Betraying Big Brother

“Construing the everyday relationship of women to society as an inherently violent one—Mao characterizes it as a relationship of daily rape—Mao concluded that women such as Miss Zhao (thus, most women in China) could not develop individuality in life, but could only assert free will in death by suicide,”

Li often says that “our bodies are our battleground” (drawing inspiration from Barbara Kruger’s 1989 black-and-white photographic silkscreen of a woman’s face, Your Body is a Battleground) in her campaigns against gender-based violence. Li’s prolonged abuse while growing up demonstrates how this saying is literally true for her—just as it is for so many other women in China and globally.

I recall one conversation with Li Maizi in 2016, when we spoke about how so many women in China are sexually assaulted, yet very few come out publicly about their experience. “In China, rape culture is so strong that almost no one dares to admit they’ve been sexually assaulted because they’re terrified of being blamed for it,” she said.