Betraying Big Brother
Subtitle: the feminist awakening in China
By: Leta Hong Fincher
Edition: [CA & US version].
Publisher: Verso
Published: 2018
Place of publication: London; Brooklyn, NY
Language: eng
ISBN-13: 9781786633675
Copyright date: 2018
Subjects: Feminism; Women; Political activity; Social media; Féminisme; Femmes; Activité politique; Médias sociaux; Aspect politique; SOCIAL SCIENCE; Discrimination & Race Relations; Minority Studies; Political aspects
Description: A feminist movement clashing with China's authoritarian government On the eve of International Women's Day in 2015, the Chinese government arrested five feminist activists and jailed them for thirty-seven days. The Feminist Five became a global cause celebre, with Hillary Clinton speaking out on their behalf and activists inundating social media with #FreetheFive messages. But the Five are only symbols of a much larger feminist movement of civil rights lawyers, labor activists, performance artists, and online warriors prompting an unprecedented awakening among China's educated, urban women. In Betraying Big Brother, journalist and scholar Leta Hong Fincher argues that the popular, broad-based movement poses the greatest challenge to China's authoritarian regime today. Through interviews with the Feminist Five and other leading Chinese activists, Hong Fincher illuminates both the difficulties they face and their "joy of betraying Big Brother," as one of the Feminist Five wrote of the defiance she felt during her detention. Tracing the rise of a new feminist consciousness now finding expression through the #MeToo movement, and describing how the Communist regime has suppressed the history of its own feminist struggles, Betraying Big Brother is a story of how the movement against patriarchy could reconfigure China and the world
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Introduction; title: China's feminist five; title: The Internet and feminist awakening; title: Detention and release; title: Your body is a battleground; title: Jingwei fills the sea; title: Feminists, lawyers and workers; title: China's patriarchal authoritarianism; title: Conclusion: a song for all women.