Abstract

ZHENG, Tiantian. Masculinity in crisis: effeminate men, loss of manhood, and the nation-state in postsocialist China. Etnográfica [online]. 2015, vol.19, n.2, pp.347-365. ISSN 0873-6561.

The phenomenon of “fake women” sparked indignant discourses chastising it as an epitome of the loss of Chinese manhood and a threat to the nation-state. Experts, counselors, and educators called for “saving boys” through revamping the education system and underscoring gender-difference education in schools and families. Effeminate men have become a scapegoat upon which anxiety over the current social problems such as dissolved marriages is displaced. While a dissolved family is pinpointed as one of the key factors that can lead to a child's effeminacy and gender misrecognition, the media also portrays the lack of manhood not only as a public menace and a threat to the family, but also as a metaphor for passive masculinity and national crisis. Drawing on research of print and electronic media in China from 2010 to 2012, this paper enlightens the inextricably intertwined relationships between a lack of manhood and the strength of the state in the globalizing era of China. It is argued that the crisis of masculinity in effeminate men is considered a peril to the security of the nation because it reflects powerlessness, inferiority, feminized passivity, and social deterioration, reminiscent of the colonial past when China was defeated by the colonizing West and plagued by its image as the “sick man” of East Asia.

Keywords : masculinity; effeminacy; gender roles; state; China.

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