Personally, I was very happy to find that more people in China started discussing feminism. Regardless of whether it is a positive or negative voice, it at least shows that this topic has been paid attention to. I think this is an improvement.
Connie’s Chatting Club
Storyteller | Yue WU
“Born to be human, but I need to fight for equal rights-II”
Audio original in Chinese
(The text has been edited and deleted)
1
Whether women can truly be independent, or what should we do to grow into a more independent and confident us.
-Connie
I think it’s actually quite difficult to talk about the topic of independence. The most important thing is economic independence. Economic independence guarantees all other possibilities.
As women, we must endure some physiological sufferings: such as physical and psychological changes during menstruation; or external judgments given to us by this society: for example, objectifying women, body shame and age anxiety.
The aesthetic judgment of everyone will be affected by society to some extent. Everyone is watching advertisements, watching celebrities, and watching various media postings every day. In this media environment, we will subconsciously feel that this “good-looking” appearance is beauty.
A healthy society should be very tolerant, it should be able to allow different aesthetic experiences and different aesthetic values to exist.
In my personal opinion, I think the young generation is better at make-up and fashion. But there is another question behind it: why young people are generally good at dressing up, good at making up, and making videos and doing Vlogs. Why do people spend so much energy and time doing this?
This is actually driven by appearance anxiety.
Maybe a certain society only allows the existence of a unified aesthetic, which is actually very unfair, because as you said, some people “force” themselves to do these things to cater to this popular aesthetic: for example, weight loss, whitening, makeup, etc., this is actually the process of being materialized.
Because many times in the workplace, people do choose good-looking people. In this way, people are in the process of being objectified. You use your appearance to exchange for a condition that may be more convenient than others. You can’t blame the person who does this thing. Because she is in such a game rule, she must do this in order to have a better life, in order to gain respect, in order to obtain something, but this is not a personal problem.
In my opinion, this is still a manifestation of gender inequality, or unequal distribution of power.
Because some people have relatively greater power to speak and make decisions, they can use this to demand others, or even occupy other people’s resources, and let others do what they want them to do.
In order to prevent everyone from falling into the negative loop of appearance anxiety, in addition to personal awareness of this problem, the more important thing is that society needs to regulate the scope of power. At least you have to specify the powers that can be exercised and the scope of their use: What can be done and what can’t be done in the workplace.
[True good-looking] must be based on the premise of making oneself comfortable.
The matter of childbirth is a more typical behavior of objectifying women that everyone has already accepted.
2
There is a documentary “This Is Life”, which talks about some girls in remote areas and rural areas in China. In order to give birth to a male baby, even if their uterine wall is very thin, maybe the woman has already reached her body’s limit, she still uses her life and health to exchange for a male descendent.
I believe that the family itself has warmth, but between the life of the mother and the life of the male descendent, many people choose the male newborn very naturally and without further thinking. This unconscious evil is to objectify women. As a result of this, women are used as a container to nurture life. Because everyone is very accustomed to the fact that women just have to give birth to children, and they must give birth to boys for the family.
I found that since the girl was very young, the one thing everyone said to her was: “You will become a mother in the future.”
Even when we want to praise a girl, we will say: “You will be a good wife.”
-Connie
Most people in the society, maybe 99.9% regard the possibility of a woman having children as her value as a woman. No one has ever said to a girl: “You can choose to become a mother. You can reserve this possibility, but you have the right to decide whether to be a mom or not.”
Just because you have been given a certain ability, you have to use it. You no longer have any control over this ability, and you are not allowed to have autonomy. This is very weird and scary.
Take surrogacy as an example. Because life is hard and they are very poor and there is no other way to make a living, some women give their reproductive rights to others. This is far more than objectifying women, it is the behavior of treating people as animals.
This is a very basic right for women, for ourselves, but we have never been told that we have this right to choose, whether to give birth to babies or not.
If I can talk about this topic with women, I very much hope that we can all realize one thing: You are a woman, you have the possibility of giving birth, you can choose whether to exercise the right of reproduction. You are a person, you are you at first, then you are a wife, you are a daughter, you are a mom. When you are discussing with your partner and your partner’s family, you must realize that you are not affiliated with them, your reproductive rights do not belong to them, and your reproductive rights belong to yourself.
If you love this person, if you want to have your own offspring, for your own happiness, of course you choose to give birth to baby, I think this is a very great thing. But if it is your life, for example, your physical health is being threatened, or your body is not suitable for pregnancy, you should not give up your right to not give birth. This is your own right to choose. You should not give up your body.
I think many women do not realize the huge responsibility and sacrifice they have to make of having children. The reason why they choose to have children is because this is an invisible social rule which they have to follow: a family is to have children.
I hope that before every woman comes to this decision, they can learn more about their partners, their economic and social conditions, including their own health conditions, and even more knowledge about parenting, with all this preparations to make decisions: “Do you really want a child?”
3
This notion of patriarchy in some rural areas in China has its social roots. Since we were a farming society, the male labor force were hugely required at the beginning. Later, it slowly evolved into a concept of male centralization, and the male is the dominant role of the family.
Over time, everyone has become accustomed to such an established social rule that men have social power and the right to speak.
In such a social environment, people may not want to challenge the established rules, or in order to live an easier life, everyone is accustomed to such rules: men should go to pursue their career success, while women should stay at home and take care of the family. Men are the breadwinners, and women are housewives.
In fact, I do not agree that men may have more achievements than women. I think this is more of a plunder of social resources.
Similar to the Matthew effect (the good will get better and the worse will get worse.) Because men have more social resources, they are given more possibilities to do those things, on the opposite women have fewer resources. This polarization will become more and more obvious.
-Connie
In an unequal society, when a woman wants to achieve a higher goal, she has to work much harder than a man.
Since you are a person who breaks the rules of society and wants to pursue achievement, then just breaking the rules will have many people accusing you and not understanding you, and there will be many negative voices. In addition to working hard, you have to face this kind of incomprehension of others. In comparison, men have never had this concern. What they want to do is to learn, to fight, and go for it.
I think most women are very good and very smart, but not everyone is strong enough to fight against such negative external voices. In many cases, in order not to make their lives full of such big conflicts, a lot of women choose to return to their families and choose to do a job that may not be very competitive, so that they have enough time for raising children and doing housework.
In addition to the ideological inequality, what we cannot deny is that due to the differences in our bodies between men and women, for example, we have the so-called marriageable age and child-bearing age. The different conditions will also bring some obstacles to ourselves. Do you think this is also a kind of restraint?
-Connie
Two years ago, I wanted to do a project related to women’s dysmenorrhea. At that time I downloaded a lot of relevant academic materials to study the proportion of women with dysmenorrhea in different regions, countries, and societies and the causes of their dysmenorrhea.
What I found interesting is that in a more developed society, many companies, many schools, and many institutions will provide some help to women. For example, when you are physically unwell, you can ask for a day-off, or offer you with sanitary napkin subsidies, painkillers subsidies, etc., painkillers against menstruation are common in Germany. If you feel pain, you can buy it in every pharmacy, and then you can return to work. If you can’t work, go to the family doctor and ask for sick leave.
What I want to express is that if the society itself is sufficiently tolerant, it will provide convenience to such a group of people and let you know that there is a solution. So after solving this problem, you can devote all your energy to your work.
If a society cannot provide such convenience to disadvantaged groups, it is actually not a well-functioning society, it is more of a society that treats people as machines.
4
At last I want to talk about “gender antagonism”.
What I want to say is that gender antagonism has existed thousands of years ago. As the beneficiaries of gender antagonism, men have all the resources. You are used to neglecting and oppressing the other sex. When the other sex wants to stand up and speak out, you think it is the female group that provoked the gender antagonism, which is not correct.
This is something that has existed many years ago, and we just want to put it back to equality as much as possible.
5
Connie’s remarks
Social relations and social norms have set too many different roles for us. Every moment, people are hovering between self-image and ideal social roles, but they often forget “I” and are completely tied to the requirements of “ME”.
Don’t ignore your true feelings, and don’t follow the trend and get lost or hurt yourself.
Everyone is a unique existence, see yourself as an individual, and truly love yourself.
If everything goes well, it is expected that Yue WU and her artist friend will hold an online joint-exhibition at the end of this year, with the theme of “Female Awakening”, and hope to let the public have a better understanding of “female consciousness”.
The follow-up will also be updated in my blog.
