Stigmatization of Feminism and Feminists on Weibo

Absztrakt (kivonat)

With the prevalence and popularity of smartphones and social media, gender inequality has become one of the most frequently discussed topics on Chinese social media. However, in China, feminism and feminist are not defined as positive terms, and it does not associate with the image of independent and powerful women that western feminism represents, due to the online stigmatization, Chinese feminists have generally been depicted as unreasonable and fierce women who provoke gender antagonism and disturb the social stability. The stigma on feminism has limited the emergence of feminism in China, instead, fewer women are willing to identify themselves as feminists because it brings cyber bullying and verbal abuse online. Even though the feminist movement has become more challenging with massive insults and attacks from its critics, social media as a platform has provided more opportunities to explore what is behind this intensive antipathy and backlash. Although the stigma of feminism comes in many forms, the resentment and oppression of feminism in the language is a direct indicator. Therefore, in this paper, the concentration is on the stigmatizing language towards feminism and feminists, and these comments are all from, Weibo, the largest social media site in China, as it is the main gathering place for Chinese feminists. The research question is, in what ways do these users stigmatize feminism and feminists? And what are the true reasons that drive these users to verbally abuse feminists and feminism? The author is going to use the method of content analysis to investigate and analyze anti-feminism insults, which is a direct tactic to understand the language patterns and interpret the mentality behind the text.