Digital masquerading: Feminist media activism in China

From non-governmental engagement to feminist media activism

In socialist China under Mao’s reign, official discourse supported gender equality and the liberation of women through integrating women into the workforce to build a progressive and modern nation. This version of state-sponsored feminism was criticized for overemphasizing class struggle while obscuring the structural and everyday inequalities faced by women (Evans, 2008; Gilmartin, Hershatter et al., 1994; Yang, 1999). The economic reform led by Deng Xiaoping in the late 1970s introduced a shift in gender politics by way of market liberalization. As Rofel (2007) argues, traces of neoliberalism during the reform era called for the expression of “natural” desire and gendered selfhood, which are believed to have been suppressed by socialist policies during Mao’s era. The cultural imperative of self-expression and the interest in gender identity lent support to the commodification of women’s bodies. The portrayal of women in the media diverged from the sexless and androgynous in the Cultural Revolution era, to the economically successful, consumerism-friendly, feminine, and sexually attractive (Evans, 2008). The binaristic conception of traditional gender roles, which subsided in Mao’s era, resurfaced during the market reform (Zhang and Sun, 2014).

In response to these social changes, the women’s movement in the economic reform era of the 1980s and the 1990s actively involved both NGOs and state institutions (Milwertz and Bu, 2009). The incorporation of the national Anti-Domestic Violence Network into the organizational infrastructure of the All China Women’s Federation (ACWF), a state-sponsored institution tackling women’s issues, was a successful example of Chinese feminists’ “dual approach” (Milwertz and Bu, 2009: 228). Unlike western feminists, Chinese feminists worried that an NGO’s explicit oppositional stance to the state might lead to suppression, which would then compromise their ability to advocate for women. They recognized collaborating with the party-state/ACWF to be necessary for channeling their efforts into policy and legal changes (Milwertz and Bu, 2009). This non-confrontational co-existence of state-initiatives and NGOs was also observed by other scholars as feminist activism in this period “simultaneously [drew] upon the political and financial resources of the state/ACWF, and [worked] on new, local initiatives” (Hsiung and Wong, 1998: 480).

The “non-governmental” feminist engagements began in the mid-1980s and were heightened by the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women held in Beijing in 1995. These engagements covered a wide range of women’s issues, from economic and legal justice to religion and sexuality (Hsiung et al., 2001). The media sector (including the press, television, and film) was becoming more commercialized in practice, but was still under the government’s watch. As the media permeated people’s daily lives, it became a key area of feminist study, and a powerful tool of feminist activism. Feminists in China have been monitoring the mainstream representation of gender constantly. For instance, their content analysis of news reports on domestic violence in Zhongguo Funü Bao (The Chinese Women’s Newspaper) from 1984 to 2003 showed that the newspaper’s typical reportage personalizes domestic violence and overlooks structural and social inequality (Bu and Zhang, 2011). Moreover, girls’ issues have little media visibility, as they are often blended with women’s issues or children’s issues. Girls are usually depicted as passive victims or receivers of assistance, and are rarely given an active voice (Bu, 2008).

In the age of digital media, feminist media practices include the production of digital video, multimedia performance, and art installations, among others. Easier access to digital technologies, such as digital cameras, facilitates the creation of public culture (Berry et al., 2010). Veteran feminist Ai Xiaoming has been using digital video for social engagement for decades. She sees her documentaries as “part of China’s fledgling rights defense movement” (quoted in Zhang, 2015: 335). Zhang Zhen argues that Ai’s digital video activist documentaries construct a “digital political mimesis” by leveraging the accessibility of digital technologies and the Internet to mobilize the audience for social change (Zhang, 2015). Zhang sees Ai’s documentaries as demonstrations of Jane Gaines’s idea of “pathos of facts” (Zhang, 2015). For example, instead of aiming for journalistic reportage or projecting detached objectivity, Ai inserts herself and her camera into the scene of protest and is unabashed about her agenda. By showing that she is attacked along with other protesters, her documentary dissolves the subject-object divide. The evidence of injustice elicits “pathos”—affective, bodily responses—from the viewers, prompting them to take action for social change (Zhang, 2015).

The Internet aids feminist activism in China in other practices. Media Monitor for Women Network in Beijing was founded in 1996 to promote women’s communication rights and gender equality in the media. In 2009, the network started to publish the weekly e-paper Women’s Voice and launched the website of the Network. Women’s Voice comments on current events related to women’s rights and gender equality, responds to women/gender issues reported by the mass media, reports on the work of NGOs serving women, and introduces the development of the international women’s movement. The New Media Female Network (NMFN) (Xin Meiti Nüxing Wangluo, also known as Women Awakening) focuses on gender issues in mass communication. Through organizing exhibitions, seminars, lectures, and journalist workshops about feminism in the Pearl River Delta region, NMFN educates the public and trains journalists to evaluate and monitor the media from a gender perspective. NMFN sees the organization of these activist events in physical spaces such as libraries and cafes as a way to reclaim the male-dominated public space (Jun Li, personal communication, January 10, 2016).

This new era of feminist activism saw the emergence of the Youth Feminist Action School (YFAS), whose actions started to receive attention from mainstream newspapers in Beijing and Guangzhou circa 2012. YFAS is not the designation of an organization or the exclusive title of a particular group of people. Instead, it puts a name to a form of activism in China that people recognize and a set of values that anyone can espouse. YFAS promotes an all-inclusive feminism, led by young, action-oriented feminists who leverage various platforms of communication to achieve their objectives (Lü, 2014). While previous generations of Chinese feminist activists were often intellectuals who maintained good relationships with the mainstream media—which oftentimes helped promote NGO activities with feminist messages (Bu, 2008: 322)—YFAS is made up of a younger generation of media-savvy feminists who publicize their actions and messages through social media, especially Sina Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter. For example, the Sina Weibo accounts of the two aforementioned feminist websites, namely @FeministVoice and @WomenAwakening, are run by young feminists. ¹ Their media-based practices exemplify what I call digital masquerading, a new form of construction, delineation, and alteration of bodily images online for activist ends.

Masquerading, agency, censorship

To masquerade is usually understood as to pretend to be someone one is not. In her 1929 essay, “Womanliness as a masquerade,” Joan Riviere argued that femininity is a mask that women wear in order to be accepted in a male-dominated world (Riviere, 1929). The concept of masquerade is oftentimes used to discuss the relationship between gender and identity expression in cultural texts, ranging from the literary tropes of mask and masquerade to filmic enactments of masculinity (Studlar, 1996; Urszula et al., 2008). Kathleen Woodward later pointed out that Riviere’s study has introduced at least “two currently circulating notions of masquerade”: one sees the inescapable female disguise “as submission to the dominant social code” while the other views “masquerade as disruptive and as resistance to patriarchal norms” (Woodward, 1988: 125). The practices of YFAS present a complicated picture beyond the two polarized understandings of masquerade. I use masquerade to expand from the act of performing gender to describe a new relationship between user and digital media that is resistant to state censorship and conditioned by both censorship and the specificity of media forms. The notion of digital masquerading captures how the feminists tactically use media and carefully set their agenda. Their actions demonstrate a high level of self-awareness of possible criminalization and strong agency that negotiates with strict state surveillance.

To masquerade is to pose for the camera, the journalist, and ultimately the readers of the news and users of the Internet. Compared to the previous generation of feminists who focused on critiquing media representation, the young feminists are news creators who set the agenda on both traditional media (print and television) and online media. In the early stage, YFAS deliberately took to the street in order to attract the attention of mainstream media. Later on, YFAS, no longer relying on mainstream news media as the main outlet, leverages social media in generating social impacts. The heated discussions online triggered by the young feminists about a particular event would be noticed and then reported by mainstream news media. For example, in June 2012, the official Weibo account of the Shanghai Metro posted a photo of a female passenger dressed in a transparent dress. The caption warned, “wearing a dress like this is bound to attract sexual harassment.” This post drew a cascade of criticism from female Weibo users, many of whom spoke from their personal experiences to repudiate the claim that sexual harassment is the fault of the victim. Subsequently, on the Shanghai Metro train, an activist held a sign that read “I can be provocative, but you can’t harass me.” Shortly afterwards, she uploaded a photo of her action onto Weibo, which was reposted many times and attracted a slew of commentary from the mainstream media. This is one of the first successful campaigns that started on social media and then received mainstream media attention (Jing Xiong, personal communication, February 26, 2016).

The young feminists’ media knowledge facilitates their agenda setting. During the planning stage of a campaign, one or two spokespersons are chosen to present the whole campaign to the mainstream media. They rehearse what to say to the journalists, introduce relevant policy background and advocate specific policy change (Meili Xiao, member of YFAS, personal communication, January 5, 2016). YFAS is extremely conscious of the potential and limits of mainstream media. Lü Pin points out that for an incident to qualify as newsworthy it has to meet a set of criteria: the protagonist has to come from a group regarded as deserving of attention, instead of a marginalized or stigmatized group; the protagonist should have a clear and focused demand that is not too controversial; the action and setting of the incident should make a good spectacle (Lü, 2014). These criteria factor into the campaign planning of YFAS.

The visual representation of the actions of YFAS is also carefully thought through. On Valentine’s Day in 2012, the young feminists caught public attention with their campaign “Injured Bride,” in which three activists wearing bloodstained wedding dresses walked on Beijing’s Qianmen Street. The bloodstained wedding dress has been used in multiple anti-domestic violence protests as a dramatic representation of violence in marriage. The combination of eye-catching visualizations and placards held by activists that provide a narrative is able to garner significant journalistic interest. Moreover, photos of the act that also capture the placards have a better chance of circumventing Internet censorship. Internet content in China is censored in a number of ways: “the Great Firewall” that blocks foreign websites or services such as Facebook or Twitter; keyword filtering that automatically forbids posts that contain sensitive words or phrases; and real-life inspectors who screen and delete sensitive posts online (King et al., 2013). These photos with protocol-violating words will have to be deleted by hand and thus have a longer Internet life span. The tactics employed by the feminists to counter online censorship can be seen as acts of masquerading that show their agency in navigating the mediascape.

The advocacy for social change and the intervening practices of YFAS have forged a new feminist identity, and redefined the relationship between feminist activism and the use of media. Unlike the feminist trailblazers in the 1980s and 1990s who were reluctant to subscribe to Western feminist theory because of its universalizing tendency, YFAS embraces Western feminism. Feminism has been translated as nüxing zhuyi in the field of literary critique, but YFAS insists on using nüquan zhuyi. Nüxing simply means female, whereas nüquan conveys women’s power or women’s rights. The commitment to women’s rights is reflected in the Weibo profile description of NMFN, which states the organization’s support for women’s human rights. As emphasized by Li Jun, the director of NMFN, striving for women’s human rights is a way to resist Chinese liberal intellectuals, who are largely ignorant of gender issues (Jun Li, personal communication, January 10, 2016).

In “Social activism in China: Agency and possibility,” Lee and Hsing identify three types of activism in contemporary China: the politics of redistribution that struggles for material interests such as homeownership, labor rights, and land claims; the politics of recognition that demands moral status, political position, and respect for marginalized identity; and the politics of representation that struggles for expression of ideas in cinema, art, and journalism (Lee and Hsing, 2010). While the politics of recognition and representation is influenced by the “flow of universal values, abstract ideas, and virtual images” of “foreign discourses and organizations” (Lee and Hsing, 2010: 6), the politics of redistribution tends to be motivated by local injustice. Activism around recognition and representation can forge networks across regions and nations, whereas activism around politics of redistribution is locally bound. Although China’s current status in international politics and economy means that it cannot be “impervious to international standards of governance and justice” (Lee and Hsing, 2010: 9), affiliations with foreign organizations may subject social groups to heightened surveillance and suppression with the introduction of new national security laws under Xi Jinping’s rule.

Indeed, the state’s control over social activism has tightened since Xi assumed office as the leader of the state, of the Communist party, and of the new government branches charged with internal security. As Yuen points out, cycles of relaxation and repression have characterized the Chinese state’s control over civil society since the start of the reform era. However, under Xi, “control … has now become the norm and relaxation … the exception,” and “ad-hoc repression of civil society groups and activists is now moving towards a more systematic restriction” (Yuen, 2015: 51). The state used to be more lenient toward activism without foreign funding or without an intent to challenge the rule of the Communist Party (Wu and Chan, 2012), but has tightened its control in recent years. Activism with nationwide networks and interactions with foreign organizations in particular have faced increasing suppression. The crackdown on feminist activists should be interpreted in this context.

Masquerading the body and digital alterability

Existing studies of social media in China (e.g. Weibo or online forum comments) have predominantly focused on discursive formations through text, while overlooking the power of image and bodily involvements. For example, Weibo comments are seen as “hidden transcript,” a kind of humorous rearticulation of official discourse to circumvent censorship (Clothey et al., 2015; Gleiss, 2015). The emphasis on textual cues hardly takes into account the effectiveness of visual expressions, such as pictures of protests, hand-written notes, and portraits. The majority of scholarship on Chinese social media tends to equate censorship with state control, and online coded language with resistance. Yang Fan (2014) is one of the few who examine the effect censorship has on culture, instead of on state politics. She conceptualizes recoding as a cultural response that articulates the invisible. A “recoding public” comes into being through the making and remaking of meanings. One of her examples is the use of an “empty chair” to signify Liu Xiaobo on microblogs. It’s significance is beyond circumventing censorship. It’s also remaking meanings by toying with the link between language and image.

The digital practices of YFAS, especially the online display of their bodily performances, can be seen as a negotiation of the relationship between words and images. Staging provocative public performance art or behavior art has been one of YFAS’s powerful tactics, be it an occupation of a men’s bathroom to demand fair bathroom access, or shaving their heads to protest biased university admissions (Wei, 2015). Visual manifestations could been interpreted as a kind of masking and masquerading. Photographic and videographic documentation of their offline campaigns are uploaded to and widely circulated on Weibo, which would not have been possible on older online platforms such as BBS (Bulletin Board System). Users on Weibo can post screen captures of long text to bypass the 140-word count limit, or upload derivative works such as Photoshopped pictures that make fun of officials or counter official narratives (Liu, 2015; Poell et al., 2014).

Masquerading is not always about masking, but can be about staging controversial bodily performances for the media. During the 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence campaign and the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women in November 2012, feminist activists in China launched a petition for legislation against domestic violence (which was eventually enacted in December 2015). Although the issue was on the agenda of the National People’s Congress, the activists rallied for a more transparent and inclusive legislation process to ensure the content of the law would serve victims of domestic violence. The petition also called for more proactive participation from the public, a higher degree of accountability, and expedited passing of the laws.

The activists were hoping to collect 10,000 signatures, but the enthusiastic response at the outset waned shortly afterwards. Xiao Meili and several members of the YFAS took self-portraits in a studio and uploaded them via Weibo in the hopes of boosting the petition. A cluster of Weibo users, who had no personal connections with each other but were following feminist causes, joined by posting topless or nude photos of themselves on Weibo with a hyperlink to the petition.

A picture uploaded by Xiao Meili to her personal account and the group account of @FeministVoice (Figure 1) went viral on Sina Weibo. Inscribed on her torso were two columns of Chinese characters: “Shame on domestic violence / Proud to have flat chest” (“家暴可耻 ／ 平胸光榮”). Notably, three red stripes of text overlay the top, middle, and bottom of the photo advocating for collecting signatures for legislation against domestic violence. The layout, the white italic font, and the red background of the caption resemble Barbara Kruger’s 1989 artwork, which was created to support women’s reproductive freedom. By referencing Kruger’s work, Xiao highlights the female body as a battleground of the politics of gender, where physical and symbolic violence materialize.

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Figure 1.

Screenshot of Xiao’s petition photo soliciting support for legislation against domestic violence, publicized through the Sina Weibo account of Feminist Voice.

Xiao’s photo set the stylistic prototype for subsequent posts. A photo that borrows Xiao’s graphic design shows two nude women with what appear to be used tampons hanging from their mouths, and what appear to be used sanitary napkins adhered to different parts of their bodies. Viewed alongside the 10 Chinese characters inscribed on the women’s bodies (“menstrual blood is not shameful / domestic violence is reprehensible” (“经血不可耻 / 家暴才可耻”), these bloodstained sanitary products also resemble bandages covering different injuries caused by physical assault. The largest bloodstained cloth covering the women’s genital areas can be read as a sanitary napkin or a bandage in this context. The powerful image offers layered interpretations that simultaneously denounce domestic violence and attest to menstruation as an essential female bodily experience that is shamed and hidden from public view.

Er Mao’s photo adopts Xiao’s template but differs from Xiao’s in important ways. In contrast to Xiao’s physical composure and stilted gaze, Er Mao’s photo shows her screaming with her eyes closed and hands balled into fists. Instead of inscriptions, her torso is covered with red palm prints that resemble bruises from beatings. Rather than inviting critical reflection, the unapologetic display of pain from domestic violence stirs a visceral response in the viewer.

The subjects of other photos seek to subvert binary gender norms and aesthetics that prescribe “proper” gender performance: we see masculine women, transgender people, a man wearing lipstick with the words “I can be sissy, but you can’t hit me” inscribed on his body. These pictures re-politicize the body and redefine femininity and masculinity. Despite constant raids on pornographic material online, images that objectify women’s bodies are easily available (Jacobs, 2012). Female nudes, repurposed through words written on the bodies and text overlays, seek to provoke the public.

Another example of the digital masquerading of bodily performance is a series of digital photographs by YFAS released as part of the Free the Five campaign. Most of the creators involved are friends of the Feminist Five. The photographs depict five women, each wearing a mask on which the faces of the Feminist Five are printed, enacting the daily lives of the arrested feminists (Figure 2). The five were photographed in mundane settings in Guangzhou carrying out day-to-day activities: eating dim sum, shopping at a wet market, strolling along a river, playing in a public park, and resting at the storefront of a sex shop.

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Figure 2.

Free the Five group pictures taken on the streets of Guangzhou.

Shortly after the online dissemination of these photographs, another group of young feminists in Beijing created photos of themselves wearing the same masks appearing in different public spaces in their city. It would have been difficult to take these photos on the spot in the heavily-guarded capital, so these women digitally superimposed photos of themselves on those of public spaces in the city (Figure 3). The production mode of these digital photographs is also conditioned by the distribution pattern of social media. As the interactive norm on Weibo encourages daily updates, in the Guangzhou case, for example, dozens of pictures were taken on the same day, while one photograph was released per day over a period of time.

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Figure 3.

Free the Five group pictures after digital alteration, uploaded to the Weibo account @AntiPETD. The words read “Feminism is not guilty!”.

Collective masquerading and remaking publicness

The concept of masquerade has been used to understand gender performativity (Butler, 1993; Parker and Sedgwick, 1995), sexual difference (Barbin et al., 1980), masculinity (Penley and Willis, 1988), feminist camp and performance in popular culture (Robertson, 1996), and transgender expressions in film and video (Straayer, 1996). In these conceptualizations, masquerade is an important concept for deconstructing normative gender identity and challenging heteronormativity, which usually presume an individualized identity concerning gender and sexuality. The notion of digital masquerading, instead, points to the interface between the medium and the subject, which involves collective efforts in assembling activist activities and remaking publicness.

While the Internet is typically understood as a public space facilitating discussion and community formation, the publicness of the Internet is fraught with exclusions. A study on an environmental NGO’s use of the Internet to promote their causes acknowledges that the public sphere online can be elitist, ineffective in reaching out to new supporters, and short of critical exchange (Sima, 2011). Conceptualizing public spheres as allowing “open debates about issues of common concern, continuous debates and a large number of participants,” Rauchfleisch and Schäfer (2015: 151) identify multiple public spheres on Weibo that lie along the continuum between apolitical entertainment and an ideal discursive space. Weibo is a prime example of an Internet platform that could be exclusive and hierarchical. As Svensson (2014) has pointed out, there is a participatory gap on the platform, as many registered users are inactive or post infrequently while a small percentage of users dominate the feed. Sina Weibo’s active courtship of celebrities, public intellectuals, journalists, and business leaders privileges their voices over marginalized groups and ordinary citizens (Svensson, 2014). Moreover, social media has been criticized as an individualistic private sphere (Fenton and Barassi, 2011). The increasing reliance on social media can be construed as an outcome of the failure of representative democracy, a symptom of the failure of the “public terrain of political participation”. The individualistic, atomized mode of networked participation reflects how the neoliberal logic has eroded “collective public citizenry” (Fenton and Barassi, 2011: 191).

Online media is capable of reinforcing sexism and misogyny in explicit and subtle ways. Wallis (2015) shows that ostensibly subversive online derivative works that mock and attack the government are built on visual and linguistic rhetoric that denigrate femininity and reinforce the violation of women’s bodies. For example, the Grass-Mud Horse song that went viral on Chinese Internet plays on the pun between the Chinese name of the mythic animal and the curse “fuck your mother” to criticize the government’s censorship of online speech. The rhetoric of criticism embedded in the lyrics is premised on a set of gendered binary relations, in which the trope of the mother represents the sacred motherland penetrated by the evil government. The misogynistic language online sometimes reveals the entangled relations between gender and class in the reform era. One telling example is the term “green tea bitch” (绿茶婊), which has recently gained currency online. The term was created by Chinese netizens referring to young women of pure, wholesome appearance (embodied by the metaphor “green tea”) who offer sexual favors to rich men in exchange for money or material goods. As Cao et al. (2015) observe, the term implies that women are expected to conform to certain aesthetic standards of femininity in order to be considered “marketable”. The YFAS constantly receives misogynistic attacks online, as evident in the derogatory comments with compound terms such as “feminist bitch”(女权婊) or “feminist cancer” (女权癌) on their postings.

Though the individualistic mode of participation is embedded in the design of Weibo, the tactical use of group accounts for assembling by Chinese feminists can be seen as a kind of masking or masquerading. Besides regular NGO Weibo accounts, many xiaozu (small groups) accounts have been established to disseminate alternative and controversial opinions. For example, @國際斯拉特, literally International Sluts, is a group account for sex-positive bisexual and lesbian women. These group accounts rally people across geographical locations and facilitate offline organizing as a way to work against the misogynistic attacks online.

YFAS’s strong demand for the accountability of both public and private institutions has accelerated concrete social changes in women’s lives. A series of reports to officials and complaints have successfully brought the issue of gender discrimination in employment to the court. In August 2012, the media revealed that the admissions system of many higher education institutions set a higher bar of entry for female applicants. After multi-pronged follow-up actions by the young feminist activists, the Ministry of Education prohibited higher education institutions from setting gender quota in their enrolment in May 2013. China’s first anti-domestic violence law took effect in March 2016. The influence of the group accounts of @FeministVoice and @WomenAwakening demonstrates digital masquerading that points to the interface between the medium and the subjects, which involves collective efforts in assembling activist movements and remaking publicness.

Conclusion

As taking their causes to the streets proved to be a mounting challenge, YFAS allies bought a subway station advertisement in Beijing in early 2016. The poster celebrated singlehood, fighting against the tremendous social pressure for Chinese women to fulfill their filial duty by getting married. The original design did not pass the censorship and was replaced by a softer motif (Tatlow, 2016). The upscale skincare and cosmetics company SK-II launched a media campaign with a similar message, specifically targeting urban women in their 20s and 30s, around the same time. In the latter campaign, singlehood was implied to be a choice, but only for the economically capable. The critical lens of class issues is crucial to a thorough understanding of the relationship between media activism and feminist politics.

YFAS might have engaged a state-censorship-resistant relationship between user and digital media, but the unequal access to media, influenced by class and geographical differences, easily undermines the impact of media-based activism. College-educated women in major cities remain the most prominent participants of this new wave of media-based feminist activism that also catches the attention of mainstream media. In the early 2010s, @FeministVoice labored over a new Weibo account for two years in an attempt to mobilize female domestic helpers, but the movement gained little traction (Jing Xiong, Director of @FeministVoice, personal communication, February 26, 2016). The surging ownership rate of mobile communication devices among migrant factory workers and domestic helpers did not alleviate the challenge to get female domestic helpers involved in social media activism. In comparison to factory workers gathered in industrial areas, domestic helpers scattered in separate workplaces are even harder to recruit and mobilize through mobile media (Sun, 2014). Although lesbians and bisexual women make up a significant demographic of the YFAS movement, their sexuality is rarely at the forefront of YFAS’ activism. The neglect of certain groups could be another form of masquerading that prioritizes economic, legislative, educational, and workplace concerns.

As exemplified by the “digital masquerading” practices of YFAS, social media such as Weibo gives rise to a new set of feminist aesthetics and politics under state surveillance and the threat of incrimination. The notion of digital masquerading does not suggest an authentic identity or personhood behind the masks and masquerades, but a process in which the creative usage of social media intersects with the formation of feminist identities and articulations.