"Natural History" magazine's "women's book" controversy: gender is not the biggest problem, losing the spirit of popular science is!

Author: Chunmei Fox

Published "Illustrated Traditional Chinese Costumes"

I'm going to write the third article of "Nüshu" (the first two "Cangjie is her | Nüshu: Words that are not recorded in writing can be usurped at will? "If talking about "women's books" makes people break their defenses, then I will talk a little more!" (Attachment: Scholars' views on the founders of Nüshu)"). In fact, I don't know, why can this be a "sequel" and a "sequel"? Therefore, I don't want to say anything more, because this "overturn" is the "Naturalist" magazine with a good reputation, so let's talk about where the problem of this article is, and those feelings about popular science articles.

Is "Natural" wrong?

In the May 2023 issue of "Natural History" magazine, the root cause of the controversy was that the author chose a very non-mainstream and very sensitive point of view for online public opinion - women's books and male creations.

"Natural History" magazine's "women's book" controversy: gender is not the biggest problem, losing the spirit of popular science is!

△ Full text of the article of "Natural History" magazine, source @ Natural History Magazine

Although, this may not be the author's original meaning (inferred from the perspective of good intentions), the author's intention in writing the article is in the title, he attempts to package the "Nüshu" as a secret secret of the transformation of Chinese characters under the history of "protecting the family and defending the country". This may be the reason why the editor liked this article and did not find the possible risks of the article in the first place (inferred from a good intentional point of view): "defending the country" is a positive historical portrayal; Mysterious Chinese characters can stimulate the reader's interest. It's just that neither the author nor the editor expected that the views chosen by this article were so "non-mainstream" that they could even be called "countercurrent" in the current network environment.

The fundamental reason behind this is that (I personally think it is) neither the author nor the editor has read the works related to "women's books", especially the "mainstream" works and opinions. For popular science articles, it is not necessary to adopt the "mainstream", but it is necessary to be familiar with the "mainstream".

Some people may question, why do you think that the author and editor of this article in "Natural History" have not read the "mainstream" works and opinions? Because if they go to even one book with a comprehensive discussion of women's books, even if it is a journal, they will find that they have chosen the point of view that was said about that person, that is, the preface to Chen Qiguang's "Women's Dictionary". The author and editor do not know this, so the use of "scholars" instead of "Chen Qiguang" in the article not only makes everyone mistakenly think that this is a mainstream view in academic circles, but even the name of the opinion himself "Chen Qiguang" does not appear in the "Natural" magazine.

It was not until @naturalMagazine's after-the-fact statement that "Chen Qiguang" was mentioned (August 13), but before that (August 12), netizens had already written all the problems with Chen Qiguang's women's books as the source. Although "there are mountains outside the mountains, there are people outside the people", popular science magazines and popular science authors cannot be omniscient, but judging from the statement, it is still a lot behind the netizens who pay attention to women's books, which is more worrying.

△ @博物杂志 Aftermath Statement (August 13)

△ Netizens questioned Weibo comment area (August 12)

Regardless of whether Chen Qiguang's views can withstand scrutiny, it is necessary to leave a right of authorship for others, as well as the integrity of the views!

Because, although @Natural History Magazine's after-the-fact statement accurately numbered Chen Qiguang and his writings, it still could not hide the problem that the article itself did not correctly and completely relay Chen Qiguang's views. The author may have only read the preface to Chen Qiguang's "Nü Han Dictionary", because even if he read a little more of Chen Qiguang's other works, he will find that Chen Qiguang not only advocated the creation of women's books and men, but also advocated that Nüshu was "created by the Yao people", and he wrote in his "Miao Yao Language" 7 years after the "Nuhan Dictionary": "It is the text of the Yao people who transformed Chinese characters to write the Wuling dialect of Chinese that they have switched to." It is important to note that the two claims are one and the same argument is used.

△ Chen Qiguang's discussion of the origin of Nüshu in Miao Yao Language (Miao Yao Language published in 2013, Nu Han Dictionary published in 2006)

It can be said that what Chen Qiguang really advocated was that Yao men created women's books. Therefore, the author of the "Naturalist" article did not directly adopt Chen Qiguang's "rebel theory", but created another "rebel theory" on the basis of Chen Qiguang.

Some people may think that "Natural History" magazine was beaten "female fist" this time, which is quite wronged, but from the perspective of popular science articles, it is actually not wrong. It's just that compared with the discussion of an academic point of view, social topics have natural fermentation and are more likely to attract attention. Moreover, we cannot buckle the hat of "punching" when women fight for their rights, and turn a blind eye to the provocateurs and avoid talking about them.

Popular science is not eyeballs

My understanding of popular science is that it is a vernacular translation of some cold and jerky academic topics, translating them into content that ordinary people can understand and be interested in. But in this process, the three words "interested" will cover up the original intention of many people and move towards another behavior that is more inclined to eyeballs.

Or take the "Natural History" magazine article "Nüshu Encrypts Chinese Characters Born for Battle" as an example, and the content mentioned at the beginning about the "car accident" and "spy" in the discovery process of Nüshu is something I have never seen in any Nüshu-related materials.

△ "Naturalist" magazine article, source @ Natural History Magazine

Although many people are fighting for the title of "Nüshu No. 1", it is basically the educated "other" who only recognizes its value after reaching the popular area of Nüshu. Because in areas where Nüshu is popular, locals know about the existence of Nüshu and take it for granted, and when a single Nüshu work is circulated, it is difficult to recognize its value (most people think that they just don't know it).

The only similar content to this paragraph mentioned in the "Natural History" article is the letter from Zhou Youguang relayed by Gong Zhebing:

△ Memories of Zhou Youguang in Gong Zhebing's "Women's Words and Women's Society"

This memory is very plain, without the twists and turns and suspense in the "Natural History" article, and Zhou Youguang's attitude at that time also confirmed that a single Nüshu work could not cause a sensation similar to "secret agents", and in the context of the fifties and sixties, even the ethnic identification work was not completed, and no "scholars from all of Beijing" came to the conclusion that "it is different from the known minority scripts".

And this content is on page 1 of the book "Women's Writing and Women's Society" by Gong Zhebing, which is mentioned in @Natural History Magazine's statement after the fact. If the editor who wrote the statement looked closely, he would have found that the part of the article that was not questioned by netizens was still full of errors and omissions.

△ @博物杂志 Statement after the fact

Similar content that distorts the original appearance of reality in order to add mystery to women's books, you can casually find a lot in this short article.

For example, in this paragraph, it is said that women's books are destroyed as "demon books", and torturing users is content that they dare not teach, and it is also a fabrication.

△ "Naturalist" magazine article, source @ Natural History Magazine

"The Miracle of Purdah: Chinese Women's Book" writes in detail about the reasons why women's books are endangered——

(1) Promote women's education. Women can receive education and learn Chinese characters normally, and naturally no one will learn women's books;

(2) Change customs. The folklore of using and inheriting Nüshu changes or disappears, and Nüshu loses its social soil;

(3) Banned book burning ... Let's read the original article in this paragraph, it's not the same thing as that article.

△ "The Miracle of Purdah, Chinese Women's Book"

Another example is the paragraph "Tie-Lao Tong", which is obviously influenced by the novel "Snowflake Secret Fan" written by foreign authors, thus lily the relationship between "Lao Tong".

△ "Naturalist" magazine article, source @ Natural History Magazine

He Huaxiang talked about this issue in detail in his book "Research on the Transmission of Intangible Cultural Heritage: Taking Nüshu as an Example". The practice of attracting attention as a topic for women's books is both outdated and distorted.

△ He Huaxiang, "Research on the Dissemination of Intangible Cultural Heritage: Taking Nüshu as an Example"

In fact, "marrying the elderly" is considered to be a quasi-kinship between people of the same sex, and exists in many indeed, the closer state is brothers or sisters, so the number is not one-on-one, but there may be many people forming the same person. And many Nüshu books that mention "Yue Lao Tong" have mentioned this, because Nüshu naturally inherits Gao Yinxian as the old man composed of seven sisters. Once again, authors and editors demonstrate the scarcity of reading women's books.

△ "The Book of Yongming Women"

△ "Nüshu Customs"

These contents in the article not only do not play the role of popular science, but also distort the original appearance of the custom of women's books. If popular science is only left to attract attention, what is the difference between it and writing "not turning is not XX" and engaging in soft pornography?

Make bold assumptions and avoid mistakes

If we say that the fermentation of the incident about the gender of the creator of the female book, and the problems in the article in the previous paragraph about the discovery of women's books, the endangerment of women's books, and the customs of female book users, we can also explain it with a sentence of "inconclusive" and "bold assumptions", then there are some established mistakes that cannot be avoided, which in my opinion is a real taboo.

For example, the author's explanation of Nüshu is "one-to-one correspondence with Chinese character strokes", "Restore Nüshu back to Chinese characters", "will become 'simplified characters'", "The rules corresponding to strokes are so complete"...

△ "Naturalist" magazine article, source @ Natural History Magazine

Has the author ever thought that if the Nüshu script can be pushed back to Chinese characters so simple, do so many scholars publish dictionaries and study standardized characters because they feel that a lot of time and funds can be wasted arbitrarily? Let me remind you that after Nüshu was discovered in the 80s, foreign scholars collected physical objects and carried out research, and was it that they were illiterate?

Although Nüshu may borrow the source Chinese characters as a relatively mainstream statement at present, this does not mean that it corresponds one-to-one with Chinese characters, nor does it mean that it can be easily restored back to Chinese characters. The morphomorphic and distorted forms of the Nüshu are diverse, adding, subtracting, moving sides and strokes, basically to the extent that you can't understand the character without telling you. In addition, there are not many basic characters in Nüshu, which means that Nüshu needs to use the same character to represent or correspond to multiple characters in Chinese characters, and it is even more impossible to correspond to Chinese characters.

And almost to the point of self-irony, the author of the "Natural" article did not even find that the cover of the "Women's Dictionary" was not the same as the female character corresponding to the "Women's Dictionary" he gave in the text.

△ "Naturalist" magazine article, source @ Natural History Magazine

△ Cover of Chen Qiguang's "Dictionary of Women"

The author provided "Naturalist" magazine with the "Nushu Standard Calligraphy Character Post" compiled by Zhao Liming and Xu Yan, using Hu Xin calligraphy style.

△ Zhao Liming and Xu Yan "Women's Book Standard Calligraphy Post"

Zhao Liming's team at Tsinghua University is the compiler of the Nushu International Coding Proposal, which is public (http://unicode.org/wg2/docs/n3598.pdf) and authoritatively reviewed, and P57 began to question whether the words "Han" and "Dian" on the cover of the Nü Han Dictionary are pseudo-characters.

Later, there is also a large number of word analysis in the physical objects of women's books. Such an example is equivalent to everyone who knows about women's books knowing that this bug exists, and as a result, the author of the "Natural History" article did not bypass it, but bumped into it.

Ironically, the first paragraph of the book "Nüshu Standard Calligraphy Character Post" is "This is how everyone evaluates Nüshu Expert Recommendation on the Memory of the World Heritage List", which lists the words of Ji Xianlin and Zhou Youguang, two university scholars. They wrote separately -

As an ordinary working woman who was deprived of the right to learn culture under the old system, Nüshu used her unique talents to create a women-specific script, which is really an expression of the great spirit of the Chinese people, enough to shock the world and weep ghosts. - Ji Xianlin

Women's books are the first step in women's self-liberation. ——Zhou Youguang

△ Zhao Liming and Xu Yan "Women's Book Standard Calligraphy Post"

However, since the website of the Tsinghua University Research Center for Chinese Paleography Art "Legendary Women's Book" theme and the "Online Women's Book Dictionary" open source project both provide direct Chinese character conversion function for female characters, and both can check Hu Xin's calligraphy style, it is impossible to presume whether the author has read the book "Nüshu Standardized Character Calligraphy Character Post" or only uses online tools to complete this step.

△ "Nüshu Standard Character Calligraphy Character Post" converter

If you read a book but ignore these words, it is "bad", if only online tools are used. That is "lazy" or "stupid", both of which are fatal for popular science authors and even popular science magazines.

In addition, @博物杂志 may not have read other works of Nüshu until the time of writing the statement, otherwise it would not be possible to write the sentence "Chen Qiguang's theory has a more specific argumentation process", there are too many scholars who are more detailed than him, and some scholars have even written an entire book for the origin of Nüshu, is it not "detailed" than Chen Qiguang? This statement does not stand up to scrutiny.

△ @博物杂志 Statement after the fact

△ "Chinese Women's Book and Prehistoric Tao Wen"

Compared with many topics, the relevant literature that needs to be read is very few, and I can see so many problems as an amateur who writes a public account and the field is not here, and it will be difficult to find relevant scholars of women's books with the platform and connections of "Natural History"?

Unfortunately, until I saw @naturalMagazine's statement afterwards, I still didn't see the corresponding spirit of popular science, but more followed the rhythm of netizens' doubts, explaining that I was not helping "men tamper with blurred history". If there is evidence for male creative claims, even if there is logic, I don't want "Natural" to cringe because of fear of voices on the Internet, and the same is true of other voices and other claims. But if the article was originally a patchwork of confusion, but happened to be seen by netizens on this issue and became the center of heated discussion, I don't want "Natural" to only respond to this question. Because a cockroach has already been seen at home, which means...

The above is based on the premise that everyone still affirms the excellent science popularization made by "Natural History" and hopes that it can still do a good job in science popularization in the future. If not, this article is just when you didn't see it, sorry to waste 15 minutes.