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coochiequeens · 1 year

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Because large-scale organising is “almost impossible” in China, women are turning to “all kinds of alternative ways to maintain feminism in their daily lives and even develop and transfer feminism to others,” she says. These may take the form of book clubs or exercise meet-ups. Some of her friends in China organise hikes. “They say that we are feminists, we are hiking together, so when we are hiking we talk about feminism.“ - Lü Pin

To find evidence that China’s feminist movement is gaining momentum – despite strict government censorship and repression – check bookshelves, nightstands and digital libraries. There, you might find a copy of one of Chizuko Ueno’s books. The 74-year-old Japanese feminist and author of Feminism from Scratch and Patriarchy and Capitalism has sold more than a million books in China, according to Beijing Open Book, which tracks sales. Of these, 200,000 were sold in January and February alone.

Ueno, a professor of sociology at the University of Tokyo, was little known outside in China outside academia until she delivered a 2019 matriculation speech at the university in which she railed against its sexist admissions policies, sexual “abuse” by male students against their female peers, and the pressure women felt to downplay their academic achievements.

The speech went viral in Japan, then China.

“Feminist thought does not insist that women should behave like men or the weak should become the powerful,” she said. “Rather, feminism asks that the weak be treated with dignity as they are.”

In the past two years, 11 of her books have been translated into simplified Chinese and four more will be published this year. In December, two of her books were among the top 20 foreign nonfiction bestsellers in China. While activism and protests have been stifled by the government, the rapid rise in Ueno’s popularity shows that women are still looking for ways to learn more about feminist thought, albeit at a private, individual level.

Talk to young Chinese academics, writers and podcasters about what women are reading and Ueno’s name often comes up. “We like-like her,” says Shiye Fu, the host of popular feminist podcast Stochastic Volatility.

“In China we need some sort of feminist role model to lead us and enable us to see how far women can go,” she says. “She taught us that as a woman, you have to fight every day, and to fight is to survive.”

When asked by the Guardian about her popularity in China, Ueno says her message resonates with this generation of Chinese women because, while they have grown up with adequate resources and been taught to believe they will have more opportunities, “patriarchy and sexism put the burden to be feminine on them as a wife and mother”.

Ueno, who found her voice during the student power movements of the 1960s, has long argued that marriage restricts women’s autonomy, something she learned watching her own parents. She described her father as “a complete sexist”. It’s stance that resonates with women in China, who are rebelling against the expectation that they take a husband.

Ueno’s most popular book, with 65,000 reviews on Douban, is simply titled Misogyny. One review reads: “It still takes a little courage to type this. I have always been shy about discussing gender issues in a Chinese environment, because if I am not careful, I will easily attract the label of … ‘feminist cancer’.”

“Now it’s a hard time,” says Lü Pin, a prominent Chinese feminist who now lives in the US. In 2015 she happened to be in New York when Chinese authorities arrested five of her peers – who were detained for 37 days and became known as the “Feminist Five” – and came to Lü’s apartment in Beijing. She narrowly avoided arrest. “Our movement is increasingly being regarded as illegal, even criminal, in China.”

China’s feminist movement has grown enormously in the past few years, especially among young women online, says Lü, where it was stoked by the #MeToo movements around the world and given oxygen on social media. “But that’s just part of the story,” she says. Feminism is also facing much stricter censorship – the word “feminism” is among those censored online, as is China’s #MeToo hashtag, #WoYeShi.

“When we already have so many people joining our community, the government regards that as a threat to its rule,” Lü says. “So the question is: what is the future of the movement?”

Because large-scale organising is “almost impossible” in China, women are turning to “all kinds of alternative ways to maintain feminism in their daily lives and even develop and transfer feminism to others,” she says. These may take the form of book clubs or exercise meet-ups. Some of her friends in China organise hikes. “They say that we are feminists, we are hiking together, so when we are hiking we talk about feminism.

“Nobody can change the micro level.”

‘The first step’

In 2001, when Lü was a journalist starting out on her journey into feminism, she founded a book club with a group of friends. She was struggling to find books on the subject, so she and her friends pooled their resources. “We were feminists, journalists, scholars, so we decided let’s organise a group and read, talk, discuss monthly,” she says. They met in people’s homes, or the park, or their offices. It lasted eight years and the members are still among her best friends.

Before the book club, “I felt lonely when I was pursuing feminism. So I need friends, I need a community. And that was the first community I had.” “I got friendship, I deepened my understanding of feminism,” Lü says. “It’s interesting, perhaps the first step of feminist movements is always literature in many countries, especially in China.”

Lü first read Ueno’s academic work as a young scholar, when few people in China knew her name. Ueno’s books are for people who are starting out on their pursuit of feminism, Lü says, and the author is good at explaining feminist issues in ways that are easy to understand.

Like many Ting Guo discovered Ueno after the Tokyo University speech. Guo, an assistant professor in the department of cultural and religious studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, still uses it in lectures.

Ueno’s popularity is part of a larger phenomenon, Guo says. “We cannot really directly describe what we want to say, using the word that we want to use, because of the censorship, because of the larger atmosphere. So people need to try to borrow words, mirror that experience in other social situations, in other political situations, in other contexts, in order to precisely describe their own experience, their own feelings and their own thoughts.”

There are so many people who are new to the feminist movement, says Lü, “and they are all looking for resources, but due to censorship, it’s so hard for Chinese scholars, for Chinese feminists, to publish their work.”

Ueno “is a foreigner, that is one of her advantages, and she also comes from [an] east Asian context”, which means that the patriarchal system she describes is similar to China’s. Lü says the reason books by Chinese feminists aren’t on bestseller lists is because of censorship.

Na Zhong, a novelist who translated Sally Rooney’s novels into simplified Chinese, feels that Chinese feminism is, at least when it comes to literature, gaining momentum. The biggest sign of this, both despite and because of censorship, is “the sheer number of women writers that are being translated into Chinese” – among whom Ueno is the “biggest star”.

“Young women are discovering their voices, and I’m really happy for my generation,” she says. “We’re just getting started.”

By Helen R Sullivan

This is the third story in a three-part series on feminism and literature in China.

#China #Japan #Chizuko Ueno #Books for women #Feminism from Scratch #Patriarchy and Capitalism #Misogyny #Feminist Five #Lü Pin #WoYeShi

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rogersstevie · 3 months

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really and truly unless it's a discussion about why peggy/steggy fans shouldn't like endgame, at this point idk why people feel the need to continually make the argument about her having a family as if that's the biggest problem about the ending especially when i figure most people are of the belief that it was another timeline or whatever idk what the current consensus on that is in the mcu and i don't care

but what about the fact that it destroyed steve's family? does that not matter because it's not the standard spouse and children but is instead a family he built for himself with sam and nat and bucky? because it's easier to decide steve is a selfish asshole and always has been instead of acknowledging that that storyline did more of a disservice to him than to anyone else? like oh maybe peggy's family was erased and that's horrible but it doesn't matter that steve's family was abandoned in the midst of the kind of trauma he knows very well?

i've said it before but it makes me so sad that so many people just turned on steve and decided a decade of movies don't matter in the face of one shitty desperate attempt of a movie to make him look like a pathetic creep just so they could justify their heterosexual nonsense ending

#steve rogers #anti steggy #anti endgame #also just occurred to me how part of the whole bullshit about not undoing five years #was so tony's daughter wouldn't be erased (even though like hey pepper could've already been pregnant in iw and it would've been fine)#but they had no qualms about peggy's family (since the writers and directors didn't even agree about the timelines)#bc peggy does not matter as anything other than steve's love interest lol and they just continue showing that as far as i can tell #marvel does not care about her as being anything but part of a ship that only ended up together #as a fulfillment of male fantasies and to try to squash stevebucky #so idk why fans are so defensive of marvel on that front #in the end anything redeeming that they wrote for her character was negated and stripped down so she's just a girlboss and a prize #neither of which are good things no matter how hard y'all try to put a feminist spin on it!

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fayegonnaslay · 3 months

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Jane Fonda on National Secretaries Day, 1980.

#right on #jane fonda #political activist #9 to 5 #nine to five #era #secretary #office workers #equal pay #womens rights #activism #feminist #dolly parton #lily tomlin #actress

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dollsome-does-tumblr · 2 months

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okay. having been made aware that most people dislike more characters than me, i need to try to do this. who are tv characters i don't like??? who? who??

boat guy on ted lasso. a concept and not a person. a concept designed to torment me and crush all my dreams. an avatar for all my dead dreams. if he'd actually become more of a character, like as a series regular or something, i would have probably grown to like him, because i'm weak. but in our reality, i can hate him forever.

jack from lost i always really hated, and i still do, but in a way where i almost like him because i hate him so much??? like, it's hilarious and special to me how much he sucks, and how consistently, always. jears forever.

jess mariano, but that's just because gg fandom has driven me crazy over the past 20 years in that regard, hyping him up so much, and i'm a hateful crone. technically he is fine.

christopher hayden is pretty bad. yeah, i think i can say with confidence i dislike christopher hayden.

extremely ashamed to report that i have sort of developed an occasional soft spot for dean forrester in my old age. awful! i'm not proud, okay! but i'm being honest.

i do hate rupert from ted lasso. but like. i don't think i get a prize for that one. that's an extremely easy dude to hate.

oh. i lowkey kinda hate nigel from cbs ghosts. i apologize, but i do. i think isaac could do better. i wish he would go for the australian stripper dinosaur enthusiast from the most recent episode. wouldn't it be hilarious if they decided to kill that lap dancer so he could become isaac's new boyfriend? i should write this show. it would be stunning and universally beloved and full of murders just to expand the friend group.

this has really gotten away from me.

wait!!!!! helene from killing eve! was that her name? i really didn't like her! she bugged! to me, she had too much screentime! (the actress seems very cool though, no offense to her.)

i am kind of bothered by joel mchale's character in animal control specifically because he's so identical to jeff winger in mannerisms that i just feel like jeff winger abandoned his greendale family and started a new life as an animal control man in seattle. i don't like this feeling. i just want to scream, "go back to greendale, jeff! i know frank isn't your real name!!!!" at the screen every second. does this count as disliking a character?

BOAT GUY 😡

#well. this has been an exercise.#dollsome's deep thoughts #who do i hate???#i need to remember #technically fr*d arm*sen is my nemesis of all time but i still love like five of his tv characters. i'm sick. i'm deranged.#(karl the cannibal from last man on earth?? candace from portlandia's feminist book store???)

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ciderjacks · 5 months

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I Srsly need everyone who says “women’s rights aren’t an issue, only women in third world countries suffer oppression” to explode immediately. Like first of all, that’s not true, in majority of the so called “developed” countries women still don’t have equal rights (in America women aren’t even fully constitutionally recognized and therefore don’t have the same legal rights as men, meaning women’s civil rights are still legally debatable, and as we saw with roe v wade, Can be revoked at any instant bc there’s nothing in place protecting them).

And second of all…what kind of racist cuntfuck do u have to be to say something like that? “Oh yeah well those women don’t matter, they don’t count” Fuck you.

#misogyny #I’ve literally seen queer “leftists” say shit like This #then five seconds later cry about how gay/trans people aren’t allowed in said countries.#It’s just Tumblr queers like to rephrase this to be “well white women dont really deal with any of this” whenever misogyny is brought up #Which again is blatantly untrue and any look at the statistics of impacts systemic misogyny has on groups of women would tell you that #But also is really just a progressive way of saying “I don’t think bipoc women matter”#“White feminism” isn’t just like. white women talking about their oppression. a completely normal thing to do given they’re still #A heavily marginalized and oppressed group by way of their sex and gender #It’s white women centering whiteness in feminist conversations and shutting down woc and refusing to acknowledge #The way racism intersects With sexism #And how the experiences of woc differ from those of white women

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a-queen-of-the-clouds · 3 months

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Ryan Gosling they could never make me hate you

#like it's not his fault he was one of the highlights of the movie #he is winning that oscar in the next five years mark my words #annoying fake feminists would not catch me shit talking the silliness of this #will not*

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vol-au-vending-machine · 10 months

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"Aemma was dying anyway"

Yeah but I don't get to run over a terminal cancer patient with my car because they were 'dying anyway'.

#anti viserys i targaryen #house of the dragon #hotd #can the fandom be feminist for FIVE MINUTES PLEASE #aemma arryn

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friendlymathematician · 1 year

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another sunday afternoon well spent requesting that the library purchase radfem literature

#five more book requests this week #i love that libfems don't read theory #like a good third of the feminist section is radfem at this point #anyone who goes to the library to learn about feminism is going to come across actual feminism

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inconclusionray · 9 months

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Conservatives: THIS ABOMINATION IS THE MOST WOKE MOVIE OF ALL TIME!!1!!1

The movie:

#yes this is about #the barbie movie #i liked it! it was fun!#and it was about as feminist as Dolly Parton's classic Nine to Five #which is to say pretty feminist! ....forty years ago!

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istherewifiinhell · 4 months

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Rewatching jacob gellars Pinocchio video to rewatch tng measure of a man to watch metropolis to read rossums universal robots to better argue about why modern tf lore sucks.

#some shit #its not called cisformers #I HATE UR STUPID ROBOT JESUS RELIGION I HATE IT SO MUCH #why have you abandoned the idea of the robot as the worker.#why must our characters be divinely created and have souls in order to be compelling. or worse. alive.#they idea that any sufficiently complex machine might live might feel might fight for their freedom #is uhhhhhh INFINITELY MORE INTERESTING TO ME.#WHY DO U HATE THE PLIGHT OF THE ROBOT.#i mean theres even smth to be said about the derision towards blue collar labour being present in the text of some iterations.#and this is DISREGARDING. the bonkers yonkers sexism of it all.#even if u made it the most feminist gender parity & intelligently engaged with alien robot gender from a non binarist viewpoint #religious lore EVER. axe the fridging and the groundgina from EXISTENCE.#i still wouldnt think it more compelling than #the five faces of darkness quote 'we tf have looked into the face of our creator and we have seen an enemy'#<- creator Literal Sense. the people who Built labourer robots do NOT like those robots being a sentient autonomus species. go figure

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spitefularoandbi · 7 months

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Girly pop feminist bros - you need to stop viewing plastic surgery as a negative thing.

Plastic surgery is a neutral thing in relation to a person's personhood.

If you're shitting on cis women for it, for them being "fake," congrats on not actually being a feminist.

And also it really puts into question if you're actually trans ally (like this one has claimed before around me). And I'm really thinking you're not if that's your take on cis women with face work lol

#like it really puts A LOT into the red flag territory immediately #maybe i should start asking cis men their opinion on plastic surgery to hit like five targets right then and there #this also is just in the territory of 'he says hes a feminist but will he was the dishes' and is a 'no he wont so no he isnt' lol #spiteful #my posts

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edmundhoward · 4 days

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“She was a lady-in-waiting to Catherine of Aragon for several years alongside Anne Boleyn, so she would've witnessed the way Anne held Henry off for so long by pleading her virginity. She watched, and she learned. There is a famous tale of how Jane was picking out items for her wedding to the king, while Anne awaited her execution in the Tower. If true, it would show sprinklings of a cold heart. [...] I wonder if Jane was reminiscing over these events, as she was dying of child-bed fever, and if so, what her thoughts on them were. Did she pray for forgiveness for the part she played? I like to believe that she did, given how spiritual she was known to be.”

abfiles comments writing fanfic fantasising about jane seymour in moments of terrible duress!

#very normal !#ab fandom #this is just an excuse to be hateful to a woman. a stubborn refusal to examine your internalised misogyny.#whitewashing anne as some kind of anachronistic fictional heroine #doesn’t diminish the misogyny of wishing suffering on her female peers #in fact: it further exemplifies it by dehumanising anne as a white feminist prop.#i don’t need to repeat how the ‘not like other girls’ (about 500yo dead women) is rancid. and i won’t.#i think you are very stupid and wilfully sexist if you believe in it #& i think you are too lazy and vacuous to apply any deeper examination of either history or yourself.#the truth is that we know next to nothing about jane’s situation in the first five months of 1536 #everything we do know is merely second or third hand speculation about her #and we know nothing at all about her prior to that.#to draw such conclusions is to readily assume the worst about a woman who we have no reason to #maybe she was ideologically for the execution of six people…#maybe she was an active participant using whatever agency she had…#but maybe she wasn’t.#in any case her own horrible death isn’t fair game or some kind of karmic justice #and the lack of empathy for something that has killed countless women is simply repugnant #these were real women and both deserved to live full lives.

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champion-of-ennui · 12 days

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when delilah asked samson to cut his hair he complied

he made a sacred oath to never cut this hair. he swore he'd remain as god made him

and he had to know she was the reason he was being swarmed with assassins every night

but he, out of foolish love, let her cut his hair

and then he died

and he may have been a reckless fool. he may have gone too far

but in the end, what broke him was when he let this love overtake who he was. he lost himself, he lost god, and he died

#my fuckin body. mutilated #and for what?!#your own paranoia?#you talk about me abandoning you like its set in stone #and then you keep taking actions to drive me further away #yes. i am my father's son #im every bit as horrid as he was at my age #you “tamed” him and every time we're alone he cries to me about your hatred #and even if he detests me as much as you claim at least he keeps his mouth shut #he's already lost one son. do you want to learn?#i don't care if you think im the ugliest girl on the planet #because the truth is that girl i was died five years ago. i barely remember her #and why are you calling a twenty two year old a girl anyways?#why aren't you the feminist you claim to be?#love isn't a cash investment with an ROI #anunity never

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rahullkohli · 2 months

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completely obsessed with the symbolism in right wingers who idolize people like james dean and marilyn monroe. it's such a perfect image of how they will believe any carefully crafted lie, even when it doesn't take more than an observant eye to see the truth underneath. it says so much about their lack of critical thinking, and their inability to recognize a curated public persona. the way james dean was queer, and surrounded himself with queer people and people of color, and other marginalized people, in a time where this could literally break you. but they see the image of him wearing smart jeans, smoking cigarettes and driving fast cars, so they have convinced himself this is what a Manly Man is and should be. even if he also openly did ballet, and read philosophy books with his cat in his lap, and made it a point to learn to do his own makeup. same with marilyn how they put her on this pedestal as The Woman and at the same time scream about how "the family unit is endangered", when marilyn chose to work during every one of her marriages, and she negotiated fair contracts not just for herself but for other women, and she supported unions and defended queer people and people of color, and very publicly was seen with them. she knew how to fix her own car, and - same as jimmy - read books about human kindness too complex for these people to even comprehend. how does it feel knowing you're choosing lies every day of your life, because you see shiny things and believe they're gold

#i accidentally followed a right winger for a week on ig because she was all about marilyn #but then she made one post and i dug into her follow list #yikes that was gross #anyway jimmy and marilyn would most likely both have been on the streets with queer people and people of color and feminists #if they had been here today #they would have hated you #and it only takes five minutes of surface reading to figure that out #don't even get me started on natalie wood lol

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jesusislord3333 · 3 months

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edible--stars · 2 years

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i consider myself a feminist in all aspects, and i'll always be one, but when hollywood dead comes on? y'all better watch out. | playlist

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