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The sluttified sex: Verbal misogyny reflects and reinforces gender order in wireless China
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 June 2018
Abstract
This article describes emerging misogynistic labels involving the morpheme biăo ‘slut’ as a gendered personal suffix in the Chinese cyber lexicon. We analyze the morphological, semantic, and cognitive processes behind their coinage, and the way they are used across gender lines in Chinese social media as a community of discourse practice. Our findings show that women participate in female pejoration as much as men do, and that men are more inclined than women to use pejorative labels that specifically attack female empowerment. Additionally, men construct masculinity and power by using certain misogynistic labels as generics. We argue that verbal misogyny is part and parcel of a larger gender ideology by illuminating the mutual constitution of the linguistic pejoration of women and the gender order in postreform China. This study has implications for research on women's conditions in contemporary China, raises awareness of gender inequality, and lays the groundwork for social actions toward gender equality. (Gender, sexism, neologism, social media, Chinese)*
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- Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018
Footnotes
We are grateful to two anonymous reviewers and the editor of Language in Society for their feedback and suggestions. We thank Maram Epstein and the students of the Fall 2017 graduate seminar EALL 611 at the University of Oregon for the comments and discussions on an earlier draft of this article, and Volya Kapatsinski for discussions about power law and exponential distributions. We take full responsibility for all remaining errors in the writing.
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