China's Masculinity Classes
Public domain courtesy of Flickr.
China is infamous for its gender inequality and discrimination. Notably, the country maintains one of the world’s most gender-imbalanced populations, with the male population exceeding the female population by over 30 million. This is largely due to the country’s now-abolished One-Child policy, in which parents felt a strong preference of having one son over one daughter, which resulted in high levels of female child mortality and countless ‘missing’ female babies. In addition, there is a striking absence of women in leadership positions, such as in politics, academia, and business. Gender disparities in employment and education are among the worst in the world. Altogether, antiquated gender norms of male superiority and female inferiority are pervasive in China.
These gender norms can be witnessed in China’s latest policy: ‘masculinity classes’. The Chinese Education Ministry has published plans to ‘cultivate masculinity’ and prevent the ‘feminisation of male adolescents’. The initiative entails hiring more male gym teachers to exert a masculine influence in schools, testing students more comprehensively in physical education, supporting research into issues that affect adolescents’ ‘values’, and, overall, focusing on ingraining the ‘spirit’ of masculinity. Intentionally vague, the policies give educators free reign in how they will fix masculinity on young boys and prevent feminisation.
The Education Ministry has stated that these reforms are necessary to respond to a ‘masculinity crisis’ in China. According to top political advisor Si Zefu, Chinese boys have become weak and inferior because of the prevalence of female teachers, the pampering of young boys by their mothers (due to them not having siblings), and the popularity of ‘pretty boys’ in pop culture. He goes so far as to say this has become a national security crisis. Feminisation, he warns, is not only a threat to the boys themselves, but a threat to China’s survival and development. Boys no longer want to become ‘war heroes’, which will inevitably endanger the Chinese people. Evidently, the government feels the need to make extreme statements in order to shock the population into believing there truly is a masculinity crisis.
But why did the CCP really implement these reforms? I do not believe that government officials conclusively agreed that female teachers and male celebrities with earrings surmount to a national security crisis, tangibly putting lives at risk. Rather, it seems as though the CCP feels threatened by rising female success. Chinese girls are outperforming boys in schools – they are doing better on tests and receiving more placements in elite high schools. Furthermore, Chinese women are outnumbering men in undergraduate programmes. Despite the legacy of gender inequality in education, birth rates, employment, etc., Chinese women are proving stereotypes wrong and combatting the prevailing narrative of male superiority, particularly in terms of intelligence. The CCP does not want to acknowledge this reality, as it would challenge its patriarchal hold on society, therefore, it redraws attention to the supposed masculinity crisis. By blaming the ‘feminisation’ of boys on factors such as the lack of male influences in schools, the CCP diverts attention away from the rising success of girls. The narrative is reshaped from ‘Chinese girls and women are out-performing Chinese boys and men’, to ‘Chinese masculinity is under attack from external forces, and society must reinstate traditional gender norms’.
In addition, gender norms have been challenged by media and pop culture in China, where boys have begun to look less traditionally masculine – wearing makeup and androgynous clothing. Of course, many of these feminine representations are blocked by Chinese censorship, but they have made an impact on adolescents nevertheless. Again, rather than acknowledge and allow these modern gender realities, the CCP refocuses attention to the non-existent problem of feminisation of boys. When it is manufactured as a challenge to security, Chinese people are more inclined to see challenged gender norms as a threat, rather than a welcome change.
The plans for education reform are much more damaging and deliberate than they may seem. Education policies inherently shape the socialisation of children, which may impact their self-esteem, attitudes, and behaviour for the rest of their lives. By training young people to view gender in a harmful, bifurcated way, the CCP is able to manipulate gender to achieve its own goals e.g. enlisting male soldiers into the People’s Liberation Army. Regardless of intent, the policies play a role in cementing systems of power, where women remain subordinate to men in China. These systems of power benefit from stereotypes and antiquated gender norms, therefore anything that disproves those beliefs is a threat to the system. In this case, female success in academics and male celebrities dressing more femininely both challenge the norms perpetuated by the CCP. Thus, the CCP has an incentive to distract the public from these realities by focusing on the ‘problem’ of feminised boys, which inherently demonises successful women and feminine men.
