Reflections on the sexual harassment and vicious wounding incidents in Tangshan

Not long ago, there was an incident of sexual harassment and vicious wounding in a barbecue restaurant located in Tangshan, Hebei. The news quickly became popular in the mainland, and the public opinion was excited. Cursing and criticism of the perpetrator came like snowflakes.

It seems that at this moment, everyone is an angel of justice.

Ironically, this kind of jealousy after the event is in stark contrast to the brutal scene of the incident in public, and the objective reality of the large number of people at the scene but no one helping the victim women.

We all know that sexual harassment is wrong, and vicious hurt is wrong, but at least normal people can understand this kind of wrong.

This vicious incident in Tangshan makes it incomprehensible why the perpetrator dared to sexually harass the victim in public, and then brutally beat and humiliated the victim woman on the spot after she clearly refused and resisted. Vicious incidents are really unheard of.

There is no doubt that this incident is definitely a serious issue of gender-based violence. It is hard to say that the perpetrator dared to act so recklessly, not because the other party is a weak woman, but such a bad social incident is really only because the victim is weak female group?

This simple answer seems hard to convince.

If it is said that sexual harassment occurs because the other party is a disadvantaged woman, it is logically at least self-consistent. In public places, after the victim woman expressly refuses and resists sexual harassment, the perpetrator dares to harass the victim woman. Malicious beatings, it is absolutely impossible to say that such vicious incidents will happen only because the other party is a vulnerable woman.

Therefore, for this vicious social incident in Tangshan, we need to think about the following two issues:

First, why did the abuser dare to make such blatant sexual harassment?

Second, why did the abuser dare to take vicious revenge in public after the sexual harassment failed?

Regarding the first question, we can clearly boil it down to the fact that the reason why the perpetrators dare to make such blatant sexual harassment is due to the long-standing structural discrimination against women in Chinese society.

This kind of discrimination may not always be as obvious as the vicious incident in Tangshan, and not every ordinary woman who experiences this kind of discrimination is a perfect victim and will dare to resist, but this kind of structural discrimination always exists.

In the final analysis, this kind of structural sexism does not regard women as human beings that are indistinguishable from men except for gender, and always believes that women are inferior to men in terms of intelligence, potential, endurance, etc., and even believes that women must abide by certain These women's norms must assume the so-called female family responsibilities, and women who must be attached to successful men can count as success.

This kind of deep-rooted structural sexism is undoubtedly the best moral accomplice of sexual harassment, and even the perpetrator will think it is a manifestation of his masculinity, and for men with normal values, this "masculinity" is undoubtedly a kind of Shameless and cowardly performance.

If the answer to the first question about sexual harassment is relatively obvious, then for the second question, why does the abuser dare to retaliate in public after the failure of sexual harassment, the problem will be much more complicated, because this is not A common phenomenon, but an extreme case.

It is precisely because of its extremeness that so many people dare to speak out justly and bluntly, but if this matter directly involves public power and involves victims who are not so perfect victims, the public opinion on this matter in the mainland will not be the same. This is now.

In my opinion, a very important reason why the perpetrators dare to take vicious revenge in public is that the legal and judicial thresholds for excessive defense in mainland China are too low, which makes them fearless to commit evil.

An obvious question is, when such a vicious incident occurs, if the female victim accidentally kills the perpetrator, is it considered excessive defense? If passers-by at the scene lend a helping hand and accidentally kill the perpetrator, would it be considered excessive defense?

If it is considered too defensive, then the law and justice are actually the hidden accomplices of this vicious incident, and you can’t blame the passers-by for not helping, because they have no legal and judicial protection, and no one can Well-defined boundaries between justifiable defense and over-defense.

In fact, not only China, but every country will have a definition of excessive defense, but the threshold is different.

There is no doubt that if such a vicious incident occurs in a country like the United States, even if the perpetrator is killed by mistake, it will definitely be judged to be self-defense in the end, because the purpose of excessive defense is mainly to prevent some people from using the law to deliberately. Hurting others, rather than strictly limiting the standard of defense.

In China, not many people dare to say that if they accidentally kill the perpetrator, this is a legal defense. Everyone is worried that if they do something wrong, they will cause a series of unnecessary troubles, and no one will think that the law And morality will support justice at a critical moment, so it is better to be an innocent victim and a passerby who has nothing to do with himself.

In such an environment, even a very brave and upright person must think twice about defending himself and helping others, and may even give up.

If the threshold for excessive self-defense is too low to imprison the victim’s self-defense and bystanders’ help, and indirectly encourage the perpetrator, then in addition, Chinese society has more serious encouragement for the perpetrator. A very obscure phenomenon: that is the reckless act of collusion between public power and local underworld forces.

Many people may be surprised that there is no evidence that this incident is related to the public power. Why do I say that this is the result of the collusion between the public power and the local underworld forces.

You only need to look at the overwhelming reports after Tangshan launched the so-called "Thunderbolt Sweeping Action". If the public power does not collude with the local underworld forces, this phenomenon is impossible. On the mainland, people who dare to commit such reckless violent crimes like this group of perpetrators will guess that there is someone behind them. Why do people always think so? And who is behind it? All this is self-evident.

The collusion between the public power and the underworld forces, in many cases, does not even require the public power to do anything. It is enough that the public power does not care about it, and the underworld forces can take advantage of it. This is the local underworld force. Unbridled confidence.

In fact, when this incident just happened, I didn't want to write an article, because it was an incident that everyone thought was wrong, and I didn't need to repeat it, but when I saw that many people just When it comes down to gender issues, it comes down to the bad guys themselves, it comes down to local government inaction, which I think is problematic.

The occurrence of such vicious incidents is a manifestation of the decline of the overall civilization level of a society, because it does not occur in some remote mountainous areas, nor does it occur in the gathering places of some underworld forces, but in a country with a high level of development. , the pursuit of a civilized city, the second- and third-tier cities that best represent the overall situation of China - Tangshan.

Regarding the root cause of this vicious incident, whether it is structural gender discrimination, or the legal and judicial restrictions on reasonable self-defense, or even the collusion between public power and underworld forces, these are deep-seated in Chinese society. Problems, if you can't realize these problems, how can you solve them?