I hope each woman whoever starts to have a sense of independence and female consciousness, her first task is to be able to handle the relationship between herself and society, as well as the people around her.
Slowly let them understand you, use a more gentle way to communicate, to hear feedback, and slowly to mobilize the people around you.
In my opinion, it will be healthier than going to demonstrations and expressing one’s demands in a radical way.
Connie’s Chatting Club
Storyteller | Yue WU
“Born to be human, but I need to fight for equal rights-I”
Audio original in Chinese
(The text has been edited and deleted)
1
Hi everyone, my name is Yue WU. I am now studying Art in Germany, and the graduation topics I prepared related to women and time.
I think “Feminism” cannot be avoided when talking about #Women#. As a Feminist, what we want is equality and being respected. We are born to have such equal rights.
Maybe everyone will feel very radical when they hear about “Feminism”. But we women do not want to start wars against men, or to provoke gender antagonism. We just want to shed light on this topic, so that everyone’s got a chance to think about it.
A part of my graduation topics #Women# is Feminism. Of course, our lives, our emotions, our studies, and our various other issues can be included in women’s topics. Feminism is only one part of the whole topic.
In fact, many contemporary feminist activists do not directly call themselves “Feminist”, they call themselves “female critics” or “Feminism critics”.
Many of us understand Feminism in a relative single and one-sided perspective. In Western academic or social circles, Feminism is actually divided into various directions. It is a branch of sociology.
In the 1980s, Western society might be talking about Feminism, or so-called women’s rights. Now in 2021, everyone starts to talk about women’s perspectives, with the hope not to make it a one-sided or a very radical movement. They will hope to permeate this concept into every aspect of life and give people who devote themselves in pursing women’s rights a different identity-label/title, rather than misunderstanding them as radicals.
2
Actually I think any identity or role will be easily misunderstood. This is a very normal thing. Just as our majors are different, I have no way to understand what your major is doing. Or when I said that I study Art, maybe people will take it directly as painting.
What I have learned is that the current domestic discussions (in China) about Feminism, including the media’s reports, are using #Feminism# as a gimmick to market their views. In fact, they don’t care whether this point of view is correct or not, nor will they pay attention to the bias or the extremization of public opinion filed.
However, this kind of thing is also very common in Western countries. Take the #me too# movement for example, there are also many unjust, false and wrong cases, including many people who have turned Feminism into a kind of strategy for their own political interests.
Many people want to make a profit in troubled situation.
3
I have personally experienced language harassment in the workplace.
He was my workmate, I wore a short skirt and long boots that day, and he kept staring at my body, which made me feel very uncomfortable. Similar situations have happened many times afterwards.
Then I wondered, maybe I would make him stop this behavior if I changed into a normal outfit. So I changed into normal sportswear to talk to him about work another day, but the first time he saw me, he asked: “Why don’t you wear a red dress anymore, you are beautiful in that dress, and your legs are long.”
I was very angry at the time because it was at the university, I mean we were at work. His remarks made me feel very angry and insulted, so I wrote an E-mail to the Office of Gender Equity and Diversity, asking them to offer help and coordinate to deal with this harassment.
Notes: Every school and every institution in Germany is equipped with the Office of Gender Equity and Diversity. When you are faced with a series of problems such as racial discrimination, sex discrimination, verbal harassment, etc., you can turn to the office for help.
Although I had taken corresponding measures very quickly at that time, I still felt a deep sense of humiliation for a while.
I started to subconsciously feel that it was because I was wearing the wrong clothes, or because I didn’t stop him in time when he said this for the first time. I blamed myself, and at the same time I hated him very much.
It has passed almost a year. When I think about this now, I can understand that I should not blame myself.
There is an exhibition that shows the clothes worn by victims of sexual assault. Before this exhibition, everyone had a fixed idea that girls who were sexually harassed or assaulted must dressed too sexy. But what surprises people is that most of the victims’ clothes at the time were very ordinary, not gorgeous at all, not sexy, and even conservative.
So whether through my own experience, through this exhibition, or even the workplace sexual harassment encountered by other people, we should all realize that girls should not attribute it to their own fault, the one who did the wrong thing should be guilty.
Going back to my personal experience, after mediation by the Office of Gender Equity and Diversity, the person gave me the answer that he didn’t know that it was wrong to do so. He said he did this because of ignorance, regardless of whether it was an excuse or he really meant it.
But his answer and the whole thing made me realize that this is not just a personal problem, but a problem of the education of men in the whole society.
No one tells a man what should not be done, they will always be told that everything should be done, which is very scary. The society has always given men more possibilities, telling them, “just do what you want to do”.
Instead, the society tends to blame the victims.
This is a point that makes me feel very sad, because although this matter of mine is not a major event, and it did not really cause too much harm to me, I still feel a strong sense of self-shame.
Looking back at those who have been seriously violated, for example, when they go to the police station to report a crime, hoping to be treated and handled fairly, if others are more dismissive of their experience, or presumptuously start to judge victims’ behavior, which will bring them secondary, tertiary, or even more damage. Some serious ones will cause a very big trouble in their life. This is the thing that makes me feel the most heartbroken.
On the other hand, I have also thought about it. The whole thing cannot be 100% blamed on the perpetrator. What I want to say is that any event that occurs, we should look at it objectively and fairly, and try to see its essence.
I personally feel that this is also unfair to the entire male group, if we take all men as our enemies only based on a certain incident of violation.
There will be bad people in the world, regardless of their gender, age or social background; but there are also many good people who are serious about life and they will not cause any harm to others. If we blame the entire group, just because one person of this group did something wrong, this is very unfair and irrational.
But it is very difficult to be objective, and I am still learning.
4
I think I have always been a person with a feminist mindset.
Maybe my parents have been educated me in that way since childhood: you have to be independent. Then when I got older, I started to read Simone de Beauvoir’s “The Second Sex”. Her views at the time were actually very radical, and maybe because I was enlightened by some radical feminist thinking, and then I felt that there are many problems in our society, and the inequality between men and women is very serious.
I found that our feminist can’t really change the way others treat women. We must first consider how we treat ourselves and how we accept ourselves. We must understand that each society is imperfect. Male is accustomed to occupying more social resources and social advantages. They are accustomed to oppression of the other sex, maybe they don’t know it themselves.
We will still face gender inequality and social problems such as sexual harassment in the workplace. I think any woman, when you get to know the concept of Feminism, the first instinct should be how you want to make yourself live more happily or more at ease.
Any kind of practice and thinking which lead to changes in the social rules will bring you some uncomprehensive, unsupportive voices, or even malicious actions, because you want to make any changes, which will hurt another party’s interests.
While you are doing this, there are bound to be many voices that do not understand or support. It is very important that you first take care of yourself.
If those accusations make you miserable, if you can’t even protect yourself, or put yourself in a state of rebellion, then for whom are you doing all this. Because your ultimate goal is for all women to have a better life, but because of the incomprehension of society and the incomprehension of public opinion, you turn yourself into an island. This will be a sad-ending.
So I hope each woman whoever starts to have a sense of independence and female consciousness, her first task is to be able to handle the relationship between herself and society, as well as the people around her.
Slowly let them understand you, use a more gentle way to communicate, to hear feedback, and slowly to mobilize the people around you. In my opinion, it will be healthier than going to demonstrations and expressing one’s demands in a radical way.
5
Connie’s remarks
Feminism ≠ gender antagonism ≠ gender war ≠ radical
