6 months ago
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SHANGHAI: In bars tucked away in alleys and at salons and bookstores around Shanghai, women are debating their place in a country where men make the laws. Some wore wedding gowns to take public vows of commitment to themselves. Others gathered to watch films made by women about women. The bookish flocked to female bookshops to read titles like "The Woman Destroyed" and "Living a Feminist Life".
Women in Shanghai, and some of China's other biggest cities, are negotiating the fragile terms of public expression at a politically precarious moment.
China's ruling Communist Party has identified feminism as a threat to its authority. Female rights activists have been jailed. Concerns about harassment and violence against women are ignored or outright silenced. Prez Xi Jinping has diminished the role of women at work and in public office. There are no female members of Xi's inner circle or the Politburo, the executive policymaking body. He has invoked more traditional roles for women, as caretakers and mothers, in planning a new "childbearing culture" to address a shrinking population.
But groups of women around China are quietly reclaiming their own identities. Many are from a generation that grew up with more freedom than their mothers. Women in Shanghai, profoundly shaken by Covid lockdown in 2022, are being driven by a need to build community. "I think everyone living in this city seems to have reached this stage that they want to explore more about the power of women," said Du Wen, the founder of Her, a bar that hosts salon discussions. Frustrated by the increasingly narrow understanding of women by the public, Nong He, a film student, held a screening of documentaries about women by female Chinese directors. "I think we should have a broader space for women to create," she said.
At quietly advertised events, women question misogynistic tropes in Chinese culture. "Why are lonely ghosts always female?" one woman recently asked, referring to Chinese literature's depiction of homeless women after death. "They share tips for beginners to feminism," said Tang Shuang, the owner of Paper Moon, which sells books by female authors.
Anxiety about attracting the wrong kind of attention is always present. When Tang opened her store, she placed a sign in the door describing it as a feminist bookstore that welcomed all genders. "But my friend warned me to take it out because I could cause trouble by using the word feminism." There is always the possibility that officials will crack down. "They never tell you clearly what is forbidden," she said.
