The Men Question in Chinese Digital Feminism: Embodied Gender Subjectivity and Ugly Affects

Abstract

This thesis examines the controversial phenomenon of yan-nan (misandry) in post-MeToo Chinese digital feminism. Through empirical and theoretical approaches, this thesis situates Chinese digital feminists’ attitudes towards men within the broader context of the “men question” in Chinese feminist history and the dynamics of global/transnational feminist theories and movements. It challenges superficial versions of the “misandry myth” which frequently pathologise feminist emotionality and tie it to misogynistic notions of femininity. Conversely, this thesis argues that yan-nan in Chinese digital feminism should be understood fundamentally as a situated knowledge (Haraway 1997) reflecting the complexities and dilemmas faced by feminist politics within the post-socialist, neoliberal Chinese setting. Drawing in part on interviews with 14 self-identified feminist women and 16 Chinese men, all of them engaged with online feminist content, this research explores feminist attitudes towards men and men’s responses to feminist yan-nan. Analysed with reference to feminist affect theory and feminist phenomenological approaches to embodied subjectivity, I contend that a feminist sensibility has replaced conventional feminist collective activism, organisations, and practices as a core means of doing feminism and building feminist political identification in contemporary China. With a specific analytic focus on negative feelings such as feminist disgust and men’s guilt, this thesis interprets these “ugly” affects not as issues to be managed but rather as fundamental aspects of the embodied subjectivities that enable feminist politics to unfold. In the end, this thesis proposes for recognising the key role of affect in everyday politics of gender, by especially considering how the availability of positive/negative feelings on the structural level can orient individuals to incline or resist existing dominant gender power structures in their everyday feelings and practices.