Panel Statement

Panel: Feminist Stirrings and Social Media in Mainland China

My talk mainly examines two important queer-feminist online activities the Young Feminist Activist Group had made in China: “Nudity against Domestic-Violence” in 2012 and “Take Feminist Five to Travel around the World” during the well-known case of Feminist Five’s Detention in 2015. I will argue that the Young Feminist Activist Group has transformed the social media, such as Weibo and Facebook, into their new stage for activism so as to challenge state-patriarchy and to conduct creative resistance that could not be realized in the offline activism in China. I will also point out that Young Feminist Activist Group’s online activism is featured with “queerness” that is de-centered, de-organized and theme-shifting with different netizens’ participation, so that such feminist activism could transcend the boundaries beyond hetero-patriarchal system and framework of either gender or sexuality, and form a widely open coalition with participants from both inside and outside the gender/sexuality movement in China for their creative resistance.

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Video: Panel 2: Feminist Stirrings and Social Media in Mainland China

• Holly Lixian Hou is now pursuing her Ph.D studies in the Department of Cultural and Religious Studies, the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She has been conducting research on the lala (lesbian) movement, queer politics, feminist activism, cyber-activism and civil society in China. She has published articles on the emerging feminist cyber-activism in China, as well as on the history and development of LGBT movement in China. She is also involved into the gender/sexuality movement in China for over 5 years as both a participant and a researcher.