Xiao Cheng married Zhang Moumou in 2012 after being introduced by relatives. It wasn’t until February 2018, when her husband Zhang Moumou was arrested, that she learned he had fled in December 1999 after intentionally killing someone. After obtaining false identity information through others, Zhang Moumou married Xiao Cheng under false pretenses and had a child. Xiao Cheng and her child suffered this sudden calamity and endured others’ cold looks and contempt. She could only be forced to transfer her child’s school, riding an electric bike back and forth over ten kilometers weekly to pick up and drop off. Her pain was not only from the deception of marriage but also from the difficult divorce process. After this oppressive scam was exposed, it vividly revealed the roots of gender oppression. Xiao Cheng cried out, “We were married for 6 years… I never thought he had killed someone in 1999. After changing his name and identity, he married under false pretenses, and now he has been sentenced to death with a reprieve, but I can’t seem to get a divorce!”
Between 2020 and 2024, nearly five years, the woman filed three civil lawsuits and two administrative lawsuits, either because of the pandemic preventing court hearings for a long time, or because the prison refused to accept legal documents, or because the statute of limitations expired. She finally had to withdraw her lawsuits five times in despair. In her repeated efforts, her energy and financial resources were drained. Even though in May this year, the Lu County Procuratorate issued a prosecutorial recommendation to the civil affairs department to revoke her marriage registration, the civil affairs bureau did not annul her marriage. The bureau responded that, after consulting higher authorities, “marrying with household registration and ID issued by the public security department, personally registering at the civil affairs department, does not constitute fraudulently obtaining marriage registration,” and thus cannot revoke her marriage registration through the civil affairs department.
However, is such an incident truly due to procedural issues of divorce? In the October incident in Henan, Zhou Moumou, a man from Henan, married a woman seven years older, and after a few months, sued to annul the marriage, claiming she concealed her mental illness and had undergone a total hysterectomy. The court held that Zhou Moumou’s wife had a duty to disclose her serious illness before marriage, but she failed to do so truthfully before registering. Zhou Moumou had the right to request the annulment, and the first-instance court ruled to annul their marriage. Is removing the uterus and having a mental illness more heinous than murder or forging identity documents for marriage? The answer is clearly no. So why does changing gender make divorce so much easier or harder? Because in the Chinese-style capitalist society, the private ownership system and patrilineal inheritance are highly integrated. Men, as the main source of property income in private households, also hold dominant power and can arbitrarily manipulate women, who are reduced to family slaves. Naturally, the initiative for divorce is also in men’s hands. From family to society, the entire capitalist society discriminates against and oppresses women. Women are deprived of the right to divorce; even if they want to escape, they face various restrictions, making it extremely difficult.
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