Gender and the privacy paradox in Chinese college students’ locative dating communication

Abstract

This article explores the role gender plays in addressing the privacy paradox in the context of young Chinese people’s locative dating communication. Based on a case study of 19 Chinese college students, I explore differing privacy management strategies adopted by female and male participants in their use of WeChat People Nearby. This gendered phenomenon reveals how People Nearby works within patriarchal Chinese society to pose more privacy-related risks to women than to men in locative dating communication. The research findings shed new light on the socio-technological processes through which existing gender power relations are reproduced in young Chinese people’s use of locative social media applications.

Multiplicity, diversity and individualization behind shuttlecock play: Chinese sportsmen’s masculinities in today’s China

“…Gender role and relations surrounding the dominance of men are constantly emphasized, similar to Connell's (2005) conception of hegemonic masculinity which points to the subordination of women, and still remains prevalent in modern China (Peng, 2021;Zhang, 2019). All along, masculinity is shown to be socially instituted through patriarchy for males and females are excluded from being associated with such a privilege (Xiao, 2021).…”

Television, women, and self-objectification: Examining the relationship between the consumption of female TV dramas and sexism, the internalization of beauty ideals, and body surveillance in China

“…In conclusion, this study employs a gendered perspective to examine the relationship between media exposure and a series of consequences caused by sexual objectification under the framework of the objectification theory in the Chinese context, which is expected to provide some references for future research in feminist media studies. Advances in media technologies have been found to reinforce the existing gender norms in China, which impose more limits on the liberation of women against the background of the masculine narrative (Peng, 2021). We find that the consumption of female TV dramas does not cause women to sexually objectify themselves directly; however, it tends to coax them into body surveillance that is likely to lead to a series of health problems according to the existing scholarship.…”

Constructing ambivalent masculinity and constant femininity in interracial families: Media representations of African-Chinese marriage on Xiaohongshu

“…In particular, driven by online anti-African sentiments and the spreading of misinformation, African men are deemed carriers of viruses, and ‘unchaste’ Chinese women are recipients of these (Liu et al, 2021: 485). As a result, anger is vented at Chinese women married to African men, and sexual defamation is used to stigmatise them since in the Chinese context, sex-based discourse, like slut-shaming discourse, tends to set a ‘sexual double standard’ unfavourable to women (Peng, 2021a: 234). However, from another perspective, African women actually aid in resolving the problem of ‘leftover’ men in China, which primarily affects lower-class Chinese men with less conventionally attractive physical characteristics who can use their perceived racial superiority as a form of sexual capital despite their precarious economic situations or perceived physical flaws (Zhou, 2023).…”