‘Promiscuous women get gangrene’ – what Chinese summer camps taught teens about gender values
- Classes teaching children about women’s values promote reactionary ideas and scaremongering, video exposé finds
- Authorities intervene to halt the latest such classes and central legal body calls for further action to promote equality
“I dressed myself up in a fashionable and revealing way, and that’s an invitation for others to insult me and rape me,” says a sobbing woman in a video shown to teenagers at a summer camp in Wenzhou, in eastern China’s Zhejiang province.
“Three drops of sperm are equal to poison, and they will hurt unclean women. I’m afraid my body will rot, will stink and ache, and they’ll have to amputate my legs.”
Her words were supposed to reinforce another video that was shown, which instructs that “women who change boyfriends frequently will develop gangrene on their bodies, and will rot and turn black, until their limbs will have to be cut off”.
In a series of videos shot in secret that went viral on Chinese social media over the weekend, Pear Video reported that in August a group of children aged between five and 18 were taught “filial duties” and “women’s values”.
The topic “women’s virtue classes for teens” was viewed 54 million times on Weibo, China’s Twitter-like platform, at the weekend. The figure represents the total number of views of the videos and articles including those by Pear Video.
