User:Puddingworld/Me Too movement (China)

= #MeToo Movement in China and "Mi-Tu" =

The censorship from the Chinese government
The #Me Too movement was a feminist movement that fought for the inclusivity and fair treatment of women in China. China put censorship on its media and prevented its citizens from engaging in any form of the feminist movement. This annoyed many women as they were the ones who were facing a lot of discrimination because of the censorship. Hence women went in high numbers on their social media platforms and rallied others around the world using the #MeToo hashtag to help fight for their rights. In tandem with the #MeToo hashtag, bunny, bowl, and rice emojis were used. The reason why those emojis were used was that, they had symbolic meaning behind them: a good example is the "Rice bunny" symbol which in Chinese, pronounced as "Mi-Tu". This combination of emojis were widely used on social medias.

The biography of Lu Bicheng
The article of Lu Bicheng, published in 2012, was written as a biography to Lu Bicheng’s life. Lu was born in 1883, in Taiyuan, to Lu Fengqi and Yan Shiyu. She was the third of three daughters and became one of the literary geniuses in the household, taking after her older sisters (Liu, 2017). According to the article, Lu was accorded multiple opportunities to further her career as well as to improve her social life, chances that are implied to be somewhat rare. Opportunities like attending school which led to her adventure to America opened up her world to knowledge and information. According to the article, prior to the 1898 Hundred Days’ Reform and the Boxer Rebellion of 1900, women education was highly ignored and the decision on whether to work or not was left to the men.

About her article
Given the impact Lu has had on the Chinese women and the influence on the female voice in China, the article provides information on the impact Lu had on the perception of women and feminism. According to the article, Lu was a Chinese writer, an activist, an editor, a poet and a school founder, which established her placement among the top four women in China. The article establishes the place of women in the society which shows the struggle women like Lu went through to defy the standards set by the patriarchal society. The ability of the Lu women to start over after they were displaced from home exhibits the strength of a woman (Liu, 2017). According to the article, Lu uses every platform at her disposal such as the newspaper, to raise awareness and improve education for girls. Her contribution to the growth of feminism in China can be measured through her vocational activities such as her poetry collection that spoke intimately of female struggles and experiences throughout life.

The place of women in the Chinese society
The article of Lu Bicheng uses four main themes to show the growth and impact of feminism in the Chinese society: the place of women in the society, ownership of property and inheritance, the strength of a woman and the construct of marriage. The article uses Lu’s life to show how women were treated in ancient China during the late Qing dynasty. To begin with, following the death of her father, the entire family is displaced from their land following a contest for the Lu inheritance seeing as he had no sons. The article uses her struggle with education, the work opportunities availed to women and the materialistic perception of the society towards marriage to depict the state of the society. Lu’s family is forced out of their home after the death of their father which leads to her early betrothal to the Wang family, a state that quickly changes after the Lu starts losing their wealth. In such an instance, marriage is considered a strategic alliance to strengthen and maintain social status, a factor which in this case, led to emotional distress having faced rejection at the age of 9.

Lu pursues her dream
The article further informs on her predicament which saw her escape from her uncle’s home to pursue her dream. To emphasize on the strength of a woman, the article uses Lu’s ability to adjust and adapt to her surroundings as a measure of the strength of a woman. Her ability to surpass the hurdles presented by life, through emotional scarring and stigma, and develop into a holistic, well-educated and rounded person who became top of her industry in literature and arts, shows how much a woman with the zeal to succeed can achieve (Hsiu-Mei, 2020). At the same time, her choice to use the platforms availed to her, for instance through her editorial position, as education avenues on the vitality of women education goes to show how important a woman’s voice is to raising awareness of female issues.

Lu's willingness and devotion towards helping feminine figures
The article is quite relevant to the growth and empowerment of individual and or collective feminism and the development of women voices in China. Despite the significant absence of well-established support systems for women upon her death, the article demonstrates Lu’s willingness and devotion towards helping fellow feminine figures, neutral to the voice of women in the society. The article demonstrates a high regard for neutrality with reference to gender equality since as much as the society was inclined towards helping the boychild, Lu, among other women decided to create opportunities for the girl child, a factor which is particularly instructive as it advocates for neutrality between different genders while at the same time creating more opportunities for the girl child which would consequently regard her as a man’s equal. The article depicts Lu as a feminist in different aspects such as cultural feminist, radical feminist and liberal feminist, given her desire and value for freedom. The article proves its relevance to the feminist topic by establishing the struggles Lu went through as well as showing the changes incurred over time with regard to how women were treated and considered in the society.

Criticism on the Lu's article
The article uses quite a number of citations, with every claim having an assigned footnote as a citation. The article is accurately structured to capture the different avenues of Lu’s life in terms of her experiences and contributions to the society. At the same time, every main idea in the article is followed by a source which creates reliability. In retrospect, the article is quite efficient in covering the historically underrepresented populations such as women and the marginalized Chinese people. These factors make the subject more relatable and quite educational since it sheds light on vital matters affecting misrepresented populations.

However, despite the availability of a bibliography, the article fails to assure the reliability of the citations and sources used especially given the vulnerability of the article to outside manipulation. In addition, the article fails to explicitly discuss Lu Bicheng’s position and contributions to feminism and the growth of the women voice in China. The article assumes that Lu was feminist simply because she fought for equality, she was a feminist, a factor that is quite disputable.

The short comparison with Ling Shuhua's
In comparison to the article on Ling Shuhua, the Lu article depicts a lot of complexity in the articulation of ideas especially the biography. The article on Ling explicitly states her stand on feminism by indicating how she directly contributed to feminism and the voice of the women in China. Additionally, through her writing skills such as domestication of feminism among others, Ling exhibits a clear understanding of feminism and factor affecting women compared to Lu’s passive method of handling feminism (Ng, 1993). The article also provides criticisms which go a long way to prove the neutrality of the article by establishing the weaknesses and misgivings of Ling’s way of life (Wang, 2018). Similarly, the article includes a list of publications and bibliography with the aim of providing a reliable list of sources for the readers.