitaka & co are now at a monastery, and this woman they ‘rescued’ from the forest is still in tow. Half the monastery crowds into Tripitaka & co’s room, ostensibly so the abbot can talk to him, but mostly to get a glance of the woman. (Oooooh, a WOMAN!)

I imagine it a lot like this:

At first I thought that was just a funny moment thrown in for relief. Later I realised, maybe this is the point of the whole chapter: that they’re insincere in their Buddhism, especially as far as lust goes. They rush to ogle this woman at the first opportunity.

The abbot awkwardly hints that Tripitaka & co shouldn’t have a woman sleeping in their room. Tripitaka emphasises that in no way were they planning to have sex with her. The abbot is free to house her somewhere else. In other words, Tripitaka & co are the epitome of chastity.

They are not, however, the epitome of feminism. As you can see, they talk about her like she’s not even in the room. It doesn’t occur to them to, you know, include her in the conversation. To see what she wants to do. To them, she’s a mere object by which they can demonstrate their saintliness: their transcendence of lust; their compassion in not leaving her for dead.

There’s then an interlude where Tripitaka thinks he’s dying. Actually, the Buddha is just bitch-slapping him with some kind of three-day flu as payback for falling asleep during his lecture back when. Bajie figures that if the Buddha is that pissed off with Tripitaka, then Bajie must be in for a lot worse. But Wukong breaks it to him that Bajie is too much of a nobody for the Buddha to bother smiting him.

Meanwhile, the demon woman ‘disappears’ for a few days. Monks start disappearing too. Wukong goes undercover to investigate, disguised as a teenage monk.

The demon woman promptly appears and, disturbingly, tries to seduce said teenage-looking Wukong for her nefarious demon purposes. Wukong emphatically resists seduction and they start fighting.

They’re pretty evenly matched, but Wukong starts prevailing, so she runs and Wukong chases. When he almost catches her, she rips a flower slipper off her foot, transforms it into an imitation of herself, and leaves Wukong to fight it.

It’s a little bit like this:

Except this:

Doing this:

Okay, it's nothing like that. Her shoe actually transforms into a clone of her and fights the hell out of Wukong. But come on, who doesn't want to see some slipper smackdown.

It takes Wukong a while to prevail against the demon’s footwear. When he does, it turns back into a shoe, and he realises he’s been had.

Can we pause for a moment to acknowledge how badass that is compared to this?

Actually, that GIF makes the bewitched shoe look pretty frightened and cowed, running away from Wukong at the end there. The book version sounds a look more badass. But anyway. Shoe-as-strategic-defence vs shoe-as-prince-pickup-material.

Needless to say, the demon has abducted Tripitaka while Wukong was distracted, and disappeared off somewhere. When Wukong realises what has happened, he’s royally pissed.

He also realises that the demon must have been the one ‘disappearing’ the monks – that the monks must have been only too happy to be seduced, and that’s how she got them.

He, Bajie and Sandy set off in search of Tripitaka. They’re told he’s in Bottomless Cave within Void-Entrapping Mountain. When they reach the mountain, Wukong sends Bajie to scout of the situation while he and Bajie wait behind.

And that’s where the author leaves us in this chapter.

I do want to throw in a few bonus links, though. I have pulled together some quality scholarship for you. And by scholarship, I mean a scattering of TwoSet videos with tenuous links to the theme of demonisation of women.

This is going to be unbearably tedious unless you fit the intersection of this Venn diagram:

(Credit to this Github team for the XKCD font – and of course to XKCD for being XKCD.)

Please don't freak out if you're a TwoSetter. I’m not saying that TwoSet or JTTW are doing anything particularly heinous. I just want to gently raise a particular perspective on these videos without judging them too harshly. It’s easy to get sucked into unhelpfully divisive thinking, and I don’t want to do that.

With that, here are some links for your mild entertainment and reflection. They’re on the theme of women as threats to bromances and men’s ambitions. The third video is harder to timestamp, because the relevant excerpts are in three separate places. It's one of those slipper videos GIFed above.

If we’re going to talk about men keeping their shit together in a world where women exist, I prefer Xue Mo’s tone in the following passage. I don’t know if he’s representative of Chinese Buddhist voices more broadly – I’m too ignorant about such things – but at least he’s one voice. In The World is a Reflection of the Mind, he says (on p36 of the English edition, in the chapter What Do People Live For?):

… I always say to students that there is no failure, there is only giving up. I did not have natural talent, and I was not hardworking. I just faced in a certain direction, and every day I traveled the road I had to travel, without stopping, without wandering off, without being deceived, and finally I woke up [spiritually]. Sometimes there would be a girl who beckoned to me, and I could exchange a few words with her, but I did not forget the goal of my quest and run off after her. This was because I clearly knew that she would lead me toward another road. When money beckoned me, I also would not go. I always affirmed my own direction.

Fairly neutral. No demonisation; no hostility. No implication that women are inherently threatening, destructive forces. No suggestion that women need to be rebuffed, defied or avoided aggressively.

There is also this TwoSet skit. It portrays the woman as (1) a romantic object and (2) something to be used in the pursuit of a man’s career ambitions. I found it depressing on multiple levels. But in fairness to them, they’re not demonising her.

We have seen TwoSet take instruction from a talented female violinist before. Good on them for that. It’s an adorable video. I still have reservations about it, but I'll leave you to form your own impressions.

For contrast, here’s a video in which Brett takes feedback from a grown man. That part goes from about 12:31 to 13:46.

Now, just in case any TwoSetters out there stumble on this post and feel triggered, I will say this. I like TwoSet. I wouldn’t know so many of their videos if I didn’t. I also realise they tend to pout about feedback. Sometimes they seem to want to have it both ways: to make whatever content they want without anybody being allowed to express criticism. I love a lot about them, but I don’t agree with that. They are full grown adults who have chosen a very public career. They have generated a lot of money and status out of it. There is a place for feedback and criticism. Criticism can even help strengthen bonds between content-maker and audience by keeping the gates of communication open, if the content-maker is open to hearing sincere feedback. So, with love, I’m standing by this.

@journeythroughjourneytothewest

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