Chopsticks Only Works in Pairs Book Analysis - Essay Example

Very strange social customs like the walking marriage (In a walking marriage, the couples do not marry to live together as is the majority custom. Both of them stay in their own matrilineal family for the whole life. The male walks to the female’s house every evening and. the women open their doors to their lovers every evening. The men walk back home to work in their mothers household every morning. Neither of them is a member of each others family. ) and the graceful peacock dances seen among the Yunnan minorities are now recognized examples of cultural diversities seen among the ethnic minorities.

It is in this context that Shanshan Du’s Chopsticks Only Work in Pairs, an important work on the ethnography of the Luhu gender system in China becomes pertinent. The book deeply explores the gender egalitarian society that still exists among the Lahu community, a community that lives in Southwest China; a community without a traditional written language. Chopsticks Only Work in Pairs is a proverb that expresses the ideology that supports the gender equality prevalent in this community. Du begins the book with a clear theoretical introduction which states that, like rare islands there exists gender egalitarian societies, though very scarce and often imperfect.

The existence of such societies has to be seen in the background of the cry for gender equality, which according to Du is “ a popular dream like concept in the so called civilized world .” The strange fact is that these egalitarian societies are not recognized either by the feminists or by the anthropologists. This exposes the limitations of the utopian feminist agendas and the Western intellectual traditions, Du argues. Du in her introductory chapter thus goes critical about what she calls the anti male bias of the feminists.

Even in a male dominated society there is no absolute male domination; neither is there absolute female