What Is “Rural Feminism”? A Computer-Assisted Analysis of Popular Antifeminist Discourses in Chinese Social Media

Along with the popularization of feminism in Chinese social media, an antifeminist wave has become increasingly prominent since 2014, marked most notably by stigmatization buzzword “rural feminism.” We collected 2,104 texts regarding feminism” on Zhihu (the Quora) and applied approaches computer-assisted discourse studies (i.e., topic modeling, collocation, concordance analyses) as lenses to help us understand connections patterns within these fragmented media texts, uncover hidden strategies. The findings reveal that popular antifeminism adopts strategies we defined “double embrace” rejection” minimize realistic threat men’s vested interests. These deliberate hint at further exacerbate complex interplay between current feminism. On this basis, argue previous framework understanding relationship a simple dichotomy no longer applies need reconceptualize challenges threats context specific history reality society rich interactions misogyny, neoliberalism, postfeminism, various versions active China.