MCLC: Nietzsche scholar comments on women

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Nietzsche scholar comments on women
Source: China Daily (1/27/15)
The vulnerable majority
By Ruan Fan (chinadaily.com.cn)
Chinese scholar Zhou Guoping, who specializes in Nietzsche.
Chinese scholar Zhou Guoping, known for his studies and translated works of Nietzsche, tactfully apologized for his microblog post after backlash by Chinese women labeling him a hopeless chauvinist.
“I admit that I am a straight man, but I’m not a helpless chauvinist,” Zhou Guoping, a well-known Chinese scholar and writer, said on his microblog last Monday. A week ago, his post saying “women have but one ambition”, and that “to love and to give birth to babies is the most important thing in their lives” was criticized by thousands of angry netizens.
Adding fuel to the flames are his other claims, such as, “no matter how talented, how accomplished a woman is, if she cannot be a gentle lover, wife or mother, I would think less of her in terms of beauty.”
Most of the criticism came from women, who argue that Zhou is a helpless chauvinist, or in Chinese, 直男癌 zhinan’ai.
Zhou said he did not create this post to intentionally irritate the public. Actually, the claims were excerpts from his article, Contemporary: Misunderstandings of Feminine Charm, that published in the magazine Chinese Women in 1991.
It seems hard for him to digest the fact that after 24 years, these claims, once acknowledged by males and females alike, have lost their original appeal.
Yet more unexpected for him is that, within a day, he had became the target of criticism.
Hou Hongbin, senior editor at the Southern Urban Daily, said: “Suppressing women by belittling them is quite common, yet a more effective way to achieve this end is by praising female loyalty, chasteness, endurance and sacrifice to the family, and to deem submissiveness as their virtue.”
Changes are really taking place, in thinking and in the actions of the Chinese women.
Domestic violence, once thought to be a skeleton hidden in the closet and sidelined as a private matter, for example, has been brought out into the open bit by bit by women in the last decade.
More and more victims of sexual assault, especially those on campus, are coming out of hiding and efforts are being made to end such crimes.
“We have to fight for our own rights,” Xiao Meili, a 25-year-old feminist said. She once wore a wedding dress tainted with blood to call attention to violence between lovers and couples, and took nude photos of herself to urge anti-domestic violence laws. She shaved her head to protest against higher university admission scores for female students. She also participated in an “occupy men’s rooms” activity with her friends to lobby for more public toilets for women.
In 2013, Xiao, together with her friends at BCome, a Beijng-based feminist drama association, took a hike from Beijing to Guangzhou to promulgate feminist ideas.
They traveled to over 20 cities or counties, held more than 10 lectures and wrote to local governments to apply for disclosure of measures taken on the prevention of sexual assaults and similar crimes.
Their efforts have not gone unanswered.
The Chinese Department of Building and Housing, for example, has vowed in response to build on a 1.5:1 pro-rata basis respectively, for female and male toilets, in buildings since November 2014.
The first national anti-domestic violence law was drafted and issued for public outreach on Nov 25, International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.
by denton.2 at osu.edu on January 27, 2015
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