Nora in Chains: A Narrative of Eight-Child Women in Xuzhou and Rural Patriarchy

The scene of a woman in Fengxian County, Xuzhou, standing numbly in chains and cuffs in the cold wind is heart-wrenching. It has been nearly 100 years since Lu Xun published the famous "What Happening After Nora Leaves", and it has been more than 70 years since the Chinese people's declaration to "stand up". The ensuing development of the incident was particularly infuriating. (As of the press release on Matters on the 22nd, the investigation team established by the Jiangsu provincial government has not heard back, and it is reported on the Internet that the local government has instead further carried out work on "stability maintenance".)

This article intends to explore and criticize a discourse that is not mainstream but worth responding, that is, a discourse that defends it from the standpoint of rural men . This discourse asserts that men at the bottom of the countryside like Dong are a vulnerable group under unbalanced social development, so buying women as "wives" (and subsequent crimes) is a last resort, and even implies that this is a form of rural compensation. It is not mainstream because the abduction and trafficking incident can basically reach a public moral consensus, but it is worthy of a response, because the argument of devaluing women has repeatedly reappeared in the fields where rural and women’s issues intersect (such as the issue of high bride price in rural areas).

We should fully see that the urban- rural duality is important, as are the political and economic inequalities caused by urban developmentalism , especially the exploitation of the countryside, which have shaped population mobility and its gender over the past few decades The basic shape of the distribution. However, this premise is precisely the starting point for a critical understanding of rural issues, including gender, rather than a justification.

In the social relations involved in the trafficking we have seen, human traffickers and rural male buyers who serve the patriarchal order can still oppress and exploit women in extreme ways (including cheating and kidnapping), and then rely on local clan forces, The legalization function of the marriage system, the discourse of the family as a private domain of "household affairs", and its influence on the grass-roots regime limit women's freedom and autonomy. Here, the patriarchal order is not only traditional/cultural, but also includes contemporary more complex economic arrangements (such as property distribution). In addition, inequalities related to class, nationality/ethnic group and their intersection (meaning the intersection of multiple hierarchical dimensions of the social system in individual situations) also emerge from it (see: Nujiang Lisu people behind "Xiaohuamei" Woman: Begged? Abducted? Or self-marriage migration? | Interview ).

If the abduction and trafficking of women is a "helpless" compensation for the interests of the rural areas, then whose rural area is this rural area ? Do the so-called "rural interests" not include women but only men? Or is it a group of vested interests who, under the guise of rural men, benefit from this brutal relationship (if its sympathizers say it, the bribe of the so-called rural bottom male group) ?

This rural (male/patriarchal) narrative that excludes women is shared even by some rural experts who are shy about talking about gender. However, in this way, this masculine "rural" perspective can only act on the maintenance of the current urban-rural structural relationship. Moralization advantage (the latter is simply constructed as a backward, ignorant, uncivilized pre-modern space, while rural men are considered to be inhuman and dangerous images synonymous with violence and crime) . On the other hand, it will also destroy or dissolve the nation's commitment to modernity , which was the basic concern and core ideal of the political and social liberation movement in modern China.

"As for women, in addition to being dominated by the above three kinds of power, they are also dominated by men (husband's authority). These four kinds of authority - political power, clan authority, divine authority, and husband authority - represent the entire feudal patriarchal ideology and system, and are the shackles of The four great ropes of the Chinese people, especially the peasants." - Mao Zedong, "Report on the Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan"

(This article was first published on the WeChat public account "Mayfly Ghost" on February 13.)

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