The Misunderstood Lin Yihans

In the past few days, articles about the Xianzi lawsuit against Zhu Jun have been pouring into the elite section. I had followed the metoo movement and had a general understanding of the Xianzi event, but after two years, these memories have become very vague and distant. If it weren't for the appearance of these articles, I would have missed this court session. While thanking these articles, I am also thinking, why not use this event to talk about feminism, and let the discussion of social issues become the mainstream of Matters for a long time? Why not continue the unfinished debate two years ago and try to come up with an answer?

Another motivation for me to write this article is that I was surprised to find that although time flows, there are a large number of people who have stopped acknowledging the Lin Yihan incident. Their cognition of the Lin Yihan incident is always fixed on "Fang Siqi is Lin Yihan" or "this book is based on real events". The Lam Yihan incident has become a rigid feminist symbol.

@Xianzi: I have received a lot of narratives similar to the "Fang Siqi" case. I want to communicate with you, but I don't know how to talk about it; unless the parties prove their innocence like Lin Yihan, it is really difficult to get any relief. The opportunity - I hope the teacher can give me a direction.

Second: Regarding Fang Siqi's book, apart from very deep regret and pain, I think the first significance is that Lin Yihan's experience made me realize for the first time that sexual violence can bring such serious and unacceptable consequences. The consequences of the reversal also made me realize that turning a blind eye to this kind of thing is actually a very cruel thing in nature.

I am listing these remarks in no way to criticize the speakers, but to point out that even news from feminist leaders on the front lines about the Lam Yihan incident may be left unupdated. For a discussion to be effective, at least one fact needs to be shared by the participants in the discussion, and all points of view begin from the shared fact. If the two sides do not even clarify the facts themselves, and enter the stage of confrontation of views in a state of disagreement, then such discussions will only end in mutual accusations, insults, and hatred.

Therefore, this article attempts to make a reminder before all kinds of discussions take place: even if the narrative is symbolized, there is still the possibility that it does not completely coincide with the facts. When the other party questions such narratives, perhaps we should give the other party some space to tell.

The reason why Fang Siqi is widely concerned is that her content includes these points

1 Sexually assaulted at age 13

2 The sex offender was her remedial teacher and involved powerful sexual intercourse

3 The author, Lin Yihan, committed suicide shortly after the publication of this book, which seems to be a matter of death to ensure the authenticity of the content

These three points are too shocking and too impactful. The third point, in particular, caused the sympathy and sense of justice of many enthusiastic citizens to burst out involuntarily. When it was determined that the prototype of Li Guohua in the book was Chen Xing after human flesh searches and revelations, many people reported to the police.

However, after 113 days of investigation, the Tainan District Prosecutor's Office made a decision not to prosecute.

Regarding the first point, the District Attorney's Office confirmed that Lin Yihan only went to the Tongxin cram school after the second semester of high school in June, that is, he met Chen Xing after the age of 16. In addition, a query of the communication records of the two shows that the two had no contact before May 1998. The more frequent contact period was from August to October 1998.

Regarding the second point, the District Prosecutor's Office believes that the supplementary teacher does not have the authority to grade Lin Yihan's grades, and the two are not in a relationship of power. In addition, the course of the Tongxin cram school will end in June 1998 at the latest, and the most likely time for the two to have sexual intercourse for the first time is in August. So it doesn't involve the issue of power sex.

As for the third point, according to the medical records, Lin Nv has chronic migraine and depression and other symptoms. She has not been informed by her parents due to her dropping out from the Taipei Medical College, her desire to become a writer, and her love affair with a Chinese language teacher in a cram school. She agreed with her, but had a tense relationship with her parents, and overdose due to a conflict with her parents the previous day. She was sent to emergency treatment and was admitted to the psychiatric ward. All the medical records of the hospitalization did not mention Ms. Lin. Content related to sexual assault.

In addition, the prosecution also found that Lin Yihan completed a novel called "First Love" at the end of 1998, which was the original structure of "Fang Siqi's First Love Paradise". The heroine is also called Fang Siqi, but the content is that a high school student falls in love with a married Chinese teacher, and is found, condemned and stopped by her parents, so she commits suicide by taking medicine and is sent to a psychiatric hospital.

This is the full text of the indictment

If we believe the investigation of the Tainan District Prosecutor's Office, then we have to accept the fact that although "Fang Siqi's First Love Paradise" has the label "Adapted from a true event", the content of this book and Lin Yihan's personal encounter are far apart. Whether it is the sexual assault of a 13-year-old that caused great excitement to the readers, or the powerful sexual intercourse that makes the readers indignant, it is not something that the author Lam Yihan has experienced. It is also difficult for us to believe that Fang Siqi is a character created by Lin Yihan based on the real experience of his friend. On the contrary, it is more reasonable to regard Fang Siqi as a created literary character.

If you don’t believe this survey, even though Tainan has been in power for a long time by the DPP, it is a city that needs voters to use their votes to teach the arrogant, corrupt and incompetent rulers a good lesson, then it will also fall into the predicament encountered by metoo. Are personal allegations more credible than "untrusted justice"?

In East Asia, there is also a representative of the metoo movement who is often mentioned together with Lin Yihan, the accuser of sexual assault, and the black box author Shiori Ito. For a long time, all I knew about her and her case came from the Chinese-language media. The media coverage is almost the same.

Japanese-style #MeToo: Women bravely break silence, society is indifferent

Beautiful reporter "sexually assaulted by TV station executive"! After 4 years of fighting with tears, the lawsuit finally reversed and won

Stand up even at the risk of revealing your identity!

It wasn't until I stumbled across this blog out of curiosity as to why Japanese netizens insulted Shiori Ito instead of showing their solidarity, that I got more details and the other side's voice.

The blogger is a third-generation Zainichi Korean who lives in Seoul with her husband and has a cat named Maurice. She spends a lot of time translating her Japanese blog into English for easy dissemination. After reading her blog and the timeline she organized, you may not change your opinion, and you may scoff at some of her subjective views. But if you are like me, who only received information from the Chinese media before this, then I can assure you that you will get a lot of details, including the correspondence between Ito Shiori and Yamaguchi Keizhi, and a lot of background supplements. . After getting this information, you may think like me, how irresponsible and lazy it is to blame Japanese netizens' attack on Shiori Ito entirely on "Japan's powerful patriarchy" ignoring the controversy itself.

Back to the hotly debated Xianzi case. From my personal opinion, based on the information I have and the possible prejudice against illegal armed groups in mainland China, I prefer Xianzi's statement. But I'm also more inclined to the prediction that Xianzi won't get the result she wants in court. Unlike sexual assault, it is very difficult to obtain evidence for sexual harassment. A few years ago, in a space where two people were alone, I really can't think of how to produce evidence that the other party was sexually harassed or not sexually harassed. Are there other ways of proving when the desired result is not obtained from the judicial process? Should we accept a biased judicial revision? This is a topic that has always plagued metoo, and it is also the topic I want to talk about in the next article.