ABSTRACT
This chapter sheds light on how non-elite Chinese young men perceive gender dynamics in contemporary China and interpret popular feminist expressions which have become topical in cyberspace. It first teases out the oxymoron construction of women as “objectified subjects” which can be found in various popular cultural products oriented towards urban middle-class women. They idealize a symbolic world where men privilege women in the private realm by both indulging their consumerist compulsions and caring women’s emotional needs. The chapter then uses interview data to illustrate how young ordinary men struggle to live up to this gender ideal. On the one hand, young men with low socio-economic status may not only feel self-defeated but also blame materialistic women for their own masculinity crisis. On the other hand, on presuming women’s economic reliance on men, many respondents refused to engage with feminism and scapegoated feminism for making women increasingly demanding and imposing. The chapter argues that popular feminism, as orchestrated by the results of state policies and market imperatives, serves to conceal the huge cost that women have to take to become “entitled” with state policies working against their autonomy, as well as the great burdens placed on non-elite men’s shoulder with the intersectionality of gender and class inequalities in contemporary China.
