Liang Xiaowen: Chinese Feminist Activist on #MeTooInChina

This interview was conducted by Robin Morgan at Women’s Media Center, transcribed by Liang Xiaowen and edited** by D.D. Wang and Winnie Shen at Chinese Feminist Collective.

Robin: We’ve all read about tightening of speech on feminism in China. As the#MeToo movement reached China, China shut it down. Literally. Weibo, which is their Facebook and has a huge population, is not allowed to use the term “feminist.” Feminist websites completely shut down. Pressure has been put on students, where much of the grassroots activism began, to stop their activism, their complaints against professors for sexual harassment and sexual assault, to cease all such activity, under threat of not [allowed] graduating, under threat of expulsion, and parents become involved, universities brings them in to add to the pressure [to students] at home. In addition, there is a “Troll Army” that attacks such people online for their feminism, hewing to the government line — an interesting position for so-called trolls. So, there has been general repression over feminism and specifically, over #MeToo, and it reached to a point where some of the protesters, organizers were in jailed.

One of them, however, is currently in the United States and is able and willing to speak freely. Liang Xiaowen, a Chinese feminist activist from Guangzhou. She co-founded a grassroots organization for feminists in China. After graduation, she worked as a legal project manager of a feminist activist group. To the women in China who we know listen to this podcast we’re with you. To the women and the rest of the world hearing this podcast, we read about and hear about the work that Chinese feminists are trying to do in a repressive context. But, this is a rare time when we actually get to hear their own voices, or at least one of them. And it is with great delight that I welcome Liang Xiaowen.

Very good to have you here and you are one of the courageous women. [omitted] Talk about — [your work] and then I want to get on to the #MeToo movement and the women’s status in China.

Xiaowen: […]I was born and raised as the only child in the family. Gender equality is actually in our policy. So, all my life I never knew women are still unequal in this world. After I met this group of feminist activists, I found out women are actually suffering from inequality, and that’s when I started to join feminist movement. I became a volunteer with a group of feminist activists who are mostly in their 20s. The first campaign we did and I joined was occupying the men’s room in 2012. In that campaign we occupied the men’s room and claimed more room for women, because women are always standing in line this campaign went viral in China.

Robin: You should know we did that in here in 1968, on the way to the Miss America pageant because we had buses taking us there to demonstrate. We stopped at a rest stop and you know there was this huge line of women and there was nobody waiting in front of the men’s room. So we liberated the Men’s room. One woman guarded it while the other women went in. This was wonderful!

Xiaowen: Yes. We actually did learn from campaigns from other countries’ feminist movements and we added on our own ingredients to localize [these campaigns]. But after I joined that campaign, I still didn’t identify myself as a feminist activist. [It was] because once identifying myself as a feminist, it did not sound very good. It sounded like I’m a man-hater. I didn’t want people to feel like I’m a man-hater. I wanted people to feel I’m a people person. I identified myself a gender equality advocate because it sounded more gentle and more welcoming to people and then I participated it more campaigns and I did more work. We stood on streets using performance art to attract people’s attention. So, we basically used our bodies as an installation art because China doesn’t really allow public demonstration. This is our way to getting to it.

Robin: So, you’re doing it through art because that is allowed?

Xiaowen: Yes. We don’t call it demonstration. It is art. In one campaign about anti-sexual harassment, a photo of me doing this art was published in a lot of websites and a lot of people commented on this photo saying that I was so ugly that no one would sexually harass me.

Robin: You know they say the same thing all over the world. It like they all read the same “secret book.”

Xiaowen: Exactly! Also, when I was doing a campaign about anti-domestic violence, people said that I was so ugly, no wonder I got beaten up.

Robin: Oh, they are such idiots! They are such idiots… go on.

Xiaowen: They also accused me of being a feminist.

Robin: (Laughing)

Xiaowen: So, back then I didn’t identify myself as a feminist, I felt so weird because everything I did was not extreme at all; it was not radical; it was simply emphasizing…

Robin: Common sense!

Xiaowen: Yes, common sense and gender equality. But they still accused me of being a feminist. At that point, I was so angry. I felt like I was so fed up with all these personal attacks that I said why not? If everything I did when I was advocating for gender equality and you said I was a feminist, then maybe a feminist is who I am.

Robin: Oh, good for you.

Xiaowen: So, finally I identified myself as a feminist, I felt empowered and I am immune from all these personal attacks. It’s like every time a woman stands out in the public and claims her rights, people will attack her. But once I identified myself as a feminist, I didn’t care about these attacks anymore so that’s how I became a feminist.

Robin: I went the same route for what it’s worth. I’m an old woman, 150,000 years old now. At first I was nervous about using the word feminist because it sounded 19th century and old fashioned. Instead I called myself in the ’60s, a women’s liberationist, because we were imitating China. We were imitating speak-bitterness meetings and creating consciousness-raising. It seemed so revolutionary, we didn’t understand we were the real revolutionaries, even the men of the left turned against us. I thought finally, well, if I am going to be blamed for it, I might as well call myself a feminist. It’s a very honorable word. I know there is a whole furor over the #MeToo movement in China and they shut down Weibo, which is like your Facebook. They’ve arrested some women a few years ago. Tell us about that and the repression that has shut down any demonstrations about sexual harassment. First of all, there are no sexual harassment laws, are there?

Xiaowen: There aren’t specific laws about sexual harassment but there are laws, like employee protection. There will be one specific provision saying that employers are not allowed to sexually harass women, their employees, but [there is] no punishment, penalty, and there is no specific definition about sexual harassment.

Robin: So it was not enforceable at all. It might as well not exist. And the crackdown, they say you are all agents of the West or you’re “all man-haters”. And the women who were arrested, they were detained, talk about that.

Xiaowen: Around March 7th or 8th, 2015, five of my colleagues were arrested because they planned to carry out an activity in five cities nationwide to hand out stickers about anti-sexual harassment. But right before this activity, my colleagues were detained. And, not only my colleagues, but also ten to twenty people [volunteers] were also being questioned by the police officers. They [my five colleagues] were detained for 37 days.

Robin: Wow, 37 days! I was just about to ask how many hours! Were they formally charged with anything?

Xiaowen: No, they were never formally charged so they were accused of — so they were detained in the name of causing public disorder. They never found enough evidence to formally charge my colleagues. After 37 days, they were released on bail.

Robin: [Omitted discussion about women scholars and women in power in this movement] We read about the fact that the #MeToo movement is going underground using codewords online like rice bunny because it sounds like “mi tu” because they [censors] have shut down all mentions of #MeToo. Tell us how you’re getting around that.

Xiaowen: It was inspired by the #MeToo movement in the US . There was one woman who stood out and said she was sexually harassed by her supervisor when she was pursuing her doctorate so this open letter brought public outrage. Two students in China wrote open letters to their alma mater, asking their schools to build an anti-sexual harassment mechanism and these two students also appealed to the public, appealed to other students to ask them to write the same letter to their own alma maters. I joined that movement too. I wrote a letter to my alma mater and asked my school to build this mechanism and about 70 students joined this letter within a week.

Robin: That was to South China University of Technology?

Xiaowen: Yes, and that was in January. Apart from my school, there were, in total, 94 schools who joined this campaign. Students from 94 schools joined this campaign. In total, there were more than 8,000 students who joined this campaign.

Robin: Wow, that is fantastic. What was the response?

Xiaowen: I was not in China, I was in the US [at that time] so I haven’t heard of a reply yet but we did send this letter to our Education Ministry and we’re still waiting for a reply. As for each of the [94] schools, they have different replies but mainly, they were vague. But a lot of schools haven’t replied yet. Some of the students — I didn’t connect with them directly — but I heard, this is all what I heard, I heard that some of the students were being talked to — they haven’t graduated yet. That’s why we ask our participants to write letters to their alma maters because they have already graduated so they won’t be threatened by their university. They were still some students who joined this campaign even though they hadn’t graduated yet and I did hear that their school’s counselors talked to them and asked them to not join. This was in January and in February, about 200 students and schools from outside China, mainly students who are studying or teaching overseas. We wrote a letter to the Education Ministry asking them to build a [anti-sexual harassment] mechanism that we all asked for. But it was not until April — I think there’s something big going on right now in China — because there was a lot of students who heard about the campaign and a lot of students revealing their sexual harassment cases that are going on in China.

Robin: Yes, people gain strength from each other. The more [#MeToo stories] there are, the easier it is for people to join. Although, the more the government would get alarmed. [omitted] How can women from other countries be helpful and supportive, without playing into the hands of the authorities saying, “Ah! See, you’re just pawns in the hands of the West.” How can women be sensitized to be supportive? What do you need from the women who are listening to this program, not only in the States but around the world? What would be helpful?

Xiaowen: Thank you for this question. I am really touched and I really needed that. So, right now, because of the censorship, people in China can never get access to Twitter or Facebook so no one knows what’s going on in the outside world. Also, Feminist Voices, the largest and most influential feminist alternative media in China was permanently banned. Basically, right now, feminist activists in China don’t have a large platform to post their ideas, news or campaigns about feminism activism because this platform has been banned. We are trying to build a bridge between China and the U.S. about Chinese feminist movement. We use our Twitter (@FeministChina) and Facebook (@FreeChineseFeminists) to tell the world about Chinese feminist movement.e also receive a lot of support from all over the world. We then send back these support to activists in China, to let people in China that people all over the world are watching and supporting them

Robin: [omitted] Women can then establish sisterhood across national boundaries and patriarchal boundaries. I wish you all the possible best!

**Please note some sentences in this interview were edited or omitted for clarity, and all were marked with “[ ]”.