Recently, many bloggers have posted revelations about a group called “MaskPark Tree Hole Forum” that spreads obscene and pornographic videos. All members of this forum are Chinese men, with a total scale exceeding 100,000 people. The forum has at least 20 subdivided groups, all closely related to pornographic content, with the largest group reaching 900,000 members. Netizens have disclosed that the forum includes secretly filming unfamiliar women in various settings, actively spreading private photos of ex-girlfriends, current girlfriends, wives, daughters, and even mothers, and openly fantasizing about female colleagues. The forum even calls on all members to engage in lewd activities facing the screen. According to insiders, this voyeurism group has posted videos of people’s private parts, some of which can be sold for money, and has spawned an industry selling pinhole cameras. “Subscribers will contact sellers themselves to buy pinhole cameras. The groups I could find before numbered about ten, with the largest having 220,000 subscribers.” Everyday objects like aromatherapy, water cups, and power strips can be disguised as pinhole cameras, and the scope of voyeuristic scenes is even broader: female ultrasound rooms, public toilets, subways, and shopping malls. China is not only plagued by this voyeuristic porn industry; various other forms of sexual crime are rampant across the vast Chinese mainland: a group called “Little Cabbage” with up to 50,000 members sharing experiences of deceiving and raping underage girls under 16; an adult man dragging a 6-year-old girl into an alley with the intent to commit rape; Tang Yuwen repeatedly raping and molesting student Fu Yuehua, leading to Fu Yuehua’s suicide… “I reaffirm that this is the will of the majority of the people; those advocating it are just mouthpieces. Although he voices it, it is related to all five senses and internal organs. Therefore, my questions and answers are posed before the majority of the people in this group.” (“My View on the Sacrifice”) The rampant proliferation of pornography culture in modern China is a problem of the entire social system.
After the exposure of the “MaskPark Tree Hole Forum,” different social classes have shown varying attitudes towards this matter. The middle-revolutionary class, being the most reactionary, has tried to suppress the issue, wanting to settle it quietly; related terms on Weibo’s hot search list have disappeared from first place. The petty bourgeois male mostly does not oppose and even tacitly supports it because their own morality is extremely corrupt. Most petty bourgeois women oppose it, but under the lack of thorough promotion of Marxist women’s liberation theory, many still hold illusions about the middle-revolutionary class, hoping to resolve this issue through reformist methods that do not touch capitalism and patriarchy, proposing slogans like “Today daring to film under skirts, tomorrow daring to film confidential things,” hoping that the middle-revolutionary class will help them seek justice. The proletariat, lacking a voice in public opinion and weak in propaganda, can oppose such sexual crimes most firmly, but they lack organized strength.
“Only the comprehensive decay of Chinese society’s ideology and cultural life is caused by the complete corruption of imperialist politics and economy!” (“The Road to Future Revolution in China”) The essence of gender oppression is class oppression. Since humans entered patriarchal society, women’s domestic labor has lost its social nature; they became household slaves, beginning a long history of suffering for women. After the founding of New China, under Mao Zedong’s call that “Women hold up half the sky,” women actively participated in socialist construction and gained equal status and rights with men. Since the middle-revolutionary class restored capitalism in China, capitalist patriarchy began to harm Chinese women. Women were forced back into the home as domestic slaves and sexual tools, seen as “despicable” by bourgeois male chauvinists: women are sold like commodities, bride prices rising; domestic violence and wife-killing are rampant; rape, molestation, and voyeurism are everywhere… Capitalist patriarchy is primarily capitalism, where women’s domestic labor remains unrecognized as private labor, and women’s political status is very low. The low economic and political status of Chinese women forces them to depend on men, which is the foundation for bourgeois male chauvinists to deceive women. Gender oppression reflects the bourgeoisie’s oppression of the proletariat; male oppression of women manifests in property-owning families, where the husband is the capitalist and the wife is the proletarian. Only in proletarian families can men and women be equal, but this does not exclude the influence of reactionary bourgeois culture leading to oppressive ideas against women. The basis of porn culture is the material superiority of men over women in capitalist society, influenced by bourgeois culture and strategies, deliberately maintaining gender oppression to divide the masses and sustain their rule. Although petty bourgeois men suffer heavy oppression under capitalism in real life, as long as they think women are available for their oppression, they are content with bourgeois rule and temporarily give up resisting the middle-revolutionary class. Meanwhile, women suffer double oppression from capitalism and patriarchy, enduring great physical and mental trauma.
“We mourn the past people, and we vow: to be pure, intelligent, brave, and upward for ourselves and others. To remove false masks. To eliminate the blindness and violence that harm oneself and others in the world. We mourn the past people, and we vow: to eradicate the meaningless suffering of life. To remove the blindness and violence that produce and indulge in others’ pain. We also vow: that all humanity shall enjoy just happiness.” (“My View on the Sacrifice”) Only by supporting women’s liberation can social liberation be achieved; oppressors cannot attain liberation themselves. Chinese men should thoroughly transform their worldview that takes pleasure in oppressing women, stand with women to resist this cannibalistic capitalist society; only through social liberation can women truly be liberated. Women should participate in the great revolutionary activities for social liberation, personally eliminate social toxins like the “MaskPark Tree Hole Forum,” and realize women’s liberation in the process of human emancipation.
