Created by: Marxist Philosophy Group of the Proletarian Liberation Struggle Association
Recently, stage supervisor Cao Yang (personal WeChat public account “Yishou Zhetian Music Festival”) at Jiangsu Grand Theatre made shocking remarks on his personal public account. This person first brazenly claimed that the Changsha Meixi Lake Grand Theatre received the so-called “Most Beautiful Audience Award,” blatantly treating women as commodities to be judged and chosen. How was this fabricated “award” actually “determined”? He then proudly boasted that he had manipulated the surveillance system at Changsha Meixi Lake Grand Theatre to “see what’s happening in every corner of the theatre,” and used this system to voyeuristically spy on female audience members. He also said that the women he spied on “look too good, have good figures, dress well, and have diverse styles,” venting his filthy sexual fantasies. Not only that, even the theatre’s glass curtain became a tool for this voyeuristic pervert to insult women—“During the intermission, we also search through the cracks of the glass curtain [with a wolfish tone of hunting prey] for various styles [without hiding his attitude of treating women as commodities to be picked] of hot girls, aunts, princesses, and wealthy flowers, always finding something.” Such shamelessly publicizing his crimes of invading women’s privacy as “harvests” exposes his fascist male chauvinism and reflects the rampant nature of Chinese fascist male chauvinists today.
Why can this voyeuristic pervert so brazenly exploit the theatre’s facilities to satisfy his lust? It is reported that he is a senior stage supervisor for the dance drama “Dream of the Red Chamber” at Jiangsu Grand Theatre, a worker aristocrat within the theatre. He receives the leftover scraps awarded by the bourgeoisie, and under the guise of coordinating performances, he has gained control over the troupe’s key positions. These lackeys have long been allied with the bourgeoisie, not only brutally exploiting the lower-level staff in the troupe, forcing them to work high-intensity hours, but also using their privileges to seek personal gains. Therefore, such people and their bourgeois masters, as Lenin said, are “managing for plunder,” “using management to plunder”[1], and thus, using their authority to spy on women and indulge their perverted lusts is completely unimpeded. Moreover, because they have long become a privileged class sitting above the masses and are beyond supervision, they can use surveillance cameras to carry out such filthy acts without the audience’s knowledge. The stark class divide between a small bourgeoisie and their lackey worker aristocrats, hooligans, and the masses in Chinese capitalist society is the fundamental reason why such voyeurism can occur.
Furthermore, the widespread bourgeois pornographic ideology persecuting women across Chinese society is a major cause of such violations. Since the re-establishment of capitalism in China, class contradictions have remained extremely sharp. The Chinese bourgeoisie, led by the bureaucratic monopoly bourgeoisie of the petty bourgeoisie, has been in fierce resistance from the masses, causing the reactionary rule of the petty bourgeoisie to falter. The instability of this reactionary rule makes the bourgeoisie extremely fearful, feeling their doom is near. In a desperate struggle to avoid extinction, they viciously spread pornographic ideas that harm women, hoping to incite patriarchy among the people and provoke male oppression of women to create social division. These backward men, empowered by women to oppress and derive pleasure from abusing them, forget the brutal exploitation and oppression of capitalism, tasting the “sweetness” of capitalism in women’s blood and tears, thus becoming loyal servants and supporters of capitalism.
In this reactionary Chinese society, the equally extreme and reactionary Confucian ideology, which is rooted in the same soil as pornographic thoughts, is also prevalent. In a capitalist society in China based on patriarchal kinship inheritance as the pillar of private ownership, men are the heirs of private property, future heads of households, the eldest sons and legitimate grandchildren, and the main breadwinners, thus enjoying various privileges. Women, because they cannot inherit property or continue private households, and because their domestic labor is not recognized as social labor, cannot gain social status through their household work and are reduced to household slaves without social standing. As a result, Chinese society as a whole has formed a brutal system of male oppression of women—voyeurism, molestation, rape, prostitution, trafficking, and the legal sale of women as commodities through “bride price,” along with endless domestic slavery—these are the various humiliations women face throughout their lives. Even more despicable is that this master-slave relationship, between private owners and private property, is cunningly disguised by the bourgeoisie using Confucian ideas, turning into seemingly harmless “Three Obediences and Four Virtues” and “Male Respect, Female Subservience,” becoming a super-class, super-historical morality that supposedly conforms to “Chinese traditional culture,” making male oppression of women seem natural and justified. It is on this reactionary Confucian patriarchal soil that fascist male chauvinists have grown, brazenly oppressing women and shamelessly claiming that women in China enjoy “privileges,” and are so low in status that they can be further humiliated—an extremely rampant phenomenon. “Anything considered a crime against women that would lead to severe legal and social consequences is regarded as a glory for men, at most a minor moral stain that can be gladly accepted.”[2] Cao Yang’s shameless publicizing of his crimes, even considering them not as crimes, is supported by the various fascist male chauvinists in Chinese society, especially by the reactionary officialdom that shelters fascist male chauvinism politically and legally. If his crimes had not been exposed and condemned by the angry masses online, especially by women, and if the bourgeois platform had not been forced to remove his article under public pressure, he would not have faced even the slightest punishment.
On the other hand, the rampant pornographic ideology also reflects the declining state and spiritual emptiness of the bourgeoisie itself. The more they approach demise, the more they indulge in reactionary pleasures to numb themselves, pursuing violent and oppressive behaviors for enjoyment. They especially enjoy brutal oppression of women, building their escapist happiness on women’s infinite suffering. “The ruling class’s ideology is always the dominant ideology of each era.”[3] In capitalist society, with the bourgeoisie’s conscious and unconscious reactionary propaganda, pornographic thoughts have spread nationwide, plunging Chinese women into a deep abyss surrounded by fascist male chauvinism. The reactionary voyeur Cao Yang in this incident is a typical example of a political and economic puppet bought by the bourgeoisie, utterly loyal to bourgeois cultural ideology. Cao Yang studied at Wuhan Conservatory of Music, a reactionary higher education institution, earning a master’s degree in Western music history, and later worked at Jiangsu Grand Theatre, becoming a worker aristocrat used by the bourgeoisie to control lower-level performers and workers. Such a lackey, already bourgeoisified economically and living a life of superficial pleasures to numb his spiritual emptiness, lives a decadent bourgeois life. In this life, enjoying oppressing women and pursuing pornographic culture of corrupting and seducing has become inevitable, and his heinous crimes are a stark manifestation of his exploitative class nature. On one hand, he is satisfied with the existing Chinese capitalist system, which underpins the bourgeoisie’s rule; on the other hand, in his extreme emptiness, he vents his perverted sexual thoughts by harming women, even going so far as to publicly expose his crimes online, hoping to incite another fascist male chauvinist frenzy and enjoy the “honor” of being a “man” amidst their cheers.
In the face of such a deep societal foundation, all reform measures aimed at improving women’s conditions without touching the capitalist system will inevitably fail. After the incident, Cao Yang’s article was urgently taken down by WeChat officials, his personal WeChat public account was cleared of articles, and Jiangsu Grand Theatre, where he worked, responded that they had “immediately ceased all his work” and “dismissed him,” but these measures are ineffective. Cao Yang has not been reported to have been arrested or sentenced and remains at large, unpunished for his crimes. This fully reflects the rampant fascist male chauvinist ideology in Chinese society. Moreover, even if Cao Yang has been dismissed, there are countless other fascist male chauvinists who abuse their privileges to harm women, many of whom are even worse than Cao Yang. Under such a rotten social system and atmosphere, who can guarantee that the next stage supervisor or the next person wielding power on stage is not a pervert like Cao Yang or even worse? Even those without official positions can exploit the widespread pornographic culture and websites rooted in Confucian patriarchy to obtain and spread dirty voyeuristic videos insulting women—existences like Tang Zhuoran are the best proof. As long as private ownership exists, the patriarchal system that protects private property will persist, and the horrifying pornographic thoughts and heinous oppression of women rooted in this soil will continue to exist forever.
However, even in this hellish society, women are not without hope for liberation. “Darkness is followed by light, chaos by order—that is the way of Heaven.”[4] Although Cao Xueqin, the original author of “Dream of the Red Chamber,” saw the tragic life of women under feudal oppression and their spontaneous resistance, he, as a landlord class figure, could not and did not point out a path for the complete liberation of women; the reactionary “Dream of the Red Chamber” heavily altered from its original meaning, with distorted adaptations, is even less likely to show women a way out of oppression. It is ironic that Cao Yang, a fascist male chauvinist, would use it as a tool for voyeurism. But the Marxist theory capable of truly liberating women has long since appeared. In the past, oppressed women participating in the Chinese revolution, under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party, shattered the chains of regime, clan, religion, and marriage—these four shackles—and in socialist New China, they were reborn. They actively participated in industry, agriculture, on stage, in schools, in critique meetings, and in government conferences, fighting tirelessly on all fronts of socialism, supporting half of the sky of socialism, earning genuine respect from the people. Former slaves, women have truly stood up. Today, under capitalist restoration, women have once again become slaves, but the hope for salvation remains the same: participating in the great socialist revolution to overthrow the reactionary bourgeoisie, smashing the shackles of patriarchy in the fiery revolution—only through women’s liberation can society be truly liberated, and only by societal liberation can women truly be free!
Lenin: “How to Organize Competition,” Selected Works of Lenin, Vol. 3, Second Chinese Edition, People’s Publishing House, 1972. ↩︎
Engels: “The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State,” Selected Works of Marx and Engels, Vol. 4, First Chinese Edition, People’s Publishing House, 1972. ↩︎
Marx and Engels: “The German Ideology,” Marx and Engels Collected Works, Vol. 3, First Chinese Edition, People’s Publishing House, 1960. ↩︎
Hong Xiuquan: “The Original Way to Wake the World,” Selected Works of Hong Xiuquan, Zhonghua Book Company, 1976. ↩︎