Please note: This piece contains discussion of sexual harassment and assault, sexual misconduct and violence, and rape.
At 2:39 a.m. on a June 2022 night in Tangshan, China, a man at a barbecue restaurant placed his hand on the back of a woman in a group of four. After she pushed him away, he slapped her in the face and, along with several other men, began hitting all four women with beer bottles, kicking them on the floor, and dragging them out to the street. While the authorities claimed that two of the women were hospitalized, rumors spread online that some had died from the wounds. Most discourse has since been censored and deleted.
In the days following the tragic event in Tangshan, millions of people swarmed onto social media platforms such as Weibo and WeChat, posting and reposting videos, photos, and commentaries. Within two days, Weibo, a Twitter-like platform, deleted over fourteen thousand posts and closed over one thousand accounts for violating the platform’s regulations. This is far from a new phenomenon in China. After almost every single national incident that causes public outrage, social media platforms routinely delete thousands of comments and turn thousands of pages into “404 Page Not Found.”
With the event in Tangshan inciting rage, terror, criticism, and conversations online, different interpretations and narratives surrounding gender harassment emerged. Though the topic of sexual assault, harassment, and violence began to gain its new peak of attention in China, others downplayed the role of gender by shifting the conversation to public safety and gang violence. Nonetheless, a few comments still represent the old patriarchal view of gender violence: women who go out at two in the morning are making themselves “easy prey.”
This rationale may sound familiar to the one that originated in 2018: that women wearing exposed clothes are setting themselves up for sexual harassment. In 2018, Zhou Xiaoxuan, once an intern at China Central Television, accused Zhu Jun, a television host, of molesting her in 2014. The accusation eventually ended in 2021 with Ms. Zhou losing the battle, after, as she claimed, the judges rejected the video evidence that she provided.
From the beginning of the #MeToo movement in China in 2018 with the case between Zhou Xiaoxuan and Zhu Jun to the most recent gender violence in Tangshan in 2022, similar sexist justifications remain prevalent in China, each feeding on a patriarchal culture and suppressive policies and raising more obstacles against a new wave of feminism.
Clothes, time of the day, and not enough resistance: all of these excuses give the perpetrators worldwide plausible justifications to rid themselves of the blame. In 2013, Ms. Jen Brockman and Dr. Mary Wyandt-Hiebert — inspired by Dr. Mary Simmerling’s poem, “What I Was Wearing” — launched at the University of Arkansas an art exhibit entitled “What Were You Wearing?”, which showcases the clothing that survivors of rape and sexual assaults were wearing at the event. From “sweats, a university shirt, and a ball cap” to “Army combat uniform and a gun,” the installation dismisses the “common rape myth” of exposing clothes “seducing” the perpetrators.
In a 1984 interview conducted by Diana Scully and Joseph Marolla — two professors of Sociology at Virginia Commonwealth University — where they questioned convicted rapists in seven medium to maximum security prisons in Virginia, five themes of justification regarding rape appeared: “(1) Women [are] seductresses; (2) women mean ‘yes’ when they say ‘no’; (3) Most women eventually relax and enjoy it; (4) Nice girls don’t get raped; (5) [They feel] guilty of a minor wrongdoing.” These justifications are not only single-sided but also mere assumptions. And perhaps it is more heart-wrenching to see both the incarcerated rapists blaming the victims as the culprits and the similar justifications still standing forty years later.
These justifications are not just limited to the United States. While similar excuses abound on Chinese social media platforms, China’s feminism movement also faces obstructions from the country’s deeper patriarchal history and culture. Since the Xia dynasty in the twentieth century B.C., Chinese dynasties have all followed patrilineal inheritance. Nearly 4,000 years of patriarchal rule were strengthened by Confucian ideals of filial piety and women belonging to the domestic sphere, as well as the prevalence of concubinage, especially among the upper class. While some women became prominent poets, scholars, empresses, warriors, and merchants, the scale of these exceptions was nonetheless miniscule. Before concubinage was outlawed in 1949, wealthy men could have as many concubines as they could afford, oftentimes to showcase their wealth.
As the #MeToo movement spread to China in 2018, feminism proliferated in contemporary China’s major cities. Yet the government authorities continue to implement policies that are biased towards men and indirectly “allow” sexism to flourish. In December 2020, China’s Ministry of Education announced plans to “prevent boys from effeminacy” by increasing physical education from primary to high schools. In May 2021, China allowed each family to have up to three children, which increased from two in 2016 and one child in 1980. Yet the idea of this policy is based on confining women to maternity and domesticity.
Thus, the system continues to foster gender violence, harassment, and system oppression. The efforts to promote a toxic masculinity among boys and teenagers are further strengthening ancient roots of sexism and are contrarily undermining feminist movements that struggle to rid of it. Furthermore, the arguments trying to detach the event in Tangshan from gender issues and to put the blame on gang violence and public safety are merely an effort to avoid the discussion of sexism, its ancient roots, and the lack of prevention in China. The justifications that what the victims were wearing elicited sexual assaults and harassment, again, strengthen the double standards between the perpetrators and the victims, as well as the notion that gender violence, harassment, and assaults are taboo.
Will there ever be an end to the struggle against sexism and gender violence in China? Perhaps, but not soon. How much longer will it take for girls to safely walk to the beach in bathing suits or have a late-night meal with friends? How much longer will it take for women to complain and protest freely? There is not a clear answer to these questions, but one thing is certain: with every new wave of feminist outcry on social media, the crowd just gets louder.
If you have experienced sexual assault and wish to report the incident or make use of Harvard’s support resources, please see the information below:
- Office of Sexual Assault Prevention & Response (Confidential and open to all members of the Harvard community) 24-hour hotline: 617-495-9100. To make an appointment: 617-496-5636 or osapr@harvard.edu.
- Harvard College Title IV Office: 617-496-3336.
- Counseling and Mental Health Services (Confidential and open to all members of the Harvard community): 617-495-2042
- Boston Area Rape Crisis Center: 24-hour hotline: 800-841-8371.
- National Sexual Assault Telephone Hotline (Confidential and open to all): 800-656-4673.
Image by Seele An licensed under the Unsplash License.
