Putting Chinese women back in their box, leaving men holding it?
By Dr Stephen Whitehead
By Dr Stephen Whitehead
TAKEAWAYS
The trend for young men to adopt ‘herbivore’ type masculinities (similar to the Western ‘metrosexual’) has spread across Asia.
But the Chinese government has started to openly kick-back at progressive gender politics.
The desire is a return to fixed gender binary, where women ‘know their place’ and men are ‘heroes and warriors’.
Will Chinese education succeed in putting women back in their patriarchal box? One sincerely hopes not.
You could be forgiven for thinking that the most significant conflict occurring in China has been the riots in Hong Kong.
After all, according to more than one commentator, these protesters could even be heralding the end of capitalism.
But there is an even bigger conflict emerging in China and it is evident in its schools. No one is yet getting teargas thrown at them or water-cannoned, but if it continues, then the effects are likely to be greater than what is currently happening in Wan Chai every weekend.
Basically, the Chinese government has started to openly kick-back at progressive gender politics, in particular the emergence of androgynous male identities. What started out in the 1990s in South Korea and Japan as a trend for young men to adopt ‘herbivore’ type masculinities (similar to the Western ‘metrosexual’) has now spread across East and South East Asia.
The popularity of ‘meng’ [softness in men] in China, on the whole, represents a growing convergence among East Asian countries…The ‘softness’ of Pan-Asian soft masculinity also lies in its more sensitive and caring attitude toward women. The ‘Herbivore Man’ in Japan and South Korea, and ‘Warm Man’ in China, are all in line with this type of sensitive new guy.
‘Warm’, ‘sensitive’, ‘caring’, non-aggressive’, ‘soft’, and definitely not threatening to women. Who said men cannot change for the better? However, not everyone is happy with the outcome of this Asian experiment in men and masculinity:
“These herbivore men don’t connect with others, they don’t have their own families or have children and don’t really contribute anything meaningful to society, either tangibly or intangibly. They are like parasites who often live with their parents. So, you can imagine how it is going to affect society in the long run, socially and economically.”
This quote from Dr Paul Wai-Chang of University of Hong Kong, is in response to the evidence of the ‘feminoid’ man 2, to be well and truly settled in Hong Kong and China. In other words, this is no longer an anomaly of Japanese culture, but has spread out across East and South East Asia, and fast.
In what is an early example of a likely concerted attempt to stem the tide of feminoid men flooding out of China’s schools, a school in southwest China has developed a course titled ‘Boys and Girls are Vastly Different’; teaching boys to grow “heroically” and girls to be “tranquil”.
The Principal of Chengdu Elementary School in Sichuan province, makes no apologies for encouraging the teaching of sexist attitudes and gender stereotypes to his students.
“In recent years, we have found that boys and girls are ‘being shaped’ in the same ways while growing up, said Fui Jin, the school’s principal. “Boys and girls aren’t being raised according to traditional masculine ideals.’
At first glance, this might simply appear to be one school principal demonstrating his anti-liberal credentials. His attitude a throw-back to China’s ancient patriarchal, Confucionist, culture; a desire to return to a simpler time when the gender binary was fairly fixed and women ‘knew their place’ in society, with men destined to be ‘heroes and warriors’.
But the Chengdu school is not alone.
There is now a ‘female morality school’ in China’s Hunan province, where ‘female students get up at 4.30am to scrub floors and are taught not to resist if their husbands beat them.’
“Don’t fight back when beaten. Don’t talk back when scolded. And, no matter what, don’t get divorced. Women should stay at the bottom level of society and not aspire for more.”
There are also an increasing number of Chinese schools training boys to be ‘more masculine’, which in effect means aggressive, assertive, competitive and behaving in a ‘traditional masculine manner’.
“The boys adopt the poses of soldiers, make their own beds, sing military songs and attend activities such as wrestling, tug-of-war, martial arts and American football.”
Fang Gang, a Chinese sex education expert, said the courses offered by such schools only promote gender inequality and strengthen traditional gender stereotypes.
“Men are placed in the public sphere, cultivating their competitiveness and professionalism, while women are placed in the private sphere, cultivating their roles as good wives and mothers”, said Fang Gang.
Could this resurgence in patriarchal values be connected to the fact that China’s marriage rate has fallen from 9.9 marriages per thousand to 7.2 per thousand in the last twelve months?6 This rapid decline in marriage, coupled with the rise in divorces is staggering and having a dramatic impact on Chinese birth rates, as well as lifestyles. The key to this appears to women’s new-found sense of independence. Shanghai and Zhejiang provinces rank 2nd and 5th in GDP per capita in China and it is no coincidence that they also have the two lowest marriage rates at 4.4 and 5.9 per thousand.
Will elements of Chinese education succeed in putting women back in their patriarchal box, under the control of toxic men?
One sincerely hopes not.
Dr Stephen Whitehead (opinions are author’s own)
References
[1] Whitehead, S.M. (2019) Toxic Masculinity: curing the virus, making men smarter, healthier, safer. London: Andrews.
3 http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1124569.shtm
4 https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1004548/chinese-school-offers-gender-specific-classes%2C-again
6 Geng Song 2016
For those interested, Dr Whitehead’s latest book, Toxic Masculinity, can be found here.
This article originally appeared in EDDi: Educational Digest International.