China's rebels with a feminist cause
Lijia Zhang says cause of equality is well served by activists' dedication
The play has provoked debate and controversy around the world, yet nothing as ugly as in China. To advertise for a Chinese version of the show on their campus, 17 women students from the Beijing Foreign Studies University recently posed for the cameras, each holding up a sign "quoting" her vagina. "My vagina says: I want freedom," read one; "My vagina says: I decide who to let in," said another.
They cannot have expected the savage criticism unleashed online after they posted the photos on the internet. Thousands of web users, mostly men, commented unkindly on their looks, accused them of being immoral and compared them with prostitutes.
The online assault was a brutal reminder that many do not favour gender equality
More than three decades of reforms and opening up have dramatically transformed China. Women have unbuttoned Mao Zedong's straitjacket. And, nowadays, major cities impress visitors with signs of an open and modern society. Even so, the culture of male patriarchy is firmly in place.
This was all too evident in the outbursts against the students by men who clearly find the women's quest for sexual freedom and their disdain for being chaste both unacceptable and threatening.
For me, the whole drama illustrates the glaring gap between the largely conservative society and an increasing feminist activism in China.
The production of (Our Vaginas, Ourselves) was actually homework assigned as part of the university's gender studies course. A creation of BCome, a feminist theatre group, it combines Chinese elements, for example crosstalk, a traditional form of Chinese comedy, and elements from Eve Ensler's 1996 play .
