Reporter | Lin Zi people
Edit | Yellow Moon
On September 21, the Workers' Daily published an article with the headline "Where the fox's tail can be hidden if you wear a robe" as an article angrily criticizing "Buddha Yuan", and major mainstream media have followed up with comments, such as CCTV Network commentary "This group of Buddhas is really hard to fill!" "Beijing News" commented that "under the "monk's clothes" of "Foyuan", there are "lice" crawling with "lice" showing off their wealth and goods" to push the chaos of "Foyuan" into the spotlight of public opinion. Major social media platforms responded quickly, and on September 23, Douyin punished a total of 48 accounts related to the use of the "Foyuan" image to create artificial settings to carry out false marketing behaviors, of which seven were permanently banned, and Xiaohongshu cleaned up 70 illegal notes of "Foyuan". On October 1, the head of the Buddhist Association of China issued a statement saying that the "Buddha Yuan" was actually a Commercialization of Buddhism that used Buddhist resources for commercial benefits, and was suspected of violating the Regulations on Religious Affairs and other relevant laws and regulations.
Coincidentally, after "Buddha Yuan", "Sick Yuan" rushed to the hot search. "Health Times" reported that ""Foyuan" reappears after "Sick Yuan": exquisite hospital photos, "Sick" do not forget to make up" was widely distributed and reprinted on the online platform. According to the report, some female bloggers posted text and photos of themselves suffering from thyroid cancer, thyroid nodules, breast cancer, depression, etc. on social platforms, and they had "exquisite hospital photos, don't forget to wear makeup when sick", and sometimes brought goods, such as scar repair stickers, health care products, etc.
Media and public criticism continues, the incident has changed, and several parties involved in the media coverage have made clarifications on social media. Weibo blogger @Zhang Jijing-cat posted a medical record report and a lawyer's statement, saying that the Health Times reported that he had mistakenly used his personal photos, and that his description of his illness was seriously inconsistent with the facts. Another client said that he only took pictures to record the treatment process, and did not think that the photos would be stolen and therefore subjected to internet violence. Weibo blogger @012 Painter clarified that the location of her photo was Yanfang Gui Inn, because she thought the courtyard was beautiful, she took a photo to share on the Little Red Book, but was framed as "Buddha Yuan" by the stolen image. Among these parties, the sick woman did not bring goods, and the Buddha Yuan was not in the temple, but the commentators who stole their photos were suspected of taking advantage of the opportunity to earn traffic.
"Yuan" was originally a word with a beautiful meaning, and the interpretation of this word in "Shuowen" and "Erya" is "beautiful woman", but in the past two years, this word has been constantly deconstructed in meaning. After a year of silence caused by the hot discussion of "spelling a single name", "Yuan" was hung up with various stereotypes, and under the general trend of rectifying the network environment, the spearhead of criticism was directed at young and beautiful girls who were active on social networks. It is true that there are illegal profit-making behaviors such as false marketing of illegal online accounts on social platforms, but from the clarification of the above-mentioned parties, whether "X Yuan" is a phenomenon that has become a climate, and even whether the target of mainstream public opinion criticism is true, it is still difficult to determine; in addition, under the background of the Internet celebrity economy, the "public indignation" for Internet celebrities and goods behavior is aimed at whether it is false marketing behavior or reflects a deeper prejudice, which is also a problem that needs to be identified urgently . Why do young women attract disproportionate attention and face more moral charges?
<h3>What was the relationship between women and Buddhism in Chinese history? </h3>
A mainstream media criticized Fo Yuan for "posing wildly in religious places, scratching their heads, lacking a minimum of respect, seemingly indisputable from the world, but in fact materialistically", but historically, religious sites are actually one of the public spaces where a small number of women can freely enter and exit without encountering too much criticism. Xu Man, associate professor of the Department of History at Tufts University in the United States, found in his study of the daily life of Fujian women in the Song Dynasty that there are many loose contradictions in Confucian ethics itself, which creates an autonomous space for women in actual life, and religious life is an example.
The Song Dynasty was a period of development and prosperity for Chinese religious organizations, experiencing extensive commercialization and secularization. With the drastic changes in Chinese society Buddhism since the Tang Dynasty from birth to entry, the ideas of New Zen Buddhism have spread throughout Chinese society in the Song Dynasty; Neo-Taoism has also flourished in the Song Dynasty. Buddhism, Taoism, and other local religions compete with each other in this "lucrative and dynamic environment," with women actively participating in religious activities, playing a variety of roles as missionaries, pilgrims, givers, and so on.
For female believers in Fujian during the Song Dynasty, religion was a way of life embedded in the daily life of the boudoir. Within the family, they are able to discuss religious issues with parents, husbands, siblings and children, learn and perform family procedures for religious ceremonies, and meet with male or female visitors from other families to exchange religious knowledge. Equally important, they are able to get out of their homes and into the intricate expanse of Buddhism, Taoism, and local popular religions, becoming high-profile customers in a thriving religious marketplace. Female devotees often visit local temples, visit monastic activities, and provide various material and human resources for the temples to show piety and seek spiritual comfort and blessings.
Hsuman pointed out that religious people are actually very willing to provide services to female believers in exchange for financial support, thus gaining higher prestige and more potential customers in the fierce competition in the religious market. In other words, religion cannot completely isolate the pyrotechnic atmosphere of the world. Historical records show that female believers in Fujian went to temples to participate in bible teachings, watched and participated in religious ceremonies, and constantly provided material and financial donations to religious organizations. Depending on the level of their individual and family economy, their generosity takes many forms: some people will give to temples handicrafts such as embroidery with religious motifs, some will hire people to make religious objects, some will buy degrees, and those with rich wealth will even give money and land to build religious buildings and temple objects.
The development of local temples in Fujian was very dependent on the alms of female devotees, and according to the records of the famous Southern Song Dynasty minister Liang Kejia (1128-1187), "(Fuzhou) rich people are concubines, and those who pour out their wealth to establish a courtyard are unlimited." This means that older female believers often have authority over family property and are able to give family wealth to temples in order to develop their spiritual pursuits in the name of family blessings. Zhu Xi criticized Fujian monks for coming forward to talk as soon as they saw women, and the complaint of the great Confucian of Science showed that communicating with local women and seeking their alms was a common phenomenon among religious clergy in Fujian. Physical evidence of the active generosity of female believers in the Song Dynasty can still be found in some Fujian temples, such as the Quanzhou Kaiyuan Temple, the largest Buddhist temple in Fujian, where two Song Dynasty pagodas stand on both sides of the axis of the Baiting, one of which preserves the inscription of the early Southern Song Dynasty:
"Right South Wing Liang An Family Room Liu San Niang gave money to build two pagodas, and prayed for peace. Shaoxing Yi Ugly July Question. ”
According to the analysis of historian Yu Yingshi, neo-Confucians from Han Yu to the Song Dynasty all-out rejection of Buddhism - although the new Zen Buddhism has made a turn to join the world, it has fundamentally not changed the basic attitude of denying "this life" and abandoning "this world", so it is often at odds with the "father and the king" that Confucianism attaches the most importance to - so how do the male scholars of the Song Dynasty see the attraction of Buddhism to women? Hsumann summed it up in one sentence, "No matter how sincerely elites strive for a world without Buddhism, they all believe that women's religious spaces are relatively independent, and that men should not forcibly interfere at this point." ”
Xu Man pointed out that many of the key figures in the revival of Confucianism in Fujian have a deep understanding of Buddhism and Taoism, and have also absorbed the reinterpretation of the ideas of Buddhism and Taoism for Confucianism, insisting that Confucianism is the only appropriate way to achieve self-improvement and fulfill family, social and state obligations, and they hope that men can stay away from Buddhism and Taoism on the one hand, but on the other hand, they have a more tolerant attitude towards women's religious beliefs and practices. This is largely due to the fact that Confucian scholars realized the benefits of allowing women to have religious pursuits: Buddhism can make women peaceful, ease tensions in the family, and contribute to family harmony that Confucian values promote; in addition, women's religious beliefs can also benefit local communities, such as their charitable activities to help the poor.
Of course, as Zhu Xi's criticism revealed, the Song Dynasty elite also inevitably had concerns about women's participation in religious activities. Visiting temples allowed women to come into contact with non-family men outside the home, challenging the Confucian principle of gender segregation, and their interactions with male believers and monks caused particular anxiety among scholars, which was particularly evident among Ming and Qing Confucian scholars. Even so, Hsu found that the attitude of the elite during the Song Dynasty toward women's participation in religious activities outside the home was tolerant, and although from time to time local officials introduced bans to try to discourage women's enthusiasm for religious activities, these efforts were often difficult to sustain. Until the Ming and Qing dynasties, in Fujian and many other places, the interest and participation of female believers in religious activities outside their homes never faded.
In modern society, the legitimacy of women's "crossing the door" no longer needs to be argued, and religious beliefs are widely regarded as individual freedom and treat both sexes equally. If the Song Dynasty had the term "Buddha Yuan", their reasons for criticism would most likely be because they had trespassed the principle of interpersonal relations between the sexes; today, "Buddha Yuan" has been criticized for completely different reasons, reflecting a new kind of anxiety or uneasiness caused by the deviation of women's position in society in our time. So, what is the explanation for this anxiety or uneasiness?
<h3>Why does the influencer economy spark moral anxiety? </h3>
Another background against which the controversy over "Foyuan" and "Sick Yuan" has triggered a large number of netizens to participate in or watch is the rise of the Internet celebrity economy, and one of the reasons why these women have been accused is "showing off their wealth and bringing goods". With goods, why is it so hated? We can also try to find answers in history.
With the rise of the consumption revolution in the 1990s, contemporary China was gradually integrated into the global consumer capitalist culture. According to William R. Leach, professor emeritus of history at Columbia University and a scholar of modern American cultural history, this culture flaunts access and consumption as a means to achieve happiness, worships new things, democratizes desires, and uses money as the primary measure of all the value of society. In a society that advocates such a culture – that is, a consumer society – people focus on consumption, comfort and well-being, luxury life, extreme abundance of goods, and consumers like the new and hate the old. According to Leach, this cultural shift in the United States was completed between 1880 and 1930. For the remainder of the 20th century, many corners of the globe moved closer to the culture of consumer capitalism.
One finding related to Leach's research into the cultural history of American consumerism is that the concept of fashion was invented, forcing people to constantly buy and discard them in order to chase trends, and that the fashion industry also opened up new social activity space for women—the fashion industry employed a large number of women, a small number of high-paid people who stood out as "fashion buyers." In the early 20th century, major U.S. department stores employed female fashion buyers, and their keen sense of fashion trends played a crucial role in the profitability of their employers. The best of the buyers even enjoy star status, such as Macy's buyer Lena Robenau. She was known as the "Queen of Retail" by industry journals of the time, and frequently traveled to places like Paris, France, to buy, and store employees would collectively send her off on overseas trips. Sometimes, the departure of these female buyers is also made into a movie.
Today, the operating mechanism of consumer society has matured, and the digital age has inserted wings for commodity marketing. In China, where the mobile Internet is highly developed and the Internet industry is undergoing rapid changes, the Internet celebrity economy has become a new phenomenon that has attracted attention - opinion leaders (KOLs) or influencers (influencers) have obtained a Chinese characteristic title "Internet celebrity" here, and they undertake business soft and wide on social networks in the form of selling lifestyles, combining social networks with e-commerce to boost consumption. The influencer economy leverages the trust in opinion leaders in consumer psychology (who appear more credible because they don't represent a company's interests) to allow (seemingly) neutral influencers to build stronger emotional connections with consumers and thus gain influence.
It is worth noting that the advantage of internet celebrities in carrying goods is a double-edged sword - their credibility is based on neutrality and no special appeal, and once they show a strong sense of purpose and try to be manneristic, it is easy to leave a negative impression of moral dubiousness in front of the public.
Influencers, like brands, need to find their niche in a large crowd, and it is the most convenient way to establish a persona through a distinctive label, while the fleeting trend (trend may refer to both fashion trends and cultural trends) makes people constantly innovate. Taking "Buddha Yuan" as an example, before this label attracts the attention of mainstream public opinion, the behavior of worshiping Buddha, copying scriptures, drinking tea, etc. is not heretical, and at the moment when "national customs are prevalent", they are even symbols of "culture and taste" to some extent. An analytical article published on the public account "Zhishu Network" pointed out that people who are keen on worshiping Buddha naturally have a certain double imagination of "the abundance of material life and the peace of the spiritual world", which is the starting point of the "Buddha Yuan" label. If "Foyuan" is not strangled by mainstream public opinion, it is nothing more than a personal label that highlights differences, one of the digital personalities that people scribble on the mobile phone screen every day; but "Foyuan" is stigmatized because some groups overdraft their imagination dividends and trust quotas in advance through social networks. It is difficult to determine how many Internet celebrities have made profits with "Buddha Yuan", but it is certain that the consequences of the stigma of "Buddha Yuan" will be shared by all young women who pursue the comfort of Buddhist faith and like to share related topics on social networks.
The barbaric growth of the influencer economy has brought problems and anxiety. The superb marketing methods of the internet celebrity economy constantly deceive people and incite unnecessary consumption desires, so that people unconsciously value-add services for the surplus value of capital, while they themselves are reduced to a tool for capital to pursue profits. In recent years, more and more people have reflected on this. The saying "Buddha Yuan" can stir nerves precisely because of the strong contrast between its surface desirelessness and non-reality, which stimulates people's disgust. On the other hand, there has always been a problem of false marketing and the sale of counterfeit and shoddy products in the Internet celebrity economy, such as "a brother with goods" Simba has been widely discussed and heavily punished by the industry for selling fake bird's nest, and Luo Yonghao has also "overturned" with goods, and the severity of its impact is self-evident. However, often in the case of attacks against female influencers, the severity of these problems is magnified into a mass phenomenon. From "Buddha Yuan" and "Sick Yuan" to various other "X Yuan" that are still emerging, such allegations show a generalization trend and are worth pondering.
<h3>Where does the "X-Yuan" bias come from? </h3>
From the perspective of social psychology, "X Yuan" has become the target of public criticism. American psychologist Gordon W. Allport pointed out in his book The Nature of Prejudice that people have a tendency to produce prejudices - generalization, conceptualization and classification are human instincts, which can help guide us to adapt to daily life as soon as possible, but people are also prone to irrational classifications and oversimplification of the empirical world. The personal value system is a classification that tends in particular to make baseless prejudgments, and negative biases are often a reflection of our own value system, and how much we value our own mode of existence, how much we will belittle or attack things that seem to threaten our values. Both positive and negative biases tend to make us stereotyped—it reflects some exaggerated group trait that rationalizes our liking or dislike of a group.
Allport points out that widespread social bias is closely related to social structure and cultural patterns. When the vertical mobility of society (where each member of society is promised potential equality and encouraged to achieve upward mobility through effort and good fortune) inspires and panics members of society, especially in the context of the accelerated collapse of social structures and social values, those who are dissatisfied with their personal situation are more likely to develop prejudices against the vulnerable groups in society. "The increased anxiety that accompanies the unpredictability of the future has led to a tendency to blame the scapegoat for the deteriorating situation." In times of social dysfunction, conflicts of interest and perceived competition between crowds are exaggerated, and dissatisfied people develop hostile mentalities and aggressive impulses. Allport argues that in order to maintain the core solidity of society, most societies will encourage public expression of hostility to specific groups of "witches" in a formal or informal way, as a safe valve for the public to vent their emotions. European societies in the 15th century and Massachusetts in the 17th century openly encouraged witch hunting as precedents.
To some extent, "X Yuan" is a prejudice generated by the anxiety of class mobility, which has begun to appear in the "Spelling Single Celebrity" controversy a year ago: the offense of "Spelling Single Celebrity" lies in the use of Spelling single to dissolve the scarcity and segmentation attributes of consumption symbols, and to usurp the social hierarchical order. A year later, this deviant accusation pointed almost verbatim at "Foyuan" and "Sick Yuan." In addition to illegal acts such as suspected false marketing, it is more important to poke people's hostility to the "upstart" created by the Internet celebrity economy - the Internet celebrity economy allows some women from ordinary backgrounds to directly use beauty and love to dock capital and break the threshold to achieve a class jump. Leaving aside this reason, it's almost impossible to explain why women in the illegal traffic business aren't directly called criminals, but instead invent the label "X Yuan," which is morally emotionally ambiguous.
The fermentation of public opinion on "Foyuan" and "Sick Yuan" and the clarification of several parties remind us that the mass media has an extremely important role in promoting and impressing the board, and for this reason the media should exercise restraint and caution in inventing labels, especially when labels are mistakenly attached to the heads of vulnerable groups in society (such as young women). In 2016, a Norton Security study found that nearly half of the 1,000 people surveyed experienced some form of abuse or harassment online, with up to 76 percent of women under the age of 30. Many studies have found that women choose to hide themselves online to avoid being abused. At the same time, online verbal violence can cause real harm to victims, such as experiencing anxiety, stress, panic, lack of self-confidence, and feelings of powerlessness. When the accusations of "X Yuan" are generalized into indiscriminate attacks, women will lose the freedom to express themselves legally on the Internet under the pressure of self-censorship, which is more worthy of our vigilance than a few big Vs of Internet celebrities with goods.
Resources:
Tabby Jackson Gee, Frea Ross. What is feminism useful? 》. Yilin Publishing House.2021.
William Leach. The Land of Desire: The Rise of American Consumerist Culture. Peking University Press.2020.
[Beauty] Gordon Allport. The Nature of Prejudice. Kyushu Press.2020.
XU Man. Crossing the Gate: The Daily Life of Fujian Women in the Song Dynasty. Shanghai Ancient Books Publishing House.2019.
YU Yingshi. Confucian Ethics and the Spirit of Businessmen. Guangxi Normal University Press.2014.
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