作者：钱钰琳

编辑：胡丽莉  校对：周敏 翻译：周敏

在中国，很多人一谈到女性地位，就喜欢拿“妇女能顶半边天”出来宣传，好像中国女性已经获得了真正平等。可现实却恰恰相反。中国女性长期活在儒家父权思想与中共极权统治双重压迫之下，从古代到今天，女性从未真正拥有完整的自由与权利。

所谓的“三从四德”，本质上就是一套驯化女性的思想枷锁。女人从出生开始，就被要求顺从、忍耐、牺牲。小时候听父亲的，结婚后听丈夫的，丈夫死了听儿子的。女人被要求温柔、听话、贤惠，却从来没人要求男人学会尊重和平等。中国传统文化里，女性从来不是独立的人，而是家庭与男性的附属品。而最可怕的是，中共从来没有真正废除这种父权思想，反而利用它来维持统治。中共嘴上喊男女平等，实际上却把女性当成维稳工具、生育工具、社会工具。国家需要劳动力时，就宣传“妇女能顶半边天”；国家需要控制人口时，就强制计划生育；国家发现人口下降了，又开始逼女人回归家庭、多生孩子。

在计划生育最疯狂的年代，中国发生过人类历史上最荒唐、最残忍的大规模生育迫害。无数女性被强制堕胎、强制上环、强制绝育。怀孕不是女人自己的事情，而是政府审批的事情。基层干部像抓犯人一样半夜破门，把孕妇拖去流产。多少已经成型的胎儿被强行杀死，多少女性因此终身不孕、精神崩溃，甚至死在手术台上。可这一切，在中共口中却被包装成“伟大的政策成果”。这根本不是文明，而是国家机器对女性身体最赤裸裸的控制。更讽刺的是，当中国人口开始下滑时，同样的政权又开始高喊“鼓励生育”。以前不让你生，现在逼你生。女性从头到尾都没有选择权。你的子宫什么时候该工作、该停止、该生几个孩子，不是你决定，而是权力决定。

而在现实社会中，中国女性依旧大量生活在赤裸裸的性别歧视里。很多落后地区，女人至今不能上桌吃饭，只能在厨房忙前忙后；家产默认留给儿子；女孩被认为“迟早是别人家的人”；农村重男轻女导致大量弃婴、黑户、拐卖问题长期存在。甚至直到今天，还有无数家庭把生不出儿子的责任推到女人身上。中共从来不敢真正解决这些问题，因为父权结构本身就是它维持社会稳定的一部分。一个被压制的女性群体，更容易忍耐，更容易服从，更容易成为廉价劳动力和家庭牺牲品。

很多女性以为努力读书、努力工作就能改变命运，可现实是，中国社会对女性的恶意几乎贯穿一生。找工作时，企业公开写“限男性”；结婚后，被逼着承担绝大部分家务和育儿；离婚时，又可能因为所谓“传统伦理”失去公平。年龄焦虑、婚育焦虑、社会羞辱，像锁链一样套在中国女性身上。更荒唐的是，当女性真正开始为自己发声时，却往往遭到打压。女权账号被封禁，讨论女性权益被说成“制造性别对立”，受害者维权被污名化。因为真正独立、有思想、有组织能力的女性，对于极权社会来说，本身就是一种威胁。

一个真正文明的社会，女性应该拥有决定自己人生的权力：决定是否结婚，是否生育，如何生活，如何表达。可在中国，很多女性甚至连最基本的身体自主权都无法真正拥有。说到底，中共从来没有真正解放过女性，它只是把女性从“封建家庭的附属品”，变成了“国家机器的附属品”。而一个社会，如果连女性都无法获得真正自由，那它口中的“文明”“进步”“现代化”，不过都是包装出来的宣传口号。

Chinese Women: From Patriarchy to State Control

Author: Qian Yulin

Editor: Hu Lili Proofreader: Zhou Min Translator: Zhou Min

Abstract: Chinese women have long existed under the dual oppression of traditional patriarchy and CCP (Chinese Communist Party) totalitarianism. From “Three Obediences and Four Virtues” to family planning, women have consistently struggled to truly possess bodily autonomy and equal rights.

In China, when many people talk about the status of women, they like to bring up the propaganda “Women hold up half the sky,” as if Chinese women have already achieved true equality. However, the reality is exactly the opposite. Chinese women have long lived under the dual oppression of Confucian patriarchal ideology and CCP totalitarian rule; from ancient times to today, women have never truly possessed complete freedom and rights.

The so-called “Three Obediences and Four Virtues” are, in essence, a set of ideological shackles designed to domesticate women. From the moment of birth, women are required to obey, endure, and sacrifice. As children, they listen to their fathers; after marriage, they listen to their husbands; after the husband dies, they listen to their sons. Women are required to be gentle, obedient, and virtuous, yet no one ever requires men to learn respect and equality. In traditional Chinese culture, women are never independent individuals, but rather appendages of the family and men. The most terrifying part is that the CCP has never truly abolished this patriarchal ideology; instead, it utilizes it to maintain its rule. The CCP pays lip service to gender equality, but in reality, it treats women as tools for maintaining stability, tools for reproduction, and social tools. When the state needs labor, it promotes “Women hold up half the sky”; when the state needs to control the population, it enforces mandatory family planning; when the state discovers the population is declining, it begins forcing women to return to the home and have more children.

During the maddening years of family planning, the most absurd and cruel large-scale reproductive persecution in human history occurred in China. Countless women were subjected to forced abortions, forced insertions of IUDs, and forced sterilizations. Pregnancy was not a woman’s own affair, but a matter of government approval. Grassroots officials, like catching criminals, broke down doors in the middle of the night to drag pregnant women away for abortions. How many fully formed fetuses were forcibly killed? How many women became permanently infertile, suffered mental breakdowns, or even died on the operating table because of this? Yet all of this was packaged by the CCP as “great policy achievements.” This is not civilization at all, but the state machine’s most naked control over the female body. Even more ironic is that when China’s population began to decline, the same regime began shouting “encourage childbirth.” Previously they didn’t let you give birth; now they force you to give birth. From beginning to end, women have had no right to choose. When your uterus should work, when it should stop, and how many children it should bear is not decided by you, but by power.

In actual society, Chinese women still largely live amidst naked gender discrimination. In many backward regions, women to this day cannot sit at the table to eat and can only busy themselves in the kitchen; family property is left to sons by default; girls are considered “sooner or later belonging to someone else’s family”; the preference for sons over daughters in rural areas has led to long-standing issues of abandoned infants, “black households” (unregistered citizens), and human trafficking. Even today, countless families push the responsibility of being unable to give birth to a son onto the woman. The CCP never dares to truly solve these problems because the patriarchal structure itself is part of its maintenance of social stability. A suppressed group of women is easier to make endure, easier to make obey, and easier to turn into cheap labor and family sacrifices.

Many women think that by studying hard and working hard they can change their destiny, but the reality is that the malice of Chinese society toward women runs through almost their entire lives. When looking for a job, companies openly write “limited to males”; after marriage, they are forced to take on the vast majority of housework and childcare; when divorcing, they may lose fairness because of so-called “traditional ethics.” Age anxiety, marriage and childbearing anxiety, and social shaming are like chains fastened onto Chinese women. Even more absurdly, when women truly begin to speak out for themselves, they are often suppressed. Feminist accounts are banned, discussing women’s rights is labeled as “manufacturing gender antagonism,” and victims seeking justice are stigmatized. Because truly independent women with thoughts and organizational capabilities are, in themselves, a threat to a totalitarian society.

In a truly civilized society, women should have the power to decide their own lives: deciding whether to marry, whether to give birth, how to live, and how to express themselves. But in China, many women do not even truly possess the most basic right to bodily autonomy. In the final analysis, the CCP has never truly liberated women; it has only turned women from “appendages of the feudal family” into “appendages of the state machine.” In a society where even women cannot obtain true freedom, the “civilization,” “progress,” and “modernization” it speaks of are nothing more than packaged propaganda slogans.