China’s gender conversations must go offline to empower everyone

Last week, a friend suggested something unexpected: “Why not invite our husbands to see the Chinese feminist movie Her Story?” Everyone agreed and we watched the film as a group. Afterwards, we discussed the movie as men and women sharing perspectives, in a way I had rarely experienced before.

Throughout my 26 years in China, open discussions about gender that involve both men and women have been nearly nonexistent. The only other time I had a real conversation like this was, unexpectedly, with my father.

One evening, as we walked along the river after dinner, my father hesitated before speaking. “I raised you without gender expectations,” he began. “But at a recent business dinner, someone said I should have taught you that family matters most for women. Now, I wonder if I did the right thing.”

His vulnerability caught me off guard. For the first time, we discussed his fears, my dreams and my values. I deeply appreciated his non-biased way of raising me. Now, he proudly tells me how he challenges people who hold traditional gender values while advocating for diverse life choices. However, I couldn’t help but wonder: why are these moments of connection so rare?

While such moments of connection bring hope, the dominant conversation around gender plays out online – and in a much more divisive way. In 2020, the comedian Yang Li brought gender issues to the centre of China’s public discourse with a controversial line: “How can he look so average and still have so much confidence?”

The show on which she made that joke garnered about 100 million views per episode on average. That single sentence caused an uproar on social media, sparking a “gender war” that has only intensified since then.

  

​Read More