A young woman expelled from university for having sex with a foreigner. A man jailed for raping his fiancée after paying her the bride price. And a video game portraying women as gold diggers.
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The discussion started in April when a court in Datong, Shanxi province upheld the guilty verdict and three-year prison sentence of a man who had raped his fiancée the day after they got engaged. The case centred on whether the bride price he paid of 100,000 yuan (US$13,900) and a gold ring was considered marital consent and a tacit agreement for sex.
In June, there was anger over stereotyping and sexism after a Chinese online game originally called Revenge on Gold Diggers shot to the top of gaming platforms on day one. Players of the game are male characters being pursued by manipulative women who only want one thing: their money. The backlash prompted the game’s creators to change the name to Emotional Anti-Fraud Simulator the day after its release.
It did not end there. The same month, media reported that a dowdy, 38-year-old cross-dresser had lured hundreds of young men into having sex, which he secretly filmed before selling the videos online.
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Days later, a 21-year-old Chinese student was expelled from a university in Dalian, Liaoning province for having a one-night stand with a Ukrainian gamer attending an event in Shanghai. The man had posted intimate photos and videos of the student, one of his fans, on social media, calling her “easy”.
In the case of the cross-dresser the discussions initially focused on lurid details of the videos. But that shifted to a debate over why the men involved, including the cross-dresser, had their identities protected by the authorities yet the student, a woman, was publicly shamed by the university.
