Several men stood in a row and walked forward, simulating a moving train.
The command came suddenly, "At 2 a.m., the child is crying and feeding." "Brake, everyone starts making milk powder for the doll, it's over, the train continues forward." At 4 a.m., the child pees and gets up to change his diaper. "Brake, everyone stops again, simulating changing diapers.
The daily life of new mothers is felt by men as an interactive session, which is a game in the "male Durban" class. The name "Male Durban" was originally an angry reaction, and the "Female Durban", which evolved from the traditional "three from four virtues", rose in society, and Fang Gang decided to take the name "Male Durban", which should be called 'Good Partner and Good Father: Male Growth Workshop'. In response to the irony and to attract more attention, the name "Male Durban" has spread through the controversy.
Fang Gang, a well-known scholar of sex and gender at Chinese Minmin University, has devoted himself to practical research for many years, advocating gender equality and opposing sexual violence. At present, he is preparing to push the "male Durban" to a wider space, in this process of controversy, looking back at the initial cold, Fang Gang is still full of passion, "When I was alive, it was impossible to change the views of everyone or mainstream society, it was normal, our job was to slowly change one person and two people." ”
▲Fang Gang Photo/provided by interviewee
Attract attention with "male virtue"
In October 2022, "male Durban" reappeared in the public eye.
A month ago, the nationwide enrollment program opened, with 19 groups of members signing up. Nine students from Shenzhen, Shanghai and Chengdu were finally selected to become official students of the "Male Durban". According to the lesson plan, after a three-month training, they will become male virtue teachers and go to various places to teach male virtue classes.
In addition to the regular participants, more than 30 people participated in the course audition.
It is not easy to become a "male virtue" teacher, Fang Gang requested: a group of 3 people, including 2 men and 1 woman; Members settle in first-tier cities and have experience in marriage and childbearing; Members are required to have been trained in gender education. Most of the "teachers" who can meet the requirements come from the anti-domestic violence public welfare organization "White Ribbon". Founded in 2013, the China White Ribbon Volunteer Network is a member of the International Men's Engagement Coalition and works to increase male participation to end violence against women.
In Fang Gang's view, the essence of "male Durban" is "male participation", and this concept was first formally proposed at the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo in 1994. The following year, at the World Conference on Women in Beijing, male participation was further strengthened and included in the Beijing Declaration.
In 2009, Chinese society ushered in a discussion: can a husband take "maternity leave" when a wife gives birth? The Women's Research Center of the Central Party School conducted surveys and interviews with 796 people in Beijing, Xi'an, Zhengzhou, Nanjing and Yangzhou. The age of the survey respondents was mainly concentrated in the age of 23 to 40. According to the survey, 92.1% of people expressed a positive opinion on the statement that "maternity leave is also a man's right".
Li Huiying, deputy director of the Women's Research Center at the Central Party School, suggested that men's paid nursing leave be a civil right, which is clearly stipulated in the Social Insurance Law. This recommendation was endorsed by the participating scholars and officials from ministries and commissions such as the National Family Planning Commission.
"But in the end, it failed," Fang Gang said, recalling the results of practice in those years, and it takes time for concepts and practices to change. At that time, there were international rankings in terms of gender equality, and some Nordic countries had always been at the forefront, "this is related to their male participation since the 70s of the last century", Fang Gang explained, traveling to Nordic countries will have obvious feelings, the streets are full of men with children. Where did the woman go? Maybe into a career you love, maybe go to school, etc. This made Fang Gang realize that promoting gender equality cannot only focus on women's aspects, "In the past, we only talked about equal pay for equal work, women's employment rights, and women's right to study from the perspective of women, but later found that if men do not change themselves, it will be far from the actual gender equality." ”
The establishment of "Men's Durban" and the encouragement of male participation have become the focus of Fanggang's research and practice. In 2015, the first "Good Husband, Good Father" workshop was established, which was later known as "China's First Male Durban". However, enrollment was cold, and only 2 people signed up.
"At that time, almost no men were willing to pay to go to Beijing and spend three days listening to others teach them to do housework and take care of their children." Fang Gang recalled.
In a sense, the emergence and controversy of "female Durban" gave birth to the prosperity of "male Durban". Such a corresponding name expands the public's horizons, and in addition to specific matters, people understand what kind of path they are exploring.
"Male Durban" as an advocacy activity, in the concept of "male participation" is relatively unfamiliar into the social discussion, "since we do this activity, in fact, the target is not in the dozen men or two dozen men, or even two men does not matter", Fang Gang said of the name itself, "we just want to attract attention, the meaning of the activity is to advocate, to transmit this voice." ”
▲In 2023, Fang Gang and all the members of the second phase of "Male Durban" group photo / provided by interviewee
The tide is standing towards the waves
Will become a man who pays attention to women, Fang Gang feels that it is his "instinct", the natural union of the fate of the weak.
When he was 3 years old, Fang Gang's father committed suicide, and his mother worked outside the home all year round, and he grew up with his grandmother. At school, he was often the target of bullying. In the second grade of primary school, Fang Gang was punished by the teacher for standing in front of the classroom, and during recess, the classmates wanted to "criticize" him, and he was escorted by the classmates from the second floor of the classroom with twisted hands all the way to the playground, and "paraded" around the playground. Once when he returned to school as an adult, he realized that the playground turned out to be small, and in his memory, it was always very large.
In the 1980s, the long turmoil ended, pent-up longing gushed out, literature became a scholar, and writers became a profession admired by society. "If you become a writer, you can be recognized and respected", Fang Gang, who was bullied and denied since he was a child, grew a writer's dream in his heart. From the age of fourteen or fifteen, Fang Gang began to write. At that time, many surveys and statistics said that most writers came from two professions, one was a soldier and the other was a journalist. A soldier could not be a soldier, and Fang Gang embarked on the road of journalism.
Because of his profession, Fang was often exposed to new, avant-garde things more than mainstream, so he paid attention to the gay community. In 1995, after doing a lot of interviews, Fang Gang published the book "Homosexuality in China", which became the big news of that year. Before that, there had never been a non-fiction book about homosexuality in the country. Fang Gang's books and people suddenly became popular all over the country, and the temporary reporter of the little-known tabloid became a famous writer overnight.
The dream did not last long, and soon, the job of the newspaper was lost, the writer's name was lost, and Fang Gang once again fell into the fate of the "weak", but this time he was no longer confused, but developed a sober pride.
Later, he chose the path of academic research. Every week, I go to audit Pan Suiming's classes, and from the suburbs, I have to reverse the car twice to get to school. At 8 a.m. class, Fang Gang needed to get up at 5 a.m. and stand in the crowd for more than two hours before he could sit in class. He described the feeling of listening to the lecture, "Every word hit my heart. This also strengthened his determination to pursue sexology research. He was then admitted to Chinese Minmin University for a doctorate.
Vanguard comes controversy. A person who claimed to be "the mother of a middle school student whose children are studying in Shandong" once posted an open letter on the Internet, saying that "Li Yinhe, Fang Gang and others have committed adultery in the name of science and education, and their ambition to poison and destroy the next generation has been clearly revealed."
Another middle-aged woman in Xi'an put together photos of well-known sex scholars including Alfred Kinsey, Li Yinhe, Fang Gang and Peng Xiaohui on the street, encouraging passers-by to pour feces on the photos with her. Fang Gang was finally "honored" by pouring dung, and later responded in the article, "Great people have suffered fierce opposition from philistines. It is impossible for a philistine to understand when a person does not rashly submit to inherited prejudices, but uses his ingenuity honestly and fearlessly. ”
In 2014, in order to summarize the process of gender equality in China during the 20 years since the Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995, China Women's University undertook an oral history project to interview people who have made important contributions to the field of gender in China in the past 20 years. Of the 60 respondents, there were only two men, one of whom was Fang Gang. This 60,000-word oral history note, titled "Rising to the Tide," was included in the seventh book in the 2015 China Women's Publishing House, Listening and Discovering: Women's Oral History Series, "Documenting Their 20 Years of Action: Interviews with Beijing+20 Women Activists."
"Women are acquired"
The day before the interview, Fang Gang received a consultation about a woman who had suffered domestic violence. After being subjected to domestic violence, she sought counseling with a psychological counselor for a year, and the more she talked, the more traumatic she became, "because the counselor said, 'This is your responsibility, you should learn to communicate and interact.'" ”
In Fang Gang's view, this counselor does not understand the power and control behind domestic violence, and lacks basic gender awareness and common sense. In the male class he opened, there were such "domestic abusers", and Gu Wei was such a student.
In 2015, the first men's Durban class began, and the divorce case of student Gu Wei is waiting for the second instance judgment. Gu Wei wants a happy family, but he can't control his violence. In class, Fang Gang asked Gu Wei to tie balloons to his stomach, simulate the state of pregnant women, and experience his wife's difficulties.
When calm, Gu Wei frankly said that he could feel this hard work. But quitting violence is not easy. Once, Gu Wei's son followed the eldest child of a relative's family to read horror comics, and began to have nightmares at night after reading it. Gu Wei made an agreement with his son not to watch again, but the child did not do it, and after being discovered by Gu Wei, he hit the child again. Fang Gang encouraged Gu Wei to tell his experience and face it squarely in order to correct it.
According to data released by the World Health Organization in 2021, about one in three women worldwide will experience physical or sexual violence by an intimate partner or sexual violence by a non-partner in their lifetime – a figure that has remained largely unchanged over the past decade.
The French writer Beauvoir wrote on the title page of The Second Sex, "Women are not born, but acquired. Substituted for his own life experience, Fang Gang can experience this "weak" situation, "When I was in elementary school, when my classmates bullied me, when the teacher beat me, wasn't I a 'woman'? What is the difference between the oppression of me and the oppression of women by the entire patriarchal society for other reasons? I don't think so. I am the 'woman' who has been beaten, humiliated, and pushed to the bottom of society. ”
In addition to the physiologically masculine, Fang Gang mentioned "dominant masculinity", which is oppressive for all people. Not only for women, a less "masculine, successful, rich" man is also a victim of this temperament, because every body is in a "weak" context.
He shared this poem in the male class called "As long as there is a woman":
As long as there is a woman who feels strong,
Thus hates effeminate disguise,
There must be a man who realizes that he also has vulnerability,
Therefore, they are no longer willing to pretend to be strong.
……
As long as there is a woman who wants to understand the structure of the car and does not get help,
There must be a man who wants to enjoy cooking but is not satisfied.
As long as there is a woman who takes a step towards her own liberation,
There must be a man who finds himself closer to the path of freedom.
Entering the new year, new male Durban is being launched in more places. Seven years ago, the name "male Durban" alone attracted a large number of media interviews, and more than 200 of the more than 300 media articles collected by Fang Gang that year were negative.
This year, there have been fewer criticisms of articles in the mainstream media, and controversy has always existed, but Fang Gang feels that "this is not important, the more people scold us, the more people pay attention?" The aim is to pass on the idea of 'male participation'. ”
He always remembers one afternoon more than twenty years ago, riding his bicycle under the scorching sun, from the Sanlian Bookstore of the National Art Museum of China to the wind into the pine of the south gate of Beida, and then into the Halloween Bookstore in the small alley, just to find a feminist book.
The search was lengthy, unlike now, when some bookstores might have an entire counter on gender research. Fang Gang sighed, "Our job is to slowly change one person or two people, and we don't expect to change everyone while I am alive." When the women's movement first started two hundred years ago, they would not have thought how many years it would take to get to the present, and they probably thought it would take five hundred or a thousand years..."