Do Kochi women have to be perfect? Starting with the Chizuko Ueno controversy

Chizuko Ueno is a renowned sociologist and pioneer in the field of gender studies in Japan. (Visual China/Photo)

An online conversation between three female bloggers who graduated from Peking University and Japanese sociologist Chizuko Ueno sparked so much controversy that the latter's name was at the top of Weibo's hot search for two consecutive days, with the blogger's question "whether the decision not to marry was because of male harm".

Because the three bloggers are all married and childbearing women, their questions about Ueno, who chose to be unmarried and infertile, were interpreted by some netizens as "ignorant" and "disrespectful", which was an "unforgivable" offense, and was also ridiculed as "losing face and losing his face abroad".

Is it really that serious? As a public intellectual who has been involved in discussions and debates in the Japanese public media for many years, Chizuko Ueno may not think this way (although the other party's question is clearly a dwarf question for women). Peking University girls' questions may be basic and naïve, but they are definitely not sharp, and they can even be said to be more common in social life about women's confusion, and it is not a bad thing to have the opportunity to get expert answers.

Based on the comments of the audience, it is not difficult to find that these doubts not only accuse Peking University girls of not understanding the true connotation of feminism, but also due to the contrast between the social elite attributes of these three and their "ignorance". As one netizen said: "Their image is that of a Kochi woman, but their behavior is the same as the seven aunts and eight aunts, and we cannot accept this contrast..."

Such remarks seem to be a defense of Chizuko Ueno, but they still secretly divide women into three, six and nine, as if there is always one kind of woman who should be nobler and smarter than another. To put it bluntly, when we naturally expect "Kochi women", we are taking our place in it, and opposing them to the "seven aunts and eight aunts" is itself a "misogynistic" mentality that Ueno criticized.

We have to fight misogyny in our hearts

"Misogyny" can also be translated as "female contempt", and Ueno points out that in the order of the gender duality, no one can escape the shadow of "misogyny", and women will have a "self-loathing" if they do not have a "sense of contempt" for their gender.

This may seem like a serious accusation at first glance, but it is a mentality that is very common in patriarchal societies, and even Chizuko Ueno herself has frankly said that if she were not misogynistic, she would not be a feminist.

In the book "Misogyny", Chizuko Ueno simply asks: "In your life so far, have you not been happy with a man who was not born a woman?" Haven't you ever complained about a woman who was born a woman and suffered losses? ”

Returning to the previous article, netizens' expectations for elite women and their "contempt" for ordinary women perfectly prove what is the "misogyny" of contemporary society. As awareness of gender equality gradually becomes a universal "common sense", "misogyny" also becomes more invisible.

The subtext of this "some women are good, others are not good enough" logic is that women should be "perfect" and must meet various criteria. Even if it is not the traditional "good wife and good mother" perfection, it is necessary to establish a set of independent women's perfection, which precisely ignores that the specific situation of each woman is complex, and in a long life, everyone will have cognitive shortcomings and behavioral cowardice and helplessness.

I encountered a very interesting phenomenon in an Internet celebrity bookstore: Chizuko Ueno's books "Misogyny", "Feminism from Zero", "Women's Thoughts", etc. were placed in the most conspicuous place at the entrance of this bookstore, and were displayed as super bestsellers; Along with her books are practical books such as "What to Do with Divorce" and "How to Raise Children Together" after divorce.

Those who are familiar with Chizuko Ueno certainly know that her view of marriage in a patriarchal society is not positive, and she has also talked about her criticism of the mainstream marriage paradigm on different occasions, and we can certainly question that the staff who placed these books do not understand what feminism is, have not read Ueno Chizuko's books well, and why serious feminist discussions should be put together with some "kitsch" reference books - this discussion is almost the mainstream discourse in the current public opinion field. But from another perspective, perhaps this shows that the bookstore understands the reader's mentality, and they understand the readers who come to buy these books, empathizing with their anxiety about seeking some kind of answer.

Assuming that readers who buy both books are filled with very specific confusion and anger, that both law and chicken soup for the soul can solve some of the problems, but that behind individual differences there are huge structural problems, and Ueno's book may offer a new perspective on women in the maelstrom of marriage and relationships.

In my opinion, the dialogue between Peking University girls and Chizuko Ueno certainly shows the lack of understanding of feminist research by some Chinese women, but it is also representative, reflecting the confusion and confusion of ordinary Chinese women after "feminism" gradually became a popular discourse. For example, their question "can feminists fall in love brain" looks a little "nonsensical", but it is indeed a typical female confusion, I believe that as long as individuals who have received a certain sense of gender equality are likely to think about such questions in the process of love, the connotation of this question can be very rich, it includes "how to understand the boundaries in intimate relationships" and "how to distribute rights and obligations in intimate relationships" and a series of endless topics.

Throughout the conversation, Chizuko Ueno's attitude has been gentle and powerful, and her answer is a good response to the confusion of Peking University girls, she said: "In fact, feminism itself is not a fixed concept, I want to pursue freedom, I want to pursue liberation, what is liberation for you, only you can make a definition." ”

Chizuko Ueno doesn't have to be a perfect idol

Chizuko Ueno's research is wide-ranging, and in addition to family, marriage, love, and other fields that are often considered to belong exclusively to female scholars, she was also the first scholar to introduce Marxist feminist theory to Japan, and she also paid special attention to Japan's postwar intellectual history, actively opposed militarism, and made great achievements in the study of the situation of women in the war (comfort women issue), pension, and nursing care.

She is also involved in various women's social movements, serving on the board of the nonprofit Women's Action Network. As a result, Chizuko Ueno is one of Japan's most widely known feminist scholars. His works can also be roughly divided into two categories, one is serious academic books, and the other is a relatively light collection of dialogues.

In Chinese intellectual circles, Chizuko Ueno is not an unfamiliar name, and she herself attaches great importance to transnational academic linkage, especially on the issue of comfort women, and exchanges between Chizuko Ueno and Chinese scholars have long been established. In 2011, her book "The Old Queen of One" was translated and introduced to China, and in 2015, her masterpiece "Misogyny" was also published in China.

For most Chinese, the first time Chizuko Ueno became known came from a widely circulated video of a speech in 2019, in which a red-haired Chizuko Ueno was a professor representative at the University of Tokyo and gave a moving speech at the opening ceremony of this top institution. She first bluntly criticized the widespread discrimination against women in Japanese universities, pointed out the unspoken social rule that "hard work does not necessarily pay off", proposed that students should not only care about personal wins and losses, but should have "insatiable curiosity and anger at social injustice", and said the golden phrase that has been circulating for a long time: "Feminism is by no means the idea of the weak trying to become the strong, feminism is the idea of pursuing the weak and being respected." ”

After the video was widely spread on the Internet, even Chizuko Ueno's book became a bestseller, and "Misogyny" reportedly sold only 4,000 copies in the years after its publication, but after the video became popular, demand suddenly exceeded supply, and it was reprinted several times, and the cumulative sales have reached 250,000 copies.

In 2019, Chizuko Ueno visited China and gave keynote speeches in universities in Beijing, Nanjing, Xi'an, Harbin and other cities, and the audience was very enthusiastic everywhere, and Ueno himself also specially opened Weibo to communicate with Chinese readers. Gradually, Chizuko Ueno has become the "darling" of the Chinese publishing industry, and some people jokingly call 2022 the "Year of Chizuko Ueno" in the Chinese publishing industry, and in this year alone, seven books by Chizuko Ueno were published in China. She has become almost a phenomenal academic icon, and the huge controversy caused by this online conversation may also have something to do with the blogger's miscalculation of Chizuko Ueno's readership in China.

As the first person in Japan to study women, 75-year-old Chizuko Ueno's life is exciting, but it is by no means perfect. She never hesitates to talk about her troubles at different stages of her life, which are often very specific, and in the eyes of today's netizens, it may not necessarily fit a perfect "feminist" image.

Although many times we portray Chizuko Ueno as a single female model who "has a wonderful life without marriage and no children" with good intentions, this may not fully summarize the life of this legendary figure. Not only will she fall in love with men, but she also regrets that she did not better manage her relationship with her mother. In dialogue collections such as "Starting at the Limit", although Chizuko Ueno is often regarded as a senior with great respect, she will also frankly express her doubts when faced with topics she has not thought clearly.

The most interesting turning point is that after discussing the fermentation of the whole network, some netizens turned out the "breaking news" of a Japanese media, claiming that Chizuko Ueno had secretly married a certain man (naturalization), so he thought that the female idol who was known as "unmarried and infertile" "collapsed". Let's leave this news alone for sure, but even if 75-year-old Ueno changed his mind for some reason and tried to get married, what's the problem? Chizuko Ueno never had to be a perfect idol, let alone bound by so-called ideas.

What's more, before this news came out, Chizuko Ueno had been questioned for many years as "criticizing the marriage system without being married, and having no right to speak", and now the same group of people may still come out to accuse her of "inconsistent words and deeds". Despite doubts about the traditional marriage relationship under the patriarchal system, describing marriage as "a contract that transfers the sexual use of one's body to a specific and exclusive member of the opposite sex for life", Chizuko Ueno herself has never believed that marriage and childbearing have a direct and necessary relationship with whether a person is feminist or not.

What Chizuko Ueno is really wary of is a kind of "strife" within women, and she constantly reflects on the "misogynistic" mentality of women in her elite, pointing out that many elite women who have worked hard to gain certain freedoms will look down on women who have not been able to obtain these freedoms.

At the end of the day, if we think of feminism as a good ideological resource and consider ourselves feminists, we should not easily label anyone with some kind of unwashable label. If we believe that no one should suffer any form of injustice because of their biological sex, then we should also support more diverse voices and choices in the public opinion field, even if sometimes they seem "not progressive" enough, or even "inconsistent in words and deeds", because human beings are often complex and choices are often difficult.

Perhaps there has never been an infallible feminism, and no one has ever been able to frame what the model of a standard woman should be.

Southern Weekend reporter Yu Yaqin