User:KU J590 Group 1/sandbox

Xiaowen Liang: Lead
Xiaowen Liang,(Chinese Name: 梁小门) is a feminist activist from China who has played an influential role in advocating for women’s rights despite personal attacks online and the Chinese government attempting to stop feminist movements altogether.

Xiaowen Liang – Biography
Xiaowen Liang is an Associate Attorney at Geng and Associates, P. C. located in New York, NY. With a Fordham University Law Degree, Liang pursued a career in practicing feminine law, defending women and their rights globally.

Before her career as a lawyer and resident of the United States, Liang began supporting feminism during college in her home country of China. Before college, she stated that she never knew women in China did not have as many rights as men. When she discovered this, she decided to take action. During 2012, Liang was enrolled as a student at the South China University of Technology when she began publicly demonstrating for women against the school admission policies which heavily favored males. Police showed up and immediately questioned her resolve and purpose, explaining to her that she had reflected western ideologies at the Chinese campus. Liang saw this as another attempt by the Chinese government to suppress female freedom. Liang finished school in China in 2016 and decided to move to the US to enroll in Law School at Fordham University in New York, NY. With a special focus on feminism and women’s rights, Liang was able to obtain a law degree in under two years. From there, she began work as a Community Organizer for the Chinese Feminist Collective, INC in May 2017. She then added another occupation in 2019 as an Associate Attorney at Geng and Associates, P. C. which is an immigration attorney’s office. Today, she continues to advocate for women’s rights in China. Liang says, “because of censorship, not a lot of people know about feminism activism in China. We want to let the world know that there are people fighting against the government”. Traditionally, China has not supported feminism or women's rights like the democracies of the west; however, due in part to efforts like Liang’s, China and its citizens have an optimistic look into what could be China’s foreseeable future.

Xiaowen Liang’s efforts for women in China
In 2012, Liang volunteered with the LGBT and feminist movement group in China. The first campaign she was involved in was when the group occupied the men’s restroom at her college. This campaign went viral in China because their point was that women needed better restrooms. Liang also shaved her head to protest school admissions policies that favored men. Later in 2012, police showed up on campus to question her about these campaigns. Additionally, during many of the campaigns, people on the internet verbally attacked her. However, this motivated her to keep fighting for women’s rights. By 2015, she co-founded a grassroots feminist organization. Later that year, it was shut down when five of her colleagues were arrested. They were kept in jail for 37 days because they planned to carry out an activity in five cities nationwide to protest sexual-harassment. In 2016, Liang decided to leave China when her family felt that her activism was getting to be dangerous. As mentioned above, Liang moved to New York, and now, her goal is to build a bridge for information about the women’s movement in and out of China. Although not as known in the United States, Liang and her group command large audiences in China. Her overall goal is to let the world know that there are people fighting against the government in China. An informal network of Chinese citizens living abroad are working to support women’s rights activists and their efforts to combat sexual harassment and inequality back home. They are focusing on bringing the stories of activists and other women in China to a broader audience. While in the United States, Liang has worked closely with several dozen other Chinese feminists to coordinate events to raise awareness of this movement. Others in the same group have curated a traveling photography exhibit showing Chinese activists laying on the streets and protesting in bloody wedding dresses. In January 2017, Liang traveled to Washington D.C. and joined other Chinese feminists at the Women’s march. The Chinese government had banned news outlets and websites from covering the march, so the women shared their pictures and videos in an online group that included 1,000 people. The movement Liang is part of has even started to see a broader reach. In February, she was interviewed on the popular American Netflix show called “Patriot Act” and Liang described the time security agents showed up to her home with her father’s boss to pressure her into canceling a seminar about women’s rights. She also discussed the #MeToo movement going on in China. Despite being able to protest and speak more freely in the United States, many Chinese women say that their fear of retribution has not disappeared upon leaving China.

History and Government Regulations on feminism in China
Ancient China was largely matriarchal. Women were the head of the household, and were among the only people buried properly with stone tools and other artifacts. However, the earliest dynasties shifted the nation’s focus to physical size and gender-based energies, except for the Tang dynasty (618-907 CE), which gave way to a harsh patrilineal society that continued through every dynasty thereafter. Traditions such as foot-binding, widow suicide, widow chastity, and Confucianism further reinforced the ideals of female inferiority and laid out strict expectations of their role in society, which was largely in service of men in charge. Although some of the more harmful traditions, like foot-binding, were disbanded in the early 19th century, the lasting effects of sexism continued.

When discussing the history of feminism in China, it is important to understand the female’s role in early Chinese tradition. Daoism, indigenous to China and still a major religion practiced today, expressed women’s relationship to men as inherently subordinate. These teachings were the basis of Chinese culture and their influence was not easily lost as China grew into the nation it is today. A major turning point for female empowerment came with the uprising of the Communist Revolution in 1949. Many have called it one of the most “striking manifestations of social change” to accompany a political revolution. As the Communist Government continued to make hollow promises of inequality throughout the latter half of the 18th century, the early 2000’s finally gave way to feminist milestones. These included policy changes and successful gender-focused lawmaking. This decade’s feminist movements and feminist leaders in China have included a strong presence of the #MeToo movement, which has been operating since 2015. Liang has been a crucial part of the movement’s spread in China. According to an article by the South China Morning Post, in March of 2018, Feminist Voices, a popular feminist social media account with over 180,000 followers on Weibo, China's rendition of twitter, was shut down. This was even after its author attempted to sidestep censors by not using words such as “sexual harassment.” The #MeToo movement had to get creative to bypass censorship. Chinese social media users tag posts about the movement as "rice bunny," whose homonyms are mi(rice) and tu (bunny). This was devised to avoid censorship as Beijing sought to crack down on discussions of sexual assault and gender issues online. Although the #MeToo movement is what Liang is most known for, she advocates for many areas of women’s rights. This includes anti-domestic violence, sexual assault, and more.

While Liang continues to be an advocate in the United States, the Chinese government has continued to tighten its grip on feminists in the country. In 2018, according to the South China Morning Post, the government shut down its gender and sexuality center. The Guangzhou Gender and Sexuality Education Center (GSEC) was designed to fight the growing issue of sexual harassment in China and was created in 2016. GSEC set up the Network Anti Sexual Harassment and Assault project to raise awareness of sexual violence, ran into trouble with censors before closure. GSEC created multiple surveys on sexual assault, many of which were deleted--up to 4 times in one month. The surveys stated that 75% of current and former female university students in China were victims of sexual harassment. GSEC released another survey about the Chinese media industry which raised this number to 80%. Its creator, activist Wei Tingting was one of the “Feminist Five,” a group of women who were arrested in 2015 by Chinese police after attempting to hand out anti-sexual harassment stickers. This was also the group Liang was part of, but fortunately she did not get arrested. The “Feminist Five” would go on to serve as a symbol of dissent towards the authoritarian state. Few feminist organizations remain in China, but the feminist community is still active and powerful. In 2018, Xuecheng, a well-known Buddhist monk stepped down from his position after a 95-page document accused him of sexual harassment. Although the Chinese government is still restrictive, there are feminist groups and people like Liang who are continuing to advocate for women in China.

Timeline of Important Events:
2012: First activism campaign was when the group occupied the men’s bathroom at their college university and it went viral throughout China 2015: Co-founded a grassroots feminist organization. This organization was shut down after five of her colleagues were arrested for carrying out a public campaign against sexual harassment. Decided to move to the United States because her activism was becoming dangerous. 2016-2017: Attended Fordham University School of Law in New York, New York while continuing spreading awareness of feminist movements in China. January 2017: Traveled to Washington D.C. and joined other Chinese feminists at the Women’s march. May 2017: Became a community organizer for Chinese Feminist Collective, INC. She continues to do this today. January 2019: Participated in the Women’s march in New York city and advocated for Chinese women with her group. February 2019: Interviewed on the widely-watched American comedy show Patriot Act to talk about China’s #MeToo movement. July 2019: Became Attorney at Geng & Associates and is still working there today. October 6 2019: Discussing #MeToo movement in China at an event in New York City.