By Shen Lu
As content focused on women is becoming increasingly popular in China, it is also drawing flack from men -- and causing headaches for Chinese companies.
Last month, e-commerce giant JD.com cut ties with the female comedian Yang Li after a promotional campaign triggered intense backlash from male customers, including some who threatened to stop shopping on the app.
At the heart of their criticism appears to be Yang's mildly sarcastic poke at men in a 2020 routine, where she asked: "Why are men so mediocre and yet so confident?"
The quip was the target of a backlash before. Four years later, it still stings.
"Promoting a female comedian? I've already uninstalled the app," one user wrote on popular Chinese social-media platform Weibo.
A nationalist influencer, who uses the handle "God's Eagle" and has more than two million followers on Weibo, on Oct. 21 reposted two photos of Yang that she had posted, with a caption: "She is clearly so ordinary but so confident." Hundreds of followers attacked Yang's appearance in the comment section.
The joke has haunted Yang's career; in 2021, she lost an advertising deal with Intel after a similar backlash. At the time, Intel told a Shanghai-based publication the controversy had surprised it and that diversity and inclusion were a part of its company culture.
In 2022, male consumers flooded Shede Spirits' social-media accounts after Yang appeared in an interview sponsored by the liquor brand. The company clarified on an investor-relations platform that it had no commercial collaboration with Yang.
The cancellation of the collaboration with JD.com was the latest reminder of the cost of making fun of men in China.
The gender strife comes as many younger Chinese women defy the expectations from their families and Chinese society. Since the abandonment of the one-child policy in 2016, China's leaders have been touting traditional gender roles as a way to encourage women to have more children.
Movies and shows featuring strong women figures have been among the top performers at the box office in recent years. The growing visibility of such content also has made some of it a target of attacks.
At the September premiere of "Like a Rolling Stone," based on retiree Su Min's road-trip to escape a toxic marriage, a male audience member accused the film of vilifying men, "as if we men are worthless." He said women need men to provide for them and have children. Director Yin Lichuan responded by noting that the film intentionally avoided scenes like domestic violence to reach a broader audience: "If you are not aware of the more explicit suppression," she said, "be more observant."
"To engage with gender politics but at the same time to please everyone seems like a mission impossible," said Jingyi Gu, assistant professor at the University of Hawai i at M noa who studies digital cultures.
Women make up 42% of JD.com's shoppers, according to data from analytics firm QuestMobile. By contrast, Alibaba's Taobao and PDD Holdings' Pinduoduo both have more female than male consumers. To get more women to shop on JD.com, known primarily for its electronics offerings, the app has set aside more than $400 million for discounts on beauty products.
The marketing campaign featuring Yang was part of the outreach to women, but instead it entangled JD.com in China's emerging gender culture war. JD.com on Oct. 18 said it had stopped collaborating with "a certain stand-up comedian," without naming Yang. "If this has caused any unpleasant experience for you, we sincerely apologize," it said.
Some female JD.com users who saw the move as cowardly called for a boycott of the app. One female user who said she had removed the shopping app from her phone wrote on Weibo: "So many men are upset because Yang Li speaks the truth."
Neither JD.com nor Yang responded to requests for comment. The decision on Yang appears not to have hurt JD.com significantly. On Oct. 31, the company boasted of a 140% increase in new customers shopping for beauty products and apparel on its site during a promotion period over the previous two weeks.
Yang addressed criticism of her comedy in a performance this year, saying, "If you find it offensive, feel free to watch something else."
Comedy shows streamed on tech behemoths Tencent and iQiyi have in recent years featured a steady lineup of female comedians whose routines focus on women's personal experiences, from discrimination at work to the pressure to have children.
Women welcome such acts, which helps drive traffic to the platforms. A 2021 study showed that Chinese women made up 55% of stand-up comedy audiences and were more likely to sign up for memberships on streaming services than men.
In the summer, in one performance streamed to millions of Tencent viewers, a female comedian who goes by the stage name Caicai delivered an eight-minute routine about menstrual stigma, including the description of an embarrassed delivery man attempting to hide an order of sanitary pads in a dark grocery bag.
Hundreds of women turned to her social-media account to share similar experiences, while commentary from some men was more critical, saying such acts were women's attempts to get attention.
"Female comedians can't seem to speak without bringing up gender," one male user wrote online. "Their lack of skill is truly astonishing."
Others criticized it as pitting women against men. "It's just feminists funded by foreign influences...constantly creating gender conflicts and dividing society -- it's a cultural war!" another male Weibo user wrote.
Luo Yonghao, the male judge for a comedy show, said recently that he had suggested a female comic not go into too much detail about menstrual periods because that would draw widespread criticism.
Attitudes of Chinese women and men on gender equality increasingly diverge, according to a 2020 study by professors at the University of British Columbia and the Shanghai University of Medicine and Health Sciences. Most strikingly, the researchers found that highly educated men born in the 1990s were significantly more inclined than their female counterparts to agree with a statement that men should put career first and women should put family first. The researchers said that was likely to make more educated women delay or forgo marriage.
Chinese authorities treat feminism with special caution. Beijing has in the past decade detained and jailed feminist activists and promoted traditional family values. Pop-culture icons like Yang don't fit into the feminine ideals that were historically celebrated in Chinese literature and popular culture. But Yang and others have to tread a fine line in shining a light on women's circumstances without veering into content that could be seen as political.
In 2021, after feminist activist Xiao Meili posted a video on social-media platform Weibo of her confronting a man who refused to stop smoking at a restaurant, a number of male nationalist influencers started a campaign against Xiao and a dozen other feminist activists, cobbling together what they felt was evidence of the women's disloyalty to China. The activists have said that soon afterward, their Weibo accounts were deleted without explanation.
After one of them sued Weibo for damaging her reputation, Weibo responded that her account had been closed for posting "illegal and harmful information."
Women have sometimes challenged brands and companies over what they see as sexist content. In 2021, tens of thousands of women boycotted the video-streaming site Bilibili after it promoted an animated show that was criticized for portraying women as objects of male desire and using humor to put women down. Female users also pressured several brands to cut ties with Bilibili, which later removed the series for what it claimed was "technical reasons."
Write to Shen Lu at shen.lu@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
November 10, 2024 23:00 ET (04:00 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2024 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
